Mason B. Mason

 Mason B. Mason’s lovely deep voice and his wide smile are so much a part of my teenage and college memories of downtown Santa Barbara. 

When I was a young teen I loved spending time downtown with my friends. Mason was a fixture on State Street, often bussing in front of the Fiesta 5 or Metro 4 theaters. He’d have conversations with passersby through his songs. He always had a big smile for us as we passed, and we often stopped to listen and drop a dollar or two in his guitar case. Mason was always kind and he never made us feel uncomfortable. He made us feel safer. Nobody was going to mess with us when this big kind man was right there. 

Once, when I was a university student, he complimented the confidence of my walk. He said it in just the right way, and it made me feel absolutely wonderful. I’d grown up with what was probably gluten ataxia, and I saw myself as super clumsy, so this simple compliment actually made a huge difference in my self-perception. I still think of him when I see my own reflection whilst walking. 

I moved away from Santa Barbara for a few years after college and I looked for him when I moved back. Sadly, he’d passed on in 2004 after a very short illness. Godspeed, Mason. You had a real and lasting impact on me. 

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sanantonio/obituary.aspx?n=sonye-mason&pid=88848748

love at first sight or a moment of potential

Stories and songs make much of the idea of love at first sight. But what I’ve found most amazing, even miraculous, is the potential in that moment you first meet a future lover or partner. I keep recalling the day I met my husband with a sense of absolute wonder. I had no idea that this was the person who would be my perfect match and my future life partner. He was a complete unknown. Given how compatible we are, it almost seems as if there should have been some indication. The thunderbolt. A flash mob singing the hallelujah chorus. But there was nothing theatrical, just attraction, interest, and curiosity.

I’m so glad that our relationship is unfolding just the way it is. I think of love at first sight as being a kind of assumption of knowing or even faith, which implies a lack of curiosity, a lack of openness to the possibilities. It almost seems as if you’re putting that person in a box before even knowing them. Isn’t it best to make as few assumptions as possible, especially while you’re getting to know someone?

The experience of falling a little more in love all the time is just amazing. The ever-increasing, ever-escalating emotion and attachment, the strengthening of our bond over time… it’s beautiful. The more I get to know him, the more comfortable he is around me, the more he trusts me, the more I love him. When I show him some new less-than-stellar aspect of myself and he accepts it, my heart breaks open just a little more. With each new revelation of some aspect of his character, of his self, of his thoughts, I have more to love.

While there are many moments of overwhelming hormones and emotions, of love exploding like a volcano, I think one of the best things about our relationship is how it keeps building over time, like layers of lava creating new land.

Memento mori

Everything I see is a memento mori, a reminder of impermanence. Not just the skulls, the rotting fruit, the dead birds and bubbles of classical artwork, but also the delicate flowers, the clouds, the newly born animals, the shadows on the mountains, the light on the water. I see a reminder of impermanence in the dimpled knees of a baby as much as in the spotted and veined hands of a crone. Everything is changing, all the time. I look at my face in the mirror and I hardly seem like a solid thing. This too shall pass. This body, changing and aging all the time, will soon be gone. Life passes in the blink of an eye. Why pretend otherwise?

This is reality. I don't find it sad or depressing, but rather beautiful, right and perfect. Without death, each moment of life would not have the immeasurable value that it does. We value precious metals because they are a finite resource. So is this life.

My mind runs over these well worn tracks again and again. Am I repeating myself? Perhaps. But this is one of the most beautiful truths of my life, a message well worth sharing.


2017-05-13

falling in love

“They sat together in the park

as the evening sky grew dark.

She looked at him and he felt a spark

tingle to his bones...”

-Bob Dylan

When I fell in love with T, it felt just like that. We were at his ranch in the mountains above the Big Sur coast, so far out in the wilderness that no lights from other houses could be seen, no city skyglow to obscure the stars. We were together on a redwood slab bench out under the stars, which were piercingly bright. At the moment I fell in love with him, if felt like one of the stars had fallen from the heavens and was drilling into the center of my chest. It was an immensely pleasurable and powerful sensation, like a burning ember hitting me in the sternum and burning straight into me, directly to my spine, slowly illuminating my entire chest cavity with warmth and dazzling, expanding starlight. I’d never felt anything like it.

“That’s a very mysterious thing, that electric thing that happens.”

- Joseph Campbell

I had a similar experience when I fell in love with R, that first magic week we spent together. We were lying together and alternating long periods of kissing and caressing with what I would call deep soul gazing. We were staring into each other’s eyes, and a wider area on that same place on my chest lit up, filling my chest cavity with that same beautiful spreading feeling of tingling warmth and light. The tingling warmth felt like it sank into the marrow of my bones, and then radiated out to the tips of my fingers and toes, to my nose and lips and earlobes, and up to the top of my head. I remember feeling that tingling, glowing wave of love expanding out from my chest, moving up my neck and face like a waterline. I felt like love was pouring out of my eyes for weeks afterwards.

"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."

- Sarah Dessen

I fell completely in love with E the first night we went to the hot springs together for the full moon. I’d felt little zings and zaps to my chest with him before. I knew I was falling in love with him. But that night at the hot springs, suddenly it felt like fireworks exploding in my chest, bright and white as the moon. It sizzled out to all my nerve endings, and up to the crown of my skull like white-hot bolts of lightning. I knew E much better than I’d known T or R at the moment love struck. I’d only known them a matter of days (though in both cases, we’d been together almost nonstop on those days). I think the depth of knowing with E increased the intensity of the experience.

Funny how every time has been a little different. But all three were head-over heels, ‘this is totally irrational and crazy but I don’t care’ loves. I still love all three of those men, but in very different ways. I have loved and do love other men, but only felt that earth-shaking, life-changing moment of it those three times.

I don’t think this is a universal experience, based on the few people I’ve asked. When people talk about “feeling that spark,” they seem to be referring to the feeling of sexual attraction more than anything else.

You know that feeling when you see someone and the attraction shocks you with its intensity, like a punch to the gut? Many people call it “love at first sight.” Personally, I think “lust at first sight” is more accurate. In The Godfather, Mario Puzo called it the “thunderbolt.” That’s the best one word description for that feeling I’ve ever seen. Sometimes it isn’t the first time you see someone, but rather the first time you see them smile. Or that first eye contact, the first moment of connection. The feeling might be more or less intense based on your hormone levels at the time and your instinctive response to the person’s appearance.

I once saw a drop-dead gorgeous man I’d never seen before at the grocery store and literally felt like I’d been zapped with electricity and punched in the gut all at once. It did hit me in the gut, not the chest. I think that might be an important distinction. The attraction I felt was so strong it shocked me, and yet I felt a sense of recognition, like I knew this man, had met him before. His face was so familiar to me. I actually gasped aloud. My heart leapt and started pounding and I felt myself flush from head to toe. I heard a buzzing in my ears. We made eye contact and smiles and and hellos were exchanged (with a deep blush on my part). We passed each other, and as I turned to say something more, I realized that I recognized the kid he had with him; that this was the recently divorced ex of a friend. So despite that feeling that some people would identify as “love at first sight,” I didn’t pursue a connection. Instead, I walked away. I’ve never experienced that degree of thunderbolt with anyone else.

I saw this man around town a few times since that day, and that intense attraction had completely vanished. It was so strange in it’s intensity partly because this man was not at all to my “taste” in looks. He had light-colored hair and light eyes and a very northern European look. I prefer a dark-eyed and dark-haired southern European, Middle Eastern or Asian look.

2017-02-03

why I write about my pain

I just heard this on the Dear Sugar podcast: “Writing can be a powerful tool for social change, but only if you write about the things that are uncomfortable. What if Anne Frank had just written about trees?”

It was exactly what I needed to hear, because as I write about my own experience, much of it traumatic and uncomfortable, I sometimes feel like it is a narcissistic enterprise, more valuable for venting or self-expression than anything else.

This reminded me why I speak up about my trauma, and why I post those writings publicly. I don’t want sympathy, I want others with similar experiences to know that they are not alone. I want the family members of abusers and victims to realize that even though the victims might seem to be okay, they aren’t. Speak up. Do something. Stop it from happening. Perhaps abusers will also read my writings and be brought face-to-face with what they have done to others.

We are so good at hiding our injuries. We are animals, after all, and what happens to the wounded antelope? But we aren’t a part of the food chain in that way any more.

For me, baring my wounds though my writing and in conversation with friends and family has not only helped me to work through these experiences and let go of my shame around them, but has also prompted others to reveal their own stories to me, which I hope was helpful to them on their own journeys of healing.

By ignoring our traumas, and not talking about abuse, we are continuing to brush abuse under the rug. Far better to bring it out in the open, to see it, to acknowledge it. That is, I believe, the first step towards change.

2017-01-31

mindful dreams

In my journey of healing my body, I have come to realize that past disassociation due to childhood trauma and lifelong pain has damaged my connection to my body, has interrupted my receipt of signals, disrupted essential communications. I’ve ignored the discomfort until it turns into pain, and ignored the pain until my health is in crisis.

Mindfulness is my tool to repair the connection: checking in regularly with my body throughout the day, whatever I am doing. It has become a habit, so much so that body awareness is now seeping into my dreams more and more often. I’m dreaming and suddenly I feel my body lying in my warm bed: so relaxed, so comfortable. I feel the slackness of my muscles. And in the dream, I collapse to the ground and lie there, unable to rise, as the dream continues all around me. I try to rise, again and again, but my muscles just won’t contract. So I lie there in the dirt, on the rocks, on the floor, on the stairs, wherever I was in the dreamscape when I collapsed.

It happens so often now that it has become my new tip off that I am dreaming, though usually I choose to forget, and slip back into the flow of my subconscious, rather than directing, controlling the dream. Truly, I have even less control, as now I am mainly an observer of the dream’s storyline, rather than a participant.

One day, I awoke so slowly, so languorously, and brought the awareness of my body with me the entire way up into wakefulness. The dream flowed directly into my morning body scan. Now this happens nearly every time I wake.

Lucid and semi-lucid dreams are usual for me, as is occasional sleep paralysis. The merging of the two is an experience I’ve never heard anyone else recount.

2017-01-21

all bleeding ends eventually

I feel the blade
sliding into my belly

again and again.
Burning, screaming agony.

Gaping wounds

oozing dark red blood.

I watch, helpless,

as they multiply,

one after another.

But there is no blade in sight.

No one but me,

standing alone

in a field of ripe golden wheat

swaying in the wind.

I crumple to the ground,

the dirt between my fingers.

Blood spatters in the dust,

among the fallen seed heads.

The dream ends,

but still the pain increases.

I scream silently, biting my fist.

I writhe, curling into a ball,

my eyes watering,

my limbs trembling.

I can barely breathe.

“This too shall pass,”

I say it in my mind
again and again.

It reminds me of that other proverb:

“All bleeding ends eventually,

one way or another.”

The truth,

in counterpoint to the clichéd lie

that we are never given more

than we can handle.


2017-01-03

"bad words"

I have a preteen daughter, and our philosophy on “bad words" has always been that the only “bad words" are those intended to hurt someone. It feels to me like the only logical position. She knows that this is not the societal norm. She knows that she will get in trouble if she swears at school, and that if friends’ parents hear her swearing, they might not want her to spend time with their children. Her friends are fascinated that I let her swear. I’ve watched their eyes get big and round when I didn’t scold her for a little curse word she let slip. Usually I explain the reasoning for our rule.

Occasionally my girl has pushed the boundary by swearing excessively. The last time this happened, I felt annoyed and told her so, while requesting that she please cut back on the swearing. She asked me why I would be annoyed, when swearing had never been off-limits.

I thought for a minute, and then explained that the way we generally use swear words is to draw heightened attention (I’m making a very important point, I feel very strongly about this topic, I hurt myself, I’m frustrated and need help or encouragement, etc.), and when she is constantly drawing my attention by using swear words in every sentence, I get annoyed. It draws my full attention away from whatever I’m doing and to her. These words have been given that power by our culture.

I get it. I’ve been there, as a slightly narcissistic teenager, when I wanted to be provocative, but also to place emphasis on everything I was saying because all of it was so important. But it’s like the boy who cried wolf. When teenagers or adults curse excessively, they often remind me of toddlers saying “look at me, look at me!”

Often, I think that’s exactly what it is. A bid for attention. She’s just a kid. She looks so much like a little woman now. Sometimes I have to remind myself that she isn’t. As she moves closer and closer to her teen years, these bids for attention are lessening. Now, more than ever, it feels important to me to turn towards every one of them.

And there it is. For those of you who don’t allow your kids to swear, when they do let one slip, perhaps you could consider turning towards them, towards this bid for attention, rather than punishing them for non-adherence to a rule.

Swearing is, perhaps, unique in socially transgressive behavior, in that this "misbehavior" is used as a verbal bid for attention by both children and adults.


2016-11-04

White Privilege

I've lived most of my life in a bubble. As a privileged white girl in Santa Barbara, it was easy to believe that at least in the states, society was almost completely post-racial. I honestly thought of racism as something that only happened somewhere else, and mostly in the past. I figured those little wannabe skinheads were just pretending to be racist so they would seem more scary and tough, because no one with even a modicum of intelligence could actually be a racist.

I was raised with the world events of the 1930s and 40s at the forefront of my consciousness. I had a dear old friend with a tattoo from a Nazi concentration camp. I grew up in a state where Japanese Americans had been sent to internment camps during WWII. How could anyone be racist with those potential consequences in our collective memory? The two most revered heroes of people in my generation were Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. At least that's what I thought. But maybe that was just me and my friends.

And yet I've hesitated to repost any Black Lives Matter posts, because my late husband was a cop, and I've so many friends in law enforcement. But I keep seeing these All Lives Matter posts from LEO wives, officers and other friends, and I've got to think that these friends just aren't seeing it from the other perspective. Maybe they're living in a bubble like I was.

Racism is a real problem in the world, even today. Just because you or your LEO husband isn't racist, that doesn't mean we don't have institutional and societal racism. For the proof of this, you need to look no further than the demographic makeup of our prisons. Even here in liberal, enlightened California. When I think of what racism looks like today, right here in my home state of California, prison demographics are the first thing that comes to mind.

I get that you fear for your life, or for your husband's life. We know that all lives matter. We know that blue lives, cop lives matter. That was never in question. Just take a look at the sentencing guidelines for someone who kills a cop versus someone who kills any other citizen for the proof of this.

The BLM movement and the treatment of the water protectors at Standing Rock are bringing our attention to what has been our reality in this country for a long time. It's just that now we've got our cell phone cameras and media attention on the problem.

2016-10-03

Trauma

I keep reflecting on my blog post about water trauma. It tells a story: a story of trauma and its aftermath. It’s a story I tell myself and others. This story is useful, up to a point. I believe that I needed to understand the cause of my panic around water in order to work with it.

But even animals suffer in the aftermath of trauma. I’ve recognized what looks like PTSD in them. When we look at this from the evolutionary perspective, we see that it is valuable for an animal to remember past danger and injuries, in order to protect oneself and one’s offspring (and one’s ability to reproduce) in the future. When one finds oneself into a situation that has been dangerous enough to cause trauma in the past, one should react with hypervigilance. But when that hypervigilance and even panic is triggered by a similar situation in which that original danger is not present, the reaction no longer serves. 

It seems to me that the stories of my trauma are somehow stored in my body. After the worst incident with W, and up until I reported him to the police and shared the story of his abuse with my family, I carried pain and tension in my hips. I carried anger. Justifiable anger, the most dangerous kind.

I wonder, how will I know when it is time to let go of this story? By letting go, I do not mean forgetting. There will always be value in sharing our own tragedies and traumas so that others will feel empowered to share and work with their own stories. So that perhaps future harm will be prevented. Perhaps so that others can see that I did not arrive here by way of an easy road, and realize that they can find peace whatever their past or current struggles.


2016-09-12

Soberanes Fire

2016-08-12

I’ve had an intense several weeks. The Soberanes Fire has ravaged the Palo Colorado community, which was my home for several years and continues to be a second home for me and especially for my daughter. So many friends and neighbors have lost their homes. Most of T’s acreage has burned. His home, along with a few neighbors’, is now an unburned island in the midst of a desolate charred wasteland.

I was so afraid for his safety, for his home, and for the others in the community.  I was sick with worry about those I knew were on their properties, defending their homes, especially T, who I knew to be impaired by a terrible flu and high fever. Each new report of a home burned was like a knife in my gut. A bulldozer operator died fighting the fire. Another knife to the gut.  

I know what it is like to feel like your life has been destroyed, the past obliterated, your future a yawning chasm of uncertainty, all your illusions of safety and security destroyed at a stroke. Perhaps losing your home, your possessions is not the same as losing your spouse, but in some ways it gives me that same feeling. Like a partner, your home is your sanctuary, your anchor and refuge in a world of chaos and transience.

2016-07-25 Facebook posts: a snapshot of what a day of this fire was like.

1 p.m. I just talked to T and he is at home, still safe. He was actively fighting the fire last night, along with a 50-member crew from CalFire. All the deadwood, tree and brush clearing that he has done over the years is now paying off in a big way. They’ve been using all the fire roads he’s worked to keep clear as well. Because of his level of preparedness, CalFire has been motivated to (and able to) make a stand all along his property at Long Ridge Rd, which you can clearly see on the maps. They have been making heavy use of his water tanks (all that storage is paying off). He’s now 7k gallons low on his needs for the coming year, but that’s why I bought that water trailer a few years ago. That thing has really come in handy as well. It has a powered sprayer and he’s been using it to put out spot fires.

He said he could watch the fire slow down significantly when it reached areas where he has done clearing.

Tr’s place burned (empty for years), and they were going to let O's burn (Because it is a wood structure? Because it isn’t a primary residence?), but T convinced the captain to save it (with water from his lower tanks) because from there the fire could easily come back up the brush hillside towards P’s and his place [O's later burned]. Much of the woods on T’s lower property to the north have burned (CalFire did a backburn down there), but R’s house is safe. W’s burned. F's is safe [F’s later burned]. J's is safe.

They now have a pretty good firebreak where the fire has already come through and burned all the fuel to the north and west, but they are not completely out of danger yet. It could still wrap around from the south or east. We are all hoping that will not happen.

T is still sick and completely exhausted, but has kept going, because what else can he do? Some neighbors are going to try to come back up today, so he won’t be the only resident up there any more.

This has been an intense roller coaster of emotions for me, and I am safe in my home in Santa Barbara. My heart goes out to all those whose homes are endangered or burned. Because I'm secure and have internet and phone I'm doing my best to keep everyone updated with whatever info I can find. I've got Google earth and the latest MODIS data.

I had an intense moment yesterday afternoon when I saw the latest data, showing T's home safe, and my spirit soared. Then I saw that a neighbor's home had burned, the swath of red across all of upper Green Ridge and so much more of the Palo community, and just like that I came crashing down again. Burst into tears. This isn't just points and lines and polygons on a map, these are people's homes. Their histories. Their lives. I know what it is like to feel like you've completely lost the life you had, to have no idea what the future will be.

Prisma Dreams filter processing of a shot of fog in the valley I took from T's property a few years ago

dystopian dream

I dreamt last night that downtown Santa Barbara was flooded completely, permanently. The streets had become canals and the flooded lower levels of buildings were all abandoned. The water rose and fell with the tides, and the water left its mark on the walls of the buildings that were still standing. Most buildings were rotting away in the water, windows broken by the pressure of the water, paper, gypsum, wood, and asphalt shingles floating in mildewed and moldy chunks, but there were a few buildings that seemed likely to continue to survive. Stone and concrete were faring well. Adobe was melting, reverting back to mud, red tile roofs collapsing into the water. Steel was rusting, huge orange scales marking the high tide line.

I rode down State Street in a dinghy with a little outboard motor, the sound echoing off the buildings and through the paseos.

We turned right on Ortega and there were three men with a filthy old rust-bucket of a boat scavenging in the abandoned buildings. They were ripping wires and copper pipes from the walls of what had been the Volkswagen dealership. There was a foul oil slick around the whole area. I guessed that it was the oil from the hydraulic lifts as well as fluids from thousands of leaks and spills over the years. Volkswagen was polluting the world even more, this time as a result of the climate change that they helped to cause. Those guys had sludge all over their bodies, and they were cursing because the oil on their hands was making their job more difficult.

Even my beautiful hometown, in its bubble of wealth and privilege, it still wasn't safe from the rising seas, and here it was, abandoned buildings being stripped for scrap metal like a city in the rust belt.

Part of the inspiration for this dream came from something I saw on a walk in my neighborhood yesterday. Someone had attached the middle and lower sections-including the propeller-of an outboard motor to their mailbox. It made me remember some of the times I rode in a boat with an outboard motor. Part of it came from the prominence of water in my consciousness these past few days, and part of it came from my concern over what changes in sea level will do to coastal cities and especially my hometown. Also playing a part was my sense of guilt from driving my Volkswagen, which pollutes a lot more than I thought it did when I bought it.

water trauma and fear

I went to a concert at the Granada the day before yesterday. The Granada has 1,553 seats, and out of all those seats, the ones I bought were right next to W and his sister. I hadn’t seen W since the day he was informed by another family member that I had reported his sexual abuse of me to the police. I had sold the two seats in between us to the couple who was sitting there, and if I had not I would have been seated next to his sister, just one seat over from W. If all had gone according to my plan, my daughter and niece would have been there, too.

I leaned over and touched his sister’s arm and greeted her warmly. W looked over at me and I gave him a little half smile. I wanted to say “I forgive you,” that was in fact the exact phrase that came to mind when our eyes met, but it wasn’t an appropriate time or place for it to be spoken. There were three people seated in between us, two of whom were strangers. I hope my look conveyed at least a little of my forgiveness. I have worked hard to let go of my anger towards him and to forgive him. I didn’t do it for him, but I was glad to find that no anger came up when I was actually face-to-face with him again. I don’t know what that would have been like if the two young girls I love most in the world had been there as well. My mama bear protective instincts might have changed that. Anger is a powerful guardian.

Aside from my feelings toward W himself, I have done so much work to process my trauma from his his sexual abuse, and I think I’m in a very healthy place with regard to all that. However, I have not fully worked through my trauma and fear of water as a result of his actions in both ocean and swimming pool.

What happened was this: I was very young. I did not know how to swim and didn’t feel very comfortable in the water, so I’d hold on to the edge of the pool, or stay on the sand with the water no higher than my knees. W would grab me and throw me into the water unexpectedly, repeatedly. I felt like I was going to drown. I’d get my feet back on the sand or thrash my way back to the side of the pool, and just as I was catching my breath, he’d throw me back in again. I remember him and my cousin laughing and seeming oblivious to my struggles as I gasped, coughed, choked, sobbed and begged him to stop. I was utterly terrified, and it seemed that nobody noticed or cared. Even at his parents’ senior community pool, no one ever spoke up on my behalf. As an adult, I can’t imagine that W didn’t notice my distress and fear.

There were a few more incidents in the water that were traumatizing, but really only because I had such a fear of water going into them. Because of this early trauma, I never felt safe enough to put my face in the water without holding my nose, and so I’ve never really learned to swim, other than such strokes as can be done without putting one’s face in the water. I’ve never dived into a pool. I’ve never learned to boogie board, surf or scuba dive. For most of my life, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to do those things.

Water danger even haunts me in my dreams. Since I was a teenager, I have often dreamed of huge tsunamis washing over Santa Barbara. I’m standing on the cliffs at Shoreline Park watching the tsunami come in. Near the house where most of my sexual trauma occurred, over Ledbetter, the beach where the worst of the water trauma occurred. I don’t particularly like that beach, and I rarely go there.

For years, starting soon after my daughter was born in 2005, I have had occasional dreams about sneaker waves sweeping children (especially my daughter) into the ocean. The sneaker wave comes, and we are trapped against the cliffs (often under Shoreline Park). Or children are playing, closer to the water than their parents and are swept out before we can get to them.

I also had recurring dreams where we were on one of the docks in the Santa Barbara Harbor (right next to Ledbetter), and she was dropped or fell off a dock into black inky water and disappeared beneath the surface. For some reason I and the other people on the dock couldn’t jump in after her. We were all paralyzed. She was in a realm where I could not protect her. What W did to me—my greatest fear, the closest I’d ever felt to death—was happening to her, and there was nothing I could do to save her. (As an aside, I think these dreams went even beyond my fear of water to one of the essential realities of being a parent. We can't protect our children from everything. We can’t protect them from so many things in life or, in the end, from death. We give them life, and to be alive means to die one day. That is a difficult thing to accept, but of course we must.)

For as long as I could remember, my dreams were almost exclusively lucid. Drowning dreams were my only nightmares, my only dreams in which I did not control the dream. They were the only dreams in which I couldn’t change the scene if I didn’t like what was happening. There was no pursuing enemy to embrace with love, nothing I could do to change the situation. From the dreams of my daughter drowning, I invariably woke with a gasp, trembling, my heart racing and my body drenched with sweat.

After my husband died in 2009, when I completely stopped lucid dreaming and let my subconscious guide my dreams, rather than my conscious mind, I started having terrifying nightmares about drowning, myself. At some point in one of these dreams, I couldn’t hold my breath any more and accepted that I was going to drown. I breathed in the ocean water, in full expectation of stabbing pain in my sinuses, throat and lungs and then death. But, to my surprise, it felt like any other breath. I was breathing normally underwater. And then I noticed that my entire body felt warm, relaxed and comfortable (I was feeling my body, asleep in my soft, warm bed). In my dreams I can now swim and dive deep into the ocean without fear. I can breathe in the water of the ocean and I feel safe there.

I listened to a podcast on animal spirit guides in late 2010, and as a result I bought a recording of guided meditation to encounter one’s own animal spirit guides. The first time I did the meditation, it was intensely hallucinatory, and I met a fish, a young female California sheephead. I asked her for a message, and all she would say was “swim.” Again and again I asked for something else, and again and again “swim” was the monosyllabic answer. This was, of course, the absolute last thing I wanted to do and the last thing I would ever have wanted to hear anyone advise me to do. The species of the fish was also very curious. A few weeks after that dream I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium and saw a big male sheephead in the kelp forest tank. I was so excited to see it, and then I read the informational card about it on the railing. I was amazed to discover that California sheephead are all born female. Depending on their environment (and if they live long enough) at some point in their life cycles they will all morph into males. Like the dragonfly, they are, to me, symbolic of complete transformation.

As a result of this vision, I realized that I needed to do some work to overcome my trauma around water. I had come so far in my dreams, but clearly, I still had so much more work to do. I found that it wasn’t nearly as easy in waking life.

Step one was starting to wash my face in a full basin of water and splashing water on my face rather than using a wet washcloth. Some water inevitably would go up my nose. At first, this induced full-on panic.

When I started spending time on the ranch in Big Sur, where there was no shower, I had to wash my face in the bathtub in the same way. I also started taking baths and washing my face in the huge bathtub in my home in the Santa Ynez Valley. With water up to two feet deep, it was even more scary. It was very, very hard to get to a point of being okay with that. I started resting with my face forward in the water for as long as I could hold my breath. Then I moved on to submerging my head totally, with and then without holding my nose. The first time I sank my head backwards into the water and water went up my nose I lost it completely. I didn’t feel safe again until I was not only out of the bath and mostly dry, but had the bathtub drained as well. That was a huge setback. But I continued to make progress, to have fewer and fewer episodes of panic.

When I was living in Big Sur, I bought a membership to the Carmel Valley Athletic Club, with the express purpose of using their hot tubs and pool. I wanted my daughter to spend a lot of time in the water and become a strong swimmer, and I wanted to continue to move forward with my healing around water. It was huge. My daughter is a great swimmer now, with no fear of the water. In fact, she loves to swim. I even got to the point where I could swim underwater while wearing a swim mask-without holding my nose! But this was in their warm, clear pools. Even in the hot tub I had a hard time if the jets were on, moving the water and sending bubbles up my nose.

Natural (and colder) bodies of water are another thing entirely. I thought I was doing so well. I swam in the ocean once last summer, really swam way out past where I could touch the bottom, and it was fun. I felt safe. I swam out with my sister and our daughters. My brother-in-law and nephew were out there floating with big surfboards that I could grab on to for a minute when I got tired, and I discovered how easy it is to float in the ocean if you are calm. I was excited to continue to swim in the ocean, but I am not a strong enough swimmer to feel safe going out by myself, and there was just never another opportunity to go out with anyone who I felt safe swimming with before the water got cold again.

Yesterday I went into the ocean and had a completely different experience. While I was swimming past the waves, I got water up my nose and down the back of my throat, choked a bit, and I started to hyperventilate. It was not a scary situation. The waves were small. I was really close to shore, just barely past where I could touch the bottom. I thought I’d just get past where the waves were breaking and float on my back to calm down, but I discovered that I was hyperventilating and couldn’t hold enough air in my lungs to float. I started to feel concerned, like I was going to be in trouble if I didn’t head back to shore. Hyperventilating where I couldn’t touch the bottom just seemed like a really dangerous thing. I told my friend I was panicking and needed to get back to shore, and she held my hand for a minute and helped me calm down until we got back to where I could touch the bottom. She was very sweet. I went back up on the dry sand and laid on my towel in the sun. My legs were shaking and I was a bit dizzy. It was so strange because out in the water my rational mind had remained totally calm. My self-talk was like “Uh, body, you are in no danger here. The waves are small, and we are really close to the shore. The water is warm. Calm the fuck down and let’s float here and enjoy this beautiful scene.” But my body just couldn’t calm down. It was like some danger signal had been sent when that water made me choke. I guess I am still not to a point of being okay with water going up my nose like that. But I swear I had been. I’d been so much better. I think seeing W the other day that somehow stirred up old traumas.

It seems so strange to me that I have this fear, in a way, because in my conscious, rational mind, I am not afraid of death. Especially since my husband died. I had to face my own mortality, and discovered that I find the idea of non-existence to be a peaceful and totally acceptable thing. I’m not afraid of the water because I’m afraid of drowning, of death. At least, not consciously. It seems that I have a primal, instinctual, totally unconscious fear response to water that has to be unlearned, untrained.

A friend warned me that this might not be possible to totally heal, that in the attempt to work through this trauma, I need to guard against retraumatizing myself. I think that is true as well. It is something that must be done totally at my own pace, without any outside pressure or internal expectations.

2016-07-05

Note: This was a journal entry, and so is a little more raw and unedited than what I usually post.

me in the mid 1980s
I remember this day so clearly. My Dad had taken me camping at the Pinnacles, and my new friend had convinced me to get in the swimming pool with her. I remember being so delighted that I felt safe and was having fun in cool water. 

connection

A friend asked me a question today: What is connection? I would reply with another question. What is real? And the accompanying question: How do we know?

Most things, we know are real because we can sense and measure them. We can measure and quantify so much. 

Other things we know are real through a different kind of perception. I experience my “self” as the witness behind all my observations and experiences, rather than as my body and its biometrics. That is something that science cannot quantify. What else is there that is real and perceivable and yet cannot be objectively observed or measured? Connection, perhaps. 

Certainly, we can observe electrical activity in the brain and body that signify consciousness and life. We can measure activity in particular parts of the brain when we have the experience of empathy and connection, the hormonal surges when we experience attraction or repulsion, but the connection itself—which can range from the most fleeting moment of recognizing a fellow being to the deepest love—perhaps there is something there that can’t be measured by science. 

Many spiritual teachers talk about the life or consciousness that is in everything, animating everything. Is that what this is, this witness of everything, and the connection between the witnesses? Are we really all one life, and the connection we feel just the recognition of that fact What then of plants, which science has shown can sense in ways that we cannot? I can attest to feeling a sense of connection to ancient trees, certainly. But I doubt the trees felt any particular connection with me. Is that connection I felt a thing of imagination or something real, something we cannot prove with science? How can we know? 

What about people who feel a connection to someone they've only read about, even an imaginary character? What about the love we might have for the dead? People can even feel a love connection to a celebrity who has never even heard their name. Is that love a delusion? But who can deny what another person feels? 

A partner recently described a feeling of being alone when he was with me. Feeling a lack of connection when I was quiet. I didn’t feel that. I felt him there with me, I felt the connection and enjoyed it in silence. If two beings can be together and have such opposing experiences of their connection, what then does that mean? 

Is connection real or imaginary? How can such a question be answered? The now proven theory of “spooky action at a distance” comes to mind, but can quantum entanglement even be applied to the relationship between beings? What about mirror neurons and their connection with theory of mind and empathy? 

Schrödinger said, of quantum entanglement: “When two systems enter into temporary physical interaction due to known forces between them, and when after a time of mutual influence the systems separate again, then they can no longer be described in the same way as before. ... By the interaction the two systems have become entangled.” 

If we apply this idea to relationships between beings (and it is not at all a given that it can be so applied), what then does that mean for all of our relationships? Are we not all then completely entangled, permanently, not just with those we love but with every being and every thing that we ever encounter? Is that then, what we call relationship? And connection? What then sets one connection apart from the rest? We are all made of the same star stuff. The same energy vibrates all of our constituent particles. If we are all just a part of the whole, then isn’t any lack of connection the true illusion? 

I ask myself these questions and can only answer them with more questions. The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. 

2016-06-30

a moment of connection

the blink of an eye

The indifferent stars glitter overhead

as generations of men are born and die.

The rocks in my garden

collected over a lifetime

will outlive me

for certain.
The scattered bones
reminding me
that as I am
they once were
and as they are
I will be.

Crystals

bought and paid for

grown in the earth

over aeons

mined

cut

and sold for profit

decorate my home

with its walls of paper and dust.

When all this is gone

all memory of me forgotten

they will remain.

What can we do

in the short span of our lives?

The blink of an eye

less than a blink

in the lifetime of the universe

of this solar system

of this planet.

Our currency

which we work and die for

is little more than numbers on a screen

zeroes and ones

stored in servers

imagined and agreed upon

buying and selling pieces of this planet

thinking we own them

when they will outlive us

and all our descendents.