How stuff comes together

Yesterday evening, I cleaned my bedroom – but THORoughly! I lifted the mattress off the bed, so as to turn it; having done that, I lifted the bedsprings, thinking to turn them around. While they were upended, both mattress and springs, I took the small vacuum cleaner and thoroughly vacuumed under the bed. I hadn’t done this in the three years I’ve lived here. So one can only imagine the black cat hair, the dust, the ponytail bands that I culled from there. The bedroom was hot, almost unbearably so, but I was absolutely possessed and obsessed! The sweat dropped from my forehead in big splotches onto the increasingly-clean carpet. While considering the possibilities of turning the bedsprings, and before that, wondering if I could turn the mattress over, I remembered a session with my therapist in New York. This is a good story and I don’t know where to start.

I lived in NYC for 22 years. While there, like many a good inhabitant of the city, I saw a therapist. Actually, I went into analysis at the Karen Horney clinic. For two-and-a-half years, I saw the shrink three times a week; saw myself coming and going. And saw her away from the clinic for another two-and-a-half. Hard to lie to yourself under these circumstances, but of course I did for as long as I could. Eventually, though, the process caught hold of me, and I began to heal and to change my way of being and perceiving.

So. First, I considered the mattress, and how I might maneuver it so as to turn it over and around, both. I actually accomplished turning it over and around without having to lift it up. Then, I walked it to the floor off the foot of the bedframe so that it stood upright at a slight angle against the wall, and began the same weighing of consequences with respect to the bedsprings; they are heavier and more unwieldy than the mattress, so I spent more time on the issue of turning the bedsprings. While I was doing this, I remembered a particular session with my analyst some years ago, and I laughed out loud, cheered by another memory of life in Manhattan while making do in Iowa.

One day, as we (my therapist and I) were discussing a particular dilemma (and I have no memory of the dilemma itself), she suggested using a little ‘leverage’ (her term) to impact the situation. I must have looked surprised.

She said, ‘what, you never thought of using leverage?’

I replied that such a thought had never occurred to me in my life.

“Well,” she said, “suppose you encountered a 2,000-pound block of granite on your path. Now, clearly, you can’t lift it to move it; and it blocks your way. If you use some leverage to kind of, you know, move it a bit this way and that, eventually, you could maneuver it out of your way.”

“I just never thought of leverage,” I said.

“Well, what would you do?” she queried.

“Bomb the fucker,” I replied without hesitation.

I thought of this session and my remark and her very instructive example while I, indeed, used leverage, both mental and physical, to ‘maneuver’ the mattress and then the bedsprings.

All of this cleaning occurred to make a fitting home for the brand new down comforter and duvet cover that I bought recently. Sage green, they looked fantastic on the bed! I then stripped, showered to cool off and clean up, and leisurely ate a bowl of cereal before curling up under the down comforter on clean sheets to sleep and dream.

I learned in analysis to step back and appreciate the processing of feelings that occurs when events bring them forth in us for our various uses. I think this fact has saved my life and enriched my creative energy. Thanks, Jill, for everything!

Update

It is several months since I created this blog and noted some intention to write every day. And I have not done that. So much for that promise. But instead of judging myself, I need to just acknowledge and move on. This past week has been intense, emotionally. I attended rehearsals in Des Moines of my play, "Window Treatment," currently in production as part of the 2nd annual Iowa Fringe Festival. The script is very sturdy, well constructed, damned funny, in fact. I'm happy with the script, and look forward to the production that opens July 20, and runs through July 22. I'm going to see it.
Then, this week, I learned that the mother and daughter who were shot to death in Washington state are relatives, beloved relatives. My cousin David Stodden's wife Mary Cooper and their eldest daughter, Susannah, were shot while hiking near Pinnacle Lake on Tuesday. We are all stunned and saddened by this news, and the only way I can presently think of to make use of this tragedy is to vow to get busy with my tasks. Life is short; art is long.
So, I'm presently dealing, in the world of feeling, with the emotional highs and lows that occur around an original work being presented -- and believe me, there are plenty of feelings, many of which I simply cann't discuss here! -- and with the feelings of shock and sorrow around the deaths in my extended family of two truly beloved women, and with my own attempts to discipline -- and the word does NOT equate with punishment! -- myself to write EVERY DAY. This simply has to happen.
Sitting here at my laptop this morning, in small town silence, sensing the day's temperature on the rise, record-setting in fact, listening to the hum of the laptop, the occasional chirp and twitter of the birds outside my windows, I contemplate -- well, everything! The writing I want to do, screenplay, maybe a poem today, even this blog post, and then the venetian blinds to be cleaned or replaced, the housecleaning that awaits me, and all the while I am waiting for a phone call to pick up my car at the repair shop. My neighbor backed into my left front fender and it had to be replaced.
These are mundane things, everyday life. My cousins, peaceable, centered Mary and her lovely young daughter were reveling in the natural world, I'm sure, when death caught up with them. They are now past suffering; that task is left solely to all those who loved them and still remain here in this world.
Today, I will assess every task, every perceived problem, even every triumph however large or small, in relation to the lives and sudden deaths of Mary and Susannah.
Take heart. Take courage. Live! Who knows when the final stalker will arrive and claim his prey? How long has it been since I thought of death in this manner? When each of my parents died, it was anticipated in some way, and though each death was wrenching -- the soul pulls away from the flesh, the final division -- each death was also somehow expected and thus, in the logic of emotions, grieving was a logical move. I witnessed each of my parent's actual dying; I often say I no longer fear death. That may be true. But I fear violence, and the possibility of a violent death that reverberates through the world.
But this violent end to two lives so vibrant and promise-filled and promise-fulfilled shocks and angers and frustrates everyone who loved them; the manner of their dying causes beliefs and faiths and values to be blown into the light of harsh reality for yet another look, yet another pawing through. What god sanctioned this? What about free will and god's will? Where is the line of demarcation? OR does such a line exist? What in HELL happened? What meth freak or misguided soul has blown our loved ones apart and shattered our comforts?
Some days questions are more important than answers. Today, I raise questions, and move into my tasks for the day. Writing has had its effect once again. Enough.