The Summer fruit orchard gives forth its incredible bounty while the meltdowns of my formerly trusty computer create an extraordinary and overwhelming sequence of meltdowns in me.
In the magic of mid-June into July, I am being deliciously overwhelmed with lush, succulent dead-ripe apricots that fall off the trees into my waiting hands each morning! The Santa Rosa plums are just beginning to blush reddish purple on the trees in the family orchard. I pick some early, to ripen in kitchen baskets because I can’t wait to taste them! All my little strawberry patches are giving forth small manageable daily rations of large, luscious berries. The bounty of summer in this little Eden!!
We are having (along with the rest of the country) some rather unusual weather for this time of year. Grey, moist, almost drizzly days that are more typical of the coastal summer "marine layer." This year it comes more than 20 miles inland to cool us in Ojai. Many of the locals at the bank, supermarket, library and post office are bemoaning the absence of sunshine, growing weary of the days and days of cloud and mist. Though it worries me with wonderings about what we’ve done to the ozone, I’m otherwise truly grateful for the postponement of the high desert heat that usually is our weather story in June. I love feeling "plumped up" by the moisture. And, I love still being able to garden or walk in the mountains during the days. (Both usually no longer possible at this point in the year.)
This month, as always, I'm endlessly amazed at how, in the middle of my simple peaceful Eden, "life" always finds me. I don't seem to need to go off on "adventures" in the outside world in order to be stretched and grown. Spirit can use any little thing right here in Eden to take me through whatever challenges and upheavals I might need to undergo in order to continue the journey of my healing and unfolding.
My trusty little computer, late in May, began having several serious, sudden and utterly unpredictable meltdowns, paroxysm and seizures. This sweet war-horse of a Mac G3 PowerBook has been in my life for the past four years. When I first began word processing the material for my web site Barbara, my computer mentor/good friend/creative collaborator, sent it home with me as a loaner. After I had been working with it for two years, we did a trade and it became officially mine. Except for a brief period when it had some hiccups easily resolved by installing additional memory or getting some new software, it has served me consistently, reliably and efficiently. Until the middle of May!
At first it seemed simply a test of patience. It took several tries to boot it each time I went to use it. Then it began freezing when I woke it from sleeping. Putting it to sleep instead of turning it off had been, till then, my strategy for avoiding at least some of the re-booting failures. With things seemingly on a confusing down hill slide, I delivered the computer to Barbara for some troubleshooting and repairs.
For more than a month, I lived mostly without a computer in residence, borrowing Barbara’s newer Power Book only when I was ready to write my monthly columns. I was quite untroubled by being computer-less. I was away from home for part of the time. When I, once home, did want to check e-mail from the site, the local library computers served me as well as they did in my pre-computer days.
After five weeks, endless troubleshooting and fixing (including two clean-installs of all the software and twice re-formatting the hard drive) the computer came home with me for a test-run. More and even new failures and craziness. I was in tears. So much frustration. Not anywhere near the earlier capacity for patience. I was in a meltdown myself!
I felt abandoned. Betrayed. Seduced into learning a new way of writing–relying on the computer to be able to write and rewrite simultaneously–that left me feeling completely flummoxed and stymied by having to use pen and paper! Feeling seduced into dependency only to be betrayed, abandoned, dumped! (A profound re-echoing of all of my endless childhood memories of what depending on anyone inevitably led me to!) I was feeling so furious with the computer, wanting to take a hammer to it. Wanting to fling it against a wall. Sorry I’d ever let it into my life.
This intense upset with the computer-as-other led me to plummet into a kind of despair that from time to time sneaks in to overwhelm me. The plummet always begins with my noticing things like the endless proliferation of spider webs in the windows and rafters. The endless dust blown in from the orchard. The endless crumbs of bark and twig tracked in by Ms. Pretty. The endless sprawl of hedges and vines that seem always to need trimming. The profusion of flowers topping the veggie-greens that endlessly need to be pruned in order to encourage the more usable leafing. The endless dead flowers that need to be cut back to allow more flowers to bloom.
Suddenly noticing and focusing this way on all of this relentless, endless creeping of entropy all around my little cottage always overwhelms me with despair. I’m in tears at each perception. I stomp around. I mutter. I yell, howl, curse. I storm around in frustrated rage with all there is to always keep doing in order to stay “afloat” in my so-called simple life!
I moan and cry and wish out loud for a housekeeper/gardener, a “Personal Assistant,” a “Mommy-outside.” Someone/anyone who could come in and take over these endless chores without needing endless instructions. Then I realize having such a someone would involve me in yet one more interpersonal relationship. And, I realize that I would also have to work more hours with more clients to make the money to hire such a someone. This would involve me in even more interpersonal relationships.
These thoughts exhaust me even more than the thoughts of the chores themselves. I dissolve in a puddle, longing for the impossible: an always-on-call clone of myself. Finally, I give up and just fall into a long, exhausted nap!
In calmer times, these same “endless chores” don’t distress me at all. They are all merely part of the moment by moment nourishing puttering I do, without much thought, as I go about my days “tending-the-shrine” in my mostly timeless life. Only when I feel particularly pressed or tired or overwhelmed by something else do I occasionally fall prey to this plummet-into-despair. The computer disaster certainly set me up for it this time.
The center of this despair is always the same impossible longing for reliable, ready outside help that asks and needs nothing from me. Help that would be there instantly available to do exactly what I needed just and only when I needed it. Help that I wouldn’t have to help to help me.
When I’m in the middle of it, I know to hold myself lovingly. I know to be sweetly compassionate to the falling-apart part. To say “Poor honey.” And, “I’m soooo sorry that there’s no one to give/be for you just what you need right now.” And, “I know it’s soo hard, sweetie!” I know whenever I fall into this particular pit it is yet another time of re-experiencing the overwhelm, struggle and pain of my early life. The overwhelm, struggle and pain of having been, for so many years of that early life, a too-little person from whom too much was expected with too little loving support from a mom who was neither loving nor truly present in any emotional way.
I always recover and regroup from each of these now fairly infrequent plummets into that old well of despair. At some moment, for no particular reason I can discern, I’m done with the excursion. I know that each time I go there, I am grieving and raging out more of the (amazingly) still incompletely grieved and incompletely raged early sadness and anger. I always feel so much lighter on the far side. And always, I need lots and lots of naptime.
As I was napping, recovering from my excursion and preparing for the possibility of buying a new computer, Barbara finally ran out of things that she knew to do to try to fix the problems. She gave it up and braved the testosterone-infested lair of a local Mac repair shop (for which I am forever in her debt!). Three days and $350 dollars later, she re-installed all the software on my little now-repaired computer. She brought it and the faulty 3 x 4-inch processor-board back to me this evening. (It clearly helps to have the Mac diagnostic software to troubleshoot with!)
We talked quite a long while about all the ups and downs in this process we went through together on the way to here. (More of that story about our flowing and reciprocal collaboration and mentoring some other time.) And now I’ve been here–still somewhat warily–writing this tale on my once-again seemingly reliable and trusty little work horse.
Originally published July 2003
