Since last writing, I have been to Eugene Cash’s Sunday night sitting group twice. Over the years, a few people have drifted from the meditation group I used to go to, led by the person I still consider to be my teacher, Howard Cohn, over to Eugene’s, so the first of the two recent times I went to Eugene’s, I saw a couple of people I knew, but was left wondering if I would actually end up making friends if I went there regularly.
At 12-step meetings, you can raise your hand and talk about yourself (obviously my favorite thing to do) and then people can come up to you at the end and say, “That happened to me, too,” or you can go up to them and say that, and because of that and because people are sharing about their lives, it can be quite easy to make friends, though this seems to me to happen somewhat more easily in AA than in Al-Anon. Al-Anon is for the families and friends of alcoholics, and it’s the only kind of meeting I go to these days.
I will digress to say that I did hear from my boss that I have permission to move to Michigan and retain my job, working full-time from home, but by then, I’d decided that maybe I wouldn’t like to work at home all the time. It sounds like it would be lonely.
My mother said hopefully that if I WERE to stay inside all the time, I wouldn’t be able to ride a bicycle! She worries about me getting squished.
Getting squished aside, because I ride my bike to work, I get some exercise at least five days a week without having to do anything special. I’m sure I would vow to go out and walk or bike, anyway, if I worked at home, but I probably wouldn’t. So I have asked my boss to find out if my company has an office location near Ann Arbor where I could work.
I was also thinking of all the things I would do to make friends in Michigan, or anywhere. I would go to Al-Anon meetings, and find a meditation group, and join a local bicycling organization and go on group bike rides. Since I know what to do to meet people, I might as well do those things here. Even if I move, if these are good things to do, there’s no reason not to do them now.
I went back to Eugene’s last Sunday, and this time I sat with a couple of my friends from Howie’s, including a fellow I am very fond of, a really sweet person, and I found that sitting with friends, meditating, was extremely pleasant. Just as nice, in its way, as talking. Maybe nicer.
When we were done meditating, Eugene asked if anyone had questions, so I got to ask a question that had arisen from my new practice of whole body breathing, which was that I have been extremely stressed out and grumpy since starting to do it—is that what’s supposed to happen?
Eugene said heightened sensitivity may be a side effect of greater awareness, and he encouraged learning to relax, and letting things move through me instead of getting stuck. I think there might be something to that. Earlier that day I was making cupcakes (from which I learned that if I want a really good vanilla cupcake, I should just go to Starbucks) and, as usual, was liberally tasting the dough and frosting.
However, I noticed that it was making me feel profoundly terrible, and I actually put a large amount of frosting in the compost bin instead of eating it. It probably always made me feel terrible, but I just wasn’t aware of it.
While Eugene was speaking that evening, a green balloon came drifting slowly through the air, well above our 150 heads. It edged diffidently toward Eugene, and then slowly sank down to the ground, taking a seat in the front row, where it remained exactly as it was until Eugene was finished speaking.
I got to chat with my friend from Howie's during the break, and at the end of the evening I talked to someone else I knew from Howie’s, who encouraged me to come back (and also to go to Howie’s), and I left feeling very connected.
On my way to Eugene’s on my bike, I saw the Harvey Milk movie being filmed at City Hall, and on my way back a couple of hours later, I saw Sean Penn filming a scene with a bunch of extras. That’s one thing you’d have to do without in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
I got a kind note from my father saying that while they’d love to have me living closer, San Francisco is a great place and I should be sure I really want to leave it. That put my mind at ease and made me feel that both moving and not moving would be fine.
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