the complexity of trust

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”
― George MacDonald

Ask anyone, and they will tell you a story, perhaps a few, about betrayal. There are many songs, movies, poems, and so on about betrayal. Yet, trust is at its core. Trust, the opposite of betrayal, is wrought with emotion, duty, and obligation. After all, isn’t it our humanity that compels us to trust? Is trust a basic human trait we cannot wrestle our way out of, or is it a moral fabrication?

At birth and through infancy, there is an ingrained bond between the child and caretaker that requires survival. As we move from that state of helplessness, we quickly learn that absolute protection and trust isn’t always guaranteed. At this point, trust can sometimes be a liability and the antithesis for survival. Knowing this, do we prepare ourselves in such a way to place our trust in ourselves? I would argue NO.

Society breeds dependence. Through the educational system, religion, and moral teaching, it is emphasized that trusting in someone (usually, the system or someone with greater power) is what we should strive for at all costs. The emphasis on trust extends itself to human relationships and social constructs, but leave out trust in oneself. It disregards the individual’s ability to navigate the world with a healthy dose of skepticism and the knowledge that everyone, in some way, will fall short of that trust.

We live within a paradox of being pushed to trust in what’s outside of ourselves, while simultaneously being pressured to get what we want. This is why we feel caught and disgruntled. You see this in broken marriages, those who are fed up with their political party, teens who rebel against their parents, and those who fall away from their religious beliefs because one of their leaders fell out of grace. I could go on.

I have examined the concept of trust at various angles and have resigned myself to the belief that complete obedience to trusting anything outside of yourself is self-sabotage. I can count the number of people I trusted in my life on one hand. This is because I got to know them well, and more important to that — I trusted them to be who they are, not what I wanted them to be. I trusted that they would be who they are, even the aspects of them that did not bode well with me.

Some people have faith and trust in something “higher” than themselves, such as God, a cause they can support, or a creative calling. Some people have learned to trust their own common sense, intelligence, or inner knowing, and leave it at that. These people who have found trust in something that would not falter are often the most content with the world.

My trust has been tested and rebuilt over time and experience. Some of this process has been excruciating. Lessons learned. I have also found that the more a person desires happiness through external things, the less trustworthy they are. The greater the self-interest, the less likely they are to garner real trust.

I have found my trust in something that cannot be betrayed or misguided. It is that *power* that has kept me going through the worst points in my life. It is that comfort I found as a child, wandering through the forest and fields. It is ever-present and does not require me to believe or not. It is in the trees, my breath, the beating heart of everything.

It speaks to me and tells me I will be alright, whether my heart breaks or I fear this direction the world of humans embrace. There is nothing that can corrode this faith. I trust this intuition at all costs and lean into it.

To trust humans…That’s the tricky thing. To paraphrase Hemingway, the only way to know if you can really trust someone, is to trust them. I am afraid that’s the truth. And so we jump into it, hoping for the best.

Another Flight

When I walk in the woods, I am lost in my own time. Out of time, or out of step, I walk with wonder. The roots of my heart bend down to meet creek beds. I listen to the mountain jays, those old friends sounding off the hours. I lose track of myself and my desires, as sand wiped free of tracks. There is nothing and no one, and there is much relief in that.

Occasionally, ravens pull at my hair. I watch another oak leaf fall. Walking with a kind of wonder is magic. I have seen twigs turn into instruments, ants fly backwards, and sometimes I could swear there are whispers from tree stumps. I see the pale moths, lovely nymphs of forgotten ancestors. My family is here, this wild bunch of travelers like me.

Did you ever get lost following a butterfly? A trove of blue butterflies, Celastrina echo, lift upward in the wind, driven madly to scatter. There is a need to be out of view, out of the picture. I come here to disappear back to my old solitude. It’s a friendly place. I have no regrets about my lack of social ties, but for all purposes, I have my connection to the land and there is a friend to be found everywhere. That is, if you don’t limit your concept to human friendships. Fellow woodland wanderers understand.

The other side of despair is transformation. After weeks of hopeless sadness, the angel of change is upon me. Coming here, I face the truth of myself — the knee-deep, baptismal truth. It is a matter of time, after such a submergence, when one can come to the surface again. Heaven and earth are one and the same, they just blend to the curve of our beliefs. We wait it out, and whatever it is we need to surrender to also waits for us.

Living on Less

Traveling light is in my DNA. This is why I am about to go on my 22nd purge of belongings. There’s something about leaving behind piles of non-essentials that I delight in. Never much of a pack rat, I like the freedom of just picking up and going, not worrying about someone watching my valuables, watering my plants, or gathering up my credit card bills for the things piled in my house.

Over the past week I have been living out of a large day pack. My sole possessions are in this pack, along with a bag for my laptop and camera (both are essential technologies, although I recognize that a person can certainly live a full life without them). Basically, I own clothing, toiletries, and tech. Everything else has been left to donation boxes, friends, and collateral damage from break-ups. There were times I didn’t exactly plan to lose things, but it happened to be the way it ended up. No love lost. I scantly recall what I even owned.

There are so many things to delight in without possessing them. I love plants, of course, but enjoy them growing wild. I love art, but I am satisfied seeing it at museums or galleries, or on the walls of friends’ places. One of my cherished possessions at one time was a painting of a black horse. Interestingly, I happened to see a wild horse of the same coal-black hue galloping through the underbrush of a mesquite bosque near where I camp. There’s art everywhere, poetry in movement, music in the sound of water.

You might think I am being too extreme to live an austere life. Yes, there are times I miss having my collection of tea pots, plants, cozy quilts, and other fun, comforting items, but when I think about the absolute ease of moving around, I wouldn’t wish it all back. My life is in my experiences. Home truly is in the love you feel when you occupy a favorite place and interact with a cherished friend.

Traveling light takes patience. It means less about convenience and security and more about whimsy and wonder. It means less time cleaning and maintaining and more time tending relationships and honoring time, the limited time we have on this planet.

“Desire to possess nothing in order to arrive at being everything.” St. John of the Cross

The Christian Mystics wrote of eliminating the needs of the world in pursuit of a greater connection to God. This spiritual thirst is something that drives me to seek that connection. As a woman of modernity, I’ll admit that search for the sacred is hard. There are so many distractions that keep is locked in a profane chase for people, places, and things. It is no surprise we have the enormous task of tackling addiction, neuroses, mental illness, a general malaise of modernity. In having, we are always in a state of wanting. We are in a state of comparison, of wondering if we made the right decisions or have the right make-up to achieve what we see others achieve.

There are days I get caught up in fear and worry about my future. If I don’t have a prescribed lifestyle, will I survive? Then I remind myself that today I have enough. Today is the extent of what I have in front of me. As I write this, crowds of blue butterflies congregate on a still puddle in the middle of an unknown forest road. What a shame to give myself over to worry when wonder appears in all forms and in all ways. Miracles.

Familiar Landscapes

“We are a landscape of all we have seen.”
– Isamu Noguchi

There are particular landscapes that stand out in the recesses of memory. Driving down the I17 for the first time and seeing the Sonoran desert come into view…the saguaros, the palo verdes, and brittlebush, and realizing I would live there some day. The wide fields and hollows of soybeans, horses, and oaks are the places of my youth. The steep granite cliffs lining river gorges and pine bring to mind my days in the north woods. And now, I walk among volcanic rock, crumbling welded tuff and ash, a blaze of sunlight lining the cliffs at first light.

Place is the indicator of safety, and that familiarity of place soothes the fearful animal.

I’ve always felt the flora and geology to be family, places I could gather and listen to ancient stories about how to live in a manner this culture contradicts. To this day, I take my knowledge from the elder trees and the mentor species. There is never a moment I feel isolated from being a part of, because I am so intricately a part of them.

Friends, too, share this passion for landscape. Their backyards consist not just of green grass to mow or a small garden plot to tend but the unruly weeds and beetles. Many have the privilege of living in a wilder terrain where they can hike at will and never see the same path. Fellow explorers spend their time wandering the Southwest, uncovering their unknown history, writing up bones of forgotten days.

When I walk a new landscape, I prefer to walk it alone. Like meeting a new friend, I must respect this space and listen intently. The phainopepla reminds me to honor the new day. A quick “qui-qui” shout from a familiar friend, the thrasher, tells me to watch my footing. It’s nearing spring, and after heavy rains the wildflowers abound – the most obvious call to renew, readjust, and most importantly, stop being so serious.

The most meaningful lesson is that the earth is not here to provide lessons, or to owe me a thing. It is not an object of worship, a peak to “bag”, my mother, or my playground.

While I may glean from place deep lessons and gifts, it is my duty to know my place as an animal among animals, and to live life as not to disrupt this reality. I am called to be a fierce daughter of one loyalty. It is to the saguaro I bow, the lion, the rock, the soil. I am called to be a protector of place, when called, but not the instigator of outcome.

To know one’s place in the most meaningful sense is to be humble. My nameless journey, I am here to serve.

 

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Total Fail…But With Fancy Socks

Recently I came face to face with failure. It didn’t seem like such a big deal because it had to do with a hike. I have headed back on a trail without finishing before, but this was something I was determined to accomplish…and didn’t.

On Saturday I set out to hike Picketpost Mtn on the Tonto National Forest, close to Superior, AZ. Those who are familiar with this hike know that it is a hard one, mostly because you have to rock scramble on loose, crumbly rock and steep terrain. I was woefully unprepared.

Loaded up with water, my camera, lenses, and lacking the right shoes to keep a grip on the boulders, I set out on the trail. I’m used to quick elevation climbs at this point, so the gain wasn’t causing me any issues. I thought, this must be why so many people turn back, because of the steep climb. Who knew? As I climbed, the views became more dramatic and expansive. The weather swirled in the distance and the wind swept the desert scrub and tiny wildflowers.

I stopped at several key points to take some photos and realized that I had too much weight on my pack to be balanced. I had to be especially careful not to slip and to move my weight from back to front, as not to pull myself backwards.

Why did I want to do this hike on an impulse? I knew that it was a challenge and I have known a few of my friends to do it, but it was much more than that.

I wanted to set out to find some reserve within myself to make me feel good enough again.

Again? Have I ever?

There are times in my life that I have felt on top of the game – what game – the game of feeling better than or at least equal to. Mostly, I have always felt like I never measured up and related to anyone, like I missed the instructions that allow me to finish things with confidence and success as I saw my peers do.

I’m what you might call a Jill of All Trades. I am just okay enough to do many things, but never that superstar that gets kudos. As I get older, I don’t get the attention I used to get from men, and the women I know are so wrapped up in trying to work and raise kids, few of us can do that bonding to help bolster each other up.

We all struggle with feeling like we’re lacking something. The hole of the soul we might fill with the thrill of the chase, alcohol or drugs, a winning streak, that final triumph of a pursuit that goes well. Now that I am sober, who or what can fill that eternal void of the restless soul? What can define me?

These are the questions of an unprepared woman looking for answers.

On the nasty precipice of that mountain, I had a fast fall when my footing gave way to loose rock.

I slid down quickly.

It all happened and I had NO control. Gravity did her job.

My blessing was a strong Manzanita tree who cradled me, cut and bruised, but still intact. I was able to gather my wits and crab-crawl my way to a safer bench.

You would think I would have thrown in the towel after that, but no. I climbed and tripped, cried and inched my way up and away into the setting clouds until I could no longer take it. I was hurting and scared. The storm was coming in and dark would soon be upon me, and there was no way I wanted to navigate that mountain in the darkness.

I came back down to the ground without completing the climb.

I am still disappointed, but I realized some lessons through all of this.

1. Failing means you actually are doing something that challenges you. I am willing to take a risk.
2. Stubborn pride and unrelenting ego are formidable foes. Being humble is being teachable.
3. My worth is only defined by me. What you think of me is none of my business, nor should it be.
4. If I act as if I am someone who is already whole, I am. What a paradox! Thinking about the ways I am not *there yet* only result in mental gymnastics. My actions change my thoughts.
5. If it isn’t required and doesn’t bring me joy, don’t do it. Life is full of necessary pains, so why add to it? Have some fun.
   

And, on that note, I bought myself some fun socks:

 

 

 

Shattered and Joyful

The woman I was four months ago was close to death. From her bed, she watched days pass, nights eclipse through the shadows. I see her now as I would watch someone moving down a long hall. Her contorted face forms a silent howl.

She comes to me when I hear a song, or remember a moment lost in a blackout. When someone reaches out for help from the grip of despair, I know that grip that constricts everything.

Being new again, to life, is more difficult that I can convey. Light and sound pierce me, like I was rescued from a mine shaft after spending days in darkness. Life itself seems too loud and too close, but I am learning to live with the fullness of it.

As a sober woman, I look at the past as shattered glass – and the fragments do not have to be my weapon. Each one holds a precious mirror of what moments are like if I choose to return to them. Instead, I hold them gently and whisper that something else is being pieced together.

I live my life by hours. Hours are easy. Each one is as full as I can make it, and made fuller when I hold my dog, or watch the Cooper’s hawks at the park, or talk to friends. The road to recovery is hard, but it is full of unexpected joys, small moments where I can actually be present and alive.

Not everyone gets to experience a complete breath without pain.

To be free from pain; that’s a type of happiness.

I want to return to the woman in that long hall and hold her until the howling stops. But for now, I live my hours and nurture them.

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Becoming Impatient, A Virtue

Morrigan

I woke up angry again. The feeling of it scratched at my sheets and gnawed my arms, so that I had to leap out of the bed to get away from it. That feeling like steal wool against flesh.

Anger is not my normal state. My normal state is somewhere between here and Tijuana. My normal state is anxiety, the way you feel when you fall asleep behind the wheel for a few seconds and are on a hairpin curve. I can be cat-like, prone to scamper. But anger is something else for me.

Someone told me after I got sober that I have a lot of anger; that he has seen that side of me very few people know about. Repressed anger is something most alcoholics carry—especially women. In truth, all women. Our anger turns to sadness—overripe fruit set to pop its pulp and sicken the air.

Demeter Mourning

I am not an angry person in that belligerent, obvious sort of way…Male anger. I think I am just impatient, knowing that everyone around me agrees that I need to be patient, but I am not in agreement. That’s the thing.

“If you are not angry, you’re not paying attention.” << My mantra when I was a twenty-something. “If you are angry, you are not living in gratitude,” I am reminded. As if gratitude is on the shelf all alone, as an urn with special cremains from angels.

No, I say. Anger and joy can co-inhabit. Gratitude and disdain, equally so. Gratitude MUST know the contents of my grief for me to even recognize the grace of being alive, the love that still remains. Gratitude respects a good sorrow.

We live in a world that is not set to stop for us to exhibit one thing or another in perfect order. Feeling states are not art exhibits, and rarely are they exclusive.

I’m waking up in anger because the world is not slowing down for me. Or for you.

It can be trite. I know I am growing older into middle-age womanhood. “You can still have kids?” “Why don’t you just focus on your career?” “Ever think about getting a job?” <<<Countless questions about being a 45 year old, childless, in recovery, poor woman writer.

Durga

It pays to have women friends. I’m sure I’d be a lot angrier if I didn’t.

Holding this breath like a wish for desire only exasperates, and then the pace of one day to the next just doesn’t stop for anyone. How many things have happened over the past few months? Years? Did you expect them? Were you patient for them?

I am impatient. I don’t care for the scheme of things, and if I could raise the wild places out of their peril, the wild beings away from what is certain apocalypse, why would I choose patience?

If I could find that place I envision, the kindred partner, the freedom to roam, would I jump? Yes, I would.

There is the very real now versus the prospective future of waiting games and being patient. I choose to embody the now. And, maybe, just maybe that anger upon waking won’t make its appearance.

Stillness

In doubt and uncertainty, in times of strife and fear, to whom do you run?

We exist in a time of constant chatter, distractions of all kinds that aim to keep us locked in attention to the external. If and when we get a few moments of inward, contemplative silence, it is immediately filled with worries and anxieties, oftentimes about personal things like our finances, our marriage, our kids. Other times we worry, and rightly so, about the world.

Fear can be a good teacher, but a dangerous master.

When anxiety becomes my modus operandi, I feel it in my body (most notably, with heart palpitations and tension), but I also take this anxiety into everything I do, how I interact with the world. Our culture itself is in a continuous fight or flight response, and the mechanisms of this cultural machine keep us exhausted, unable to take our focus away from the demands.

I long for silence.

“When you move silently, then you are that which God was before nature and creature, out of which He created your nature and creature.” Jakob Bohme

If you get beyond the “God” and “He” references, you scratch the surface that there is something powerful in this. It is to say, we are NOT the programmed worrisome, anxious creatures we believe ourselves to be, but that we have that original capacity of stillness, of silence. Yet, we veer off into the elsewhere of distractions and addictions.

In other words, we are responding to (and collaborating with) a movement away from Life in obedience to industrial civilization. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The justification of a mad world is that humans are just full of greed and brutality. Many of us accept this, to integrate it into our being so that we cannot even trust ourselves.

This is the ultimate lie.

When we allow ourselves to leave the distractions, we come to our true selves in silence. This desire for stillness often happens through adversity – when we are desperate the eyes open and we begin to see.

We come to our full attention when we listen, deeply listen. Listen to the ancestors, to other beings like birds and snails and moss. Listen to canyons and rivers. Listen to the truth that precedes us, that essentially is our Source and true nature.

 

 

Hello, It’s Morning

The morning was punctuated by the sudden call of a Curved-billed Thrasher. Thrashers are aptly named, and precede all other desert birdsongs with their single, piercing cry that jolts the weary out of slumber. It was this single cry that broke the spell of my twilight meditation.

Like the thrasher, there is nothing quite like a sudden illness to dolt us into awareness. This has been true for me. While I am relatively OK now, there is a constant hum – a background noise – that is ever-present. Something that whispers to me that I am so fragile, that I am just another animal.

Worry is a habit that requires cultivation, and I have been heavily cultivating it in my habits. But these mornings of autumn chill and the late arrival of daybreak, I am prone to forget my troubles.

What calls to you upon waking?

Rabbit

Sonoran Desert Sunrise – A. Sato

The desert keeps her secrets.

I am back, pre-dawn, scrambling up a hot jumble of granite boulders. Burning my hands, then knees, all to investigate scat, what appears to be a busted lamp someone discarded, a broken mano, a dead ground squirrel.

At 8am, it is already 98 degrees with high humidity, but I come here for the silence and solitude, like they can somehow relieve the heat. At least I will enjoy the quiet. A few minutes pass in this surreal repose until a hiker comes my way. Shit. There is still noise from the road, the distant hum of highways.

The hiker warns me that there is an old guy and some younger women having sex down below the boulders, in the parking lot. We give each other a knowing nod of what’s going on.

This sanctuary, it seems, keeps secrets. The heat drives out most people, but oh…there are the solitude seekers who come in all forms, some to praise the miserable indifference of a July morning among baked rock, and others to find a place to hide their lives from view.

Watched I – A. Sato

Whatever the situation, I am disturbed, and angry, and ultimately sad. Why here? Why this morning of all mornings? The hiker assured me that he phoned the police and took photos of the guy’s license plate. None of this will change much, but I appreciate his concern.

“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear – the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break….I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.”

I pray his sentiment was right when he also longed for man to be an illusion and rock, and I would add all other forms of life, to be the only thing that is real.

The only thing that lasts.

Cradled – A. Sato

The desert keeps her secrets. But after the rain it is easier to understand her – hedgehogs burst their tiny strawberry blooms. A gray fox meanders the wash where dragonflies dance above muddy tinajas.

Nothing is subtle after the rain.

I follow the delicate tracks of javelinas while fighting off mosquitoes that make a feast of this convenient, warm-blooded host. Scanning the ground, I find a bit of rabbit fur caught in cholla spines. I imagine some plump coyote, lounging somewhere nearby, smiling his sanguine smile with full belly.

Making my way to a clear patch among the cholla, I wait for the welcomed sort of morning traffic: a troop of chatty Gambel’s quail scatter from beneath an ironwood. A mockingbird sings his patchwork morning song. Behind a small clump of brittlebush, two long ears rise. I wonder if it was his friend who became coyote’s supper. Carefully, the rabbit emerges, sniffing the air.

I have a fondness for rabbits. Their fear is understandable and relatable. Our vulnerability to life is sometimes less palpable, but nonetheless just as real.

Coyote deserves our understanding, too. Feed or be someone’s food…eventually. Too often we want to align with rabbit, all of our fears protecting us from responsibility. Sometimes we want to align with coyote, never allowing gentleness to expose us to the inevitable.

Flesh – A. Sato

The truth is that both coyote and rabbit embody life, all that life entails, all that is necessary.

The sun burns my neck and distorts my view of the world. Or maybe this is exactly how it should appear. Rabbit makes his way back to his den, belly full from the morning’s good measure of work.

As I reach the parking lot, there is no trace of the man or his Mercedes, or the young woman. The distant traffic continues to hum.