Instinct, Reflection and Remembrance 9/11

When the attacks on September 11th happened I was living in Cape Cod at the time.

Preparing for a move back to New York City in October. I was struggling for work, my relationship at the time was over and I was planning on starting a year long Teacher Training to become a yoga teacher.

I was teaching Yoga already but also several other modalities in order to make a living in that very challenging economy. I was something of a Richard Simmon’s with alot of enthusiasm and a lifetime of being “Physically Active” but very few credentials to train or teach. The Cape did not seem to mind my lack of experience and I managed to eek out some jobs teaching Tap Dance, yoga, Drama, Personal training, aerobic’s, you name it, I taught it!

On the morning of 9/11 I woke up at 5:30AM and taught a “Stretch and Strengthen” class to senior citizen’s at 7AM. I played song’s from “Rent” the Broadway musical and made them laugh while moving very simply and working with very light weights....they enjoyed my light-heartedness and that meant something to me.

I enjoyed their steadfastness, every morning without fail they were always there.

At the close of the class I always felt a strange uselessness in that it was 8AM and I had no other work to do. The whole day stretched before me, people were just getting up for work and I was done. So, as soon as the class was over I would run away into the woods and be alone....

I had a secreted pond way out in the woods on the border of Orleans and Brewster (two neighboring towns at the elbow point of The Cape).

I would leave my car parked on the road and hike to the pond, leave my stuff and spend the whole morning swimming and exploring the woods.

This is how I spent the day on September 11, 2001.

Alone in the woods, swimming, walking, meandering through the trails looking out for poison ivy, keeping watch for ferns and mushrooms, listening, smelling, looking in the way you can only do when you are by yourself in nature.

I had exhausted myself completely by the afternoon and I was lying on the tiny little scratch of beach belonging to the pond reading, when a very ancient man walked onto the beach (the only person I had seen all day since my octogenarian class at 7AM...welcome to the Cape folks!)

He greeted me and asked how my day was going. I of course was effusive with my response. “The temperature of the water is perfect! and such a gorgeous day! It’s day’s like this on the Cape that make me question my decision to move back to New York”.

We started talking about the city he told me his Granddaughter was there at Columbia University. I told him it was my native city but I had been coming to the cape all my life.

After a while he said “I guess you haven’t heard the news?”

“What news?” I asked.

The man was gentle, he was mellow, he was weathered and wrinkled by the sun.

He had a New England accent from the Catherine Hepburn era no Boston suburb stuff for him.

“Well, the Trade center is gone, millions of people have died.”

I remember my body language so clearly (I feel guilty about it).

I had been sitting there in my suit on my blanket with my book completely relaxed and it was as if a freezing cold chill descended upon us.

Shutting my book, covering up my body instantly I was certain this man was insane.

What do you do when an insane person is talking to you in the woods and no one knows you are there and you do not have a cell phone?

I am a New Yorker....you listen, you watch, you wait.

I did not feel threatened by him, I just felt certain he was crazy and I wanted to get the heck out of there.

All the stuff he had said about his duck hunting lodge and his wife started to spiral for me into a weird Alfred Hitchcock movie. I imagined her dead for many years and his lodge a cavern of flies and dust, ancient memories being kept alive by imagination and solitude.

I realized being alone isn’t always such a great asset. Sometimes our aloneness causes our demise. I wanted to return to society with such a vehemence! I just had to do it carefully so as not to offend “Crazy man”.

“What time is it?” I asked

“Around 3” he replied.

He probably thought I was crazy!

“Well, I really should get going then.” I said as I organized my things.

“Good Luck to you and your family” he said “I hope all your people are alright”

Yikes!

I hauled ass to my car as soon as I could get out of there. My heart pounding, the hair on my neck standing, the flesh on my arms burning.

Talking to myself the whole way....who’s crazy here?

“Oh, my god! I can’t believe it....why would anybody! Jesus what’s wrong with him?”

I was really unnerved and angry all of the sudden.

Who is he to come onto “My beach” and Fuck up my day?

By the time I got to my car I had settled down and was planning on writing it off as another bizarre Cape Cod story when....

After all these years I wish he WAS just a crazy man.

Instinct’s are funny that way. Looking back I struggle with how disconnected I was from everything that was happening. How could I have no idea? How could I swim and hike and be merry while my city was in turmoil, while the world was grieving and terrified?

All I wanted when I left New York was to get away from the place and all I wanted the moment I realized the truth of this tragic day was to return.

This is the nature of tragedy it shifts us, it changes our perspective, it sends us running in the opposite direction from which we thought we were heading.

I believe this is where I very pointedly changed my view on life. I valued being single, having my independence, living freely so to speak. My biggest fear was reflected back to me on this day and it had nothing to do with terrorism based on where I was at the time and how I chose to spend my day.

Sometimes our choice to be alone out of safety, passivity, courageousness can limit our heart's ability to navigate the twists and turns that lie ahead and cloud our judgement. After this day, I prefer to be in union and harmony with another.

To have a truthful mirror to call me back from my escapist surroundings and remind me when I am lost.

I went back with flowers and visited my so called "Crazy man". I met his wife and his Grandaughter who had managed to get out of the city. I told them my story and in the kindest way possible I shared with them my dissconnect and how I had no idea that their very sane Family Matriarch was speaking the truth to me on that day.

I love being alone and I cherish my time by myself in nature but I recognize that I am always seeking, searching, diving into the essence of another and this flame was lit on this day spent in solitude when I projected my worst fear onto another.

Detachment, aloneness, solitude, in good measure can be healthy but sometimes like anything in excess we go a bit beyond our spiritual connection to humanity and become mad like weeds, moss, or stone we grow and harden beyond the reach of any human touch past the point of our intention.

Yoga means Union and I seek to unify in every possible exploration of the word and I found that gift on this day.

So many prayers of blessings and love to those that lost their loved ones and those that never had loved ones and were lost.

I remember this day....

All In the Timing

What I really want to know is...Can an Island betray you?

Here I am, back on Cape Cod a place where I grew up. A place that has fostered all of my vision’s and inspiration’s for spirit and nature. The first place I ever taught yoga, did a back-dive, went clamming, worked on a scallop boat, acted professionally, and fell in love with the man who came from here...my “so-called soul-mate”.

I had a dream and we were here together and so much about this place became about “us”. We met on this Island and we shared so much of it together and yet it was his birthplace and he was the “Prom King” when we made our rounds. Everyone shared a fondness for him and wanted his attention. It bring’s to mind Lisa loeb’s song “Sandalwood”. The lyric’s that get me are “I’m trying to keep cool, but everyone like’s you.” This is how I always felt upon entering the Cape with him. Sure, I have my “peep’s” and people love me here...but there was no comparison to “Prom-King” stature. Don’t get me wrong I am not competitive in this way but I longed for his attention and his company and whenever we were here it was spliced ten-fold.

That said, a year and half after the relationship I return to this Island without this partnership. However, I carry the full weight of knowledge that he was here when he made his crucial voyage out of my port and chose to take his cruise ship into new territory.

Basically, he was on the cape when he made the decision to no longer be present in our relationship.....that’s really all you need to know and that’s really all I know to share with you, regarding his decision.

So, a year and a half later I return to this Island I consider my homeland, my touchstone, my spiritual birthplace and for the first time ever, I feel threatened.

There is a beautiful quote by Marianne Williamson, “You are what you defend against.” So who who knows which came first here the chicken or the egg. I am certain my defensiveness did not assist my Cape Cod return in any way, in fact I know this to be the first time ever I felt I was in unwelcome territory on Cape Cod.

The night I arrive, there is an electrical/lighting storm and the cottage I am in shakes and throbs and light’s up and dead tree limbs fall all over the roof of the house and wind shakes and throttles the small place. The tiny cottage light’s up and then quiver’s with the force of nature (normally very exciting!) This unnerves me oddly...I am a lover of nature and storms included but I feel attacked and unwelcome. My cottage suddenly has a very “Shining” unappeal and I cannot rest amidst this brutal storm. I toss and turn and fixate on axe murder’ers and houses caught in a blaze from lightening and I marinate in all of my poor decison’s made here on Cape Cod.

Great night for rest and relaxation.

The next day, there is this heavy cloud of humidity and smelly thickness in the air.

I go for a run and so much of it hit’s me with a clarity and certainty.

I no longer trust Cape Cod! Because his heart was moved to leave me and it happened here! The Island has betrayed me and it lurks in the coyote’s howl, in the dense humidity, in the thick brown body of the spider in the bathroom of my cottage...the Island is telling me to leave.

My underlying persistance keeps me present despite the trying turmoil.

I take my Godaughter’s to the ocean I am dying for a break from the humidity and I am certain the ocean will offer it. Yet, I carry the knowledge of “Great White” sightings on the cape...several! So I carry a watchful eye as I dive into the waves (frigid and intense).

My Godaughter’s watch and wait turned off by the cold and the drama of the ocean. No one else is in the water at our beach.

Eventually, they follow me and have an earnestness to stay in the Icy water way longer than me. I stand “Lifegaurd” watching the horizon for any sign of shark...Ready to pummel, hit on the nose, curse out, take down, you name it I will protect.

The worst in store for my sweet girls was a bit of wave intensity in that they both got taken out by waves and rolled and surprised and came out coughing and heart’s palpating.

I wrapped them in my towel and encouraged their bravery....what more can you do?

One is fourteen and the other thirteen, they are on the brink of understanding the kind of turmoil their heart’s will experiance. They already understand loss to some degree, their father has passed and yet I think they will be processing this for a lifetime I do believe it has aged them beyond their mean’s.

Do they understand love?

The wave’s have pummeled them both at seperate interval’s and yet they both want to go back in after they have resumed their normal breathing pattern’s, found the spots where the rocks have scraped them, figured out what happened.

One was in the thick of the wave, right in the middle, I watched it take her up and thought she was too much in the center, the other was in front and had cleared the nasty roll of the wave. I saw her limbs as the wave took height, her tall figure lifted up and carried by the wave and I thought to myself “she is too much in the center....”

Like a gymnastic’s coach knows they are off by a hair or a centimeter. The wave lifted her up and shook her down...she was fine. The other has a discomforting habit of turning her back to the waves which makes me an annoying person on the shore,

“TURN AROUND!”, “DIVE’, “STOP LOOKING AT ME!”

Her wave took her at the worst possible place in the rotation. Her back was turned, she was looking at me, the wave had already begun to curl and it grabbed her and threw her into the mix like the smallest minnow of the pack losing it’s school...or “cool” in our terms. She came out of the water terrified, choking and trying to breathe.

I wrapped her in my damp towell and held her.

That was me....in my relationship.

My back was turned when he made up his mind. That’s the worst kind of blow you can suffer. It makes your arms cross around your midriff when you contemplate another dive.

Fortunately for me I only recognize this source of pain when I visit this Island....I am immune to it elsewhere.

I can handle a moment or two in this nasty surf figuring out how to land my feet, how to swaddle my emotion’s, how to make peace with nature who never meant to harm me.

It was all in the timing and I met the wave at precisly the wrong moment.

I get it now...thanks to the Cape and my constant guides who follow me here.

This place will always be my touchstone.