Learning to Follow (Blog #43)

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This evening I attended a swing dance in Northwest Arkansas, and my friend Matt was there. Matt’s a dance instructor in Springfield, and we danced together several times. One time I was the leader, but the other times I was the follower, and I was pretty much in heaven because I love to follow and don’t get a chance to do it very often. Right before the dance ended, Matt even lifted me up in the air a couple of times, and I felt like my little nephew because I kept saying, “Again, Again!”

I can’t exactly say when my fascination with following started. For the longest time, I taught followers at my studio, but wasn’t actually on the floor following on a consistent basis. But over the last few years, I’ve made it more of a priority, something to work on, something to actively seek out.

Having spent most of my time on the dance floor as a leader, I can say it’s often exhausting. Of course, everyone has a job to do, but the leaders have a lot of responsibilities, and they make a LOT of decisions—where to go, how to get there, what to do WHEN we get there. It’s like being a tourist guide, really. There’s always this low to high level of stress that sounds like, What’s next? What’s next? What’s next? Like I said—exhausting.

As the name implies, leading is a rather active thing. Following, however, is more passive. Followers have their responsibilities of course, but since the bulk of the decisions belong to the leader, followers often get to enjoy the ride a little bit more. There’s more listening on the follower’s side, and that means there’s more anticipation, a certain type of wonder about what’s going to happen. I think followers are also thinking, What’s next? What’s next? What’s next?, but rather than coming from a place of stress, their question comes from a place of excitement.

I admit I’m not the best follower. (However, a nice Australian woman with a delightful accent told me tonight that I was “a lovely lady dancer.” I’m pretty sure I blushed.) I’m so used to being in charge, it’s hard not to back-lead and try to take control. But when I can relax, it goes better, and it’s such a relief to get a break, to not have to be in charge or decide, to not have to know what’s going to happen next.

There is a force, a momentum that dances with all of us.

In the car this evening, I listened to a book by Ann Patchett called What now? The book was adapted from a commencement speech Ann gave at her alma mater, and it deals largely with the question we tend to ask when our lives are changing—What now? In terms of school and business, Ann says we often put a big emphasis on learning to lead, but that most of our lives is actually spent following, so it’s useful to learn to follow. As a writer, she says she spends most of her time listening, most of her time observing, most of her time staring at her computer screen, waiting for something to happen.

Up until tonight, I thought the whole leading and following thing applied mostly to the dance floor. That was context in which I knew it. But since listening to Ann’s book, I’ve been thinking about all the applications of leading and following OFF the dance floor. For example, I’m usually a “make shit happen” kind of person. I typically have a plan, work nonstop, and am ridiculously productive. In short, I’m used to being a leader.

But lately the biggest decision I’ve made has been whether to have waffles or pancakes for breakfast. And since I don’t have a job, I haven’t been working so much. And I guess I’ve been giving myself a hard time about that, but now I’m seeing that I’m getting a chance to be a follower. Sure, I could see that as scary, but I could also see it as exciting. Like, I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t know how I’m going to get there, but there’s a certain type of wonder about all that, and it’s not as if I’m dancing alone here. There is a force, a momentum that dances with all of us, sometimes lifting us up in the air, sometimes bringing us back down in a great mystery of starts and stops. So I can relax and enjoy the ride for a while. I can be passive for a change. I can wake up each day with excitement and ask, What’s next? What’s next? What’s next?

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"Sickness and health come and go, just like everything else. It's just the way life is."

The Truth Is a Monster (Blog #42)

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This morning I helped my friend Madeline redecorate her home. For a while, I just kept walking around the house, going from room to room and thinking about what needed to go where, but I couldn’t decide. After a good bit of this, I finally sat down in a chair in the living room. Instead of thinking, I decided to feel. Call it intuition or Feng Shui, but there were areas of the room that felt crowded, and there were spaces on the walls that didn’t feel like they could breathe as well as others. There were pieces that didn’t feel like they got along with each other, like they needed to be separated.

Having checked in with my feelings, I could then explain them to Madeline. “See, all these pieces look hand-made, they don’t belong next to the ones that are mass-produced.” But it wasn’t something I could articulate before I sat down and checked in with my gut. Once I did, we were off and running.

Here’s a picture of three pieces we grouped together because of their complimentary colors.

This afternoon I watched a movie called A Monster Calls. It’s about a boy whose mom is terminally ill and his encounters with a tree outside his window that turns into a monster. The monster tells the boy three stories, for which the boy must tell the monster a story—his nightmare. I really wanted to love this movie, but I didn’t. (I’ve had this same experience with several people and more than one piece of chocolate cake.) Having said that, there was a pretty profound scene in the movie that I loved. (I’m about to tell you about it, so if you’re hell-bent on watching the movie and not knowing what happens, I suggest you put this blog down, go watch it, and come back to the next paragraph. If you’ve already seen it or don’t care, tally forth.)

Toward the end of the movie, the monster comes to collect the boy’s nightmare, and the boy kind of beats around the bush and says, I can’t tell you the truth, I can’t say it. But the monster is really big and really intimidating, so the boy finally comes out with and says that he wishes his mom would die—he loves her—but he wants the whole thing to be over—it’s too painful.

(Since we’ve come this far, I’ll go ahead and tell you that the monster tells the boy his feelings are normal, very human. More than anything else, he says, the boy is very brave for being honest.)

The movie made me think of a situation that came up in therapy once. I was having some difficulties with a friend who was crossing some boundaries, and although I knew I had a problem, I couldn’t articulate it. So kind of like the monster in the movie (and I mean that in the most endearing way possible), my therapist got a little aggressive and said, “Do you want to spend time with this person or not?” And I kind of sheepishly said, “No.”

And my therapist said, “Say it again.”

So a bit more forcefully, I said, “NO.”

And my therapist said, “Say it again.”

“NO!”

My therapist shot to the edge of her seat, clapped her hands together like a televangelist casting out demons, and said, “THAT’S your truth!”

In the movie, the boy thought that he would die or be punished when he spoke his truth, and he was surprised when he didn’t. My reaction to my truth that day in therapy wasn’t that dramatic, but I was surprised that I felt so strongly about the relationship with my friend. I mean, we’d spent a lot of time together. I cared about them.

Over the next few days, I was able to make sense of the truth I’d spoken in therapy. I’d been angry with my friend for quite a while but had been biting my tongue (my therapist says that hurts). I was sweeping problems under the rug.

The thing that I have slowly learned over the years is that my gut is trustworthy. Looking back, I can see so many times that it was telling me to slow down or back away or run like hell. But I almost always made excuses in favor of avoiding a confrontation. (Red flag? No problem—full speed ahead!) However, now I’m learning that relationships are like decorating a room. Sometimes things get crowded and you need space to breathe, and sometimes things don’t go together and they need to be separated. And maybe it takes a little work to make the necessary changes, but it always feels better when you do.

At least in my case, I’ve found that sometimes I have to get out of my head and stop thinking about things so much. I have to sit down and check in with my gut. When I do, the truth is always right there waiting for me. And I don’t blame anyone who runs from the truth because the truth isn’t always pretty, and the truth isn’t always easy. More often than not, the truth is a monster. It gets in your face and makes you get honest. And sometimes the truth even physically separates you from people you care about, if for no other reason than to bring you closer to yourself.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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And God knows you don't make everyone else happy. But this is no reason to quit or be discouraged, since doing what you love and feel called to do is never--never--about gaining acceptance from others.

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everything right where it belongs (blog #41)

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This afternoon I met my roommates (my parents), my aunt, and a family friend at a cafeteria for lunch—like a buffet line, green Jell-O, all-you-can-eat-dessert-section cafeteria. Personally, I think places like this are heaven, but not when you’re on a diet. Somehow I was able to stick to salad and baked chicken, but kept drooling over the tacos, macaroni and cheese, and soft-serve ice cream. It felt like having a spectator pass at an orgy. Like, I wasn’t completely satisfied.

After lunch, I’d intended to go to my office (the public library), but realized that I’d left my laptop at home. Well, when you’re retired (unemployed), you don’t have anything else to do, so I drove home, got my laptop, then drove all the way back to the library.

Recently I discovered how to sync my laptop files to an online account. I realize I’m a little late to that party, but I can’t tell you how good it feels to have everything backed up, especially considering the fact that I lost all the files from my other computer. It feels good to know that something is secure. So today I copied the files from my recent CT scan to my online account, and I kept looking at the file structure, satisfied that everything was both “safe” and “right where it belonged.”

Even now, I keep going back and looking at the files. Yep, they’re still there—organized—exactly where I left them.

It just makes my little heart sing.

A couple of weeks ago I took a metal shelf from my parents’ garage, cleaned it off, and put my collection of Broadway show magnets on it. The project took about an hour because I arranged the magnets first by the city in which I saw the shows and second in the order I saw them. I realize NO ONE ELSE GIVES A SHIT or would even notice, but every time I look at it, it makes me happy and reminds me of a line from a poem I memorized in high school: “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”

I think my therapist has only used the term Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with me a couple of times in three years, and I think she said, “A little OCD” or “A touch of OCD.” (You think?) But it’s definitely a label that comes to my mind whenever I’m arranging my computer files or magnet collection. Hell, I should probably put it on my business cards:

Marcus Coker, OCD
(Let’s alphabetize!)

My psychologist friend Craig told me the story of a lady he knew who HAD to wash her dishes five times by hand before they could go in the dishwasher. She was afraid her family would get sick from germs. No one ever got sick, so that reinforced her habit. He also told me about a woman who could never see her son because she obsessively thought about killing him. (Whoa.) So Craig said OCD can get really bad; it can seriously alter your life.

Once I read a slightly angry blog that said people like the dish-washing lady and the might-kill-her-own-son lady who have clinically-diagnosed OCD don’t particularly appreciate people like me using the term. Like, YOU don’t have real OCD, I do. You’re just tidy.

I mean, I can appreciate that. And I am tidy. But I guess OCD is a bit like a scale, and Craig says that a little OCD can be functional, so I’m not quite ready to give up the label.

We can hang on and put everything safely in its place, and then at some point, we’re forced to let go.

This evening I went for a two-hour walk. I ended up on Mount Vista, an area of town that was hit by a tornado in 1996. It’s really weird walking in that part of town because I used to ride my bike there, and I have all these memories of the houses and landmarks I’ve seen hundreds of times. Well, there’s this one house on my Mount Vista route that stands out because my sister and I volunteered to clean there after the tornado. And I really don’t remember much about it, but I do recall standing in the kitchen in a puddle of water and going through a cabinet, and there were dozens and DOZENS of Cool Whip containers stacked neatly inside each other, right where they belonged, tidy except for the fact that the house around them was completely ruined.

I’ve thought about those Cool Whip containers a lot over the years. My guess is that the person they belonged to was a little OCD like I am. And I think it’s interesting how we can hang on and put everything safely in its place, and then at some point, we’re forced to let go. A tornado comes into your life, and everything is out of place, and safe no longer exists, if it ever did.

Even though I recently voluntarily let go of a LOT of stuff, I still fight the tendency to start hanging on again, whether it’s with computer files, magnets, whatever. To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with collecting, and I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with putting everything in its place, right where it belongs. I imagine I’ll always be tidy. But whenever I start hanging on and organizing, there’s part of me that feels like I’m reaching for control, as if I’ll somehow be able to avoid a disaster if everything is—in order.

But life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes it’s chaotic and sometimes it’s messy. So going forward, I don’t want to kid myself into believing that having everything just so makes me safe and secure. It doesn’t. Everything, after all, passes way, and it’s not like anything temporary completely satisfies. And that’s more than okay. I don’t need all my things lined up in order for my heart to sing. The heart sings for its own reasons—it doesn’t need a thing.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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It takes forty years in the desert for seas to part.

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the long road to resurrection (blog #40)

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When I sold most of my possessions several months ago, one of the few things I kept was a mid-century modern crucifix that shows Jesus with both hands nailed above his head, kind of off to one side like Martha Graham or Jerome Robbins. It’s part of a “traveling alter” I set up wherever I move, and whenever I joke about it, I call him Rock Star Jesus, sometimes Jesus Christ, Superstar. Personally, I don’t think that’s blasphemous, although I probably would have at one time. Plus, I didn’t keep the crucifix because it’s a good joke. It actually means something to me.

There’s a story in the Acts of John that Jesus danced with his disciples the night before his crucifixion. When one considers that the cross represents surrendering personal will to divine will, this becomes a beautiful image. Jesus had so completely given up his own will, so surrendered to the father whom he trusted, that he could actually find joy in giving up his life.

That’s why I like Rock Star Jesus. He reminds me to surrender—joyfully.

Tonight I went for a walk around the neighborhood. I drank a lot of coffee this evening and felt like I needed to burn it off. It sort of worked, but about halfway back, the coffee really started working, and I thought, Uh-oh. Anyway, up until the coffee kicked in and I started power walking, it was a lovely midnight stroll. The full moon hung in the sky, the smell of honeysuckle drifted across the cool air, and I was kept company by the sounds of the crickets and the bullfrogs.

As I walked, I thought a lot about a book my friend Marla gave me last year called Learning to Walk in the Dark. The book is by Barbara Brown Taylor, a former Episcopalian minister who left the church, as I understand it, in favor of a more-encompassing form of spirituality. In short, Barbara proposes that although the term dark is almost exclusively associated with things that are bad or wrong or scary, almost all of us would agree that the times in our lives we have labeled dark are also the times that our souls have grown the most. So even though the dark is often unfamiliar and uncomfortable, it’s just as necessary to our spiritual path as the light is.

Tonight as I walked up my parents’ street, the street I grew up on and have walked more times than I can count, I tried closing my eyes. This is something I often tell followers to do while dancing. It helps put your focus more on what your feeling and less one what you’re seeing. But whether your dancing or walking along the road, it’s hard to do. I found tonight that when I’d close my eyes, my ears would immediately tune in to sounds I hadn’t noticed before—a train going down the tracks, my shoes striking the pavement, a church bell in the distance. But I could only go maybe a dozen steps without opening my eyes.

Going down a familiar hill, I tried putting one foot on the road and one foot on the grass. I can keep my eyes closed longer this way, I thought, I can see with my feet. But still, my eyes kept popping open.

It’s hard to trust what you can’t see.

Shortcuts don’t really get you where you want to go.

Last September, Marla and I drove to Little Rock to see Barbara Brown Taylor speak as part of a lecture series at an Episcopal church. This is the sort of thing writers really get off on. It was like going to a rock concert. For over an hour, I sat on the edge of my pew in absolute wonder at Barbara’s ability to not only write and speak beautiful words, but also to accurately and compassionately comment on what it means to be human.

Go read the book (after you read this blog).

When Barbara finished lecturing, she opened the floor up for questions, and I jumped out of my seat and headed for the microphone in the middle of the room. First I thanked her for being there, then I brought up the story of Jesus dancing, and then I asked how a person could take joy during the difficult times in life. Barbara said she wasn’t sure that most of us have the same spiritual DNA that Jesus did, so it’s difficult. But then she said, “Obviously you’re going somewhere with this, so what do YOU think?”

So there I was stood, in a room full of people, thinking, Oh crap, I wasn’t prepared for this.

But I said, “Well, I’m really fascinated by this idea that Jesus trusted God so much that he absolutely knew that God had a plan. And I know that personally there are times that something happens—a breakup, a death—and I think, This is the worst thing. But then maybe a few years go by and I look back and think, That’s the best thing that could have happened. So the older I get, the more hesitant I am to label anything as bad. But sometimes I get frustrated that it takes so long to have that perspective.”

Barbara said that was called wanting a “spiritual shortcut.” Things take as long as they take and that’s where the growth happens. It’s not overnight, and it’s not right away. She said that sometimes when bad things happen, the best we can do is maybe drink a beer with a good friend.

I remember talking to my therapist that first time on the phone and saying, “Well if we can take care of everything in six sessions, that’s great, but I’m willing to come for a year if that’s what we need to do.” She said, “I’m just going to go with my gut and say it’s going to take a year.”

Here we are three years later, and even though the last three years have been full of challenges, I can’t tell you how glad I am that I didn’t take the shorter route.

So I think about shortcuts a lot. This time in my life feels like walking in the dark, stumbling along, trying to find my way. Some days I try to close my eyes and feel my way through it, but it’s hard to trust what you can’t see. It’s hard to surrender. It’s hard to dance when you know your old life is dying and you don’t have a promise of resurrection. It’s easy to want the difficult times to be over. I think that’s why Jesus said, “I don’t want to do this if I don’t have to,” like, “I don’t want to do this if there’s a shortcut.” But obviously there wasn’t. Shortcuts don’t really get you where you want to go. Resurrections happen on the long road.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Even a twisted tree grows tall and strong.

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getting body positive (blog #39)

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I’ve been thinking that if I want good material to write about every day, it would really help for me to leave the house. I mean, I could tell you about my trip to the mailbox today, or the fact that Dad watched his favorite soap opera twice (once by himself and once with Mom), but I can’t imagine that would be anymore exciting than the fact that I had spinach for breakfast (woo).

Yesterday while I was waiting on my prescriptions to be filled, I decided it was time to buy some groceries and put together a meal plan for the week that didn’t involve white bread and eating peanut butter from a jar. So I picked up some protein, fruit and vegetables, almond milk, and granola. I also got some dandelion tea because I’m fancy (and it’s supposed to be cleansing). And despite the fact that I ate fried chicken, chocolate chip cookies, AND cheese fried in corndog batter less than twenty-four hours before, I still felt like a superior bitch when I put my healthy food on the conveyer belt next to some lady’s TV dinner.

I’m telling myself that I don’t have to do a 30-day balls-to-the-wall diet like I’ve done in the past. I can start slow, drink more water, cut out desserts. So that’s what I did today. After dinner, Mom and Dad and I listened to the S-Town Podcast, which if you don’t know about, you need to. This is my second time through it, and it’s storytelling at its finest. Anyway, during the podcast, I did a few yoga stretches. It was nothing major, but it was a beginning, and that’s something.

I’m not sure why the decision to eat a couple healthy meals today and do some light stretching feels so good. Like, I stepped on the scale this evening, and it’s not as if the number changed from what it was last week. But I actually feel better, and I’m sure that feeling has something to do with self-respect.

Caroline Myss, who teaches about chakras (the energetic centers that produce and maintain our physical bodies), says that our self-esteem is located at our third chakra, which is around the navel. She says that we grow our self-esteem when we keep the promises we make. So if you’re always telling yourself that you’re going to start a diet or go to the gym or whatever and you don’t, your self-esteem will take a hit because you’re literally not being true to yourself.

My therapist and I don’t talk about weight a lot, but she says that if you’re going to eat stuff that’s “bad” for you, eat the expensive stuff. Don’t waste your time on Cheetos because they don’t fully satisfy. Really indulge. At some point, you’ll burn out. She also says that most people go back and forth within a ten-to-fifteen pound range, so even though I freak out about gaining ten pounds, it’s a normal thing to do. As my friend Jim says, “Weight goes up, weight goes down.”

Seasons change.

Beating yourself up is a far cry from self-respect.

Last week I spent a couple of days with my friend Kira. She used to take dance from me, but then, just to prove that miracles exist, she met a stud in the military and moved to Italy. Anyway, she’s back in the states, and while we were hanging out, she used a phrase that I’ve fallen in love with. It’s “body positive.” Kira says that body positive means that you think and speak well about your body, you don’t put yourself down. And maybe it’s not something you get perfect, but it’s a goal, and I think it’s a good one.

In light of body positive, I’ve been thinking a lot this week about my tendency to pick at all my physical imperfections, and I had a small revelation. It might seem obvious, but I realized that all the picking and self-criticism don’t do any good. They don’t really motivate me. More than that, none of it makes me happy.

Recently a friend and I were talking about how I was able to get to the point of selling most of my worldly possessions, how I went from being a hanger-on-er to a let-it-go-er. I said that before I decide to sell everything, I was coming home most days depressed. (My therapist says I wasn’t clinically depressed, but I definitely wasn’t myself.) And one day I was looking at all my stuff and thought, If it’s that great, it would make me happy. If it’s that important, I wouldn’t be sad.

So I got rid of it. And sure, there are a few things I still think about, but nothing I’m heartbroken about letting go of, and I’m happier with less than I was with more. Go figure.

That’s what I mean about all the self-criticism not making me happy. I’ve been at it a long time, and both in the short and the long-term, it hasn’t done anything for me except make me feel worse. I mean, I know I want to eat better, and I can do something about that to show myself respect. But changing your habits in order to improve your life is different than beating yourself up in order to feel better about yourself. Beating yourself up, after all, isn’t body positive. Beating yourself is a far cry from self-respect.

I’ll let you know how the gentle, body positive approach goes. It’s only been one day, but so far, so good. And don’t worry, I promise this won’t become a food blog. I’m not a great chef. Plus, I’m leaving the house tomorrow (woo), so there will be other things to talk about it.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

"We were made to love without conditions. That's the packaging we were sent with."

a higher perspective (blog #38)

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Wayne Dyer tells the story about a memory he had during a spiritual experience. The memory took place before his birth, and his soul was deciding under what conditions it would be incarnated. He says that during his life on earth he wanted to teach others about unconditional love and finding their inner strength, so he knew that he first had to develop those qualities in himself. The best way to do that, he reasoned, was through a difficult circumstance. So it was at that time, before he was even born, that he decided his father needed to be an alcoholic who would later abandon him to an orphanage.

I think about this story a lot. There are a number of spiritual teachers who propose that we choose our parents, that our souls map out major players and events in our lives long before they actually happen, that there are no such things as accidents. Most of the time, I’m inclined to believe this way. Of course, the bitch of the whole thing is that once you’re here on earth (and not wherever you were before you came here), you forget all the reasons your soul had for picking out your family, your partner, your job, and even your body (you know, the one with the receding hairline).

Many people who have had out-of-body or near-death experiences say that in between lifetimes, our soul has counselors, other souls who advise us on how best to set up our life here on earth. I guess those counselors are pretty sharp, and they say things like, “I know it’s been a while since you’ve been in a physical body, and you’ve probably forgotten how miserable it can be to have back problems. Maybe you don’t really want to go to earth this time. Take another look. It’s a fucking mess down there.” I also guess our souls are pretty determined, like they can look at the plan for a painful life, decide that the positives far outweigh the negatives, and say, “Sign me up. I can take it.”

Personally, I haven’t had a spiritual experience during which I’ve remembered why my soul decided to come to earth. But I’m constantly attracted to literature and teachers that talk about unconditional love and the idea that life is kind, so it probably has something to do with learning more about those things. As a result, I can usually look at even the most terrible events that have happened in my life and see that those are the times when I grew the most. So the older I get, the more reluctant I am to label any experience as bad. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I enjoy the difficult times, but it does make them more bearable.

These things have been on my mind today because this afternoon I went to a walk-in clinic. I’ve been coughing for a week now, and last night during a fit of coughing, I think I actually levitated and I know for certain that my chest vibrated. I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think that’s supposed to happen. So I went to the doctor and found out that I have an upper respiratory infection, probably brought on by “allergy season.”

Even as I’m typing now, I’m fighting the urge to not get frustrated because I’ve been on so many antibiotics lately (and I hate that) and because I just had that sinus surgery and it’s easy to look at the mucus that I cough up every morning and think that it didn’t do a damn bit of good. I’m so tired of getting sick (again) that my knee-jerk reaction is to label the whole thing as “bad.”

Now, that being said, I’ve done a pretty decent job today of not letting that frustration overwhelm me. Rather, I’ve thought a lot about the fact that everyone at the clinic and pharmacy was extremely kind and helpful. Insurance took care of the majority of charges, and the doctor was gentle and attentive. When I told him I taught dance, he asked if I had a studio, and when I said that I’d closed mine and wanted to move, he said, “I hope you find yourself in a place you love doing what you enjoy doing.”

I imagine that he has no idea what a simple sentence like that means to me. Most days, I keep my chin up. I can look at my life the way it is—living with my parents, in a town I’m grateful for but not in love with, having no definite plan for what’s to come next, worried my dreams won’t come true—and keep putting one foot in front of the other. But when I get sick, especially with a sinus infection, I tend to lose hope. And I’ve spent so much time being scared of and intimidated by life as a whole, that it’s a really big thing to sit in a doctor’s office comfortably and recognize the moment for what it was—kind.

I spent this evening reading another hundred pages in Andrew Solomon’s book about depression, so my parents and I talked about it, and my mom told my dad how grateful she was that he’d stuck by her for all these years. (It’s common for depressives to lose their jobs, friends, and spouses.) The conversation made me think of just how hopeless depression must feel, especially chronic depression like my mom’s. Comparatively, my sinus issues are nothing, although they do bring up that feeling of hopelessness.

When I look at my mom, I see someone who is really strong, although I’m sure she doesn’t feel that way most of the time. But she was probably one of those souls that said, “Sign me up. I can take it.” I wouldn’t presume to know what her journey is all about, but when I think about why my soul might choose a mom with depression, I imagine that it would be because it’s teaching me to be gentler with myself and others, to be more compassionate, to be less demanding. As Mom said once, “You don’t have to excel every day.”

And when I think about why in god’s name I might choose a body with tendency for sinus infections, I imagine it would be because it’s been the perfect vehicle for me to learn to love myself—no matter how I feel—no matter what condition. Additionally, it’s helping me see the world as a kinder place, a place where there is help, a place where there is hope, a place where there is rest for the tired.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Sure, we forget it plenty of times, but on the inside we’re all shining. This is what gives me hope, knowing that we are all radiant.

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small beginnings (blog #36)

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Last night I slept for a grand total of two hours. When the alarm went off at 7:45 this morning, I stumbled into the kitchen and stood in a daze with the freezer door open for five minutes while I stared at one frozen waffle and wished it were two frozen waffles. (Unfortunately, the waffle never multiplied, so don’t ask me to feed the five thousand.)

I spent the day attending Leadercast at the Van Buren Performing Art Center. Leadercast is an annual, national event where several prominent leaders from various fields come together to discuss leadership. This year’s theme was “purpose,” and the event took place in Atlanta, but was broadcast to cities around the world, including Van Buren. Two of the speakers today were local, and one of them was my friend Marla, and she had an extra ticket, and that’s why I dragged my ass out of bed so early.

When I got to the event, the third speech was already in progress, so I sneaked in the back and thought, Apparently some leaders get out of bed REALLY early. The guy speaking was Jim McKelvey, the creator of the credit card processing software called Square. Well, anytime I attend events like these, I always take notes because my inner straight-A student simply will not quit, even when he’s sleep deprived. So the first thing I wrote in my “lowing my expectations has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams” notebook was “An artist is someone who makes something that nobody needs,” but what I thought was “An artist is someone in his mid-thirties who lives with his parents and stays up until five-thirty in the morning blogging about it,” which just made my ego soar. I’m an artist.

After Jim’s speech, there was a break and I found Marla. We walked upstairs where several sponsors were giving away free pens, magnets, squeezy balls to help reduce stress, and coffee. Ya’ll, I’ve never been so glad to see a cup of coffee in all my life. It tasted like a miracle, better than two frozen waffles ever could have. But the most notable part of the entire break was that there was a jazz combo playing, right there in the middle of the room (in Van Buren, Arkansas). I looked at Marla and said, “Who has a jazz combo at nine-thirty in the morning?” Talk about something that nobody needs. Still, I couldn’t help do a little Bob Fosse number as we walked down the stairs, the whole time thinking, I should get up before noon more often.

After the break, there were more speakers, and then we had lunch. And then there were even more speakers. One guy, a psychologist named Dr. Henry Cloud, told the story of a woman with an eating disorder who used to come to group therapy “dressed to the nines.” And it became this point of discussion, like, why do you have to look so perfect? But she said she just had to.

So one day he’s in a suit and tie, about to leave the group and go straight to give a big presentation, and he looks at this lady and takes his cup of coffee and pours it down the front of his dress shirt and says, “You don’t have to be perfect.”

As he told the story today, he did it again. He just poured his coffee down the front of his white dress shirt, made a couple jokes about not having a six-pack (but having a keg), and kept going with his speech. So I got out my notebook and wrote, “You don’t have to be perfect,” and I centered it perfectly in the middle of the page, and then I went back and added a smart-looking exclamation point. (And that, my friends, is called irony.)

The last speaker in Atlanta was Tyler Perry, the creator of the character Madea. Back to the theme of purpose, Tyler said that he found his purpose on the other side of his pain. Tyler also said that when he was first getting started, he wrote a play that took six years to really get off the ground, that he lived in his car for part of that time. “Scripture reminds us to never despise small beginnings.”

After Tyler, Marla spoke. She talked about how much she loved this area, how her roots were planted deep, and how she wanted local leaders to know what a difference they make, that people notice. Her speech was so beautiful that it almost made me not want to move.

Almost. (But maybe that means that when I do move, I’ll move with more appreciation for my roots.)

This evening I took a nap for a few hours. When I woke up and told my brain that I needed to write, my brain took one look at me and said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

So here we are. It’s two-thirty in the morning, and I wish I could tell you where I’m going with all this. Usually I try to pick one event or emotion and stick to it, figure it out, find a lesson in it. But on days like today, it’s harder to do that. I heard so many wonderful, inspiring things today. Hell, I heard a jazz combo at nine-thirty this morning. All day I kept thinking about the blog and about writing, about being an artist and how I struggle with perfection. I thought about how therapy and even this blog have helped me to work through my pain and how it feels like I’m getting closer to my purpose. I thought about small beginnings, how I often despise them, wishing for something better rather than appreciating them for what they are—actual beginnings.

And how beautiful it is to begin!

And how beautiful it is to begin, however imperfectly.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Love stands at the front door and says, “You don’t have to change a thing about yourself to come inside.”

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farts aren’t planned (blog #32)

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This morning I woke up with a tickle in my throat. I actually dreamed about it last night, and a friend in the dream told me to eat some yogurt. So that’s what I did when I got out bed because I wanted my subconscious to know that I’m listening to it. Now if I end up getting sick, I’m going to tell my subconscious to go screw itself, to which I’m sure it would reply, “Will you PLEASE go to bed sooner, quit eating ice cream and tacos for dinner, and stop thinking that you’re still twenty-three?”

Well, maybe today’s the day. With any luck at all, I’ll finish this post before the sun goes down, and I can get some sleep. Before the week is over, I plan to clean up my diet, start doing some push-ups. And then in two weeks, maybe my favorite pair of jeans won’t look like a pair of acid-washed yoga pants.

Whenever I decide to start or stop something, to form or break a habit, there’s always a lot of buildup and anxiety about it. I think about it, pray about it, think about it, pray about—for weeks, sometimes months. Not changing anything, mind you, just stressing.

Once a change HAS been made, I can rock out a good habit for a while—meditating every day, going to the gym five times a week, eating well. But then something happens, and that all goes to shit, and it’s cigarettes for breakfast and banana splits for lunch.

When things are going “the right way,” when I’m behaving like I think I should, I feel pretty good about myself. But when things fall apart, my go-to response is to beat myself up, to start “shoulding” on myself. My therapist says that’s because I want things to always be the same. But everything changes, she says. Even good habits fall away.

For the longest time, I would go to my therapist’s office and beat myself up about smoking cigarettes, a habit that started in my early twenties and effectively disappeared until I broke up with my ex three years ago. And while I was more concerned about my health and what other people would think if they found out, she was more concerned about the fact that I was shoulding on and judging myself. She said that one day I would have enough and quit.

And she was right. One day it became clear. I stopped. Just like the seasons, it changed.

This afternoon my friend Marla and I went to speak at our friend Anita’s writing class at the Fort Smith Public Library. (That’s our picture at the top of the blog.) Anita has been teaching writing in Fort Smith since God was a small child, and her second novel comes out this summer. Like her first novel, it’s about a murder that took place in Van Buren over thirty years ago. Anyway, I thought that I was going to the class to support Marla and reconnect with Anita, but had I read my messages more clearly, I would have known that I was actually going to speak about my glamorous life as a blogger.

So I winged it and read a story I wrote last September about how unhappy I was owning the dance studio and living in Fort Smith, how I wanted to write more and move to Austin. And then I talked specifically about the blog, and Anita told the class that if you don’t like R rated movies, don’t go to one, and if you don’t like four-letter words, don’t go to Marcus’s blog.

So even though I didn’t plan to speak, it all turned out fine. And what I loved about it is that there wasn’t any planning, no thinking about it and praying about it, no anxiety. It just happened.

When I finished, a dear lady named Marilyn said, “Marcus, I think you need to get on the next bus out of here. Just move to Austin.” And then several others chimed in and said, “Fuck it. You only live once.” (I’m paraphrasing. They didn’t actually say that.) But I totally felt encouraged, so I asked Marilyn if she’d like to take a selfie with me, and she said, “I would love that,” so here it is.

Alan Watts tells the story of a Buddhist monk who poetically stated that you can’t plan everything in life. You don’t think, I’m going to go to the supermarket at ten tomorrow morning and then “drop fart” at ten-thirty. And this is actually a spiritual lesson. Farts aren’t planned. They’re “a happening.”

Honestly, I think I give myself too much credit. It’s probably an ego thing. I think that I can control when I get sick and when I get well, when I work and when I don’t, and where I live. And I’m not saying I don’t have any influence in what I eat or when I go to bed or when I’ll move to Austin, but I do think my therapist and the Buddhist monk are right. One day, I’ll clean up my diet and go to bed sooner. One day, I’ll get on a bus and get out of here. When that is exactly, I can’t say, but I can save myself a lot of anxiety by not worrying about it so much. When it’s time, I think I’ll know it’s time, and it will simply happen. And just like the speech that wasn’t planned, it will all turn out fine, even if there are a few four-letter words along the way.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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For all of the things life takes away, it gives so much more in return. Whether we realize it or not, there’s always grace available.

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on being embarrassed (blog #31)

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Today I woke up at two in the afternoon. I should really start doing that more often. It felt glorious. Alternatively, I guess I could start going to bed earlier, but I really think God intended things like blogging and eating tacos to only be done after midnight, under the cover of darkness. (Isn’t that one of the commandments?)

When my aunt woke me up this afternoon, she told me that she’d come into my room earlier to make sure I was still breathing. She’d read last night’s blog about my talking to Jesus and taking a Hydrocodone, and wanted to make sure I hadn’t overdosed on either one. (I’m currently picturing one of those witty church signs saying something like: Prescription—Jesus, Side Effects may include heaven.)

Once I got around, my aunt took me to lunch with my cousin. At one point, they were talking about a flower arrangement my cousin had given my aunt, and when she realized that he’d made the arrangement himself, she said, “You did good!” And then my cousin, totally deadpan, looked at her and said, “Mom, I did WELL. Superman does good.”

Isn’t that amazing? Superman does good. I nearly spit out my third cup of coffee. (And I wonder why I have trouble falling asleep at night.)

After breakfast (that’s lunch to you), I walked to Utica Square to do some shopping. Well, even though it was cold, I wore shorts because they fit better than my jeans. It’s like this little mind-game I play with myself. The tighter my pants are, the fatter I feel, so if my pants aren’t tight, that must mean I’m not fat. Well, that logic works for a while, at least until it’s fifty degrees outside and the only pants that fit you turn out to not actually be pants at all.

Even though I tried on six or eight items of clothing, I didn’t buy anything because everything was either too short, too tight around the shoulders, too not perfect. And whereas I actually do need a few more things to wear, it was nice not to spend the money and end up with something I wasn’t really gung-ho about. I’ve blogged about it before, but this is one of the perks of minimalist living—more money, fewer things I don’t adore.

Back at my aunt’s house, we spent the evening in her living room, just chatting. A few times her dog Benny climbed up on me, looking for some attention. This is what I love about animals. They just ask for what they want. (One time in therapy, my therapist suggested that anytime I wanted a hug, I could simply ask my friends for one, so sometimes I do that. So far, no one’s refused.)

My aunt pointed out that Benny has some benign lumps on his body, and the biggest one (about the size of a baseball) is in a rather personal area. And then my aunt joked, “If he knew any better, he’d be embarrassed.” So we both laughed, and then my writer brain went to work thinking about all the times I’ve been embarrassed and whether or not I could make a story out of any of it. And the only memory that came to mind was when I was in my early twenties and got hit on by a millionaire.

I’ll try to be brief.

When my dad was in prison, he met a millionaire (a guy in his sixties, maybe) who was in prison for something to do with taxes. So when they both got out of prison, the man invited our family to visit him. And I guess a lot of guys in prison brag about having big houses and a lot of cars and antiques, but it’s usually all bullshit. But this guy actually had all that stuff.

Why should anyone be embarrassed about the truth?

Well, we had a great time, but looking back, the guy hit on me a lot. I guess I knew it at the time, but I was pretty naïve back then, so I didn’t fully see it for what it was. At one point, he straight up told me that I had a nice ass, and I guess I blushed or started stuttering. I don’t remember what I said, but it must have been something like, “I’d be too embarrassed to say something like that.” And I just remember the guy saying, “Why would you be embarrassed to say you like something?”

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. And although I’m not saying I think everything the guy said and did was socially appropriate, even now I’m struck by his confidence, his lack of shame. I used to think that his confidence had to do with his money or age. I’m sure it all helps. But in my experience, the more I accept myself, the less ashamed and less embarrassed I am. I’m still not where Benny is, but maybe one day I’ll be completely okay with a few extra pounds, or a pair of pants that fit too tight, or asking for what I want. I mean, why should anyone be embarrassed about something they can’t immediately change? What’s more, why should anyone be embarrassed about the truth?

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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None of us is ever really lost. At least we're never really alone. For always there is someone to help point your ship in the right direction, someone who sees you when you can't see yourself.

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