Right Here, Right Now
My first addiction was fantasy.
Reality was a pretty rocky and unhospitable place for me as a kid in the 1950’s. All I really wanted to do was kiss girls. I was positive some disgusting and despicable disease lived inside of me, causing this. I tried to be super-invisible, because…if YOU knew what I WAS thinking….I would die.
I mean, die. I would be dead. I could not possibly live through that exposure.
Unfortunately, my commitment to super-invisibility was futile, doomed from its onset. My stuttering, with every utterance, with every attempted sound, spotlights seemed to manifest around me. There was nowhere to go.
So, my silent and secret plan was, to remain as unseen as possible, and, most importantly, to not talk. Talking was Doom.
I hid so well from you that I was lost to myself.
In my memory, I spent a lot of time alone. My parents worked full, long days in my dad’s corner grocery store, the Colfax Market, on the corner of Colfax Avenue and Linden Street. My monogamous friend, Gladys, since she lived in another part of town, was a weekend friend.
After surviving a day at John James Audubon School #42, I would run the three blocks home, pull off my “school clothes”, and grab my “play clothes”. Jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt, weather dependent. I would zoom down to the basement, somehow manage to yank and pull my bike up the four basement tricky steps, and ride across the street, to Nay Aug Park.
Just a few blocks up from my house on Arthur Avenue, the Nay Aug Park Band Shell stood proudly in the center of a series of narrow, spoked paths. I would ride up and down, in and around those spokes, those paths, and I was positive, POSITIVE I was a Royal Canadian Mountie, riding my horse, out to rescue the damsel in distress.
I was obsessed with the television show, Sargent Preston and King of the Yukon, where Mountie Preston and his beloved dog Yukon King along with his faithful horse, Rex, kept the Yukon safe from evil (wherever and whatever that might be).
I rode and pretended, I rode and hoped, I rode and rode and wanted so much to be anybody but who I seemed to be. I wanted to wear a cool red Mounties’ jacket, have a best friend dog, a faithful horse, and, most importantly, to have the capacity to save women. I rode until exhausted. I rode until dinner time—home by 5-ish, to help Mom, who would anxiously and quietly rush in from the store about 5:30, a paper bag full of groceries, to make dinner, which had to be served at 6:00, when my Dad came home from the store. He would eat, take a nap on the couch, and go back to the store, to stand there and wait for customers, home at 9:00. Only to do it again the next day.
I’ve earned my worker-bee status honorably.
My night-times were rich with fantasy. In bed, full of secret silent shame, I conjured up fantasies of rescuing even more distressed women. The saving-women-theme was always loud in me. I had to be a boy in my fantasies, which I knew was beyond-wrong. But how else? How else might I kiss a woman?
Only boys got to kiss girls.
And on it went. My only shield to protect myself from unbearable shame and self-embarrassment was to tell myself, “I’m writing a story. I’m writing a story.” In that story, I just happened to always be the hero, the central figure.
A word about summers. They were liberation. Girl Scout Camp Archbald probably saved my life. There, I played. I shined. I connected, sort of. I was a part of, kind of. I was always in love with one counselor each year; my monogamous fantasies lived, carrying me through the painful school years.
Miss Uns, Miss Kitty, Miss Kathy….one a year, I loved each so committedly, so dearly.
And on it went.
With my big sister
~~~
As I got older, fantasy got more constricted, more subdued, more debilitating, and I, more choked by its shame. It wasn’t until I came out as a lesbian feminist in the early 1970’s, that things began to shift. And then, thankfully, eventually and blessedly, I got sober, which led me to this thing called:
Reality.
Hum.
A thousand years later I found myself at Kripalu Center.
In the Berkshires.
I found myself there.
Myself found me.
An ongoing theme, talked about a lot, seemed to be: BEING PRESENT IN THE MOMENT.
Like, this moment.
Like, Right Here, Right Now.
Hum.
~~~
Here’s what I now believe:
Life happens in the moment. Beauty lives in the moment. Joy, pleasure, bliss, all are experienced in the moment. Certainly, spiritual connection emerges in the moment. The present moment is the doorway to an energetic and vibrant sliver of life, one moment, one breath at a time.
The cost of not being present in the moment? Stifling ourselves and our life force, removing ourselves from the power and the healing possibilities of what is no matter what is happening, physical illness, living in the past, focusing with anxiety on the future.
And so on.
Okay. Great. So, how do we practice?
We move our bodies to quiet our minds.
We use prayer, mantra.
Yoga, meditation.
Nature.
We notice without judgment.
We hug cats.
We talk to our dogs.
We just practice.
What about you, dear friends?
How do you practice?
~~~
Today, I absolutely and completely believe that Reality gives me exactly what I need to become more of who I really am. I believe this. And I forget it a thousand times a day.
I practice remembering.
~~~
Friends, obviously, we were meant to hear the following song, We Shall be Known, since two different people sent me two separate links. I find the song powerfully touching. Here is the Thrive Choir, now called Wild Choir.
“In this Great Turning, we shall learn to lead with love.”
~~~
Friends,
May we be present.
May we be whole.
May we ride the waves of our lives.
May we live in peace,
No matter what we are given.
May all beings benefit from our shared words.
Blessings, all—
Aruni
