December 28, 2013: Impressions II

The taxi driver told me last week, "You are so lucky to not have any responsibilities." He meant because I am not married.

 

I chewed him out. I don't care about your education level or culture: ignorance is ignorance. To assume one does not have responsibilities because of his/ his state of marriage is highly ignorant. Telling a woman that she has no responsibilities because she has no husband and children is telling her that her life can only have meaning through her role for others. If that is true for her, why is it not true for men, too? For all of us? Would you tell a nun that her life is meaningless in tis devotion? The Dalai Lama?

 

A year ago, I wrote impressions of the 6 different types of love. Of opening. Of new beginnings. Of hope. This year I would return, but I cannot help but wonder: have I made a difference at all in my passing through? How can I keep bearing the responsibility without the support I need?

 

Impressions.

 

I have spent a year broke, being cold and hungry and lonely and disillusioned most of the time. Reports in the US say that empathy is at an all-time low, in decline for 40 years; most sharply in the last decade. Responsibility 1: cultivate, water, nurture empathy in my own life. Stop being afraid of being criticized for being "weak." Unsubscribe to notions that cynicism=wit=intelligence. Clever is not meaningful. Trust more, reach out even more.

 

6 days ago, my best friend spent the night here. He could not afford gifts for his family this year. I could not afford gifts for anyone. I took money I was going to invest in my business and use to eat, and bought his boy some small gifts: watercolor paints, paper, 2 3-d wooden puzzles. I offered to make some earrings for my friend's wife, mother, daughter. I made us a chicken dinner to share. He stayed over as he often does, because there is no transportation at night, and because where he worked has a locked gate that he cannot enter after 10:00 pm. During the night his heart stopped. This happens often. One day, maybe soon, maybe not, it will not start again. His body temperature dropped dangerously low. I threw every blanket in the house on him, put a heating pad on his stomach, and held him. An hour later, he returned to us. He cannot get the surgery he needs here. He is 31, and may not live to see his children's high school graduation.

 

so then, responsibility 2: learn that it is possible we will lose everything, despite our best efforts. We like to believe in a world and God that will reward us for good work. This is not a guarantee. Nobody else is going to do the work. Sometimes our best efforts do not change things forever... they only buy us a few more months or days. Just ask those we lost this year to bullying, indifference, unemployment, degust. Ask Jadey or John, whom we lost to despair and bullying this year. Ask Jeff, a homeless veteran living out of a car, where are the guarantees. Ask the 50 year-old man why he thinks cyber-bullying is ok; why destroying someone's vulnerability and sense of self are viable spectator sports. Ask anyone who is quick to jump on the Jesus bandwagon and deny compassion to those they deem unworthy. Ask why some lives simply value more than others. THEN ask why you are ok with that.

 

I see the projections in my own work, and they keep me awake at night. The numbers are terrifying. We can turn a blind eye in the US still because our lives are not all THAT affected. The developing world will bear the cost of our complacency and lack of empathy, to the tune of 90% of the world's effects. How convenient for us. What I see for Guatemala is horrifying. 70% loss of water resources. 60% loss of crops, 30%+ rise in food prices. Doubling of daily temperatures. Annual GDP loss for responding to climate emergency. Doubling of population because of religious control. Worsening unemployment. Malnutrition turning to starvation; borders and doors closed to emigration. What is happening here is a micro-cosm to what will play out all over the world, in small and large places. The survival of millions depends literally on the ability to recover empathy, to empower action, to invest in the future. Not just the future of 'Merica, but the future of an interconnected sphere. Bullying, apathy, disinterest, scientific illiteracy, willful exclusion... these are the cancers eating away at our collective heart and soul. I refuse to stay silent in front of them.

 

Cancer. yes, then. Three months ago, I found a lump in my right breast. It is hard, fixed, painful when pressed. Growing. I have no insurance, and have had inadequate health care for the past 3 years. Everything I do gets paid out of pocket. Donations for my work have been barely enough to keep the house/ office/ studio open. And keep half the food needed on the table- which I have also shared with those far less fortunate. I have lost 35 pounds in 4 months.

 

At this point, I can only hope it is benign. I am saving pennies to afford a mammogram. Responsibility 3: do the best with what you've got. Always make do. A package of porcelain modeling clay this year became Christmas presents for 8 families, and will provide Valentine's Day sales. My humble studio produced gifts for over a dozen. I can make a pound of chicken, some chorizo, rice, tomatoes, eggs, cheese, powdered milk, beans, a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter, onions, and spices last a week- regardless of who shows up hungry at my door. When the house is 40 degrees, I work from bed. My baking dish for making individual servings of quiche is a tin can. My walking shoes were repaired last week by a kind friend. They log 2-7 miles a day. Shipping issues lost me an entire Christmas season's worth of sales; donations are half of what they need to be. I am scrambling to revise strategies and working for pennies on the dollar even as I missed the thesis deadline again. There just aren't enough hours in the day sometimes, or energy in my body.

 

Responsibility 4: find joy in small things. every day.

 

This part is so easy. When you've been stripped to your core nakedness, there is not much left other than to feel the joy or despair of daily living. So much fills my days with laughter. I find there are so few I can relate to on a superficial level any more... and so many on a deeper lever. Small dramas become odious; cruelty becomes intolerable. Apathy enrages me. The human condition becomes mirthsome; small daily doings send us into peals of laughter. Human weaknesses are tolerated. Wonder replaces the hooded eyes of indifference.

 

Here is the friend whose marriage was so bad he fled to the US to escape it. Here is the coworker who falls asleep during conversations. Here is the 8 year-old boy who invited me on a Disney movie date. Here is the woman who sees me as a long-lost brother. Here are the four male friends who have offered to help me birth a child... and the one I may actually consider. Here is the 68 year-old man with 3 girlfriends whose wife is convinced he is gay. Here is the American tourist, lost and seeking herself through service and sharing a cup of tea at my table. Here are the hoops I jump through to receive a package of much-needed used socks and chocolates. Here is the back talk and double-speak and evenings spent designing houses that one day we hope to be able to build. Here is the man who has survived being tied in a sack and beaten and left to die in the desert. Here is the one who illegally raced cars in the deserts of Mexico- he tells us this as he backs down a twisted alley at 25 mph. Here's to the man who said, "I have nothing to offer you, but would you like to make love tonight?," and it turned out to be just what I needed.

 

Here's a toast to climbing mountainsides to do interviews and to having friends who trust me to help keep them alive. Here's to the endless struggle to find support for another month. Here's to holding onto hope, and finding, as Oriah would say, what it is that really sustains me form the inside when all else falls away. So, the final responsibility: asking for what I need.

 

Far easier said than done. I have learned this year that my biggest despair is not feeling wanted or useful. I need to feel like I am contributing. For this, a single reproach can send me scurrying into corners; for this, I have several times considered marrying the wrong men; for this, I take on too much sometimes. For this, my failures are etched into my bones and bleed from my pores. Rejection and failure are my crosses to bear in this life.

 

We saved a town this year. 40,000 people. We saved their water supply- through education, mapping, politics, law, and media. It is a drop in the bucket of what is needed. Each and every town here will have its own fight over water, over jobs, over multi-national corporation pressures on lives that are valued at slightly less than others. I have to sit here and say, "we had a success this year." We did it without salaries, because we had to. Being from the US, work feels worthless if someone is not willing to pay you to do it. I am struggling to figure out how to get paid. That feeling- that recognition we got for helping a humble town- that is why I do what I do. The handspun gift placed into my hands by a group of old men willing to share their stories with me; that was what made this year worthwhile for me.

 

A voice in my head said the other day, "you will get married in 2014." I look around, and am highly skeptical. Unless it is the spiritual marriage to my work, to my god. I failed so many things, and I have so much work to do yet. So far to go. So much to learn. I hope beyond hope there is enough time to do it all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[Horizon K.]

My dear friend, you terrify me.  This, terrifies me.  You live in a place, in a way, I could never envision for myself. You follow the hardest and bravest path, I only know how to be safe...  Strange how i know we are only a few years apart, yet it feels as if you have lived lifetimes more than me...I think when I said I came to the WC wanting to know the truth of people's hearts, to know such far beyond myself places, that I may never visit, you became one I most needed to meet...

Please, please, see a doctor.  I know I sound selfish, but I am saying this as the one in my family that everyone depends on for all the things that we have, that without, so much would fall apart... your true first priority is always to yourself, for if you are not well, you can not take care of all of those you love...

As to responsibilities, these you take on, point out, these are ones that everyone should, and yet for most, not seen as necessary.  Too many just consider what they need, or never do, or simply what they want, and never seek the deeper spaces, what can be survived on, when everything else is gone.
Anyway, I will be thinking of you today, and thinking of all that you do and say...

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank yuo, Horizon. The good news is, a freind has offered to at lleast pay for a general check-up exam for me next week. We will see what happens from there. In the meantime, my to-do list doubles daily like some sort of bacterial colony. I took some time to travel for a day for perspective, and then a day yesterday for meditation and wrestling to goals in to something that looks remotely doable.

I saw something the other day that may become my mantra for 2014; and I will share it with you:

"When driving at night, you can only see what is in fornt of you as far as the headlights will reach. Yet you can make the entire journey this way."

[Horizon K.]

I'm so glad to hear about that step... I have no idea about the medical system where you are, but now you can get Obamacare here, a thankful option... Those preexisting condition exclusions previously allowed were abominable...

As for that quote, how perfect it is! I think I do, drive in such a way... Everyone should, to some extent... The future can never be known, no perfect plan can ever solidify the path to any far away dream or fantasized future... We must always be prepared to change...
Good luck with everything, my dear... Im always here, if you need an ear...

[Georgia Gypsy]

'You are Enough'
Through it all, no matter what happens, remember these words.
Imagine what you want your life to look like, ask the universe to make it so, and don't worry so hard about the bumps in the road.
I have faith in you, I have faith that what you need will come into your life.
Much love, and light to you!
GG

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank you, Kelli. Your words are much appreciated, as always. I am trying to keep the same faith that you have. Happy New year to you, my dear friend.

[Larry Dyson]

Yes Heros come in many packages...not all wear red white and blue Capes...

[Marie Anzalone]

I have never wanted to be anyone's hero, my friend. Open minds and hearts and make people think and want to act, yes. Hero, no. But I agree that they are all around us. I work with several of them. I can no longer abide folks who judge all of humanity by its worst examples. I simply have no time for them. they stagnate, and I prefer running clear waters.

[Emily B]

thank you, for all that you do, you are my hero in so many ways

[Marie Anzalone]

and you, one of mine.