Ecopyschology--why I want to be a Wilderness Therapist

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
published by Atlantic Monthly Press
© Mary Oliver

Spring Fever, or alternately titled Fail Faster

I think I'm somehow suddenly in a relationship. For the first time in four years. And I'm not entirely sure how that happened mysteriously, nor what I happen to think about this whole train wreck waiting to happen. The details don't really matter, truth of the matter is this: I happen to be with a great guy who I've been friends with for a very long time, who has a lot of the qualities that I theoretically look for in a partner. We've been through a lot in the four years that I've known him, which is neither good nor bad, it just is. He has been a great friend to me, for which I'm more than grateful. He is legitimately one of the kindest souls I've ever known, one of the biggest hearts, and one of the most sort of impish personalities I've yet to encounter.

The only catch is, I'm not sure I'm physically attracted to him.

I feel horrible and shallow to be even having this internal monologue with myself, for allowing this to even be an issue. Though shallow might not be the correct word, because lord knows I've been involved with enough great guys over the years with non-traditional aesthetics to know that physical nature is not high up on my list of things that I look for in men. On the list, yes, but buried below the fold for sure. I do know, however, that there has to be some element of physical connection between me and whomever for a relationship to work. There has to be that spark...its part of what makes dating so magical and ethereal, that something unexplainable that just pulls you to the person.

I have to believe, I really do, that maybe you can find the spark. That you can coax it into a thriving flame. That maybe it just takes a good breeze, or a few good blows. That the physical passion that I'm so disconcertingly not feeling right now can be discovered. I have to believe that otherwise there is no hope for humanity. I have to trust that I have the potential to be surprised by people, otherwise life is just this big soup of bitterness and discontent. I have to hold on to that hope.

I wish I could be gungho about this, about him, really. I cant decide if I'm so disturbed because I'm behaving so far outside of my norm, because its him, or because I am so obviously lacking that undeniable all-consuming intensity of being entirely infatuated with someone. I don't know if not feeling that complete passion is disconcerting me because its missing, or because I am following a complete unknown. Lord knows my norm isn't the most healthy archetype to mold myself around, because either total avoidance of any and all sexual appetites unless I'm wasted is clearly the way to go... I'm entertaining this because it is the polar opposite of the faceless boozy hookups. Because even though I saw this coming from miles off, and had my let him down gently speech all prepared in my head, something stopped me. I cant explain it, which is I'm sure part of the uncertainties. Something stopped me from ending it before it even began, and I'm pretty sure I would have regret it.

I'm looking for that passion, I really miss it. I really miss falling passionately "in-love", because failing all the gut-wrenching experiences that go along with those blissful early days, at least you have certainty. You know with all of your being that you are in the right place and the right time making the correct albeit incredibly impulsive decisions because anything else would be denying God. I question what I'm feeling right now because it pales in comparison. Blame it on maturity, or realism, or chemistry, or being hurt one too many times (like there is anything but?!), but I cant make myself get completely goopily worked up over this guy, great as he might be.

I'm waiting for the universe, for this arguably wonderful person, to convince me. Maybe it's futile, but I'm really attempting to put my faith in the knowledge that things happen when they're meant to happen. If this is meant to be, than I've just been gifted a truly wonderful moment in time. If not, I can say I gave it a good shot, right?

My ultimate fear is giving it a good shot for a few weeks or so, and still feeling exactly the way I do sitting here tonight. Blank. Empty. Uninspired. I don't know which would be worse about that, that I'd be giving up the chance for an intimate relationship with a great and sincere human, or not being able to quiet the voices in my head that tell me I'm just not cut out for that kind of all-encompassing entirely possessing passionate love for another person.

Maybe I'm being entirely selfish in giving this a go at all, maybe I'm subliminally channeling my need to prove to myself that I can love and be loved in return. Maybe I'm leading him on, though I've been blatantly and explicitly honest about everything which I've written here. Maybe I'll be swept away. Maybe I wont. Maybe he'll decide he's really not into me...

I do know for sure that I have no idea what I'm doing. But regardless, I wont regret passing on the chance.

Ten Pages, Two Heart Attaches

First major thesis deadline tomorrow--and I have to admit I am damn near to ten full pages of print. I hate to think about how much more difficult the next ten pages will be, now that I've successfully churned out the early easy fluff parts of the project...

Heart Attach No. 1) Brett's shrunken head in the Sietz Lounge Microwave. I swear to Christ.
Heart Attach No. 2) Daydreamed I left my travel mug...somewhere. That maybe the single best reflection of my chaos right now, that being without my portable coffee mug was the best my subconscious could come up with to kick me back into gear.

Thanks brain, really. I owe ya one.

Eclipsed

It was almost disconcerting tonight, the lunar ecplise in the middle of everything, so quick and so distant I almost lost it amid the city lights. And, yet, sitting on my front stoop for twenty minutes or so watching, and it was like another world. I could just barely make out the waning moon caught between the treetops and apartment blocks, but it took my breathaway.

I wished I were gazing at the sky from somewhere else, away from the city lights, away from the Safeway, away from the traffic. But at the same time, it sort of touched me, that something so simple could draw so very many people. That all across the country everyone was doing the very same thing.

The take home message of the week? It's so easy to be eclipsed by everything going on around me, far too easy to go unnoticed. The temptation to pull the hood up and poke the headphones in, to be the one on the bus who turns the other way while someone struggles on the sidewalk, it's the easy answer. To sit in my little book-cave and ignore the night sky. Complacency though, too, makes me internally uncomfortable. I both crave and fear the challenge of pushing myself.

Front Country Adventures and Hidden Messengers

I like to think I'm a firm believer in fated messengers in human form. What I mean by that is basically that we meet the people we are supposed to meet at the right times. That the people we encounter are supposed to enlighten us, though its up to us to figure out exactly what form that takes.

This is the story about how I happened to be in the wrong place at the right time in order to discover that there is some law/company regulation that requires portland city transit drivers to stop and deal with apparently health and safety emergencies if they see them....On my way home from work this afternoon (the shitty not happy fun outdoorsy kind) and I'm sitting in the front of the bus being the shitty wannabe hipster that this city turns me into and we come to a corner and I hear the driver go "oh shit thats not good" and lo and behold some dude is sort of crumpled face down at the busstop. And then the driver freaks out and is just muttering to himself about insurance or something and pacing on the sidewalk and calls his dispatch and gets back on the bus and continues to talk to himself and mutter about how he thinks maybe hes breathing (the dude, not the driver) and freak out and looks around helplessly. So he sits there and looks at us passengers, and being apathetic wannabe hipster freaky people we ignore him or sigh and wonder about the state of the city and bitch about those goddamned homelesspeople.

After a minute or two I get annoyed so I go outthere...look around, cant figure anything out...no blood, no blatantly obvious mechanism of injury no hazards. Takes awhile of me yelling at the dude and shaking and sternum noogy but he opens his eyes. another minute or so and dude says a word or too fairly incoherently. So not entirely unresponsive, but thats about as much as I'd give him. All the ABC's in order, airway breathing circulation, which as really as far as I'd thought when I got off the bus. Just instinct, I figured I could start CPR if I had to. Thats literally as far as I thought. Another 30 seconds or so and I figure he doesnt speak english. Then picture me trying to asses the guy in spanish. Which i speak (not). The guy doesnt even smell like booze, just has really really dialated pupils. So I keep the guy talking (or swearing at me in spanish as the case may be) and try to convince him not to move for another minute or so (in less than acomplished spanish), till the bus driver starts yelling at me about being off schedule and all my shit and my laptop is on the back of the bus and the driver says the paramedics are coming so I leave him and get back on the bus.

And now I feel like a tool. I should have stayed until the paramedics got there. I know I didnt have to do anything...being the front country and all... I but cant stop thinking about the guy. Just the way that he looked at me. I wish I knew how it ended up, I wish I'd stayed there to find out. I wish I was better under fire sometimes.

More than that, I wish I knew what this guy was sent to tell me. What I'm supposed to get out of the whole adventure. People hit you only when you open yourself to receive what ever they're trying to teach you. What was this guy supposed to teach me?

Heart, My Lovely Hobo

"Searcher there is no road. We make the road by walking." - Antonio Machado

So much good flowing in and from so many different directions. I'm sort of overwhelmed.

No, I haven't fallen madly in love.
No, I haven't failed out of school.
No, I'm not depressed for the moment.
Yes, I do miss travelling.
Yes, I desparately miss outside.
No, I don't know what I'm doing with my life.
No, I'm not excessively concerned.

What I am doing is trying to make the road by walking it, one step at a time. Its pouring outside my window (and I mean pouring), and tonight I'm in sort of a damn-the-consequences mood. Thats kind of my motto for this last semester, do it anyway. Don't wait, don't hesitate, just throw that foot off the platform, and trust that theres ground somewhere beneath. Do it anyway, because if you're probably having this conversation in the first place you know the right choice.

I am not without flirtation and frustration and amelioration. I'm street luging down the dark sidestreet of life headfirst. The trick now is misplacing my anger and fear and resentment and trepidation; it's reteaching all of my internal boundaries of culture and upbringing and temperment, and stop expecting anything less.

What I'd Tell You If I Could

Tonight I am stuck somewhere between aroused and viciously confused. I've been so out of this loop for so long, that I find myself wandering around daydreaming happily, and then I have to remind myself that no, I am not 15 trailing around after my best friend in the secret agony of an absolutely forbidden crush. At so many points these days I am so completely and wholly struck by my age. In some ways it was so much easier in high school, the cues were so much more blatant. And if you know anything about me, you know that there is little that gets under my skin quite like being uncertain, in limbo. I think that's part of the reason that I've avoided the whole dating scene, because it puts me totally and completely out of reach of things that I control.

The bottom line is, no matter what I imagine, however hard I attempt to not let my mind wander, I need to somehow face facts that it will probably not work the way I picture. Nothing ever does. Not like that's a bad thing, its just the reality living with a severely overactive imagination and a penchant for drama. In reality, its really just a big deal for me, a big victory to even be in this situation. Putting myself out there is a big deal for me, when even after four years of solo time, I'm still not totally sure what I'm hiding from. Its even larger and more noteworthy that I am attempting to ignore the voices telling me that I made this all up, that I guy like that would never be into a girl like me. But I didn't make it up, and now all that's left is to wait and see.

If I could, I'd tell you that for once in my life I want to enjoy not being so serious. I'm not trying to marry you or date you seriously. All I know is that I liked spending time with you, and I think you thought so too. I'd like to do so more often. That's it. Casual. Noncommittal. Fun.

I want to prove to myself that I can do this. That I can be grown up enough to be smitten with someone, and not try to drink myself to death in the process. That I can do this and not be eaten up by it. Or turn anyone gay in the process. That I'm bigger and better than my demons. That I can be loved. That I don't think everyone and everything to death. That I can be patient enough to see things through, though the more patience required, the more I tend to let my mind wander places it has no place going.

I need a distraction from this distraction.