December 24, 2011

Dear friends far and wide,

This year I’m sending the annual “state-of-the-household letter”  electronically. And even worse, it’s not even an electronic transmission sent personally to YOU, but an entry on a blog! E-gad, the angels have lost their pitch and screech to the high heavens, Hosanna, Hosanna. I have finally succumbed to the ease and swiftness of this medium, but I have to tell you, I’m not happy about it. It just doesn’t feel right at all. In the past, I have taken great pleasure not just in writing my annual letter, but in choosing paper to print it on, stamps, stickers, or drawings to decorate the paper, and even carefully selecting the stamp I put on the envelope. When I finish 50 or 60 of them and take the nice fat stack of stuffed envelopes into the post office, I feel like I’ve really accomplished something. But now, I’m just one of those people who is too darned busy to write a real letter.

So welcome to the twenty-first century, and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

As you can see from this new website, the big news this year is the addition of Dash to my household. She’s now nine months old, and is the joy of my life, for sure. Happiness, silliness, and messiness abound in my home these days. Every room has a blanky or doggie bed on the floor, an array of toys and chewies, and at least one pair of underwear she’s managed to drag out of the laundry basket. She’s a curious and rambunctious little girl and we’re pretty tight.

By the end of August, Dash had turned into a nicely behaved puppy, remembering most of the time where to do her business, and very happily curling herself into my lap when I needed to work or study. And so we began the school year without a hitch. She comes to the office with me many days, and holds her own office hours, counseling my students in the fine art of ball retrieval. When she’s not with me at school, she’s at Woof Gang Bakery & Day Care where she loves playing with her best friend Lucy, the lab, and Scout, the Welsh terrier. The shy little puppy, who wouldn’t come out of the back of the crate when I picked her up at the airport on May 24, has disappeared, and in her place is a romping, running, jumping, fetching machine. She is adorable.

School has been busy this year, and rather momentous. Rollins is facing some challenging times in that the president has made big decisions that are directly contrary to the vision of the faculty. It’s been disturbing, to say the least, and unnerving for those of us deeply committed to upholding the liberal arts tradition. I’m not sure if this event has sped my movement toward retirement, but maybe it has. I have made the decision to resign my tenure at Rollins in May 2013. I’ve thought and thought about this, and bored my friends to death trying to decide when to cut loose. My friend Barbara Carson kept saying to me, “When the time is right, you’ll know. It won’t be a decision; you’ll just do it.” And she was right. It just felt right once I actually signed on the dotted line.

So I have sixteen months to live in this oldest version of Lezlie. Undoubtedly, I’ve had a strong attachment to this role, though I’ve tried to keep all attachments in check. I’m going to watch myself closely for these months and write as much as I can about the process of shedding the professorial skin and taking on a new form. I want to chronicle what it’s like to shift into a new phase of life, with awareness and mindfulness. So check in with the site occasionally and see what I’m discovering about getting older, dropping identities, purging 43-year old files, closing down an office, and various and sundry ruminations that occur to a woman on the brink of change.

The question most people ask at this point is, “What are you going to do?” I have heard myself answer that question very quickly and confidently: Oh, I’m not retiring, I say.  I’m simply redirecting my energies. I’m going to teach more yoga, read more, draw more, and continue to conduct small workshops and reading groups. I have a lot of interests, a lot of friends, and a dog to take care of! I’ll have plenty to do, I say. But of course, I won’t really have anything to do, and that’s the whole point of moving out of a professional life. You get the opportunity to think about and observe yourself outside of the roles you have easily played for so long. So I’m going to just let the stripped down Lezlie take it nice and easy. I want her to sit and be open and move more deeply into her dearly beloved equanimity. But I also want her to take action that will serve a larger purpose (more later on that project). In addition, I want her to be free of those ready responses and conditioned behaviors that keep her in a too-small frame. And I’m confident a new version of Lezlie, just as acceptable as the previous version, will emerge quite naturally.

So look at this! It’s December 24, and I am, for the first time in YEARS, getting my Christmas greetings out BEFORE Christmas. That’s definitely a new version of Lezlie! To all of you whom I have loved, adored, admired, and respected over the last sixty-four years, I send my heart-felt good wishes to you. I hope your internet connection is powerful enough to receive them!
Love,
Lezlie

It’s a rainy Monday here in Winter Park, land of the sun. Dash and I have been taking it easy, moving slowly from window to window to watch the rain, or a hapless squirrel scurry up the bamboo. I have four weeks of white space ahead of me, and after a weekend of getting the house in order and the laundry done, I find myself at loose ends. I read a blog last week about an experiment of living for 100 days with no goals. The writer said it changed his life–for the better. But I’m feeling a little like the Queen Mary today: they say it takes two hours to turn her around. I’m thinking it’s going to take more than two hours to turn myself around, after a full semester of chasing teeny, tedious goals. What to do? How to turn? My plan is to just sit for a while. And Dash is perfectly happy to doze while I let the turning take place.

To the two or three readers out there who have noticed no new posts on my blog for the last nine months, I say hello and I’m back.  After a full year on sabbatical during the 2009-2010 academic year, I returned to full teaching duties on August 15, 2010, and I have not written a word since then.  Not a word.  No blogs, obviously.  No articles.  No poems.  No journal entries.  No letters. No rants.  No mission statements.  No life plan.  No long, overly detailed explications of my ever-volatile psychological state.  Nada.  Zip.  Zero.  (I know this has been a relief to some of you!)

I recall making a grand declaration in August about the end of my days as a writer; yes, once again I quit writing.  That was my new life plan.  Stop writing.  Start being.   Breathe.

However, once school started, it became clear there would be no writing in this house whether or not I had declared the end of my writing days: it was a very busy academic year.  Lots of good experiences with students.  Lots of reading.  Lots of yoga, both teaching and practicing.  And a few wonderful trips thrown in to saturate the senses.  So while the creativity of my writerly self waned, the creative juices of my experiential self were juicy.  More on that juice in the coming days.

So on May 1, when I finished the Spring term, I was delighted to find myself facing three months of white space.  No summer teaching.  No books to write.  No trips planned.  No projects needing my attention.  Just three months of unplanned time: no goals, no agendas, no due dates, no expectations.  Quite a gift, don’t you think?

So I did the laundry.  I organized both of my closets and took piles of clothes and shoes to Goodwill.  I cleaned up the yard and did some re-planting.  I de-cluttered my desk.   I caught up with friends I hadn’t seen in a while.  That took about ten days.  And then, I sat in my tidy living room, looking out at my tidy garden, drinking a very appealing glass of pinot noir–and decided I wanted to get a puppy.

Noooooooo! Don’t do it, came a clear, robust voice (several voices, actually!).   Your life will be ruined.

Yeeesssss! Came another choral response, this one angelic.   There’s nothing more precious than a puppy nose nudging your neck.

In fact, those antiphonal voices have been speaking to me for months, for this yearning for a new dog has been with me for over a year now.  And you would laugh at the way I have flip flopped back and forth over this issue.  Should I do it?  Am I crazy?  Can I really go back to living my life tethered to the bladder of a lovable canine?  And then, I see the Beneful commercial and start crying for want of a doggy friend.

OK.  No sense being coy.  You know how this story ends.  Dash, a thirteen-week old Bichon Frise came into my life on Tuesday, May 24, and everything has changed.  Everything.  I laughed at myself this morning as I made a quick trip to the grocery store while she slept in her crate.  This dog has triggered so many long-held issues, issues I was sure I had fully addressed during the last ten years of intense study, therapy, and self-reflection.  Control.  Grief.  Loss.   Love.  Affection.  Responsibility.  Connection.  They moved in with her.  And as much as I’d like not to circle these issues yet again, I’m sure I won’t be able to refrain from doing so in the days to come.   I’ll give you fare warning when that is about to happen.

But for right now, I just wanted to get this blog rolling again, say hello to those of you who occasionally stop by, and experiment with writing when I truly have absolutely no reason to put the fingers on the keyboard—except to reach out to something or someone who wants to be reached.

If that is you, feel free to drop me a note in reply to any of my musings.  I look forward to the conversation since I’ll be trapped here in the kitchen for quite some time trying to catch Dash before she poops on the floor.

Move.  A big category, huh?  You’re probably wondering what it even means.  What on earth is Lezlie going to say about moving?

Well, I ponder movement a lot.  At the very concrete physical level and all the way up to the metaphysical level.  When you think about it, moving is what we do.  We’re hard-wired for it.  But to what end?  You could ask questions like “How does my body move?  Is it strong and agile?  Does it function efficiently?  Does it feel good?”  Or you could ask questions like “What am I to do?  What action is appropriate in each situation I’m in?  How does my movement in the world make a difference? ”  See what I mean?  Huge.

As you may have seen, Breathe, Move, Write is the title of my signature workshop.  This workshop is the culmination of years of study, years of writing, and years of deep physical practices.  It represents, I believe, my final arena of teaching, the ideas that I am most passionate about.   I believe that everything I’ve studied and practiced for the last six decades has led me to the insights I try to share in this workshop.  Here it is in a nutshell:  Breathing, moving, and writing are three “activities” that lead to understanding how mind, body, and spirit interact in any creative act.  And ultimately, every move we make and every breath we take are in service of our unique creative potential.  And even more ultimately (is that possible?), our purpose as human bodies and as human beings and as humans breathing and as humans moving around in all sorts of interesting ways, our purpose here is to engage in the co-creative spirit-impulse out of which everything (everything!) arises.  See what I mean?  Huge.

Now, by “moving” I don’t necessarily mean you have to become a super yogi and learn how to wrap your legs behind your neck.  What I’m suggesting is that by simply becoming aware of how your body feels you begin to open up pathways to knowing how you feel emotionally.  And it seems obvious to say that if you understand how you feel, you can “move” in the world with much more facility.  With much more joy.  And . . . with much more creativity.

So the art of moving impinges on virtually every aspect of our lives.  Follow along with me as I try to explore just how.

Practice:  Stand up and press your feet into the floor beneath you.  Feel the outer edges of your heels as they meet the floor.  Feel the ball mounts of your feet as they make contact.  Now press your toe pads firmly into the floor.  Feel the whole of the bottom of your feet.  Have you ever really given conscious effort to feeling the bottom of your feet?  Kind of nice, knowing you have such sturdy appendages to hold you up and move you around your world.  Just feel that power for a moment and be happy you can feel something you almost never give attention to.

I’m starting a new life this summer, with a new friendship that may take us both to our last breath.   My new partner is a sixteen-week-old puppy, and her name is Dash.  As Dash and I head into our life together, I must honor my first baby, Ginger, who died when she was almost seventeen years old, on August 2, 2003.  This poem was written a year after she died, as I moved into a new home in Winter Park and started a new life without her and without a husband.

What Is Left of Her

I’ve been without her a year now.
I own a new house.  I eat with new friends.
I laugh, I work, I water the plants, I worry about the war.
And on a lower shelf of the bookcase in my new bedroom,
a small cardboard box contains what is left of her.

And yet,
I smell her puppy skin.
I see her dark puppy eyes.
I rest my cheek against her hot, smooth tummy.
I feel her nose in the palm of my hand.
I hear her contented sigh when she turns in sleep.
I wake early to walk her.
I cradle her in my arms,
her body against my chest the deepest solace.
I know the mother’s watchfulness.
I bask in the envy of those who recognize her charm.
I hear the joyful yip for play, the sassy bark for food, the hungry whine for attention.
I find her on the deck, next to the aspidistra, dozing in the sun.
I know which chair she would favor, which pillow she would own.
I keep her bath towel in the linen closet.
Her bowl sits next to the everyday dishes in my new cabinets.
Her leash coils in the top drawer of my nightstand, like a snake ready to strike.