Weekly Zephyr #7: June 13th, 2017

Alexey Kuzmich, Crying Euphrosyne of Polotsk, 1992

Why is Euphrosyne crying? Is that her name or is she "A Euphrosyne"?

Would you even say that she is crying, though? She's not even really crying It's more like she's welling up SO SHE STILL HAS A CHOICE

Without going into why I used to cry so much, which isn't important for our purposes today, allow me to establish for you that yes, wow, yes, I have been a Notable Copious Weeper in my time. Hoo boy.

1.

A few years ago for my birthday a friend gave me a crumply brown paper lunch bag with a big, orange, stick-on, curling-ribbon bow, and a message written in ballpoint pen on the outside:

You'll probably need these.

XO

There was a three-pack of travel tissues inside.

  First/outward response: I laughed and laughed! What an excellent truth joke, made in love. I DO cry a lot, I guess. Second/internal response: I mean, I guess I do. Lingering response: But, like, that much? Really?

2.

A few years before that, I was at a meditation class, and after the meditation we were going around and discussing issues we were facing in our practices.  I said

...and I might have been, uh, crying while I said it...

that sometimes I cried a lot while I sat, that tears were coming up a lot, and it was pulling me out of my meditation.

One of the teachers said to me, very calmly and pleasantly, "Have you considered not crying?"   And I was like         

   WHAT

like these guys    

             united with myself in opposition to these meditation teachers!   AND TO THIS INSANE IDEA THAT ONE MIGHT JUST CONSIDER NOT CRYING!

    I said, petulantly, No. I hadn't considered that. And they were like, "Well, next time it comes up, see what happens if you don't cry." And I was like, SURE THING, WIENERS. <<okay sign fingers>> WILL GIVE THAT A WHIRL NEVER. THANK YOU.

Who were these robot soldiers? Who could just decide not to cry when tears were coming? And also, weren't these tears important? Weren't all tears important? Shouldn't they all be welcomed like infants into our tender, accepting arms and given room to do their thing until that primal need has passed?

3.

Another time, several years before that, I was in a play reading directed by my friend Paul. In the play, a bunch of children died and were trying to get into heaven and not having luck. This was very sad. This play reading took place during the summer of 1999, a summer I have called The Sensitive Summer of 1999, because my sensitivity to all stimuli was off the charts after an incident with a recreational drug which is another story.

As you might see coming, I found these dead, unlucky children to be a very strong stimulus. And so I wept uncontrollably during the entire reading. In character, out of character, speaking, quiet. Just whoooozh, waterfall, nonstop. Probably about an hour, all told.

Afterward, Paul said to me, shaking his head and chuckling, "Well, thanks for...feeling the play."

One possible reason for all these tears—outside of reasons that are not right for this newsletter at this time—may be that I'm a water sign with a lot of extra water signs in my chart. I'm a Cancer with a Pisces rising and a Pisces moon and some other Pisces somewhere. I once told an astrologer that and he was like OH MY GOD, GOOD LUCK.

The Astro-Poets, over on Twitter, whom you should follow, (I've linked to them here before but some of you are new and I mean it) are always talking about how much Cancers and Pisces cry all the time and I'm both, so I'm the worst. BUT NOT ANYMORE, I WANT TO TELL THEM. I'VE LEARNED THINGS. I ONLY CRY A NICE SORT OF PEACEFUL SPICE AMOUNT NOW.  YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME, ASTRO-POETS.

The crying thing changed in May of 2015. I can even probably pinpoint the day and the hour when it changed. I was in a Skype session with the teacher I've been working with for the last few years, sitting on my bed with his face on the screen in a laptop on my lap, and I started the session very mopey and drippy about nothing in particular. Jim, my teacher, did not respond with the tender curiosity I expected from him (and from every person alive faced with whatever my tears were for whichever day it was).  He was like, no, nah. This is gross. I'm not interested in this person.  I was thunderstruck.  And I was angry and ashamed—both of those things knit together extremely hard—and I hid my face behind my hair and couldn't/wouldn't look at him and I cried and burned and was full of <<<FUUUCK YOOOOU>>> in the most concentrated amount, like a bomb.     "This isn't even you," he kept saying.   What if that were true? I wondered in a small font beneath my fury. I thought about Eckhart Tolle, and how he talks about pain bodies, like we have separate bodies that activate when we're kicked into a pain response. I didn't know if that was true, or whether this was that. But I thought how creepy it would be if I'm being taken over by something which isn't me that just wants to howl a lot. What if this soggy, cranky howler is really not me but something else? There was a pause, not that you would track, a time pause, but a crossroad, a spot in which I could make a decision, and I made one. And soon thereafter it was like this Not Me got left on one side of a doorway and I was on the other side, like I'd slipped out of a ghost or translucent werewolf version of me and was now standing near it, but separate.   "There you are!" he said.