Magic Eyes

At the end of finals week in the first semester of my second year in college, I decided I should finally attack the Kilimanjaro-sized pile of laundry I had accumulated over the past few weeks.  I shoved my bulging, cracked, plastic Walmart hamper across the pavement from where I had parked my beige 1986 4-cylinder Chevy Cavalier station wagon-(appropriately named “The Cream Dream”)-which I inherited from my grandpa when he passed.  As I headed for the entrance, I noticed there was a ramshackle camper van parked right by the door to the laundromat.  It was decorated with a unique combination of graffiti coupled with a camo paint job, and various bumper stickers proclaiming slogans like “Make Love Not War” and “Bitch on Board.”  There was a bobble head Ronald Regan doll on the dashboard, and a glance inside as I passed by revealed that the front seats were littered with garbage.  Crushed up soda cans, some tattered books, a plethora of papers were strewn about all over the ripped front seats, and a bunch of rubber bands were wrapped around a spring that stuck out from the upholstery. I stifled a giggle when I noticed an old security device we had in the 90’s that attached to the steering wheel called “The Club” was affixed, unlocked, to the wooden suicide knob on the wheel.  From one owner of a crappy car to another, I was reasonably certain that this particular vehicle was at low risk of being stolen (as was mine.)  But what do I know. Anyway, I digress.  I popped my old, cracked plastic laundry hamper up onto the curb, flung open the door, and kicked it inside.

​I hate to stereotype…. But here I go.  The owner of the vehicle outside was immediately obvious.  He was dressed in cutoff camo shorts, matching the paintjob on the camper.  He wore a paint-splattered bro tank from an old “Vanilla Ice” concert.  He was barefoot, and his long, greasy, sun streaked hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks.  He stood, back against a vending machine, reading a copy of “The San Gabriel Valley Tribune.”  He looked up at the “ding” sound of the convenience store-type door alarm which announced my presence.  A huge grin spread across his face as he locked eyes with mine.  He cocked his head to the side.  “Sister!”   said warmly, as if we were old friends.  I bit my lip and boom- my guard was up as I shifted immediately into Weirdo Alert-mode.  “Stranger Danger!”  I kept repeating in my head, followed by Oprah’s mantra on her most recent life class: “Never let yourself be taken to a second location!”  One thing I knew for sure was I did NOT want to be gagged and hog tied and thrown into the back of that camper van.                                                                              
 
I decided a sturdy nod would do for a response to his greeting.  I commenced to proceed with the task at hand as I commandeered a bank of washing machines, put my head down and mechanically sorted my clothes.  Bro Tank instantly sidled up alongside me and dumped a garbage bag full of dusty clothing into a machine adjacent to the area I had territorially deemed as my own.  With a heavy sigh, I didn’t even try to hide my displeasure and annoyance, as the stench of dirt and body odor mixed with Downey Fresh violated my nostrils. Secretly, I was grateful I’d accidentally left my Diet Coke back on campus (which was going flatter by the minute) but at least there was no way for him to slip a roofie into my nonexistent beverage.
 
Bro Tank looked at me with kind eyes and asked, “Ever been to Burning Man, Sister?”  I had heard of it before, although he correctly diagnosed that I had never been there.  As far as I knew it was a modern day Woodstock, filled with hippies and drugs.  I realized that there were some witnesses loitering around in the laundromat, (albeit an odd assortment of people, surely one of them could handle calling 911 if necessary...I hoped.) so it was probably ok to at least have a chat with Bro Tank.  I shook my head, and said, “Not really.  Er-, Yeah, maybe.  Well, I actually probably don’t really know.”  I knew I had just taken the bait and settled in for a story.  Here we go.  But I had a good 45-minute wash cycle amount of time to kill, and anything was going to be more interesting than reading the snore-inducing book I had brought with me from my snore-provoking “Biblical Studies” class.
 
 As predicted, Bro Tank took that as a solicitation to enlighten me and as if on cue, he happily launched into a long-winded monologue about this 7 day pop-up art festival 3 hours north of Reno, Nevada, hosting over 70,000 people.  It’s totally off the grid so that one can be 100% present to the adventures at hand.  He informed me that Burning Man attracts brain surgeons, activists, homeless folks, celebrities, you name it.  Everyone is equal. Clothing is optional.  Self- expression is encouraged, and there is no exclusivity.  He told me about the amazing art instillations, and the giant wooden statue of a man in the center of it all, which is set on fire in an incredible display of pyrotechnics on the final night of the festival.  He told me about the “leave no trace” policy of Burning Man regarding litter….. anything that comes to Burning Man will be used- there will be no trash, or as they call it, “MOOP”: Matter Out of Place. He told me about the “accommodations”…. A makeshift camp, tents for the week, porta-potties, no running water, no showers.  Which is where, despite my mind having every intention to not look shocked and disgusted, I lost the battle.  “OH my God! EW!!” I exclaimed, mortified that the words had just kind of fallen out of my mouth, as my eyebrows shot up against my will.
 
He laughed.  “Yah, no offense, but you look more like one of those Four Seasons Hotel types to me,” he reported.  (Clearly, he had not made note of my vehicle upon my arrival.)   Then he paused, and shrugged.  “I mean, really.  What’s the worst that could happen, sister?  You accidentally take a bite of someone’s pot-laced brownie, rip off all your clothes, eat like 50 handmade tacos, run around in circles all night singing James Taylor songs, and pay the price by having diarrhea the entire next day?” My jaw dropped open and after a few seconds I threw my head back and laughed. “Yeah”, I managed.  “I guess I could recover from that.”  Bro Tank nodded his head and grinned.  “Yes.  Damn right you could!  And what’s more, what if Burning Man is, like, the single best experience of your existence?  What if it blows your freaking mind?  Wouldn’t be worth a case of the shits?”   Jaw dropped, brow furrowed, I found myself nodding.  “Y-yyyes,” I stammered, and then launched into a belly laugh.  “Yes, I suppose it could be.”  Suddenly I felt terrible for judging Bro Tank.  He wasn’t a serial killer or a rapist, he was just another character in making his scheduled appearance in the drama of my life, as I was making mine in his.
 
Then his icy blue eyes looked straight into mine, like he was piercing my retinas with his, and he told me something I’ll never forget….His final statement bore through me like a lightning bolt, and I felt a physical chill electrify me as he said, “Maybe it would be worth choosing to bravely and beautifully try something new.”  I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that, but it was the passion with which he said it that struck me: it was as if it was the most important thing he’d ever said.
 
I wasn’t ready to really hear what Bro Tank was saying that day.  I mean, I physically heard it, but I didn’t HEAR it, as in understand it.  It’s been 20 years that his sentence has been marinating in my brain.  And only now do *think* I HEAR what he was saying.  Why not consider a different experience, or a different way of looking at things?  Curiosity and open-mindedness will always be my greatest teachers, and if I let go of my clenched fists, treasures await me.  I want to be that flowing river of life, not that stagnant bacteria-ridden pond. The concept is especially important as I age and become set in my ways…. Feel comfortable, feel like I always know what’s best for me.  Expectations and pre-meditated judgements pollute my present moment experiences.
 
My human tendency and temptation is to slip into fear and pick at the old scar tissue of the heart…a knee-jerk reaction to previous instances of pain.  I’ll size it up and think I know all about the current situation, based on similar past instances which I’ll allow to color my present view. Then I end up poisoning my present experience because I can’t relax into the moment and be receptive to the lesson the universe is teaching me now….because I’m too focused on the memory of old pain.  It’s as if I’m convinced I have some magical Crystal Ball, which can only tell the future based on past situations.  It’s a false belief and an assumption that there’s no fresh page… like I already know what is written down before even reading it. I can choose to find the love in the darkness, I can choose to believe in the beautiful story of hope when things look their bleakest.  I can courageously believe all things are part of something I cannot see, something so much bigger than me.  If I don’t believe that, I’ve just purchased a ticket to becoming a stagnant, stuck-in-her-ways old lady, at age 40.  No thanks.  
 
How arrogant of me to think things need to make sense in my finite mind anyway….after all, I am just one tiny, little grain of sand on an entire beach of this existence, serving a purpose I may or may not know anything about…. My life is not my own, nor should it be…. I’m one soul, connected to an intricate web of other souls….We are many voices on one journey.  My life, and the situations I encounter are just a minute, yet significant piece of a larger puzzle, laid over time, piece by piece.  I’m just one instrument in an entire orchestra, shoulder to shoulder with others, creating one big beautiful masterpiece together.  And if that puzzle has no picture to follow, and if that music is given to me one page, or even one musical bar at a time, sobeit.  I’m simply to do what is in front of me with open hands, and let life unfold as it will.  Sometimes I will look back and be able to see the whole picture, and sometimes I won’t.  It’s actually not my business whether I can or cannot see it.  My business is to keep taking the next step that reveals itself, knowing that it’s not all about me…. I’m just a vessel- one catalyst amongst other catalysts, from which life flows as the universe will have it.
 
I was so tightly wound after my 4th baby came along, and I was adamant that I was NOT, under any circumstances, going to get pregnant ever again.  I actually spent a lot of time and energy feeding a resentment against my husband who did not feel comfortable getting a vasectomy.  While we were using 3 different forms of birth control, Andrew and I went to Maui and came home with an unexpected suvenior…. A surprise 5th baby on the way.  When I saw that positive pregnancy test, I was pissed.  Furious actually.  I acted like a little kid, folding my arms, pouty lip, kicking the dirt.  How could this happen? WHY did this happen?  I couldn’t get perspective for a large chunk of that pregnancy. And then when she was born…..everything changed.  It was like a newsflash that I don’t know what’s good for me- and it’s not even about me.  It was, still is, about her.  Her life, and whatever her purpose is here on this planet.  Same with all my kids.
 
I don’t expect anyone to understand this, but that’s when we decided to surrender the birth control thing (which only seemed to work sporadically for us anyway) in addition to several areas of our lives which we had previously (and falsely) thought we controlled. This not a religious choice, but a choice of the soul and the spirit.  It’s so much more fulfilling for me to let go and freefall into the mystery of life. I’m nothing more than a conduit for the current of life energy that has run through me, and perhaps will run through me again with another future pregnancy.  I’m finally willing to be at the mercy of the universe (as if I really had a choice anyway!!) and cease fighting.  To have faith and trust that everything happens just as it should, whether I “like” or “approve” of the outcome or not. It’s about an acknowledgement that I need to practice the relinquishment of what I assume is right for my life in order to serve a greater purpose. Not in a martyrdom sense, because I definitely get something out of it- the amazing gift of being a part of something greater than the concoctions of my mind.  It’s the spirit of embracing being part of a village, part of a team, a belonging and experiencing of life together to see what happens individually as a result of the togetherness.  A practice of compromising for the betterment of the bigger entity, and contemplating personal lessons gained through the unity.  Oddly enough, similar to the description of the attendees at Burning Man based on what I understood of Bro Tank’s description.
 
Practicing the surrendering of my plans is a much better way for me personally to live.  It’s so freeing, and ironically, so much more satisfying.  I’m not saying I’m great at it- but I continually seek it.  I’m not saying I don’t try to control the things I do have some amount of control over.  For example, I’m not going to jump off a bridge and see if I’m supposed to live or die.  I’m not going to refuse medical attention for one of my kids when they’re sick.  After all, God gave us brains to use and resources of this day and age for a reason.  It’s more of an eventual relinquishing of the outcome, which is the part I really have no control over.  It’s an acceptance.  Of course there are perceived negative risks associated with it…I often experience some amount of fear as I practice liberated living…. But often times it’s just those old wounds surfacing again.  “Fear of Fear”, if you will.  The memory of heartache and suffering, which if walked through, has never turned up void for me yet. Every time I’ve anguished over a heart-wrenching circumstance, once I’ve passed through that space and eventually shared it with a fellow sufferer, it creates a connection and a compassion.  To sit with someone in their pain and truly empathize- let’s say that’s the only perceived good result of an agonizing journey, it has not been in vain. It’s actually exactly the desired result.  It’s like placing the most beautiful healing and calming balm over a wound.  Slowly, over time, as it’s shared with others…. That horrific circumstance becomes beautiful because it snowballs and fosters a benevolence through kinship.  And just like Burning Man…. Nothing is wasted.  It all matters, it all counts.  Even if I can’t make sense of it.  Even the perceived “trash.”  The experience in its’ entirety turns out to be a gift. 
 
I came across a poem shortly after surprise 5th baby was born that blew me right out of my socks.  What resonated most was how my biggest fears and the things I’ve tried to control that I’ve let go of have actually become the ladder to freedom from the captivity of myself, and thus entire new worlds have been opened to me.   “Control” is simply an illusion anyway…. The only thing I really can control is my perceptions, attitudes and reactions.  Eerily, the poem also screamed out the same two words Bro Tank used that day at the laundromat: beautiful and brave.
 
“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.  So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
 
I read these words and it was if a hot stone suddenly lodged itself in my solar plexus.  It was like a solid coaxing of something I knew I have to try to cultivate, deep in my spirit: It was an invitation to be beautiful and brave.  Not beautiful in the physical sense but in the soul sense, in the language of the heart…. A choice to float courageously above the tangible, immediate perspective of my physical surroundings in order to see if maybe the perceived dragons around me are really princesses in disguise. After all, there is this exponentially huge festival called life going on where if I choose a certain vantage point, I can see that not one single perceived scary or painful experience will be wasted…. And I need to use magic eyes to see that I’m simply one tiny part of this entire grand spectacle.