Eating, Praying and Loving on a Budget

I for Individuality

“Discover the difference between wise individuality and unwise individualism”—advice from an online tarot site

I’m wondering into which category I should place my years of traveling adventures where I didn’t seem to think about how my absence would affect anyone else. I once told my best friend Dana* that I didn’t miss people. I only thought of the next adventure.

I only learned what it felt like to really miss home—-my friends, my family, the familiar Pittsburgh accent when I moved to the UK. Maybe it was the idea of moving somewhere for a long period of time, having a visa, paying taxes that really made my separation sink in. Before, my longest experience overseas was 3 months. I subletted my apartment that time. When I moved to the UK, I sold my car, drove my cat to my friend’s house in North Carolina, and moved out of my apartment. The hugeness of it didn’t seem to hit me until I was given the keys to my flat near the university. I knew I would be living there for 9 months.

I know my experience as an expat is a common one for many people. I’d met many international workers and students when I lived in Pittsburgh before. Most of these people had a significant other or kids which added some familiarity to a new place. But the single internationals I knew all seemed to be adjusting just fine living overseas. They got involved in all kinds of social and athletic activities where they could meet people. Keeping busy seemed to help ease the awkwardness of homesickness. I adjusted as best as I could during my first year abroad but I did spend an inordinate amount of time torturing myself using Google maps. I’d pull up my boyfriend’s street or my best friend’s apartment complex, the whole time listening to the soundtrack for “An Inconvenient Truth”. This was a cocktail for insanity and lots of needless crying. 

This homesickness took me out of the moment, focused my attention on the past (usually an idealized one) and on an unknown future stretched out before me. I think I spent the first year at university in Scotland as a ghost. It wasn’t until the next year that I began to let go of the past, of the person I was before I left to have this experience. I still idealized Pittsburgh and my friends there, but it was a needed daydream when the stress of my PhD program and the long winter nights threatened to overwhelm me.

Now that I’m living here again, I wonder how I would have seen my years in the UK if I only knew that I would one day return. But, most of us never peek outside of linear time with its neat pasts and presents leading toward a future that always has an end. What would it be like to trust the universe and believe that each moment offers wonderful gifts? To get off the tightrope of linear time and actually be present each day to all the experiences both familiar and foreign, both close to home and far away. 

The End of Days

I am a language person. I teach English. I read about it—-its structure, its roots and evolution, so it made sense for me to find a website that happened to define the word Apocolypse.  With all the fuss about the Rapture this Saturday and the “end of the world” next December, I wanted to do a little research into this obsession of ours with violent endings. For all my non-Greek speaking friends, the word apocalypse simply means “lifting of the veil”. I like that image. In our computer-animation, special- effects Hollywood world, apocalypse has taken on a whole different meaning. Think Will Smith and aliens blasting the White House or freaky zombies in “28 Days Later.”

My mother and I went to see “The Road” on Christmas day of all days (it’s a tradition of ours). We left feeling numb and immediately drove to the nearest chain restaurant just to feel normal again. What all of these movies have in common besides the end of the world theme is an obsession with depravity, big explosions, violence and lots and lots of weapons. It’s as if this version of the word apocalypse, which the media has latched onto and spread like a virus, is targeted at teenage boys.

I recently went to see Ac Tah. He gave a workshop on Mayan spirituality at one of the Methodist churches in the city. The Mayan calendar is organized into small and large time units. These larger units of time comprise the long count. Ac Tah explained that since most humans have 10 fingers and 10 toes, the Mayans chose the number 20 to represent a human unit of time. Counting a year in units of 20 days is what makes the Mayan year 360 days, or as some call it, a near year. 20 near years is called a tun. 20 tuns equals a k’atun and 20 k’atuns equals a b’aktun.  A sun is the grouping of years into a larger group equaling 5,200 years. What does all of this have to do with the end of days prophesied on December 21, 2012? Some believe that the completion of this long count calendar will happen on this date.

Ac Tah looked out at the small crowd of listeners in the church. He looked like he knew the punch-line of a joke we hadn’t heard yet. He said, “The reason people in the West believe that the end of the world will come on December 12, 2012 is because of your concept of time. You believe time is linear and therefore has an end. We believe that time is circular.” December 12 is not going to bring in flesh eating zombies or CG aliens because this date simply represents a transition point into a new age, whatever that will bring. It’s actually very exciting to think of it in this way. It beats stocking up on toothpaste and canned goods. Rather than retreating further into ourselves and our little worlds, fearful of the other and operating on a belief in scarcity, we can, I hope begin to expand and work together to create a better world. 

Coming Around Again

If you wait long enough, you may just begin to notice how life is circular. Circumstances and people tend to reappear and come around again but are always transformed by our present perceptions. I didn’t really pay attention to those curmudgeonly people who wrote snarky Facebook posts about the royal wedding. I’m not a hopeless romantic and I’m far from innocent, but I still like a good fairy tale, although the recent wedding of William and Kate is more of a modern fairy tale. This wedding happened almost 30 years after Lady Di and Prince Charles were married.

I remember waking up early in July of 1981 to watch the wedding with my mother and my older sister. We had just moved into the house my mother helped design. Everything was new, waiting to become lived in. My parents were on the verge of a separation and ended up divorcing the following year. The house never really got lived in. But on that early July morning, all three of us sat in front of the t.v. We all watched with rapt attention at the image of Lady Di, her face obscured by a thick veil of tulle. At that time, I didn’t understand romantic love or marriage but all three of us felt a kind of hope—-an emergence of all that was possible—a sense of what happiness was or could be. 

We all know how that relationship turned out but there is something transformative and powerful about public ceremonies. Humans are drawn to ritual. It is what directs our consciousness to create. I didn’t wake up early to watch this wedding, mainly because I forgot and mostly because we now live in the youtube era and I knew that I could watch clips online. I watched Prince William and Kate exchange their vows, knowing that their relationship had its ups and downs and disappointments. For a moment, my own beliefs about love and marriage shifted. I suspended my own limiting and negative beliefs about my love life and felt something close to hope about my future. 

Recently, I went to see my friend Emily* for a tarot reading. She stared at a row of cards and asked if I wanted children. I was surprised by the question, but it resonated somehow. I used to have a lot of fun with men. I freely took chances, let temporary affairs fade naturally. Recently, I’ve felt a seriousness descend like a storm cloud over my love life. I haven’t even been able to enjoy dating. Every encounter has become intensified. Emily nodded her head knowingly and said “That’s it. That’s what’s causing these issues”. I guess I am at that age where my biological clock is ringing loud. For years, I hit the snooze button without really shutting off the alarm. I had moments where I felt an urge to have my own child but those moments usually faded quickly. 

The other day my mother told me that Princess Diana was my age when she died. I’m sure I knew that but I was still surprised to hear it. I was 22 when my friend Maureen and I got up early to watch her funeral. I thought 36 was so old then. In the last year of her life, Diana was with someone who really loved her. Her earlier suffering didn’t mean she was a failure at love or even defective. Sometimes if you wait long enough, you realize that things come full circle.

The Royal We

Writing about Prince William and Kate’s wedding, the Right Reverend Richard Chartres, 132 Bishop of London comments wisely on love: “As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life.”

Love has become a central guiding theme in my life recently. I have been trying to explore many of its forms and understand its complex but powerful force in my life and in the natural world. 

Since the beginning of this part of my year-long experiment, I have had to confront some uncomfortable truths about myself. This confrontation sort of exploded in the form of a romantic relationship. I am not following Elizabeth Gilbert’s strict rule of swearing off men for a year. Although, after the last experience, I’m hitting the pause button on my love life for awhile. 

The funny thing about life, though, is that sometimes you think you’re in the driver’s seat, making the executive decisions and out of the ether you meet someone or have a brief conversation that changes the way you look at yourself and certain experiences. 

The other day I was celebrating the end of my grading bondage (I posted my classes final grades at noon) by going to an Irish pub on Carson St for a beer and a burger. When I walked in, there were about three people at the bar. One guy who looked to be about my age was sitting at the bar, laptop in front of him, notepad and phone next to him. I decided to go old school that day and just bring my notebook and pen. 

The guy asked me what I was working on and I told him that I was writing out ideas for my blog. We started talking about writing and writers and I learned that he was an avid reader of the classics and that he also loved Hemmingway. I laughed and asked if he knew of any women who liked Hemmingway. I always thought he was a very masculine writer and I used to loathe him in college simply because he used too many ‘ands’. 

Somehow we ended up talking about relationships. He mentioned that he was visiting his girlfriend. He was visiting from another part of the state, from out in the country. I asked if his girlfriend would move to where he lived. He quickly said, “No, she’s a true city girl”. But then he followed with “But I’d move to Pittsburgh because she’s worth it”. The last four words caught my attention. 

I’ve only had one relationship where my boyfriend moved somewhere for me. It took 7 months of cajoling and near bribery to get him to move from his hometown in Washington state to New York City. Maybe the allure of the Big Apple was worth it. We broke up the following year when I moved back to Pittsburgh. He met his current wife there and has never left. 

I’ve always been the one to leave relationships behind to have adventures on my own. When I left Pittsburgh the first time, I had a boyfriend I deeply cared about, a cat, a cello and many close friends. But, still I felt compelled to leave on my own to travel and live overseas. The main lesson I learned from that experience is that I want to share those experiences with people I love.

I understand the message that Reverend Chartres was trying to convey, but I also believe that through valuing our personal relationships we get a glimpse of God.

Sacred space

Sometimes when I sit in my attic bedroom, listening to the loud and drunken chatter of South Siders on a late Friday night, I wonder why I came back here. I’ve lived in metropolitan cities all over the world. I’ve experienced both coasts and even realized my youthful dream of living overseas. But, I always return to Pittsburgh. I asked myself this question last night but the answer didn’t come readily. In this part of my year-long journey, I want to explore the sacred spaces in this city. I also want to go inward to those space within that have caused me so much pain and angst over the years. I know this is a hermit year for me and I am feeling that pull to stay in, hunker down and get to work on myself but the world outside keeps calling.

As I was thinking about why I moved back here and how I can become comfortable in a place I have left and returned to so many times, I went to the internet and typed in the names of the couple I study A Course in Miracles with. The first article that came up was an interview in 2003 that appeared in the City Paper. This couple had run a mysticism school in Regent Square since 1999. They have since closed shop and now work from home.

The interviewer asked Alex* what he thought of Pittsburgh. He replied, “We think of it as a very special place. There is the underground pool here, which is tapped into by the fountain at the Point. We read somewhere the Indians knew this to be a sacred place. So it is a place people come to heal their inner spaces and [move] out and do other things.”

I have thought a similar thought over the years I have come and gone. It seems that my life lessons are accelerated here. In 2006, when I left Pittsburgh to move to Scotland, I had felt this inner push, an urgent push, to “move out and do other things” for over a year. I left this city on a high. The year and half before I moved was the best year and a half I experienced in this city. It was as if I had learned what I had come back to learn and then needed to move out. I returned a little bit broken and demoralized after almost 4 years overseas studying in an academic program I hated and trying to cope with the constant change of traveling. I wonder now what lessons I need to learn and how I will learn them. I hope as Edemir Rossi, a healer from Brazil, writes about Pittsburgh, that I will transform from “coal-consciousness” to “enlightened diamond-consciousness”.

Recently, I’ve been studying A Course in Miracles with a small group of people in Regent Square. The other night we talked about joy. Alex* brought up the story of Christ’s crucifixion. In moments when the conversation turns to concepts of love, joy or truth, he likes to emphasize the crucifixion, not as a symbol of suffering but rather as a beautiful and necessary event, which was Christ’s release from the physical plane and expansion into that limitless and eternal space of which we are all a part.

I brought up the Catholic church’s focus on Christ’s suffering on the cross, sometimes with gruesome fixation. Then another thought surfaced. I asked Alex’s wife if she would explain the Buddist idea that suffering is the way to Enlightenment. She immediately said the word, ‘through’. She explained that the way to Enlightenment was through suffering into some other state of mind, not getting stuck in suffering.

It all finally clicked for me at that moment. But, the concept of Enlightenment still nagged at me. What the hell was it? The next evening, I typed in Marianne Williamson’s name on Youtube. Someone had posted several recordings of her reading “A Return to Love”. Her interpretation of the central idea of A Course in Miracles triggered another click in my thinking. If love is all that is real and everything else is an abberation of the mind, then fear, which begins in the mind and extends out into the physical world in the form of suffering keeps us from achieving any other state of mind. The way to Enlightenment, I realized, is allowing love to fill up the mind so completely that all distortions of thought creating and maintaining our personal hells will not have the space to exist. Enlightenment does not necessarily mean the Mountain experience for everyone, or a rejection of all that is in this world. It is a unique experience for each one of us. An understanding of love and all its forms is the only way through suffering. This leads me to the next question. What is love?

*names have been changed

The Hermit

About a month ago I made an appointment to see a couple who were highly recommended tarot card readers. I’ve always had an open mind and never dismiss any occult practices off-hand without first experiencing the methods and the people who use those methods. I believe there is always some validity in these practices even if it is only a symbolic means to find my own truth.

My mother and I moved to Manhattan Beach California at the beginning of the 90s. This time was a sort of renaissance for spiritual seeking on the West Coast. I had been living in Pittsburgh for most of the 80s, which at that time wasn’t a city known for being open to New Age anything. My mother and I became interested in medicine cards, iChing, tarot and A Course in Miracles. I remember her taking me to hear Marianne Williamson speak in L.A.

Now, grant it, I didn’t always use these mystical tools in a genuine way. I think one time I actually used the iChing like a Magic 8Ball to see if a guy I liked in school would ask me out on a date. I’ve since matured in my exploration for spiritual truths. Oh, who am I kidding. I still seek ways to make sense of my inner self, my outward choices and whether or not I’ll be able to make relationships work, all only one step above wondering if a boy I liked would ask me out.

There are spiritual seekers who seek answers to larger questions, but I’m also sure that most of those seekers have asked the smaller, more personal questions—-the rivers leading to the ocean. The couple who was highly recommended to me fulfilled all of my expectations. They were smart, open, funny and insightful. At the beginning of the reading, they asked me my birth date. The woman wrote several numbers on a page of lined paper. The man also wrote the numbers, circling some and drawing lines to others. The man looked at his wife who was pointing at the number 9 and he said, “You’re in a hermit year this year, just like me”.

I usually associate the word ‘hermit’ with images of hooded monks holing up in the cloisters scribbling spiritual truths onto blank pages of parchment. That is not the kind of year I had envisioned for myself. I learned that my understanding of this word and this tarot card was severely limited. Hermits don’t necessarily need to isolate themselves form the world, although for some this approach works best. For others, this card only represents the need to be more truthful to themselves, to find ways to become more honest and direct, to finally, remove the masks we all show to the world.

I have been feeling the pull to be alone sometimes, to think and to read. But then I feel guilty for not being in the world, hanging out with friends and making the most of my time as a young woman. This tension is something I am struggling with but know that it is only serving to bring me closer to my real self—not a hooded monk in an abbey, but hopefully a more confident, vulnerable, sometimes moody but creative woman who, until only recently, accepted her calling as a writer.

The Fish and the Sea

I flick my fins

moving freely through the vast ocean

I relish the smooth motion of movement

my body a perfect vessel for the sea

until your pretty, empty words

cast out wide like a fisherman’s net

compresses the space around me

I hardly notice I am caught

until I see the ocean broken

into squares

if only I could slip through the holes

but I am too large

and the net is too small