Posts from — July 2008

An article in the upcoming issue of

“We’re So Close, It’s Lonely”

Click on this nutty illustration of me to read this essay on loneliness in intimate relationships.

So I can’t believe it, but I’m halfway through my sojourn in the clouds. I feel so sad and happy about this. Of course, almost nothing turned out the way I thought it would, but it has been a momentous time nonetheless. I’m still not sure why. Let me see if I can recount some possibilities.

From a spiritual practice perspective, it’s been quite revealing. Since I was on a writers’ retreat before coming here, I’d already had seven days of settling into a retreat vibe before I got here. That’s no small thing. To have come from the hustle-bustle of life into this sanctuary of clouds and loneliness would have felt much more abrupt. It’s been amazing, a gift, stunning, to slow down with my practice and really look at it.

I’ve been doing a lot reading, specifically about the practice I do. For every practice, there is a view. Knowing the correct view (context, philosophy), obviously, makes the practice make sense. When you have to guess about the view, it’s like studying an unnamed language. You might master it, but have no idea where or why to use it. So this meditation retreat has been about connecting with view. And practice, of course. Because spending all your time on view without practicing is just a conceptual enterprise. And practicing without considering the view makes for a bit of a willy-nilly experience.

And during this time, I’ve been able to hear talks by my teacher, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. He sheds light on my practice like the sun striking the ocean.

On the writing tip, it’s been up and down. But, again, a profound and amazing gift to be able to spend this much time, hour after hour, day after day, with the book I’m trying to write. This close focus creates equal parts clarity and confusion. The clarity comes from having time and, most of all, mental space, to consider what I’m trying to say. The confusion comes from looking so closely at what I’m doing. It’s like staring at a painting so long that the image turns into a bunch of dots. You can’t see what it is anymore. So staying with this process of intermittent bouts with clarity and confusion has been very interesting. Scary. And also wonderful. Like today, for example. I sat down to work in the late morning and suddenly it was 3PM. It’s amazing when that happens with writing. The time disappearing and all.

If it’s of interest, here is the introduction to the book, “The Wisdom of a Broken Heart.” As it stands now. Subject to change at any moment. Any comments or suggestion would be wildly appreciated.

When I arrived, I had written about 20,000 words and I knew that the introduction was probably okay, but the rest was kind of like gibberish. Words without a view. Many lovely paragraphs of useful, relevant information, but no sense from one section to the next.

This seems to happens to me when working on a book. I gather a pile of relevant stories, insights, and suggestions and just sort of slop them together. Each one makes sense on its own, but they don’t make sense all together. So this is a big problem. Then I have to stop writing and attempt to impose structure. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t come up with structure in advance. So I’m a little used to this, but it’s no less terrifying to be up against a book deadline with a bunch of words that may mean you’re well on your way OR that you’ve accumulated a bunch of crapola.

But in the last week, structure has sort of started to come and that’s where I am now. I’m up to about 35,000 words and have decided that the order they were in was not the right order. So I’m in the midst of deconstructing the manuscript, fingers massively crossed. I’m still not sure it’s going to work and I won’t know until I’ve finished taking it apart and putting it back together again. A few days ago, I printed the whole thing out and cut it into paragraphs. I stapled together paragraphs that had to go together (that were telling a particular story, for example). Then I laid all the stapled together pieces on the floor and labeled them with the heading of where I thought they should now go. Fortunately, I had some feline assistance.

I don’t know where it’s all going to end up, but this has been the most wonderful writing experience of my life. Difficult, yes. Very. Much doubt and sadness at my own lack of understanding. But I’ve had little whiffs of the muse, of something being written through me and not by me. This is the best one can ever, ever hope for.

May it be of benefit. For goodness sake, already.

This is the 7th day of writing/meditation retreat. Things are beginning to get interesting.

Last night, I drove the 10 miles to Shambhala Mountain Center to hear Sakyong Mipham give a talk and in-depth meditation instruction. It was wonderful to see him, beyond wonderful, indescribable. Anyone who has had the great fortune to find a spiritual teacher, the teacher for them, knows what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, it’s very hard to say what it feels like. Although there were several hundred people at last night’s talk, I felt that he was speaking to me personally; his teaching reverberated with some aspect of my practice, my mind, my concerns. It has nothing to do with making you feel happy. It’s more like a kind of profound intimacy, like someone talking with you from within your own mind and moving with or away from all the subtle shifts, turns, and gradations that arise. It is so private.

I also saw many, many friends from the noble Shambhala sangha, which was lovely but also kind of heartbreaking. I long to be with them, to practice intensely and experience the joy of enlightened society that is created under such circumstances. I can drop in for various things, but it isn’t the same and so I felt very lonely.

Speaking of lonely. Today, like the majority of the past week, I have been completely alone. I’m in a beautiful house, beyond the beyond of lovely. Spectacular.

The house has every conceivable comfort. The phrase “well appointed” comes to mind. It is a house of devoted practitioners and I can feel their dignity and genuineness in every corner. The house is designed to relate to the mountain range it looks out on. In all the main areas of the house—bedroom, living room, kitchen, dining room, you look out onto extraordinary spaciousness. If you could see what I’m looking at right now… well, actually you can. See photo of right now:

Wherever I settle myself, I’m able to see how the mountains morph throughout the day, responding to sunshine and clouds, darkness and light. Yet they remain implacable. Would that we could all be this equanimous, this inscrutable; responsive yet utterly planted.

The first few days, I took pictures of everything. Every room, every vista, every time of day. I realize now that I was trying to have a conversation, trying to bring someone in, show someone (Duncan, my parents, my girlfriends) where I was so I wouldn’t be so alone. When I’m home, I crave solitude. But the first thing I did was try to establish conversation. I see that I’m scared to be completely alone. I don’t understand much outside of city living and so it intimidates me to walk too far from the house. This makes me sad. I’m scared of the dark and I really don’t know why. As the sun sets, like it is doing now, I feel my loneliness and fear rise. What am I afraid of? Again, I do not know.

There is no phone here. I miss talking to Duncan so much. I miss how he makes me feel safe. Without him, I’m not sure how to do it for myself.

I spend all day doing one of three things: practicing meditation and studying texts that relate to my practice; working on my book, “The Wisdom of a Broken Heart,” which is due in October; or fussing. I’ve been spending a lot of time fussing. I sit down to read and then think I should write. I start to write but have nothing to say. I fix myself something to eat but then I’m not hungry. I check e-mail and then feel a longing to be working on the book. I return to the manuscript and find that it says nothing, absolutely nothing. Then, finally, at some point, hopefully at least once in a day, all that drops away and I find my voice, I find that I do have something to say.

Practicing meditation has been very deep. I spent the week before coming here teaching a retreat so I had already been acculturating to a retreat pace, sitting for short periods throughout those seven days. I came home for 36 hours before leaving for NYC for one night where I participated in a “talk back” after a theatrical performance of a play called “The Perfect Couple.” If you’ve never heard of a talk back (I hadn’t), it’s when people with something to say about the play are on stage afterward to dialog with each other and with the audience. I was one of three authors and our conversation was moderated by the two completely awesome authors of “The Nanny Diaries” and did I ever love them. Plus it was really fun to talk to the audience about relationships. For that night, I stayed at the apartment of one of the producers who was also a producer on some John Waters’ shows based on his movies, like “Cry Baby” and “Hairspray,” I believe. Her assistant let me into this lovely apartment on Union Square right near where I used to live at 10th and University. The producer and I never even met. She came in late and I had a 5:30 AM car to the airport to fly to Denver. So that was a completely urban blip between these two retreats. I felt totally comfortable walking all over downtown Manhattan and staying in a stranger’s apartment on Broadway but I feel kind of stiff and shut down in the house of friends, in the middle of the mountains. Once when I told a friend of my fears of being alone in the country, he said, “you’ve got it reversed. You should be afraid in NYC and feel safe here.” Well it doesn’t work that way for me.

Anyway, between the solitude, the beauty, receiving teachings from Sakyong Mipham, trying to grasp the nature of heartbreak, and a lot of meditation practice, I feel so raw. My responses are unpredictable. Sudden things arise in my mind that make me cry or laugh, but mostly cry. I could try to give some examples, but they would be meaningless to anyone but me, to whom they are quite meaningful, yet also completely ephemeral. The instruction under such circumstances is just this: relax. But relaxing doesn’t mean spacing out or distracting yourself with Project Runway reruns, or even the new season, which started last night but who’s counting. It means allowing what arises to arise, and to continue allowing and allowing, without knowing what it means, where it’s going, or how it will end. All by yourself. It is scary and noble at the same time.

But wait. I’m not alone. I have a kitty cat for company. Here he is, assisting me in the writing process.

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Somehow I’ve ended up house sitting in Shangri-la, up in the clouds, surrounded by quiet. This house is a gift, a blessing, a treasure. It is absolutely beautiful on the inside, but the killer beauty is just outside. The house is situated all alone looking directly out onto the front range of the Rockies which appear soft and distant and cool. The house is owned by dharma practitioners and they have an amazing library. Certainly every dharma book I’ve ever read is here, plus hundreds I wish I’d read. I’ve been writing, practicing meditation, reading, cooking, and sleeping.

So it’s heaven, yes? Yes. And also not. While it’s mostly a paradise of solitude, I do have one constant companion who is bugging the crap out of me. I simply cannot escape my own company. Without husband, friends, traffic, and Project Runway reruns to cushion the blow of my own personal neurosis, I have to take the brunt of it. I have so much self-doubt. I am afraid of the dark. I hesitate to give my all to anything: to my writing, my practice, my trust in myself. I see how I’m always holding back, which is easy to do now that I’m in a place where there is absolutely no reason to hold back–no others to attend to, no interruptions, nothing dictating my time, no reason not to pour myself body and soul into what I love most: study, practice, contemplating, and then attempting to be creative with these three things by writing. It makes me very sad that I don’t love myself more than this, but apparently I do not. Why? I don’t know.

I’ve been here 5 days. I wonder what it will feel like on day 10 or 19 or, at the end, on day 30.