Tag Archives: feelings

Reflections

The JuJu Collection

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On of my favorite blogs is Los Farallones, written by the staff working for Point Reyes Bird Observatory on Farallon National Wildlife Refuge, a remote rocky island almost thirty miles off our coast. Recently, they wrote about Gull JuJu:

Here on the Island, we’ve noticed that the Western Gulls have a particularly unique and fascinating taste for edible-looking things and nest decorations. When walking through gull territories, one will often notice a collection of rib bones, regurgitated bits of plastic trash and other such goodies, brought back lovingly from the mainland, some 30 miles away. Over the years, we’ve collected our favorite findings and stowed them away into the Gull JuJu Archives. By far, the most common juju items found are decrepit plastic figures. A variety of army men, Winnie-the-Poohs, Lego characters, rubber duckies and many more have found their way into gull’s bills and stomachs.
Gull JuJu - photo from Los Farallones

I’ve been sorting through some of the junk and debris of my own life recently, and during this process I’ve dreamed of piles that look a lot like this, washed up on the beach at the edge of consciousness. I keep working through it in my conscious life. Rigorous honesty, as they say.
Juvenile Western Gull - photo by Marlin Harms.
Once I have my juju gathered up, sorted, labeled and cataloged, I take it to the beach with a friend. She brings blankets and scones. A juvenile Western Gull watches, eager for a piece of scone, or maybe hoping for a special bit of juju it can steal for its very own.

In the act that I have been dreading for weeks, I retch all my juju up into the sand, and we look at it piece by piece. We talk about my labeling and cross-referencing. It’s quite a collection and the themes emerge. Tattered family photos, old grade cards, broken doll parts, tampon wrappers, army men with their guns who’ve pledged to protect all this juju if only I stay silent. Stolen coins and candy. Piles of chocolate chip cookies. Little bits of colored plastic, melted into blobs by anger or worn smooth by shame. A proud little pile of junk that I guarded like secret, dangerous treasure.

My friend looks at it all without judgement. And she points out that I have one tiny army guy left, one I picked up over the weekend and hadn’t quite swallowed yet, and suggests maybe letting go of that, too. I’m not sure. Maybe he’s there to guard the next pile. But I know she’s right. I can’t let go of the juju without letting go of all the juju. I really do want that one tiny post-confession moment where I am free of all of it, before I start collecting it again, as all humans do.
Adult Western Gull - photo by Laura Gooch.
We put on our shoes and get ready to leave. The gull sitting and watching is now an adult Western Gull. I smile. Usually it takes them four years to do that.

I do feel older, as I go through the rest of my day. But the remaining army guy bothers me. It’s just a little thing, it seems so inconsequential…just one tiny failure to express my feelings honestly. And maybe everyone would be better off if I didn’t. But all day long, I keep stepping on that damned thing in bare feet. It annoys me. I vow to get rid of it when I have the chance. I don’t know how to do that without adding it on to someone else’s pile. All I can do is trust in something bigger.

At night I try to sleep, but toss and turn and yes, that stupid little hard jagged piece of green plastic is there, digging into my skin, until finally I surrender. I get up, swing open the door and send that army guy off, give him to the moonlight. Empty and unguarded, I finally find sleep.

Photo of gull juju from the Los Farallones blog. Photo of juvenile Western Gull by Marlin Harms. Photo of adult Western Gull by Laura Gooch.

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Not Rising Above It

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It’s clear that a lot of my addictive nature is the avoidance of feelings. I find I really don’t understand feelings well at all. In fact, I often can’t identify my feelings with precision, at least not without serious reflection.

Turns out, I’m not alone in this. I’ve been using this list of feeling words recently, something suggested to me by a nutritional therapist a few years ago. I’m usually scrolling down for the negative feelings…funny, I don’t seem to need to reflect on the happy ones so much.

Identifying the name of the feeling helps. It’s gives me something to mentally grab onto so I can pivot around and look at the situation from another angle. OK…uncertain, frustrated, vulnerable, discouraged…now named, they are easier to deal with. My judgmental mind likes to have reasons, and “I don’t know…I’m just…ick” doesn’t appease that part of my brain the way “uncertain, frustrated, vulnerable, discouraged“ does. How would I treat a friend who was feeling those things? Naming the feelings takes away some of their power to overwhelm me, and makes compassion possible.

”Uncertain, frustrated, vulnerable, and discouraged” described my feelings earlier this week. Getting the yurt ready for the winter has been on my mind. The windows really need an overhaul, and I want to re-tarp the top. My landlord wasn’t keen on paying for a new tarp…“the one that’s on there is a 5-year tarp and it’s only been on there one year!” But her disagreement came to a swift end when our recent high winds created two large rips in the outer tarp. Now we both agree: I’ll get a new one. I’ve also been looking at the top rafters with some level of fear…how is that wood doing? Are those brackets going to continue to hold? My brother promises to come for a visit in a couple of weeks to go over things and help me make an action plan.

Then there are the pests…not just the “pests of the mind”, but the real live variety, with tails and teeth. The local birding mailing lists talk of rodent populations being high this year, with eager excitement about a possible influx of hawks. But I am less happy about trapping rats in the yurt or finding a pristine gopher tunnel exiting the ground right under a beautiful squash that I was watching daily in anticipation of harvesting it. The squash is now mostly-eaten, looking for all the world like a cute porch over the entrance to the gopher hole.

Clever Rodents

When the gophers and voles aren’t popping out of holes to munch on plants that overgrew the raised beds, I see them simply scampering over the wooden sides of the beds to get their snacks. Poor boundaries; it’s a familiar problem. I’m told that feeling the sudden anger and fear rise up in me is a sign that my boundaries have been crossed, and that is how I feel when I see the gophers making a mockery of the raised beds. Anger at their destruction, but more fear that people will notice this proof of what a terrible gardener I am. (Oh hey, hello there, Pride…)

The irony of all of this is that the very night I returned home from helping with the “Gardening Without Enemies” workshop, I walked in to find a dead vole smack in the middle of my floor, and woke that same night to the sounds of a rat rummaging through my kitchen. Clearly, I am a total sham. (Well, it’s true that I don’t think of them as enemies. But still!)

Sometimes I think I would like to write here about how I’ve really fixed things up, how my garden is producing food that I’m eating and preserving for the winter. I’d like to brag about my neat woodpile, the oranges and greens of beautiful squash, the careful soil preparation I’m doing as I think about the apple trees and other perennials I’ll plant this fall. I’d like to write about how much I’ve healed and grown up through the divorce, and how I’m now emotionally perfect and don’t care to be loved by anyone else in my pristine solitude at the top of this romantic ridge in this picturesque yurt.

The reality is so very different. I’m lazy, ambivalent, prone to flights of fantasy, way too needy, and the custodian (or prisoner?) of some pretty ugly feelings (and absolutely certain that no one would like me if they knew I had those feelings). Reality is messy and uncertain and, yes, sometimes wonderful too. My therapist doesn’t usually tell me anything, but recently told me this: ”If you want to play in this part of the world, you can’t rise above it. And if you have to rise above it, then you don’t get to play in this part of the world.“

And this is gets me to the core. The addictions are attempts to escape this truth. The constant striving to escape this part of the world, because it seems so messy with feelings. To aspire to something more tidy and orderly than this mucky life here on earth, and if I can’t do that, then just check out altogether. The goal setting, the list making, the project planning…all of these are great for getting work done in the ideas part of the world, but they are a poor approach for life itself. Life must be lived, and life will not be compartmentalized nor follow the rules I make up for myself (or from others).

I want to live life. I want to play in this part of the world. With all the other critters.

What does it mean to really have our feelings? What’s the difference between having my feelings and getting attached to them? Intellectually, I think the idea is to accept them, let them arise in my life and then, as easily, let them go. But is that really all there is to it? Is that really enough? What about expressing them? Do I need to express all of my feelings to live in a truly honest way?