Victoria Lin

Bits and Fragments

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I pledge allegiance to love and creativity.

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ME "I like nature-through windows" MARI "I like nature-through my phone"

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Sometimes I am overwhelmed by the unsaid things in your eyes and look away.

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Travel day. New tea bottle. As I was stealing tea bags from the club lounge because I didn't bring enough, I was expressing the pros and cons of my new bottle to my family. (ie. It rolls up and doesn't leak or clank. But it's not insulated). My son's response was, "Mom you're like an alcoholic but with tea."

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May the force be with us. I am about to cornrow the head of this bleloved daughter of mine.

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Mine and Yours

I am reading the Tao Te Ching (trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English). Number 11 says this:

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore profit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there.

№11 from the Tao Te Ching inspired me to write the following:

When we build the rooms within ourselves, it is good to remember the windows and doors, for without them we have no way to enter or see out. Today I sit in my room of peace. I see your suffering from my window, so I run out to bring you hot cocoa and toast.

If I could, I would give you my room of peace. But I cannot give you what is mine anymore than you can give me what is yours. So I will wait with you as long as you need me and hold your hand until you have enough strength to build the rooms you need. I will weave a little peace into a shawl for your shoulders.

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"Let's wait and see," is the unofficial title of this last selfie in my year long project of taking a selfie a day and writing about it, however much or little I wanted. I had no agenda for this project other than to write something and post it without fuss or revision each day as a training exercise, as a way to let go of my perfectionistic tendencies. I made up the idea with about as much thought as I will end it, which isn't much, because that's what I promised myself. I get too stressed too easily about my writing. I get too stressed too easily about much of life, and I suppose if there has been any grand theme to this blog perhaps it has been that it became a place to process the stress of life and my experiments with new ways to deal with it. I've developed a lot of new ways over the year through mindfulness and relationships. I am so grateful and have enjoyed the insights that have come through the process and my relationship with those of you reading along. I am very curious to know what it will feel like when I wake up tomorrow without this job. Will I miss it? Will I be relieved? I'll probably feel some of both and many other things. But what I am most excited about is to find out how I focus my energy next. I have been writing other things all along this past year, poetry and prose, but my writing energy will redistribute itself immediately after posting this. I can hardly wait to find out how. Let's wait and see.

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When your body has lost all is bounce like a flat tennis ball, sometimes the best thing to do for yourself is rest in your bed.

Perhaps I tempted the universe too much this morning when I thought, “I’ve been doing such a good job staying in the present moment,” and the universe replied with a PhD-level workload of challenges to help me build on my new skills.

There were a lot of old narratives hanging around the events of today. Disturbing narratives full of fear about my future and the future of people I love. I kept wacking those fears with my racket only to have the net fling them back in my face. But I’ll be ok because I’ve meditated and realized that all I really need to do is take a bath and go to bed.

My daughter took one look at me just now as I wrote that and said, “Mom, you look like you are getting sick. You should make that blog post short and go to bed.” She sounds a lot like her mother.

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Taking my kid to an R-rated movie for the first time, Logan, because we both love Wolverine. I might be a great mom or a terrible mom depending on your perspective, and I am OK with that. My kid is 14. We read the parent advisory report on the movie together, deciding it passed. OK. However, no spoilers from us. Just go see it and then we’ll talk.

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Snuggled up with myself today. Yesterday was beautifully intense with meaningful time spent with people I love, celebrating life, grieving losses, and processing what it means to be human. I loved every minute, even the most difficult ones. All of it contributed to my awareness of myself and the world. All of it taught me about the kind of mother, friend, partner, co-worker, and citizen I want to be. This was after a week that has been full, full, full, nearly every minute; and while I am not necessarily depleted, I feel the need to be alone to process my thoughts and enjoy myself without any distractions.

As of 1pm, I am still in my fleecy red bathrobe that is thrown over my sweats and t-shirt to stay warm. I have on my fingerless gloves and several Klean Kanteens full of green tea, as usual. I don’t need to see or interact with anyone until my kids get off the school bus at 5pm, unless I want to. I am so grateful. You might be wondering if I have come to any grand conclusions, thus far, in my fleecy robe wisdom? Why yes actually, I have. It may make you laugh, and I am OK with that. After years of having a shared online calendar with my husband, which I plan to keep, I am returning to a month-at-a-glance paper calendar. I just decided this while mindfully putting lotion and wool socks on my frightfully cold feet, after nearly double-booking myself again. I did not double-book myself thanks to a co-worker who gently asked me something like this: “You remember you are out of town that weekend, right?”

Most of the sorts of mistaken double-booking that I do will be avoided with a month-at-a-glance calendar. Most of the errors I make with time in general will be avoided. I will still maintain the online calendar for our family needs and am a little nervous about having two places to put things, but I really really need to be able to see all my stuff written out on one page. When my husband reads this, his heart is going to sink, so I will say directly to him right now, “Don’t worry Darling. Trust me. This will be good for us.” 

So now I have to decide if I am going to get dressed and venture out to buy said calendar, or order it from amazon while I stay here in my cozy red robe. Hmmmm…..

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Friends

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After 10 hours of washing, unbraiding, and combing, my daughter’s hair is done. We started last night. I worked from the bottom up. She helped. After finishing the bottom half last night, we hid the unbraided section in twists under a ponytail this morning for her school day. We continued and finished the process tonight. It took considerably less time because we purchased a new brush called the Tangle Teezer, which a dear friend told us about. If you have extremely highly-textured hair like my daughter, I encourage you to get a Tangle Teezer, if you don’t already have one. It is life changing. We cut off at least 5 hours from this process because of that brush, if not more. (The braid shop could take out her braids in 4 hours. But they are not very gentle. My daughter is quite tender headed. And we are working on letting her be part of caring for her own hair. So hence, we do our own take outs now.)

The right tools really matter, for hair care and for life. I didn’t grow up around hair like my daughter’s, so I’ve had a lot to learn over the years. An 8 dollar brush is going to save hundreds of hours over my daughter’s lifetime (and mine). Mindfulness is another essential tool in doing my daughter’s hair. Prior to starting my mindfulness practice, we would have multiple melt downs during hair days. This time, I only had one major melt-down at about the 9th hour. Although I was a little scary in the melt-down moment, that’s not too bad considering everything (especially when I can’t drink much wine anymore). Maybe I won’t have any meltdowns on the next hair day, or at least, maybe I’ll be a little less scary.

My daughter really wants to leave her hair  in an unprotected afro for awhile. We haven’t done this often. I prefer to always keep her hair in a protective style, such as cornrows or extensions. It is more vulnerable to breakage when it is out. My primary hair goal is to keep her head of hair completely natural (not chemically straightening it) and let it grow as long as possible. When she can take care of it herself, she will be free to do whatever she wants with it. I want her to have the biggest, baddest afro possible when she leaves home, but that requires protecting it. Her hair only recently became long enough to even get it all pulled back into one afro bun. (I don’t really know what one calls her hair style in this selfie.) 

Now that she is older, she gets to have a little more freedom in her choice of hairstyle. If she wants it out for a bit, we will leave it out for a bit. And geez, it does look pretty cute. This picture doesn’t even really do it justice. I guess, for a white lady, I don’t think I am doing too badly in the hair department for my black daughter. But I better not get cocky about it. 

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Salsa conduits can be hard to come by in the grain-free life, but sweet potato chips are surprisingly tasty with my salsa today. They also happen to be a handy metaphor for accepting agency and responsibility, not only for my food needs but also my writing needs. I would prefer to use corn chips for salsa, but corn in any form makes me quite sick. So I choose an alternative, just as I would prefer to let some of my poems live in a lighthearted humorous space, but sometimes they want more than that. 

I’ve been procrastinating working on a difficult poem today. I just realized I’ve been procrastinating. It can be a sneaky practice. It can look like meditation and catching up on email and washing the kitchen floor. A friend gave me the feedback that I needed to work on it. The feedback, in summary, was an invitation to go deeper. While the poem as it is would make people laugh,  the material actually comes from a raw, vulnerable place. I am afraid to go down into it. I believe I must. Sigh. I am going to use one of my favorite revision tricks after I finish writing this post. I am going to tell myself that all I am going to do is read the poem. That’s it. I don’t need to commit to anything else. Something else usually follows, but if it doesn’t, that’s OK.

Also related to the needs of my writing life, I believe it is important to note that I am in the last week of this blog. Some of you have made a lovely case to me that I keep going beyond my one-year commitment to post a selfie a day with some writing. I have loved considering that option, as every writer loves having readers. But I am ready to complete this project and see how my writing life evolves without this practice. I plan to go about this last week as I have every other week of the life of this blog, which is to write about whatever I feel like with whatever time I have and post it straight away without fuss or revision. I suppose the blog has been a practice in mindfulness in its own way. Therefore, it seems appropriate that I will not be planning a big, intentional finale. Whatever comes on Monday, March 20th in the present moment of when I write it will be the last post.

I put a collection of William Stafford’s poetry in my bathroom yesterday, and I opened to this poem just now, which seems rather perfect for honoring the last week of a selfie blog: 

When You Go Anywhere by William Stafford

This passport your face (not you officially, your picture, but the face used to make the passport) offers everyone its witness: "This is me."

It feels like only a picture, a passport forced upon you. Somewhere this oval, sudden and lasting, appeared. It happened that you were behind it, like it or not.

You present it--your passport, your face -- wherever you go. It says, "A little country," it says "Allow this friendly observer quiet passage," it says, "Ordinary," it says, "Please."

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On my walk home from yoga class, I began contemplating dualism. I decided I am over it. No more dualistic thinking, especially when it comes to my personhood. There is no mind/body split except as a construction. My mind is a part of my body, a wonderful, powerful part of it, but a part nonetheless. My body is created in the image of God. My body is not any less good or holy or spiritual than my mind, because I am whole. Caring for my physical self is caring for my spiritual self and vice versa, because they are the SAME THING. There is no spiritual reality for me now outside my body, just as there is no physical reality outside my spiritual self. Maybe that will change when I die, but I am not concerned with that now. I am no longer fostering this ridiculous notion embedded in our culture that my mind operates on some higher plane than the rest of me. I bring all of me into every experience all the time. Yoga is as spiritual as church. Prayer is as physical as eating. All my physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs are of equal value. I am whole, all the time. All the time, I am whole.

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RUMInating

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Prepping for my writers’ group tomorrow. We meet every month, and I facilitate our time together. I have grown to love this group of people devoted to crafting words into art. We write in many genres. We are thoughtful readers. We truly help one another. I am always grateful for the work that’s shared and for what the other writers help draw out of me. It takes courage to share one’s work-in-progress. It takes courage to speak into someone else’s art and try to help it become more of itself. I am always so inspired by this group that I tend to come home and write for a couple of hours after we meet. 

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For Lent, I am giving up worrying. Much like when I gave up harsh self-criticism and judgement a few months ago, this should be an illuminating process. I believe it will be similar to meditation. In meditation, I attempt to focus on my breath or a mantra and take a break from thinking, When I start to think, I notice it without judgement and return my focus to my breath. I can do the same with worrying. When I notice myself doing it, I will focus on my breath or a mantra instead, such as all things are working for my greater good. I am a chronic worrier, and while I recognize that I have an anxiety disorder, much of my worrying is simply a bad habit. I think I can cut out at least half of it pretty easily. Now, I do wonder what will come up with all my spare mental space. I am trying not to worry about that. (wink, wink) I know that I can fill the mental space with prayer, positive affirmations, mindfulness, and poetry--all of which are way more interesting and productive than worrying.