(Written in October 2003)
I can’t do this. It’s just too hard. I did the bank deposit & went downtown, shopped, got mail — all with my heart like a stone, body frozen in fear. Put on Oratorium, collapsed on the floor. Got in touch with the pain, moved a little in the music for Shoror, then just collapsed again. It’s too hard being alone with this. I’m willing to do the process but when I try it on my own I just bog down in depression.
I need to find some support right around here. What would help? Someone who’s willing to be with me while I’m in the pain and not try to fix it. Someone who could listen and empathize if I need to talk. Someone who supports me in staying in touch with my feelings and being able to speak them in the moment.
I’m feeling totally bummed out. I’ve lost my courage. I find myself wondering what one does with a beloved dog if/when one commits suicide.
Well, I can feel a toughness stiffening me, thank god. Yes, this is a war zone, and I fear that the things I love are going under: beauty and peace, co-operation and consideration and compassion, tenderness and mercy — and our beautiful planet with its richness of biodiversity, and our beautiful human family with its richness of music and dance and costume and food, its many names for God and different ways to contact Spirit. And I know that the physical vehicles of all this richness and beauty are doomed to death and disintegration. So then the only things that last are the creative joy that brings them to birth, and the compassion that witnesses all suffering. Therefore I hold on to my faith in the realm of Spirit, despite the fact that I can’t feel it, I hold on to my need for authenticity and compassion, despite the fact that I can’t feel the compassion. And I try to live with some dignity in this horrific world, sometimes collapsing in abject fear, sometimes continuing to make cups of tea though the bombs are falling.
I think what I’m most afraid of is the long slow disintegration, the erosion of my courage in niggling struggles like the one at the supermarket, with no clear crisis that calls out my courage and helps bring people together, but instead just this horror of things getting more and more difficult and we all keep struggling in isolation, getting overwhelmed one by one and going under… That’s the fear.