Vacation is over. The traveling portion of my time away from work entailed six nights in Eugene. And I’ve been back in Marin for four nights now. As a follow-up to my last entry, I can now report that I successfully did find that place of safety and security I was seeking while away, if only for a little while. And the chatter in my mind, well, it quieted down some too. This happened gradually over my time in Oregon, and seemed to have snuck up on me while I was doing, simply, nothing special.

This trip was not about going to an exotic place or seeing wonderful new things. I sought, and found, a blessed zone of comfort and familiarity. Some of the mundane yet meaningful portions of the trip included:

• A monstrous hug from two-year-old Kaleb. (He’s is the younger child of the daughter I never had; C’s second grandchild.) His warm and loving greeting was entirely unexpected, and the gesture tugged fiercely at my heart.
• Lunch with two former colleagues from my time with the Oregon University System, including lots of stories and laughter.
• A hike to the top of Mt. Pisgah on a 90-degree afternoon. This is the most strenuous workout I’ve had in over three years, and I survived it. In great shape.
• A long walk around Corvallis and the Oregon State University campus, including time to sit quietly on a bench at the MU quad.
• Two entire days at the Oregon Country Fair. The photos I took at this year’s event were probably about the best I’ve ever done there. Laura Kemp was, of course, spectacular. And the chat I had with Jill was delightful.
• Revisiting Café Yumm, Café Sienna, the Glenwood Café, and the Dairy Queen on Coburg Road. (Even after a year away, the folks at Café Sienna remembered my “usual.”)
• Going to two movies.
• Shopping without paying California sales tax. (Though I had to UPS a package back to myself before I left Eugene…so I probably paid the tax anyway!)

That’s mostly it. I guess this little essay on “what I did on my summer vacation” is really uninteresting. I suppose I am lucky this will not be graded!

Here I am: on vacation. In Oregon. Haunting my old haunts.

This is a vacation?

Yes, actually, the best one I could think of.

Now, I suppose you’re asking: what in the world makes this a good choice for a getaway (rather than someplace new and, perhaps, slightly-more exotic)?

I’ve been mulling this over, and I think that it’s not only my desire, but my compulsion, to find someplace safe for a few days. Now, that may sound a little strange, given my recent observations about the lack of security and support I enjoyed here before I left the state…but I believe that simple familiarity (and the accompanying feeling of) safety is what it comes down to.

I went to the Oregon Country Fair for a few hours yesterday. And I’ll be there for awhile again tomorrow. I seek out this venue despite the fact that I am not (and never have been) an organizer, vendor, helper, or any kind of active participant of the event. I am not part of the Fair’s insider culture. All that I’ve ever done, off and on over the course of nearly thirty years, is look at the public part of the Fair through my lens and record selected microseconds here and there. During nearly all my visits, I have gone alone; I rarely interact for anyone for more than a few seconds or minutes. I am not known, and no one knows me. (I only rarely even see anyone familiar there.) In terms of the life of the Oregon Country Fair, I’m about as anonymous as anyone possibly can be. Yet, the event is part of my life, and carrying around a camera and wandering these now well-known grounds in rural Veneta, Oregon is part of who I am.

Today, right now, I’m in Corvallis. At the downtown Starbucks. For what it’s worth, amazingly, I see no one else with a laptop.

Yes, Corvallis. The city I lived in from 1970 to 1990. I moved here immediately after my graduation from college…a few weeks after the Kent State tragedy, oh those many years ago. I have lived no where longer than the twenty years I spent here. By the time I left (for graduate school in Indiana), I thought there would never be a place I’d call home other than Corvallis. However, the time I spent in Eugene from 1995 to 2004 was highly significant, and it is that place that I now call “home”…having now lived in Portland, Roseburg and Larkspur since.

While Eugene enjoys that place in my heart, Corvallis is very special, and is particularly effective in providing me a sense of safety and security. Largely, these positive feelings are ones I associate with the Oregon State University campus. During the time I lived here in Corvallis, and also during the years when I lived elsewhere in Oregon, whenever I was feeling confused, lost, depressed, or desperate (and I think I’ve had more than my share of those times), it was to the OSU campus I came.

And when I got here: I walked. I sat. I read. I slept on the couches in the MU lounge. For some reason, here, I was able to just be. Like nowhere else on earth.

So today I went to campus again. I finished off a novel I’ve been reading the last few days. I sat on one of the benches at the edge of the quad. I watched a few young people walk by (on a Saturday in the summer, the campus is very quiet).

I tried to still my mind.

My mind needs stilling because this visit has produced a huge, and unexpected, emotional reaction on my part. For, while I have a good job, and people that support me, in my current place in California, I have a long way to go before I’ll be assimilated there. In fact, I’m not sure that going native will ever happen for me in Marin County. I’m not one of them. And, often, I think that I’m not sure I want to be.

It’s Oregon where I belong. It’s here where I’m home. If there’s anywhere in the universe where I “fit” – with the culture and the geography – this would be the place.

My mind needs to be stilled, needing a respite from this longing…a longing that has only been brought more to the surface by this trip.

I look out the window at downtown Corvallis… preparing, as I finish this, to head back to Eugene. And wonder…about the winding path this is that we call life.

What could possibly be next?

Soundtrack Suggestion

I say high, you say low
You say why, and I say I don't know
Oh, no
You say goodbye and I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello
Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello…

(“Hello Goodbye” – The Beatles)

I’ve had a couple of interesting interactions recently…

First: on my daily bike-path walk the other day, I ran into one of my new California friends. She wrote me soon afterward to report that I had looked “positively vibrant” during our little chat.

Second: a more casual acquaintance, and an infrequent reader of these pages, asked me in an email, with a somewhat judgmental tone (in my opinion), “aren’t you rather obsessed with your health?”

To the first person, I replied, “ahhhh…summer” … and though I believed her observation was a bit of an overstatement, I was secretly thankful that someone had really noticed me.

To the second, I reacted rather defensively…saying, no, I considered myself to be just about perfectly attentive to matters of my health. Given that I’ve spent years dealing with chronic pain, beginning in my twenties and continuing on to the present day, the old saying “if you have your health, you have everything” has profound meaning in my life.

For when a body is dealing with such issues, one can hardly say that “health” is present. Admittedly, I do spend a lot of time and energy focused on my health. It seems that it’s a condition of my existence.

Despite any projected “vibrancy” of late, however, I continue to struggle with body-wide muscular pain. And although I’ve made significant positive progress in recent months (mostly I credit the Feldenkrais Method and Anne, my local Feldenkrais practitioner), in the past couple of weeks I have been dealing with a minor setback, and the old questions such as “how did this happen?” and “why me?” come up in my mind again and again.

Regarding the matter of how did this happen?, I think I have more clarity than ever. So that’s today’s topic.

I consider my present health woes to have begun on November 13, 2003, when the Governor of the State of Oregon took the unprecedented action of firing the Board of Higher Education. I have reported on this situation before, and I knew immediately that my life was about to change, likely dramatically. The Board, after all, was my employer, and if the composition of that body was going turnover in such a wholesale manner… well, what (and who) was now in place to insulate me?

What resulted was that my entire world did shift. Within a very short time it was clear that I would be losing a job I’d held for nine years, and that I had nowhere, really, to go. I became extremely anxious. I asked myself: was I to be one of those older, displaced professionals no longer able to find gainful, skill-and-experience-appropriate employment?

Was I destined to soon become intimately familiar with that common question, “would you like fries with that?”

Of course, I’ve chronicled a lot of what subsequently happened to me here. I did lose my longtime position with the Oregon University System, but I was, fortunately, picked up for one, then another, “interim” arrangement at two Oregon community colleges. Though for three and a half years, my life was entirely focused on searching for “permanent” employment, while going to work everyday in highly-unstable, non-supportive, temporary environments.

During that time, I faced rejection over and over again in my job search. Although I seemed to have little trouble securing interviews…I had significant difficulty obtaining an offer for a permanent job. I came in second an amazing number of times. And then I ended up, in my interim appointments, working for not only unsupportive people, but for individuals who were overtly hostile and abusive. A short time into my first interim position, for example, I was lambasted and humiliated in a public meeting by the big boss. It set up a situation that entirely disallowed any possibility of comfort, security, support, or long-term prospects at the institution.

And then, if my professional life weren’t unstable enough, I continued to subject myself, in my personal life, to a relationship that involved several (and, sadly, predictable) episodes of painful rejection.

In sum, I spent a considerable portion of nearly four years dealing with repeated rejection and utter lack of support in both my personal and professional lives. (And, in fact, the personal-rejection scenario stretched back over more than twice as many years.)

During this entire time, my body was paying attention. I believe, now, that the resulting non-stop anxiety due to lack of support is the source of my current physical woes.

Moshe Feldenkrais, in a chapter entitled “The Body Pattern of Anxiety” (in The Elusive Obvious) discusses the human condition in terms of our instinctual reaction to threats. For example, he discusses what we know today as “fight or flight.” Feldendkrais (1981, p. 56) states that “an animal, when frightened, either freezes or runs away. In either case there is a momentary halt….with a violent contraction of all the flexor muscles…”. Further, he considers the case of a newborn infant, a being who is “practically insensitive to slow and small external stimuli” … but who “if suddenly lowered, or if support is sharply withdrawn, a violent contraction of all flexors with halt of breath is observed.” Feldenkrais notes further that “the similarity of the reactions of a newborn infant to withdrawal of support, and those of fright or fear in the adult is remarkable” (p. 57, emphasis added).

This makes so much sense to me! I believe these observations provide a logical explanation for the chronic-muscle-pain issues I deal with on a daily basis.

I had lived a professional existence where my experience was one of rejection and almost complete lack of support. And in the case of my personal relationship, the support I enjoyed at any particular moment was at risk of being withdrawn at any time.

My body tensed, ever ready for the next piece of bad news. And it stayed that way. I apparently lost the ability to ever relax my muscles at all…from head to toe, I became totally knotted up. I was a wet dishrag: stretched, squeezed, twisted, and left-to-dry on the rack. Over and over and over again.

I suspect any body that is stretched, squeezed and twisted, in a time frame with no predicable end, is one that is going to end up in pain.

Amazingly, I have finally found an environment that is much more personally supportive. And thanks to the supplement Fibroplex, the personal health benefits of which I have previously documented (here and here), along with the “neuromuscular re-education” that I’m engaging in with the Feldenkrais Method, I believe I’m gradually unknotting these old, fatigued, anxiety-ridden, twisted-up muscles.

It is a slow, tedious, and necessary process…if I ever expect to live mostly-pain-free ever again, that is.

This is the first anniversary of my last night in Oregon. Yes, it was exactly a year ago that I said my goodbyes and departed Eugene. I spent that first night (July 1) on the road in Redding, and arrived to take up residence in Larkspur the next day.

Those of you familiar with my biography probably won’t be too surprised with my Soundtrack Suggestion for the day.

This time in video form.

It’s a classic.

As I reported earlier, last Saturday was a hot day. And after spending the afternoon in the city, I was tired out from all my adventures. I went to bed even earlier than usual, keeping all the windows open on both sides of my apartment because of the heat.

At 3:30 a.m. I woke up, but not because of the temperature inside…I was startled by the smell of smoke. What the heck is going on? I was wide awake instantly. I am pretty sensitive to smoke, whether it’s a neighbor firing up a barbeque grill, or someone in the vicinity having a cigarette. As I evaluated the quality of this middle-of-the-night smoke, however, it was neither of those. Something else was burning, and I was hoping it wasn’t my building.

I looked out from my balcony…nothing visible down below in terms of fire. And I heard no fire engines. I put on pants and shoes, and carrying my keys, did a quick walk-around of the complex. Nothing. Still, the air was sickening with the heaviness of the smoke. I asked myself again: what is going on?

I went back inside, shut my windows, and fitfully, worriedly, tried to get back to sleep.

One of the first things I heard on KQED the next morning was about the huge number of fires burning in California. Somehow, up to that point, I’d missed all the news. However, having dealt with the smoke in the middle of the night (and still smelling it that morning), it all started to make sense. The smoke had finally made its way to the Bay Area.

Well, you’ve probably all heard about this by now…it’s been over a week of more and more fires (primarily started by lightning strikes) and hazy, smoky air for us to breathe.

There are literally hundreds of fires going on. Yesterday, at one point, I heard the number was 1,100. Yes, that’s one thousand one hundred. But I’ve also heard a variety of estimates from 800 on up. This morning’s San Francisco Chronicle reported that the wildfires have so far consumed more than 300 square miles of California. (If you want to see a map of the significant ones, click here.) The other night the weatherman on the local NBC station estimated that the smoke could last for weeks or even months…given that the fires are both north and south of here and that the winds during the summertime generally alternate between northerly and southerly.

How can we live like this?!

For some unknown reason, the lyrics of Sting’s stalker song (“Every Breath you Take”) keep running through my head…

Every breath you take
Every move you make…

Given these conditions, before long I’ll be carrying my own personal tank of oxygen along with me just to breathe…and the tank will probably be strapped to my walker!

Soundtrack Suggestion

I’ve got a red hot heart
And your heart’s as blue as the blood in your veins
I say there’s fire down below
You say it’s only smoke and ashes baby
Only smoke and ashes baby, baby…

(“Smoke and Ashes” – Tracy Chapman)