An eight-day road trip to Santa Fe with my friend (for continuing education seminars)

marks and reveals really big changes in my capacity to happily be in such close ongoing contact with anyone other than myself.

We’re in the midst of the fiery heat of another Ojai mid summer: endless days in the high 90’s and low hundreds. This year, our evenings haven’t always been cooling to their usual 60’s. More often it’s been the high 70’s and that only quite late. Sleeping in my tent is even more wonderful than ever since the house rarely cools enough for comfortable sleeping.

I’m back to frequent strolls along the beaches to cool down and re-hydrate.  Ever grateful that my so-loose work schedule leaves me free for such meandering most days of the month. Grateful this month, as well, to have discovered a huge and magnificent tree (a neighbor’s actually) hanging over our fence. A tree that’s lately been offering an extraordinary but manageable bounty of luscious warm, ripe red plums.  Everything in this meadow and garden is on such a smaller, more embraceable scale than at the old orchard!

When I first sat down to begin this piece last evening, I found myself thinking that it had been a fairly slow, easy and mostly uneventful five weeks since last I wrote here. Then, I took a break for a twilight meander on my favorite nearby trail. As I wandered through the dusk and into the moonlit night, I began remembering and feeling all the shifts and changes and openings that have filled these seemingly gentle, quiet weeks. Such an amazing kaleidoscope. A kaleidoscope in which all the bits of me have been rearranging in a sort of soft, slow motion.

As I felt and watched the inner movie of all the transformings, I realized that I wasn’t quite sure that it really was time to come up from the flow. Or, time yet for looking at the changes with the intention of putting words and form to the evolving story. Sometimes, it seems that moving too quickly toward looking at or putting form and words onto my experience can actually interfere with the organic flow of that experience. When it’s truly time for telling the tale to myself or to others, the very act of articulating the story appears to complete rather than interrupt the experience. This more timely telling always opens me to moving onto the next process. The ongoing challenge is ever to listen deeply enough to the experiencing to know when the moment is ripe for coming up for story making.

Though still, at this moment, unsure about what stories are ready to be told, I thought I’d just ramble on a bit and see where that took me. What is clear in this not-sure moment is that I feel deeply solid, centered and at home inside myself. Yet, at the very same time, I feel as though I am being disassembled and re-assembled on an almost cellular level. The ground of my being is fluid, shifting. The rearranging of my molecules unfolds, for the most part, in a gentle way. It’s so odd to feel both so solid and so fluid all at once.

I come back to this writing a couple of weeks later. More ready, perhaps, to tell some of the tale of this transforming time. Aware, all the while, that much is still reconfiguring and integrating within me.

My dear little toe stump has completed its process of growing new skin and is looking kind of sweet. The middle toe that they stitched hasn’t fared quite so well. Knobby scar tissue and some probable damage to its motor nerves have left me with no control over it and with a strange numb-ish kind of feeling. None of it seems to interfere with walking or hiking or (at last) hot-tubbing. So, for now, I keep tending it with massage, acupuncture and Reiki in the hope that some further healing may come. (The bills for this toe-misadventure are finally coming in this month. They’re unbelievably astronomical!)

A huge “threshold-crossing” in the past month-and-some was a road trip to Santa Fe with my friend “Marcia.“ Eight days of being with someone else 24/7 for the first time in over 20 years. Two driving days on either end. Four and a half days of rooming together in a “junior suite” (actually a smallish room and a half) as we moved in and out of five and a half hour days of a continuing education conference.

The conference itself, with just four brief exceptions, was terminally boring. This despite its promising and exciting title–Creativity and Madness. Most of the one and two hour-long presentations were intellectual, psychological biographies of long dead famous artists and musicians. Most of it rather dry and dull to me. All of it presented in a huge “theater” with no daylight or fresh air. With over 800 medical and mental health professionals sitting cheek by jowl in hooked together, horribly uncomfortable “banquet” chairs for hours and hours. Endless power-point presentations and images of the speakers project up on huge side-of-stage screens. Sigh!

Yet, the conference provided the scaffolding for an intense, many-layered and often hilarious journey. We seemed–in the middle of simply doing life-in-the-moment in each other’s company–to be on our own freewheeling Creativity and Madness experiential workshop. For each of us in different ways, it was quite a stretch to spend so much time in shared physical/geographical/emotional space. We knew we were in for a ride when we made the joint plan to go. Yet, we each felt a deep sureness that it was time for us to take this particular plunge together.  And, through some of the harder moments, we both were totally clear that it was all exactly what we were meant to be about.

There’s so much that’s utterly and wildly delicious about being in threshold space with someone who’s on a parallel conscious spiritual journey. Every moment gets recognized as part of the ride. One or both of you are usually awake to the endless simple moments of magic that keep happening. There’s a shared sense of the luminousness of every nuance of the unfolding.

“Marcia” and I have a shared, frequently complex and incredibly intense emotional history that extends back over more than twenty years. We also each know, deeply, a great deal of each other’s separate emotional history. Against this backdrop, there was in each of us a heightened awareness of the many amazing shifts that were happening in our own and each other’s being. In the middle of all of it, we were able to hoot and howl with laughter at our own and each other’s various foibles and “mischugass.”

So many extraordinary adventures every day. Though the most significant adventures were internal, they often unfolded as we hiked on magnificent mountain trails in and around Santa Fe and Sedona. Or, as we wandered separately or together–or sometimes separately then running into each other–through the streets in and around the edges of downtown Santa Fe. (This we did as we each took breaks from the deadening conference proceedings!)

Part of why it’s been so difficult to get to writing about all of this adventuring is that there were so many “big” moments. So many of them needing way too much “back story” to illuminate their meaning. So many of them still in an ongoing reconfiguring, jelling, integrating process.

So, what’s actually ready for telling?

One of the first “adventures” had much to do with the unbelievable volumes of “stuff” we each brought for the week. Each of us with a large “carry-on” wheeled suitcase and one other smaller suitcase or wheeled backpack. My additional “stuff” included: Two soft-sided ice chests. (I couldn’t travel without food for our road days, our first two nights and my first mornings, even though we knew there’d be a Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods right near our hotel in Santa Fe.) My large duffle bag filled with things for our shared “kitchen” as well as with my own assemblage of snack goodies. Another large backpack filled with books, a manuscript, pens and drawing paper and a stash of yarn for the crochet projects meant to save my sanity during the conference. And, finally my sleeping bag, my favorite pillow and a large purse

“Marcia” arrived at my door with her two suitcases, a small ice chest with her own breakfast stuff and–clearly practicing for some bag-lady future–about six separate, large and very full shopping bags. (They were all quite respectably nice ones, though.)  Also, a very large purse.

Since we were traveling in my PT Cruiser rather than her BMW sports car, there was plenty of room for our equally very high maintenance stashes of “stuff.”  We’d each packed judiciously for our “night-on-the-road” so most of the stuff stayed in the car at our Flagstaff stop over.  The “adventure” began when we got to our wonderful, though small Santa Fe hotel room.

First I was mortified to have a bellman deal with carting all of our overwhelming “stuff.” The fact that he’d be tipped for doing just that didn’t ease my embarrassment.  My way of dealing with my exceedingly high maintenance lifestyle is to take full responsibility for carting my stuff around. “Marcia” has no such concern. She, like most of my other women friends, feels perfectly fine paying for whatever “services” anyone might offer to ease the burden of her high maintenance load. I found myself furtively grabbing some of my stuff to separate it from the bellman’s load. Then I stayed behind at the car, leaving her to deal with getting him and going with him to our room.

When I got up to the room, the level of chaos was beyond reckoning.  Ordinarily, I would have opted for making order before doing anything else. But, we needed to make a food and water run before things shut down for the night. Once back, I gathered our dinner while “Marcia” moved a huge coffee table and two chairs out of our room onto our lovely balcony and set the table.  Both of us climbing over and around all the stuff strewn about our now less over-furnished but still claustrophobic room.

Sitting outside in the lovely starlit dark, I found I couldn’t even begin to contemplate eating. I felt overdone, overwhelmed, frazzled and nearly hysterical. The chaos. The volume of stuff still to be organized and put away. The things that needed readying for the next day’s journey at the conference session. And, on top of it all, the prospect of spending a week together in this so small of a space. It was all too much, even though we’d had a wonderful two days on the road in a much smaller space.

I wept, tried to keep breathing and gave voice to all my misery and anxiety. For a very brief moment, “Marcia” began to explain me to myself (e.g. that I live alone, don’t usually travel with anyone else, etc.). She stopped instantly when I asked her to quit it. Then, she settled lovingly into simply hearing my upset. No further attempt to explain it to me. No attempt to problem solve for me. No energy around fixing it for me. She just listened and heard my frustration and angst. It was such an enormous gift of spaciousness. That she could stay separate, individuated from my experience. Able to let me simply have that experience without needing to take any responsibility for any of it.  Simply bearing witness.  It was amazing and huge. I was so very grateful for the space it gave me.

“Marcia” went on about her own unpacking in the bedroom while I began the seemingly insurmountable tasks of my own order-making and preparations for the next day. She went to sleep by midnight and I wandered around my “living room” space till after 2:30. I moved so very slowly. Sweetly talking myself through making a nest for myself. Through making a pallet bed out of the convertible couch cushions so that I could sleep on the “ground” with my head at the open French doors, able to see the stars. Through preparing clothes, food, carafes of hot water and yarn projects for the next day. Through a long bath to ease the road kinks out of my body. Through having a few hours of time to be just with myself. I calmed and finally got a couple of hours of sleep.

The next morning we seemed easily able to flow through the space and the things we each needed to do without getting in each other’s way. (No mean feat in such a small space!). And, we found a rhythm for having time alone to start our days. I’d walk various almost one mile routes trundling my fully stocked wheeled backpack “wagon” to the conference center. I’d stake out last row aisle seats for us. Then, I’d walk around the edges of downtown for much of the next hour. “Marcia” drove the car over a bit earlier to get a parking space near the center and to not have to shlepp her equally loaded but wheel-less backpack. Then, she’d wander about the edges of downtown on her own path.

All of this unfolded seamlessly– each of us just doing exactly what she needed to do.  No need for the endless consultation and checking in that has always been so much a part of my being around someone else. (And always made being around someone else so exhausting!)

As the week unfolded there were so many astonishing edges that became not really edges after all. And, equally numerous interactions in which both of us were more definitively individuated from each other’s feelings and reactions than either of us had ever been.  A whole host of miracles washed over us, time and again. Best of all, even with the interludes of extreme intensity that have always marked our deep sharing, we could keep doing comedy routines, keep laughing with and at ourselves and each other.

Wonder of wonders, I had a really good time spending eight days 24/7 with someone beside myself!  As ever, it was still delicious to come home to my solitude. But, I came home this time with the awareness that I’ve grown many new skills for “playing well with other.” This after a lifetime of getting literal “needs improvement” comments from my teachers (years ago) and knowing that many of my friends held tender hopes that I might someday become more proficient at this skill.

Somehow it all seems part of the metaphor of this new home space into which I’ve moved. A space that seems both “wild, away from” and “in the middle” of the community/town in which I live.  Every where I turn I am in the process of integrating these two sides of my self and life. It feels deeply good.

Originally published August 2005