Learning to hold a heart

I'm starting to learn to hold a heart.

I know, I'm a late developer.

Here's something that happened.

I'm sitting with G. He's explaining how he feels.

As I'm listening, I feel attacked, and blamed. I feel fear rising and moving like hot energy snakes around my body; I sense in my arms the desire to rise up and fight, my desire to shout, about how ridiculous he's being, the unconscious misogyny, the desire to control me from his fear, the powerful desire to defend my freedom and the goodness of my life.

I am trying to learn to not be reactive; to manage deep listening; to express empathy; to take time, when my partner is on fire, to calm the fire, before I bring forward my feelings and needs and fight against him, for them.

I listen for as long as I can take it. Then I say, give me a minute.

Ok, he says.

I walk away. It feels good. He starts to speak to me. I hold up my hand - really, please, a minute.

Ok.

I move several feet away. That feels good. Oh i need to shake. I shake. That feels good. I've just absorbed a lot. I calm a little. I see the piano. I really want to play it. "Are you ok if I play the piano for a moment?" "Sure."

I sit. One chord. Yes. I'm flooded with yes. This is my place. This is a safe space for my feelings. G minor. Yes! F9. Oh yes! D minor. Fuck yes! C major. Of course!!! I move through them, getting louder and louder, making the chords more and more crunchy, my fingers fly fiercely across the keys, and here is the sound of my rage, and my fear, the motherfucker.

I move through and through it until something softens and I'm just left with, wow! He's in so much pain! The poor fucker! It leads me to the final chord.

I turn to him. "G you poor thing! You've been in so much pain!"

At the empathy, he cries.

And we have connection.

Now the rage and fear have been moved, I can hear him more. I can get to the heart of the feelings, behind all those very unreasonable seeming irrational deluded fears and odd assumptions, I can get to the heart of the needs, and the reality of his feeling insecure. However unreal his fears, his feeling of insecurity is true. I can literally put my hand on his heart, and hold it, and be with him, and want to help him, somehow, I don't know how yet, to feel more secure.

And then, he's ready to hear me. By now he really wants to hear me. And then I can say my fears, and he can hear them. It's Sunday afternoon.

On Friday night we were screaming at each other until 3am, breaking up, and I drove an hour home at 3am; by Monday morning, we are closer than ever before in each others arms.

I am beginning to learn.

A rattle snake and a walker: Love, Gender, and Power.

I walked, a 5’10 strong, long legged, walking-booted woman, alone on a Californian coast path, 4 miles from a road, no phone. At one step, I heard a loud, horrifying rattle, and saw about a meter in front of me a large rattle snake coiled on the path, its head raised a couple of feet hissing a fierce, terrified rattle. I shrieked! Screamed! Already on a strong forward momentum, I ran semi-circle past the snake and onwards, heart racing, away.

“You were both in mortal danger at that point," said Nunutsi Tenipe, a part Native-American, part Scottish guide.

“Four miles from a road with no phone, a rattle-snake bite would have killed you. Your footfall would have killed the snake. The snake’s rattle saved you both.”

* * *

When I fall in love, and begin to partner, I notice a Little Wife archetype rising up like a ghost ship, like the Mary Rose from the deep, and starting to gain access to my thoughts, feelings and actions. 

* * *

I pay attention to my first thoughts of the day. They are usually clear distillations of the night’s processing and dreams.

I wake one morning in my lover’s arms. My first thought: “I am pair bonding with this man. It would break my heart now for this to end.”

I go pee and come back to bed. He wakes and starts dreaming into life with me. The previous day, I had expressed to him that one of my consistent longings if to have more time to practice the piano. This morning, he starts asking me what I earn, what I charge. We talk a while. Then, he offers me $500 a week if I cancel half of my students and devote time to practicing music alone and with him. 

I say, what about power. I would have to please you; I would be at risk of poverty if I raise conflict; disagree with you.

He pulls out his phone; checks with me for consent, opens up PayPal, and deposits $14,000 into my Paypal account.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me.

In the next two days, I become small, scared and sad. Giving my heart voice, it says, “joy is gone. Life is gone. I am grey, I am dry, I am empty, I am dying now.”

After two days, I crack, and cry.

* * *

I am eating a snack with an older Scottish woman. She once received financial assistance, she said, from an organisation originally called The Distressed Gentlewoman's Aid Association; now called Turn 2 Us. It was initially established in the 1800s to help middle class women whose husbands took a mistress into the home; if the wife complained, she was expelled from the home, instantly destitute. For women in that position, their main option was usually prostitution. In order to prevent this, the fund provided financial assistance to these women as they handled their transition.

She tells me this and a kind of trauma, a pain, a rush of energy pulses through my body; I weep a little into my snack.

It’s like, the minute the man has economic power in the relationship, and the woman becomes economically dependent upon him, instantly it is like she cannot disagree, cannot displease, must follow the man. She becomes, it feels/seems, voiceless. 

Her truth; her path; her gifts; her flourishing; is quietened. She achieves a fulfilled life by assisting, following, and supporting him.

It gets a bit more horrific, I notice one night as we’re going to bed. She must always cook his food, must provide sex on demand - does she have access to “no”? Can she say what she likes? Can she co-lead their erotic life? Can she co-lead any aspect of their life? She must tidy up after him; mend his shirts, sew his buttons. She is in a kind of bondage, I realise. A kind of slavery.

Fuck!! I exhale hard lying down in bed, taking on the full oppression of the almost entirety of many, many women’s lives, in history. And… Some presently? I’m sorry if my question mark is ignorant. I honestly do not know.

* * *

The 100% message that school and family surrounded me with as a young English girl in the 1980s and 1990s was, ‘girls are as good as boys. You are equal. You can do anything you want with your life. You will and must have a career. He will and must share the cooking, cleaning and childcare.”

Meanwhile I saw my father gain the upper hand in any decisions that involved money, because ultimately it was his, he earned it. I saw my mother, with no pension of her own, rail in powerless frustration at her economic dependence. Young, I watched it, and took note.

Always have your own income. Always have your own pension. Always have your own economic power.

* * *

I like my lover’s kitchen. It’s really really nice. It’s open, and pretty, and spacious, with lots of clear surfaces and useful stuff. There are big windows that look out over lovely hills; birds fly in the wide open sky. We are up a hill, with a bird's view. The open floor room opens out to a grand piano, and space, calm, and more views. It’s a really lovely kitchen.

I tell him this one day.  He says, “well hey, you know, if this works out between us, well, if you wanted, you could make this your kitchen. I kind of…. feel lonely in  this kitchen, I feel dysfunctional here. If you wanted, you could really make it yours, and I would provide whatever equipment, keep it stocked with the finest local organic delicious food, and you could do your thing.”

A British person might expect me to slap him.

But, it went to a deep place within me. I slowly put my arms around him, sighed, and talked quietly into his ear in Clingon. It’s my nonsense language I learned from my 1 year old niece; with which I can express things from deep in my heart, a place the English language doesn’t seem to go to in me. He’s learnt to get to used to this :)

Then i translate it into English.

“Your words touch a place deep in my feminine soul. I love food. I love to cook. I love to share food. I love to nourish people. I hate giving rides, I love giving food. I naturally track a cupboard’s stock, notice what is vibrant in the market, imagine and create with flavour and nourishment. It’s one of the ways I love to care and nurture. I never think about money. I always think about food.

“If feels amazing to be offered support, provision. I start to feel the capacity for a deep collaboration with you. It’s like, my gifts and my dreams need your resources. And, your resources need my dreams.”

* * *

My friend R has fallen in love with J. Both meditators, they both notice some of their more subtle thoughts. She thinks, “I am the wee wife now, and I must help this amazing man bring his amazing work into the world.” He thinks, “our love is a poker game and we must bring everything to the table. She has to bring her business to the table. I have to own her business, otherwise I won’t be able to control her. She has to bring her home; I have to own her home, otherwise I won’t be able to own her. I have to own her, otherwise I will be threatened.”

Threatened with what? Abandonment; humiliation, infidelity...  power sharing? 

* * *

Can men and women, in love, underneath it all, quietly be a rattle snake and a walker, both screaming in mortal danger? How do we cultivate the genuine, mutual sense of safety necessary for power sharing, trust and non oppression? Also known, I imagine, as love!?!?

Would you believe (meet me in London) chart

Would you believe  (Meet me in London)

A Forcione, S. Sciubba

Chorus

      D            A/C#             Bm7   A

Could you believe in a dream  and I tell you that it’s true

            D                   A/C#       E4,7

Would you believe, precious friend of mine?

                        D                A/C#                Bm7                       A

Could you believe when it seems, you’re glad with what you do

                                   Am (7,6)

Gives you courage to carry on

    D     A/C#  Bm             F#m      B7        

Gives you courage to carry your spirit up on high

     D      A/C#         Bm7     A.

to carry your spirit up on high.

A(m) (6,7)

I saw people in trouble;     heard the angels cry.

Don’t you temper with my children;    make the devil cry.

        F#m, B7 F#m, B7

Spent the night with David,          taught me what to say

F#m                                                        B7 (walking bass - B, C#, D, D#, E)

I was looking for a smooth storm when I heard him pray

Chorus

(Bridge)

        D7

Now I could sing you times and reasons

                   D      A/C#    Bm7       F#m

Reasons to lay your burden softly down.

C#                                                        F#m

Kings and prophets bid everything for freedom

B (walking bass: B, C#      D               D#)      E

Keeping precious dreams imprisoned on the ground

A

I’ve got the song that I sing

A

I’ll make the mountain ring

B7 (walking bass B, C#, D, D#)   E

Tell my mama, I’ll be home but now

Chorus

Am jam

D  A/C#    Bm              F#m, B7

Courage to Carry your freedom up on high

      D      A/C#           B           A.

To carry your freedom up on high.

The names and addresses of folks I wrote to about changing the Bay Area's Transport system.

State Level

Governor Jerry Brown

c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173

Sacramento, Ca, 95814

Malcolm  Dougherty

Director, Caltrans

P.O. Box 942873

Sacramento, Ca,94273-0001

Brian P. Kelly

Director, CalSTA

915 Capital Mall, Suite 350B

Sacramento, Ca, 95814

Susan Bransen

Executive Director, California Transportation Commission

1120 N Street, MS - 52

Sacramento, Ca, 95814

Bob Alvarado

Chair, California Transportation Commission

NorCal Carpenters Regional Council

265 Helgenberger Road, Suite 200

Oakland, Ca 94621-1480

Steve Heminger

Executive Director, MTC

Bay Area Metro Centre

375 Beale Street, Suite 800

San Francisco, Ca, 94105-2066

Alix Bockelman

Deputy Executive Director, Policy: MTC

Bay Area Metro Centre

375 Beale Street, Suite 800

San Francisco, Ca, 94105-2066

Mayor Tom Bates

MTC Commissioner.

2180 Milvia Street

Berkeley, CA 94704

Libby Schaaf

MTC Commissioner, Oakland Mayor

1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, 3rd Floor

Oakland CA, 94612

Dave Cortese

Chair of the Commissioners: MTC

County Government Centre

10th Floor, East Wing

70 West Hedding Street

San Jose, CA 95110

Randy Rentschler

Director of Public Affairs, MTC

Bay Area Metro Centre

375 Beale Street, Suite 800

San Francisco, Ca, 94105-2066

National Level

President Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington DC 20500

Anthony Foxx - U.S. Secretary of Transportation

Office of the Secretary

U.S. Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Ave, SE

Washington, DC 20590

Victor Mendez - Deputy Secretary of Transportation

Office of the Secretary

U.S. Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Ave, SE

Washington, DC 20590

Blair Anderson - Undersecretary for Policy

Office of the Secretary

U.S. Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Ave, SE

Washington, DC 20590

Greg Winfree - Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

Office of the Secretary

U.S. Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Ave, SE

Washington, DC 20590

Suzi Emmerling - Director of Public Affairs

Office of the Secretary

U.S. Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Ave, SE

Washington, DC 20590

Shoshana M. Lew - Chief Financial Officer

Office of the Secretary

U.S. Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Ave, SE

Washington, DC 20590

Molly J. Moran - Legal Head

Office of the Secretary

U.S. Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Ave, SE

Washington, DC 20590

Dana Gresham - Government Affairs

Office of the Secretary

U.S. Department of Transportation

1200 New Jersey Ave, SE

Washington, DC 20590

Civil Society

Susan Shaheen

Co-Director, Transportation Sustainability Research Center

University of California Richmond Field Station

1301 S. 46th Street, Building 190

Richmond, CA 94804-3580 (University mail code 3580).

Timothy Lipton

Co-Director, Transportation Sustainability Research Center

University of California Richmond Field Station

1301 S. 46th Street, Building 190

Richmond, CA 94804-3580 (University mail code 3580).

Arpad Horvath 

Co-Director, Transportation Sustainability Research Center

University of California Richmond Field Station

1301 S. 46th Street, Building 190

Richmond, CA 94804-3580 (University mail code 3580).

Stuart Cohen

Director, Transform Ca

436 14th St #600

Oakland, CA 94612

Joshua Stark

State Policy Director

Transform CA

436 14th St #600

Oakland, CA 94612

A letter I sent to the 25 leaders of our transport system

After I came back from hiking among the dying forests of Lassen Park, California, and returned to Bay Area Traffic (6 lane highways backed up in each direction, not in rush hour), I tracked down the 25 people who seem to have the most control over the Bay Area's transport system, and I wrote them each a version of this letter.

Steve Heminger

Executive Director, MTC

Bay Area Metro Centre

375 Beale Street, Suite 800

San Francisco, Ca, 94105-2066

Dear Steve

I am writing to ask for your powerful leadership at this time.

I write this freshly back from the Sierras, where I have been hiking among dying forests, dry rivers, a desiccated ecosystem; realising myself to be a witness to, and participant in, ecocide.

I return to the Bay Area, to this. (It wasn’t rush hour.) 

I know you know the graphs; transportation in California is almost 40% of our CO2 emissions, (in blue on the pie chart); 90% of that is from our cars. It’s California’s biggest single contributor to climate change. 

I’m one of those drivers!

Climate change is devastating California, not to mention other parts of the nation and world. It’s like we’re in an Epic war.

We seem to have at least three scenarios to pursue, which I will outline below, but my point is this.

We need to change the transport system sooner or later, and sooner is much better than later. 

The time is now. We’re on your watch, Steve, and we need your leadership.

I want to feel your leadership, as a driver, as a citizen.

I’d love to see billboards on the freeways. Please talk to us. Could you say something like:

>  Our highways are a major cause of California’s drought and fires.

>  Things need to change.

>  We are working to address it.

>  Work with us.

>  This is our California.

>  This is our world.

>  www.the_transport_project_or_whatever.gov.us

The top 3 scenarios are perhaps:

1. Business as usual. Congestion, CO2 emissions, climate change, big profits for car, gas, tyre and concrete companies, but what of the commuters, residents and ecosystems?

1. Electric Driverless Cars. Will that really tackle the congestion, and the % of our towns allocated to roads and parking? Concrete, concrete, concrete.

1. Fast trains between cities, clean quiet trams on the major N-S, E-W arteries within cities, swipe-in, swipe-out city cars and bikes for the first and last mile. A smaller, lighter road system for folks who really need to drive, in their electric driverless cars.

There may be more scenarios and I am a musician not a transport planner. But Steve, something has to change, doesn’t it? 

The solution has to be not what the car, gas, concrete and tyre industries are lobbying for, but what is really right for California in the long term. The organisations, products and services can change, and can be supported to change. The need to have mobility within a healthy ecosystem is bigger, and paramount.

If you crack this, cities and countries the world over will say, hey, they did it in California, we can do it here. For decades. You’d be a hero.

Hiking among the dead and dying trees in Lassen park yesterday, I was really struck by, wow, we’re in something of an Epic war, the scale of which, all things considered, vastly exceeds the destruction of the holocaust, and this is what we are living in, right now. It’s like being German citizens in 1942. 

And going with business as usual is like saying, well, the gas chambers are already built and the systems are already in place, so let’s let them run their course.

And someone - me, we, you, has to stand up and say, No. 

There’s something really important to protect here.

And it’s our waters, our children’s future, our forests, all the creatures that live in them, and ultimately our ability to survive and thrive in California.

Steve, I look to you for your leadership.

Please stand up to this crisis and opportunity with all of the courage, integrity, ingenuity, power and intelligence that you have.

We could move from ‘me’ to ‘we’ as we think about mobility. We could take the best technology from other nations: Japanese bullet trains, clean quiet Swiss city trams; swipe in, swipe out cars and bikes for the odd little ends of the journey. It’s really possible for us; we’re a brilliant State.

We need you, and I for one am counting on you.

Do you need anything from me? Let me know.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Briony Greenhill

(Graph: California EPA Air Resources Board, May 2014: California Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory: 2000 - 2012, p16.)

Brilliant Stuff Other Cities Have Done with Transport and Public Space, Public Beauty

Street Trams in Vienna - light, quiet, fast - where it costs 1 Euro to go anywhere in the city, all day.

This is a consequence of the Vienna / Austrian government's "relentless approach towards modal shift."

 In Stockholm, Sweden, 93% of people walk, bike or take public transport to work. (Source)

So, the city is not all concrete and highways.

Madrid, in Spain, has created a car-free square mile in the city. Shalom. (Source)

In Bordeaux, the 7th largest city in France, they closed parking lots, narrowed the roads, installed a great tram network, and planted a bunch of trees. My Dad, a British retired urban planner, told me all about it.

Public space can be So Much More Beautiful. Cities can be so much quieter, safer, and peaceful. 

We can be happy and healthier.

Good for the drought, fires, carbon and climate change, too.

Peace.

Amsterdam has more bicycles than people. (Source)

In Curitiba, Brazil, 85% of people use the Bus Rapid Transit system (BRT). They're proud; it transports 2 million people a day (London's moves 3 million people a day). Then, they could pedestrianise many parts of the city.

Bogota, Colombia. "You have a human right to water. You do not have a human right to parking," said former mayor Enrique Penalosa. So he removed parking lots, installed extensive walk-bike ways, and a BRT (Bus Rapid Transport System.) "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars," he said. "It’s where the rich use public transport." (Source). 

San Francisco Bay Area, center of innovation and ingenuity; listed as one of the "Greenest Cities in the World" has... highways! And this famous "Bay Area Traffic."

And a rising population. And massive drought and fires.

What's possible for our motion? Let's Do This :)

Just sayin': today I'm having my car serviced. It's costing $400. Last month I changed the battery. It cost $325. I paid $7200 for the car. I pay $100 a month for insurance, maybe $60 a month for gas.

There are about 8 million of us living here, with many / most of us paying something like this for our cars.

What if all that money were pooled.

We could do something f*****g amazing

What is a "we"?

So, I talk with nature.

Walking alone in the woods recently at Lassen volcanic park, the woods seemed to say to me, "well, do you have an intention for today?" Humm, I thought. "How about, how am I doing?"

The woods looked back at me, reflecting in their gaze my intense individuality. Looking at life from an ecological and cross-cultural, historal position, this modern western individualism is... strange.

"We are a we," they said. "To ask how I am doing, ask, how are we doing?"

I began to wonder, and have been wondering ever since, who the we is, who the we might be.

A standard we is a nuclear family. But I'm sceptical about the nuclear family. This needs its own post.

The ways of the we

Returning to Berkeley after 10 weeks away, visiting family and friends, being in retreats and camps and the wilderness, it felt shocking to "grab" dinner at Wholefoods, alone, eating out of a little cardboard box, food grown perhaps by underpaid immigrants, prepared by brown skinned people, sold to white me at the Wholefoods premium, they profit. I eat alone among other people eating alone with laptops or newspapers. We are tribe-less, atomic consumers.

Tribe-less Atomic Consumers

How might we describe this? You're self responsible. You earn money and use it to get dinner, housing, clothing, your car. You live quite privately. Your life is your own affair. You make social arrangements privately. There is no place where you can just go, to just be with people.

A family I teach recently moved into a new development of 80 houses. There was no one place for people to gather together. "There are two stores," said the father when I asked about it.

To meet our needs, we shop, we use technology, we medicate.

Some of the downsides: my 86 year old neighbour, Roger, hadn't spoken to anybody for two weeks when I met him on the street. Nuclear families struggle. Widows and widowers can struggle. Single people can be lonely, couples can be unsupported. Folks use a fair bit of porn, it seems. Each household has its own dishwasher, set of tools etc - lots of Stuff. We each buy our food in its plastic wrappers, etc etc - I could go on but you Know This Picture. And it sucks. We each drive our private cars out of the driveway on to the big concrete roads and freeways that dominate our public space and kill our planet. And eventually us. Bye bye.


Temporary, partial tribes

I've lived and loved in a few tribes since arriving in California 4 years ago. The Stepping Stones Project is a beautiful multi-generational tribe who gather around the project of youth initiation. They aim to be, a "village" as much as an organization. Gosh when I arrived, a recent immigrant from a big British family, these people became by uncles and aunts, brothers sisters and cousins, and it was beautiful.

Until my work in the world changed, I lost devotion to the project, and had a conflict with the ED.

So people go in and out of that tribe, in different rhythms, basically depending on whether it is part of their work in the world right now.


The Ecology of Leadership Program at the Permaculture Center in Bolinas, the Regenerative Design Institute, made a beautiful little "village" for the 10 month duration of the program, and a little while afterwards. But in the end, the village was pop-up, baseless in the long term, organised around a short term program.



Family tribes

I am in a big family. We enter through birth or marriage, and we leave through death. We come together around weddings, funerals, major birthdays, Christmases and Easter. We are all, pretty much, equally a part of it. We track each others lives and stories over the long term. We support one another emotionally, practically, financially. We share Stuff; family gifts and wounds, inheritance, shadow and healing potential, should we choose to go there. It's deep and important.

And, we mainly get together and sit, talk, eat and drink, and go on walks.

We kind of... don't do any other ways of relating so much, and....... humm.... there's potential for more... intimacy, connection, depth, fun. Alcohol and food seem to take some of the place of that.

And, the family web has in it the struggles of the nuclear family.


Utopian Tribes I might imagine...

Ok this is its own blog post.