Reading

I've written a number of blog posts about writing and my struggles with it, but I don't usually write about my other obsession - reading.  Perhaps it's because reading is as natural to me as breathing or eating.  I tend to take it for granted and I don't usually think about it or about how it affects me, but reading is the biggest and most enduring influence in my life.

I will often reread books.  In fact, I would say that for every new book I read, I reread three to five others.  There are a few authors whose books I've read dozens of times.  Rereading these books is like sinking into a warm bath - you know the sensation you're about to feel the moment your toe breaks through the water's surface and the anticipation of a sure thing makes the contentment that much richer and more enjoyable.

Oftentimes, I'll reread an older book and in the middle of a book I read a decade ago, I'll stop and see an exact sentence or turn of phrase that lead to specific events in my life.  I can trace entire passages of books to turning points in my life.  And this isn't the kind of association one forms between a traumatic event and a piece of music one heard at the same time. This isn't a correlation, this is a clear causality.  I will reread a book and realize that one of the character's action is what caused me to question my first marriage.  I'll reread another one and know, with absolute certainty, that a specific scene was the reason for yet another turning point in my life.  Of course not every big event in my life was precipitated by a book, but enough were that I know it's more than a coincidence.

I reread books not just for the comfort I draw them the familiar phrases, but also to understand where I am today and how I got here.  I reread them to figure out how I became who I am and to remind myself why I am the person I am.  But that's rereading...

Over the years, reading new books had become steadily more difficult.  I tend to be picky about what I read; the book has to hold my attention, it has to be written well, and it has to be something that I can relate to.  It doesn't mean that it has to be realistic, it just has to be a place where I can see myself and that's where I get into trouble.  If I get into a book, I sink into it and the more I enjoy it, the more difficult I find it to surface.

Sinking into a book means I have to let go of at least some measure of self-control that shades every waking moment.  The deeper I sink and the more I identify with the characters, the more I become them.  I take on their worries and their fears and their lives.  Their problems become my own to solve, their struggles invade and overtake my own.  I will close the book but I am now changed; no longer the same person who opened it days or hours before.  Each book that I become completely immersed in, changes me and not always for the better.    

Because I know that this will happen I try to avoid books that will be difficult to shake off, but as any dieter knows, the more you deny yourself that cupcake or bowl of ice cream the more it becomes the focus of your desire until you say to yourself, cringing at the lie, that it will be just one cupcake or just a small bowl of ice cream.  We both know that's not true.  We both know that it's never just one.

It's an un-winnable game - I won't read books that don't suck me in and I can't stand the consequences of reading those that do.  Of course, I could steel myself from falling into them the way I do when I watch movies, but then it's like going to the dentist - you know something is happening but you feel nothing.  What is the point of reading then?  For me, my obsession with reading started as a chance of stepping out of my life and for many years I read "happy" books that accomplished that exact purpose.  Through those books I left a life where every day brought pain the way sandpaper rubbing against raw skin does and escaped into books.  They were a balm and a drug and a way of distancing myself from a life I couldn't manage.

These days, I still occasionally read happy books, but they don't touch me and truth be told, they tend to irritate or at least annoy me because I can't feel or take them seriously.  The books that do touch me are the ones that stir up the sediment, the ones that take me days or weeks to get over.  These books are ones that I'll never reread because I'm too much of a coward to put myself through the agony the second time around; now that I know what's coming.  And yet, I cannot resist reaching for a new book, all the while consoling myself with familiar lies... This time I'll stay above the fray.  This time I won't fall into it headfirst.  This time I won't emerge with scars invisible to all but me.

Masochism comes in all shapes and forms, I suppose.

On pain and suffering

A brief preamble before I get to the topic of this post...

For the last few weeks I have been engaging in meditation practice.  It started, as many of my obsessions do, with a fairly innocuous reference to a meditation phone app in a local newscast.  The newscast itself was about the stress in everyone's lives and the increase in the aforementioned stress that accompanies the holiday season.  The commentator mentioned a couple of phone apps that are now available to help people deal with stress by guiding them through brief bursts of meditation that can be done anytime and anywhere.

While I found it ironic and somewhat counterproductive to think of meditation as yet another thing to quickly squeeze into a busier and busier day, I did remember the name of one of the apps mentioned, Headspace, and downloaded it for a free trial.

The first couple of times I tried it were a spectacular failure - one time I drifted off into my thoughts completely and didn't even realize the ten minute session had concluded until a few minutes after it was over. The second time I just fell asleep.  Not an ideal start, but after a few days I tried again.  And again...

Since an obsession isn't really an obsession unless it infiltrates multiple areas of your life, I decided I wanted to learn more about meditation and started looking for books on the topic.  There are a lot of them... I mean really, really, a lot.  I have neither the time nor the interest to wade through all of them but I did go through numerous reviews and settled on one that is a series of lectures by a professor of theology at Rhodes College (Mark Muesse).  Normally, theology and I don't mix well so I was going into it with some reservations.

And this is where I finally get to the topic of the post...  One of the lectures from the book focuses on pain and suffering and on drawing a clear distinction between the two.  Prior to learning more about meditation I wouldn't necessarily have tied it to pain and suffering, but as anyone who has ever tried to sit cross-legged on the floor and keep still for longer than five minutes can attest, pain can quickly become an integral part of meditation practice.  The part of the lecture that I found fascinating was the professor's determination to distinguish and separate pain from suffering.

The point he was making was that while pain is an unavoidable and ever present part of life, suffering doesn't need to be.  By his definition, pain is the physical manifestation of sensations and while we often equate pain with suffering, they are not at all the same thing and they aren't even tied together, except that we join them out of habit.

I found that stance so fascinating that I actually listened to the entire lecture again, taking notes the second time around.  As I was listening to it, I realized that what the professor was saying wasn't exactly new to me, it just hasn't previously been spelled out that clearly.

I've always known that pain for me doesn't necessarily equate with suffering and it isn't always a negative experience.  And I readily acknowledge that it's possible to suffer great anguish without physical pain.  But here is an interesting definition of suffering that I haven't come across before.

Suffering: A sustained resistance to reality; a mental and emotional struggle against the way things are.

This definition explains, perfectly, why we so often equate pain and suffering.  For most people pain is unpleasant and something we want to get rid of as soon as possible.  We don't want to feel it, we may find it downright offensive, the thought "I don't deserve to be in pain, I want it to go away and I want it to happen right now" is one that often accompanies pain.  By greeting pain with distaste, fear, and sometimes panic, we are refusing to acknowledge the reality of being in pain and resist it.  That's suffering right there.  A sustained resistance to reality.

If you follow that logic, then separating pain and suffering is simple - acknowledge the pain as the reality that is and don't fight it.  You don't have to like it, you just have to accept it.

Blank

Is there anything more frightening than a blank page in front of you?  Why, yes.  Yes, there is.  There is a blank page in front of you and the clock ticking down the minutes until the page has to be filled.  Leaving it blank is not an option.  No, truly, that would be too cruel for words, but the words aren't coming so perhaps they deserve some cruelty in return.  Perhaps they do.  Perhaps he does as well.

If only...  If only he had checked the pockets of his coat before handing it to her to put in the donation bin.  If only she hadn't felt it necessary to go through them herself.  But he didn't and she did and now there's a blank page waiting to be filled.

What to write?  What does one write in a final note to someone?  I'm sorry?  But she's not sorry.  Not sorry at all.  It is he who must be sorry, but we won't go there now.  The fiery rage had died down to a slow and steady simmer, the tears have dried up, and the broken china has been cleaned up and swept into the bin.  It's time to write.

That damn blank page.  Any words she coaxes out and smears across it will carry but a shadow of the racket in her head.  What good is that?  What good is she?

Stare at the page, press the point of a pen against it and watch the ink form a tiny, jagged edged blob.  Words.  Words are failing her.  No.  He failed her, but words won't.  She'll be damned if she lets them.

Eyes focus on the ink stain; unfocus and now the stain looks shimmery around the edges, softening and blending into the pristine whiteness of the sheet.  Her right hand is gripping the pen, harder, harder, until the clasping fingers become pale and tremble under strain.

The words are hiding.  Huddling together, whispering nervously among themselves in some dark corner; spooked by the guttural screams and shattering glass.  It's no use, they aren't coming out.  Not for all the blank pages in the county.

Blank.  Blanks.  No, no, she can't think about it.  One hysterical meltdown per morning is enough.  She pauses in thought.  What if she left him a blank page?  Would he understand what she meant, what she found?  A blank page for months and years of intentional blanks?  Does it matter?  In the end, does it matter if he sees it and knows that she knows?

Pen still pressing into the ink spot which has now grown to the respectable size of a baby jellyfish, she slowly drags the nib across the whiteness, forming two words in the bottom right corner of the page, capping them with a tiny, final ink blob.

Good bye.

Dreaming

I am not sleeping well.  It's one of those things that you realize is happening but you brush it off as a random occurrence.  It's just a late night or a glass of wine too many before bed or a stressful day.  And then before you know it, you look back and the number of bad nights stretches behind you in a line too long to ignore.  I might as well admit it now - I'm not sleeping well.

I am dreaming and it frightens and irritates me in equal measure.  I don't have good dreams or if I do, I don't remember them.  If I'm dreaming and I remember it, then I'm having nightmares.  It's always been like that.  I can't relate to people who tell me about their good dreams.  I don't know what that feels like.

So, I've been dreaming...  J remarked on it a few times, saying that I was restless and twitchy in my sleep.  Perhaps I am, but I don't know how I behave physically, I just know that I wake up wishing I never had to close my eyes again.  Sleep has always been a welcome escape for me and it's rapidly losing its appeal.

My dreams are particularly disturbing to me because they defy logic.  Not waking logic, I don't expect quite that much, but they defy even logic one might expect from dreams.  In my nightmares two things are happening in parallel - there are the actions and then there are the emotions of the dream.  The break in logic is this: the actions do not match the emotions, at all.  I could be dreaming about utterly mundane things, making dinner or shopping for groceries, but the emotions that come along are wildly out of context and scale.

In my dreams all the strong emotions that I suppress, often without knowing I'm doing it, during the day, come out to play and they are merciless.  They infuse my dreams and take over, heedless of the actual content of the dream; leaving me shaken and confused.  I woke up crying the night before last, the sound of my own moans and the wetness of tears is what woke me up.  I opened my eyes and while on some level I realized that I had been dreaming, the grief I felt was so profound and so real, I couldn't seem to loosen its grip.

It's not always sadness that invades my dreams, although that seems to be the most prevalent emotion.  Sometimes it's fear or crippling anxiety, but more often than not, it's sadness.  Usually sadness associated with loss or abandonment.  I don't understand it.  I have no fear of abandonment in my waking hours and I've coped with loss before, although I might as well admit that my way of coping with loss is to shove it as far down the pit of my psyche as possible and pretend it's not there.

Still, that's neither here nor there...  I'm dreaming and I want it to stop.  I need a fix and I need it soon, preferably before I close my eyes tonight.