The Total Femme

Up in the nights solving. Staring into space solving. Walking of a morning solving. Drinking tea, showering, vacuuming, meditating – always solving. The trouble is, once I’ve made a little progress on the solution, whatever it may be and whatever it may be about, something else pops up in annoying whack-a-mole fashion (who thought of that horrible game, anyway?).

Seems like just about every second in my fast and furious brain another problem or ten is born. It makes me tired and it makes me wonder: Is my whole life just one big long string of problems? Sugar plum fairies, is yours?

Having a million problems is one more problem to solve. I want closure!

Closure, oh, Closure, you mythical beast! The more I search, the more you feast! Right, my endless quest for the closure I think will come by solving problem after problem they’re jumping like fleas, I tell you, well. From my head, my body, radiating outward, these problems, my personal Ps to the problems in the room, the house, town, county, state, country, continent, ocean, world. A fucking infestation.

And is the infestation a problem? Well, yes, of course it is, I guess, I mean, maybe.

It’s a lot of problems, ok? How do I manage the worry and heartbreak of the all of it, the melting ice, the suffering beings, the mounting misery? The unfinished project, the embarrassing misstep, my mother’s limitations, my father’s death (how those last tragic weeks return, they return), my own health, the health of those I love? The unexpected, the familiar? It’s hard and I want to fix it. Solve it. Manage and manage some more.

If everything is a problem there ought to be solutions. To everything.

It’s such hard work! Where is it getting me? On and on and on through problem set after problem set in some horrible, interminable, torturous algebra text book.

Oh for heaven’s sake!

Let’s think about bodies for a moment. My precious and somewhat dinged up body, and yours. Like you, I expect, the longer I’ve gone on, the more my collection of crotchets and companion pains has grown. Just today my chiropractor and I were discussing my knee. Hello, knee! And ouch. Well, ok, so what I’m trying to say is that if I’ve got a body, if I’ve been kicking around for 61 years, I’ve got stuff, thanks to gravity, chemicals in food and water, inherited genes, repeated motion, hobbies, propensities, and all the rest of it.

After all this time, I’ve found that I’m much more comfortable with a practitioner, doctor, dentist, whoever, who will say, “Hmm,” and then either just keep me company and give me context or give me a maybe this will help, maybe not. This feels so much more honest and respectful of mortality and reality than an enthusiastic and clueless this will cure you and it might have if I was 30 again but maybe not even then and if it doesn’t work it’s on me not on Enthusiastic and Clueless.

Some things you can’t fix, but you can live with them.

Back to closure, oh magical closure! But can I handle it? Can I really put something down, let it rest, so I can rest? Few and far between. Sometimes – lots of times, I forget stuff, a kind of closure, but the very devil when I remember it in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep for hours, nibbling and gnawing at it, trying to come up with a solution.

I can’t solve for misery. I can’t solve for mortality. They are the companion pains of existence and there is no closure.

So maybe it’s less solving and more co-existing. Less nibbling and gnawing and more allowing. A little more watching what my brain does because that’s what my brain does and a little less grabbing onto each new bit of info aka problem and piling it on.

Not that I particularly know how to do that, but perhaps that “Hmm,” is a good start. Gives you a hot second before you barrel down the familiar giant slide that never stops and never stops, no end, no friendly wood chips to catch you at the bottom so you can say, whew, that was a wild ride.

Darling darling dear queer femme sisters, oh! How skilled you are at problem solving, I know you are, I know you exel and abound at it, I know, I know.

Today, for just this instant – an instant where a problem can pop up, ack, there it is, I can just see it forming its problematic outline in the gorgeous gray matter of your gorgeous brain, well, smile, say hello, say goodbye, say I’m just going to be here for a moment in all my beauty, in all my imperfection, in all my insolvable femme mystery.

I am, you are, we are and will be. Here together. Heart together.

No problem.   

Every Monday (except when I post on a Tuesday!), I offer a Meditation for Queer Femmes, in the spirit of my maternal grandmother, Mimi, who was fabulous, and from whom I inherited her Meditations for Women.

At the Total Femme, my intention has been to post three times a week: Meditations for Queer Femmes on Monday, Pingy-Dingy Wednesday on Wednesday, and Femme Friday on Friday. Lately, I’ve just been concentrating on Mondays. And sometimes weeks go by… I’m here, though. I’m here.