Friday, April 26, 2013

hard work

Sometimes the most difficult thing to do is put your own problems aside long enough to support a friend.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Shattered Pieces in my Wake

The Puppetmaster and I walked along the embarcadero after brunch on Sunday. We passed the yacht club at China Basin, and a memory of being a theater usher came flooding back.

It was late one night after a Rent show. There was a cast and crew party at the yacht club, and there were a handful of ushers in attendance. I sat out on the deck in a dark corner with a few of the sarcastic girls smoking and cracking inappropriate jokes about the guys performing their favorite selections inside. They were each very talented, most of them so much that it overshadowed their larger than life egos. I had watched them in their glory so frequently that it was no longer a novelty.

A stranger walked in during one of the performances and bellied up to the bar. He was dressed in the dark layers common to the area like a fisherman or longshoreman. His pace was slow and purposeful, but his height allowed him to cross from the entrance to the bar with a few steps. The deck was silent as we looked on in awe.

He was beautiful. The ends of thick dreadlocks dangled beneath the wrap around his head, brushing his back just above his waist. His face was smooth olive with a thin goatee.  His eyes glowed golden green. The silence on the deck was broken with a whisper from one of the girls behind me, "Now, that's a man." The rest of us sighed and groaned in agreement. The top of my head tingled.

The tension in the yacht club was palpable. It became painfully clear that the stranger had encroached on a private function. He didn't stay long, but I don't recall anything that happened after his departure that night. I felt as though I'd seen a ghost, there for a fleeting moment and then gone forever. At least that's what I assumed at the time.

Monday, April 1, 2013

the ego's familiar face


I’m probably a typical underachiever.  I don’t take risks because I don’t feel like I’m good enough at anything to really excel at it.  I don’t compete at anything because I’m always afraid that others will beat me.  Not only will they prove themselves better than me, but they will rub my face in their victory.  That’s crazy!  My brain goes in a crazy direction there.

As a young person I never felt like anything I did was good enough.  When something turned out well, I felt compelled to come up with something better.  Perfection was the only scale for measurement.  If it wasn’t perfect it wasn’t right.  Mom taught me that.  I could never please her.  I tried.  Oh, how I tried!  She focused on every imperfection she could find.  To this day I cannot wear shorts because my hyper pigmented hair follicles, which she referred to as “polka dots” looked terrible in her opinion and should always be covered.  I’m not exactly sure why that particular memory came up, but it seems unnecessarily cruel to me now.  Why would a person tell their kid that?  Confidence is something that takes people far in life.  It’s one thing to teach your kids that disappointments happen (and then give them the tools to recover from it); it’s another thing entirely to take away their confidence and make them believe that success is unattainable for “someone like them”.  She probably just didn’t know what she was doing at the time, but it still makes me sad.  I feel sad not just for the child Hester whose dreams of the wide, enchanting world were shattered, but also for my mom who was so hardened and broken that she couldn’t even allow the people around her to believe in kindness, faith and miracles.

I am now at a crossroads that will likely be a recurring one for me – growing out of my irrational fears.  An important part of this process is looking at the beliefs I have about self-worth, remembering where they came from, reliving the emotions associated with the formation of those beliefs and rising above them.  It’s challenging to say the least.  The ego wants to cover up, cry, guilt, attack – anything to make the probing stop, but my logical mind knows that this is all necessary.  I lie awake at night while they fight sometimes. I don’t remember my dreams when I wake up afraid, angry and upset in the middle of the night.  It takes hours to shake it off.

This morning, for the first time in several weeks, I felt light.  I felt a peaceful acceptance of the things that are going on in my life.  I slept well last night.  I only wanted one cup of coffee, which I drank after the rainy and crowded commute.  I’m not exactly sure what changed, but it felt great.  I meditated in the dark before dawn and the minutes flew by.  Whatever this is, I hope I am able to sustain it.  I’ll need it to deal with the emotional gunk that I need to pull out.