The win and the loss

[Scent of Cedar *]

But dance movement therapy has been around for decades and decades. Actually, forever. It just did not have a name.

Copa, ballet taught me my own body. My right to and responsibility for and pleasure in and the purpose of, my own body.

Tango was the same for you, I think.

Unless it is for exploration, go back to tango. That is what you love. It is good for us to be the ones who don't know, who feel foolish and need to learn. That is where we are real.

They will find you fascinating, Copa.

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

It is tough to know what to do.

Copa, I am very sorry about Dolly. It is such a hard thing when our pets are ill. Hoping that there is better news after the biopsy.

leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You know the "banality of evil?" I have taken as a given constant fear. And dreadful self-attack. The banality of punishment. The expectation of danger. Of somebody unhappy with me. Of having done wrong. Fell short. That is my reality. I create danger and risk in order to restore the internal climate that feels normal. When it is OK, I am anxious. I expect punishment so I create some condition that requires it.

Yes.

I love this concept you have written so clearly for us, Copa. The banality of evil.

Do the soldiers experiencing PTSD...I wonder whether that is the final thing that does them in. The banality of evil.

This concept is a tool Copa, we can hold in our hands, no longer victims.

We will have been victimized on so many levels, over so much time, by the banality of evil.

Very true.

Huh.

That is the answer to: What was the win. That is why we could never find the why to justify what has happened to all of us. The banality of evil.

I went one time. I was so anxious and afraid. It was called Contact something. It must have been so new then. It felt so beyond me. People bumping into each other. I did not go back.

You were very brave, and very determined. People bumping into each other. I would not have gone back either. It was wrong of the instructor to further traumatize you. "Bumping into", while it may be able to address that core issues exist (like we didn't already know that), will not heal them, I don't think. Individual challenge. To surmount the breakage and become something beautiful and strong and your own in some way you were not, before, because you faced down shame and ugly and weak to create some spare, strong thing that is breathtaking ~ that is to heal.

Not bumping into strangers.

Oh oh, you guys. Looks like I know everything again this morning.

I do find that concept offensive. Though the damage we sustained is held in our bodies, the curing of it requires...I don't know what. Nothing having anything to do with strangers turned "friends" because we all have been hurt. Trust issues are so huge with us. This class sounds like a recipe for betrayal ~ maybe, even for the worst betrayal ~ the betrayal of self.

A quick fix, maybe.

Ballet is clean. Tango is clean. Line dancing is clean. Tai Chi is clean. Karate is very clean. Kayaking is clean. Running or working or chopping onions is clean.

Anonymous bumping?

No.

We are saving our own lives here. The primary relationship is the one forming between us and ourselves.

That is why this is sacred ground.



Maybe, this is the imagery to go with the poetry about the Prisoner.

See the stars?

That is us, coming real to ourselves. Or, that is us, witnessing for the little girls (or the little boys) that we were, when we were hurt.

How beautiful is that.

***

No anonymous bumping allowed.

Though the instructor may have been sincere.

You know how I am always saying I will find imagery of the ballerina on pointe for my next avatar? When I am ready, and when I find it, it will be the foot, or the feet, not the entire body I don't think.

The feet may be bare, and blistered and bandaged.

It will be about strength; about dancing, anyway.

About making that choice.

This is how I see you, Copa. I found it on a tango imagery site. This is how I see you, now. Fastening the thinnest of straps, everything perfect as you prepare to begin, savoring the beginning.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

This class sounds like a recipe for betrayal ~ maybe, even for the worst betrayal ~ the betrayal of self.

I have to make clear. I only watched. From the side, that first and only attendance. I would not do one bump or permit one other person to bump me. There were men there too.

It was not specifically for abuse survivors. The kernel of the idea had been a good one, that the recovery, my strength I would find in my body. Through moving.

Sometimes I think I have been a canary in the mine in my life. A Forest Gump person, who by accident or destiny lived through things--not of my doing. I know I created a destiny, too, but so much I was exposed to was by accident. There was no intent, just "being there" which is a wonderful movie about the same type of character.

This buying I am now seeing as perhaps the opposite force. I am trying to surround myself with the things to use to live a life that I intend. While it seems capricious and spontaneous. Like "oh this" "oh that". Like seeing it and saying, "oh, that could be me."

I am searching here for the name of the concept which would describe something like this: I decided a few things in my life deeply. At a deep level. One was my education and profession. Self betterment, healing myself. Being a mother. Leaving the country. And dance. Dancing.

I took a bite and I would not let go. These were more than goals, they were deeply held purposes. The wanting of which defined me. There was nothing left for anything frivolous. For whims.

I am trying to come to grips with the buying, because if I could stop it, it would be the beginning of safety. Of learning to be safe and quieting myself, my fears.

I am so anxious, I cannot tell you. Sometimes I feel as if I am sinking into another deep depression. Other times I just feel terrified. So afraid.

I am thinking this is all about allowing this internal climate become manifest to me
Because I think others have seen it, and that is why have been seen to have been so vulnerable.

If the buying stopped (see how I infer the volition of it to something other than me?)...if I stopped the buying...I could begin to build strength and order. Germany. Little by little. I could face down the terror. At least, hypothetically I could.

There is nobody I feel I can talk to about this. M knows I am afraid. Desperate.
He sees me as angry. I do not feel angry. He says he is afraid. Like a bomb will go off in the house and I am the bomb. I do not feel anything like that.

I will drink my coffee (which is now tepid) and get back to the rest of your post, Cedar.

Thank you.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

 

[Copabanana]

See above (in relation to this post)

I tried to find the name of the deep structures of which I was thinking. In the above post. I think what I was thinking of was the concept in geology, the deep structures that determine structural evolution in the earth, in dependent of what can be seen or sensed.

But deep structures also exist in motor learning, and the concept of deep structures is central in linguistics, too.

So I came upon a book called something like Becoming Batman, which looked at what happens to our dormant motor learning, that we do not use for a long time.
The idea of Batman is that he is a timid person, who in a moment, transforms himself. I think the book looks at the feasibility of that. For a regular human, through martial arts training.

I was thinking about two allied things: One is that I was wondering if trauma affects deep structures of motor learning. And if so, how? There is nothing at all that comes up to discuss this, in a cursory google search.

The other thing I thought about, with the tango shoes and feet was the idea of batman-like transformation.

I loved both feet pictures. (I had good legs--which I hid.) As you know Cedar, the ritual of changing your shoes, of arriving to the dance studio with your shoes in a bag. The unpeeling of street shoes, the putting on of dance shoes. Is almost the most important thing.

In my case in Rio I would walk through packed streets with my bag of shoes towards the studio. You cannot imagine the power I felt. It is the strongest I remember feeling in my whole life. I felt the eyes of the world on me.

When I came back to the States and went back to work, I would buy not tango shoes, but bags for my shoes. I would buy them at the second hand store. I may have 50. (Not to worry. I paid no more than two dollars.) Because that walk to the studio was as important to me, as the dance. It was the transformation, I think. The process of becoming Batman.

I am thinking here that the reason that formalized dance might be so emancipating for people like us is the relearning of deep motor structures. In tango there are only like 8 basic patterns. Everything thereafter is composed from these. It is like learning an entire new way of being, a way of being in the world. Over which you have control. Because even if you are in the female role, following, the man, is confined to the linguistic rules.

I remember once I was in an advanced group tango class. Almost all of my learning had been private, with the same instructor, who was teaching this class. It came to my accepting as a partner a man. Within seconds, I knew he was violating the rules, in some basic way that I did not understand. But I knew. I stopped dancing with him. I just left and went to sit down in one of the chairs that were lined up to either change shoes or to watch. (I am again thinking here how important is this space.)

Later, my instructor asked me: "What happened?" All I said was "I was violated as a child." This is exactly what happened. How it unfolded. No other words were spoken.

I will go back to your post now.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar, I found a transformation picture for ballet. For you. You do not have to wait to be perfectly formed. Here is one for becoming.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Sneakered, sandaled, slippered...naked, feet
on stone

This is a line from the mosaic poem.

I will find the rest.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I agree with the feel of arriving at the studio, with the power of striding through the street, with slipping into ballet slippers ~ it would have been, for me, ballet slippers ~ and into the shoes made for tango, for you.

(Those are the slippers, in the poem. Ballet slippers.)

The power in it.

The self-definition in it.

Fortunately for me, the men in my ballet classes were gay.

As were my male instructors.

We were absolutely safe.

I would not have had the courage to take a tango class. Men always want to play. When I am serious, I want to learn from a woman. I have had one karate instructor who was male, and with whom I learned comfort and trust, over time. The other may have been good instructors, just not for me.

My Tai Chi instructor is male.

I trust him very much, but then, he is an extraordinary man.

Like D H is, too.

Cedar

And the dancing to the pain of it, smiling through and becoming and rising on it and knowing you are clumsy and then, knowing you are ethereally beautiful and something more than human in your humanness.

Ha! I will take a barre class online. I have been thinking of doing that. There is a place near here where I could take class again too, even. I miss that feeling; that perfectly correct positioning, that balance of rhythm and pain and awareness.

 

[Copabanana]

I trust him very much, but then, he is an extraordinary man.

Like D H is, too.

How wonderful is this. To choose a remarkable and extraordinary man as your partner. Or to make him such. To make him choose to be this. Imagine that, Cedar. Your D H had such a good start, with his mother and father. And imagine how D H Mama must have felt, for you. To teach you to be what your D H needed to become all that he has become. For himself, first. But for you and with you. It could not have happened without you. D H could not, would not have happened in the way he made himself, without you.

Imagine each of you, so young, choosing each other. Some say it is chance. I do not think so. I think we create our destinies.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I think this is a continuing conversation on the banality of evil. There is also the sweet, commonplace presence of good. The tapestry is so being so beautifully and so swiftly woven though that it is hard to know how to determine the difference, in the beginning.

Do you remember when Nerfherder made the thread about customs in societies, and how it is not good to throw old customs aside that have been proven over time? This is a piece of the discussion on the banality of evil, too.

Or the sweet commonness of good things.

Like when Mr. Rogers said that even in the worst of times, if we look for the helpers, we will see them, too, and not just the bad things.

But then, we can convince ourselves everything will be fine one day if only we believe, if only we hold faith. And the next thing we know, we realize our people were jerks and we are being shunned for saying as much.

So, maybe it is true Copa and everyone that we are being shunned for the right things ~ for standing up for the right things and refusing to back down.

Which could actually be a closer thing to the truth than we know.

So maybe we need to stand up.

I am still circling around that whole banality of evil concept.

Cedar

But I think that is why we are shunned, or that is why we are stalked ~ I mean, I think that could be the fascination or maybe there is no fascination.

I am in the kaleidoscope again on this one.

 

[Copabanana]

when Nerfherder made the thread about customs in societies

When I come to this site, CD, most of the time the first thing I see is that thread on the precepts. I loved that.

But I think that is why we are shunned, or that is why we are stalked ~ I mean, I think that could be the fascination or maybe there is no fascination.

For some reason upon reading this I thought of M and his evil sister.

She was the one who instigated that he come here from Mexico, the last time, 12 years ago, and leave his family. Of course he is a grown man and a strong one. He decided. And from that decision came all of this heartache. For him, his family, and me. But also growth. And love.

She, the evil sister, wanted work done in her house. For free. So she had this bright idea that he come to visit her. Then she and her husband proceeded to exploit him. That had been the plan.

Of course he is responsible.

Does this fit into banality of evil?

There are people who do not have boundaries. Usually that refers to the way we act upon others. In my case, I think it means not that, but that I do not stop others acting upon me. I let everybody do as they want until even I have had enough. Or at least that used to be me.

M's sister acts on others...for her own interests. She is so destructive because she does not know that when she acts for her own interests upon other people's lives she causes hurt that cannot be remedied. Or perhaps she does know, and does not care. That is the question at hand.

Whether or not we are correct to look the other way, or whether we can.

Like what she did in her parent's and siblings lives recently. She no more thinks she is doing an evil act, than a big cat taking a swipe at a zoo patron. Is this a choice? To not know. That is what we are exploring.

So maybe banality of evil is that. A lack of boundaries. Perhaps in both guises. Allowing others to act upon you, without your conscious consent. Without a squawk. Instead of dissenting or even asking a question, like, "What exactly do you mean? And where do you propose to go with this, to take me with you?"

Acting upon others without taking responsibility for the consequences upon them. Convenience. The other form this takes.

In this sense detachment is consciousness of the reality of things. We accept we no longer can determine where we go with our children, where they take us. We can no longer consent.

We understand and accept, finally, that where they take us we do not want to go. It will hurt us. We decide. No I do not want to go on that train with you. Instead of feeling like their victims.

In that sense "no" can be the most moral, responsible and difficult of all words to say. The simplest of concepts, but the most profound and powerful. I mean, "yes" is just so easy. And then we end up in the swamp or the concentration camp. When no would have nipped it in the bud. The thing is, we never know where we are really going when the trip starts out. It is like we look outside the window of the train. And we realize, slowly we realize, where we are going. And still we want to hope we are wrong.

When we say "no" to our families, they are stuck with themselves. They have to "eat it." Something they do not want to do. How much better to put their stuff into us. For them it is like taking out the garbage. How much better to put it in us. When we stop accepting it, they get stinky and fumy and slimy inside themselves. And the madder they get.

COPA

 

[InsaneCdn]

When we say "no" to our families, they are stuck with themselves. They have to "eat it." Something they do not want to do. How much better to put their stuff into us. For them it is like taking out the garbage. How much better to put it in us. When we stop accepting it, they get stinky and fumy and slimy inside themselves. And the madder they get.

Exactly

 

[BusynMember]

When we say "no" to our families, they are stuck with themselves.

This kind of makes me smile, a bit sadly, even though it's true.

In my case, the last I saw, my sister has not given up on at least hoping I will remember her and read her thoughts on various forums. Do they really want us gone? We serve a purpose, in their minds. They can feel superior to us. Let 'em.

How sad that they can't just feel good about themselves without needing to look at us and make up reasons to feel superior.

 

[InsaneCdn]

How sad that they can't just feel good about themselves without needing to look at us and make up reasons to feel superior.

They came through the same warped growing-up processes that we did. That they chose one path and we chose a different one, doesn't mean that they had an easier road or that we did or do. It DOES mean that... they are also damaged. And damaged people often look for ways to hide the damage, because it's often too costly (in re-living trauma etc.) to fix the damage.

 

[Copabanana]

And damaged people often look for ways to hide the damage

Hi Insane. I had begun to worry about you. I had not seen your posts. I was about to go to search for you. I am glad you are here.

Or in the case of my own sister, she looks for ways to recoup. How to get on top, get more, so at to assure herself she is not less than.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

In my case, the last I saw, my sister has not given up

Sadly for your sister, she still must feel that in order to feel OK herself, she must make you in some way bad or less than.

Still she does not recognize that the more she does so, the weaker she is. She is choosing weakness and moral laziness to not stop to see that through her actions and choices she implicates herself, representing herself as morally corrupt and weak.

It has nothing at all to do with you, Serenity. No matter what was done or said in the past each of us is responsible for who we are right now. You are choosing to take your marbles and go home. Even if you can "win" the game the way it is played it will never be a win you want or need. Until your sister sees that the entire game is in her head, she will continue to depend upon you. And get madder and madder. Put she is playing alone now. How sad that is, for her.

Now, you can look at this another way. That by our constant chewing and chewing upon the residues of our family that are in our heads, we are doing the same thing. Refusing, still, to accept our lovely lives and let the past go. I will think about this.

Serenity, you have decided to let the past go, recognizing what is beautiful in what you have. Everything that came before pales in comparison.

COPA

 

[BusynMember]

Now, you can look at this another way. That by our constant chewing and chewing upon the residues of our family that are in our heads, we are doing the same thing. Refusing, still, to accept our lovely lives and let the past go. I will think about this.

Yah, me too. I don't really think much about them anymore. This thing we're doing really helped me. Writing out seemed to work more than talking it out. But talking it out worked too.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Writing out seemed to work more than talking it out.

I think in writing it out, we are able more sincerely to define the wound. So, if we have courage and are determined and if we have good witness, we are able more precisely to heal it. We were able to sit with the feelings, knowing we had one another, here.

Remember when we would post about holding the light as one or another of us came through the forest.

And then, to go deeper, healing further. Because we are here together (all of us ~ those who are posting and those reading along), each of us interpreting and considering purpose and meaning and value, there is for us the true comfort of human connection and unified purpose and hope.

And even, belief.

This is so different than any of us had, in our families of origin. To heal, to come whole, to hold ourselves and one another in compassion, seems so natural a thing, here.

So that is what we do and it is working.

How cool is that?

I wish those reading instead of posting would post in to us too, sometimes. Maybe, they are healing, are coming whole in ways new to them, too.

***

If we can avoid triangulation (which we have done, pretty nicely) then there is no one to please, no authority figure to tailor the story for, and so, we kept ourselves and one another honest and focused, and that mattered, too.

That was necessary at the beginning, remember? When we did not know this would work, but we came at it sincerely anyway.

We've done well.

You guys. Who else would have held faith with me when I put our mothers into an imaginary motorcycle bag with exquisitely worked needlepoint that said nasty words?!?

:O)

Lagavulin.

That is the Scotch, served before the fire in the library.

I have never tasted it.

But I read about it.

They say it smells like the bottom of a mash bucket.

It DOES mean that... they are also damaged. And damaged people often look for ways to hide the damage, because it's often too costly (in re-living trauma etc.) to fix the damage.

This is my question, IC. When our families of origin seem determined (especially so if we allow vulnerability) to hurt us ~ to destroy our reputations, to shame us through the words they say behind our backs ~ even and maybe, especially, to other family members, as Serenity's sister has done where the cousins are concerned and as I am certain my sister will have done, too ~ when they stalk and seek out and hurt our children, like my own sister did (!) ~ where is that line between excusing them (and ourselves, sometimes) and holding them responsible for what they do and have done.

Here is a secret, you guys.

D H is right.

As I let go of being angry about what's happened, I am beginning to lose the seriousness of the consequences to me and my immediate family that comes from having anything to do with my family of origin.

So this is a good question for me right now.

Serenity, I think you went through this phase, too. Your conclusion was that you refused to sacrifice anything about your happy, balanced life to include them, again. Perhaps that is where I will come to, too. Maybe, what I need to do is concentrate on how crummy it is that I don't have that extended family I want, and on how crummy it is that my children don't have extended family, either.

It would be fun to have a huge clan, and family reunions with hundreds of people. I have friends whose families do that every few years. Whoa I am so jealous and wonder what that must be like.

Another huge loss for (another ~ chalk one up for them) pointlessly ugly win.

Here is something I read this morning:

I never knew how strong I was until I had to forgive someone who wasn't sorry and accept an apology I never received.

David Avocado Wolfe

So this observation you've made IC, has to do with that way I always saw my mom and my sibs (as people who would do better if they knew better) and whether that was a more right way to understand what happened to all of us than the way I understand them, now. It has to do with Copa's way of seeing her sister and loving her still, and of whether I need to see mine that same way. (But I don't really want to. I am still so surprised that she meant to do what she did. She meant it! Then I become confused, because who knows why any of us do what we do and etc) Especially since we have traced the damage ~ the actual damage ~ these people do for wins that have no meaning...I see them now as wicked things, as evil minions.

So I suppose that is wrong.

But seeing them with compassion, believing in pacts to create family where the only guy who wasn't erecting defense was me (!roar!) that didn't work, either.

But I think I used to believe as you do, IC. I did not mind it until they intentionally hurt my child.

Intentionally!

And after that it becomes...what. That is why I am asking for clarification on how you see the...what is the nature of the mental barrier you must erect between your true self and anything to do with any of them. Because compassion lets them in and once they are in, they do take advantage. Like thieves really, taking trinkets of little value when they are welcome, are part of the creation of all of it because for them, the win is in the stealing it from you.

I don't feel a sense of judgement in your evaluation of your situation.

Maybe I will get there.

I am still so mad, no matter what I post about being through this angry part.

Maybe I will go from someone who was never angry to someone who is never not angry.

And I am angry because I don't have what I wanted.

Our children will pick up on our interpretations of our sibs and even, our parents.

Or maybe I've answered my own question.

Or maybe there is no question.

Maybe we are all just doing the best we know, and the best I know now is to leave them where they lie (where they tell lies) and just be mad all the time.

Or it could be like D H says. And I only fool myself into believing I have any choice to make in any of this, at all. That it is an end game ~ like when a totalitarian government comes to power. The upper echelon gets smaller as, one after another, the henchmen are assassinated. Until whoever is left holds absolute power over the countless minions, broken in the beginning.

Or exiled, like us.

Because of course, we did leave them first, by refusing to ridicule or victimize. Think about it, everyone. That is why we are shunned, now. They literally do not know what to do about us.

We are not weak enough to destroy and we are too strong to leave alive and we know, and have always known, who they are.

So I will be my own Republic, then.

Okay. So, that makes sense, you guys. We are the only ones who can declare the meaning and value of our independence. How we got here matters less than who we will choose and decide and declare ourselves to be. I was going to make a joke about a flag of needlepoint and bad words. But why would I dirty my Republic in that way?

Those words, that needlepoint ~ that is only how I got here.

My flag, and all of yours too, will be of brilliant silk, of course.

When chopping onions....

Let me win. If I cannot win, let me be brave.

Cedar

 

[InsaneCdn]

where is that line between excusing them (and ourselves, sometimes) and holding them responsible for what they do and have done.

It is not my "job" to hold them responsible. Depending on your beliefs, the Creator or Karma or Life will hold them responsible. I can let go of that part.

That is why I am asking for clarification on how you see the...what is the nature of the mental barrier you must erect between your true self and anything to do with any of them. Because compassion lets them in and once they are in, they do take advantage.

The nature of the mental barrier, to me, is simply this: I will protect myself and my own from harm.

Therefore, distance as necessary, including "no contact" if that is the only distance that works. Anger, I can let go of. They have a right to be angry also. Life wasn't fair. But I am not required to be at the receiving end of their anger, just as I have no right to direct my anger at them.

I don't remember where I heard this quote, but someone said once "It's not worth being angry unless it will make a difference." And for FOO? It's not going to change a single thing.