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Compulsive, pink

I asked a friend why he was giving what seemed to me like way more than enough time and energy to a project, and he said, in the clipped manner that sometimes made me laugh, “Compulsive.” Both of us laughed in mutual acknowledgment of his “condition”.

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Mistaken identities

I witnessed a fascinating case of mistaken identity. I was the one in error, and for current purposes I’m defining mistaken identity like this: when a person thinks something about someone, often a stranger or a new individual in her life, and finds out, either pronto or down the line that she is WRONG.

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A clearing of congestion

The Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan asserts that congestion causes all illness. Accordingly, illness can be mental or physical congestion, congestions of which a person is aware, such as post-nasal drip, or ones to which she is numb or of which she is ignorant, such as a tightness that has lived in her body for so long that it feels natural or a hatred of someone that feels so right that the hater does not call her heart into question.

Congestion is a lack of space. Space and clarity go hand in hand.

Clarity is a clearing of congestion.

Not driven

Early today over tea I discovered this: I’m not driven anymore.

Professionally I’ve lived in the art world and academia, which harbor highly driven people. Ambition is fine with me. But there’s ambition with generosity and there’s ambition that’s everything-for-me. The latter clangs and screams in the professional worlds with which I’m most familiar: individual status, making a name for oneself, telling others how great you are by touting your publications or exhibitions or speaking engagements, asking your “colleagues” what they’re doing so that you can compare your accomplishments with theirs and come out feeling superior, though you may well end up feeling inferior.

Ambition with generosity produces a desire to help others. Because of whatever success or status has come my way, how might I make the path easier for a younger colleague? What have I learned through and about my intellectual and bodily disciplines and practices that I can give? How do I share what I know and what I continue to learn? Read more

Quandary, clarity

Saturday morning another intense vinyasa workout (see January 14, 2010, Morning/yoga/dance) overjoyed me. Michelle guided us in constant movement from a high lunge at the top of our mats to one at the back, over and over. Then, as on Wednesday, we sank into Goddess Squat, this time with our arms striking straight up and then forward, parallel to the ground. In each of the many repetitions we opened our fists in the outward gesture and closed them as we pulled our hands, fingers up, into the torso. Vocalization increased the exertion and the pleasure: Ha! with every inward action of the arms.

The last week of 2009 into the second week of 2010 found me in an uncharacteristically indecisive place about an aspect of my life. Quandary then clarity then quandary then clarity . . . By the Wednesday evening after the first super-activating vinyasa class clarity was mine!

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Must have been a monk!

During the retreat that I attended last autumn, all one needed to do was to meditate. (See “Gently radical changing 1,” October 18, 2009, and “Gently radical changing 2,” October 19, 2009.) You could keep a non-ticking watch or clock that you brought, but phones and other hand-held devices, along with reading and writing materials had to be turned in–they were kept safe–until the end of the course. Vegetarian food was cooked for meditators and served, buffet style, with much to choose from at breakfast and lunch. Dinner was tea and fruit. You were indeed unto yourself, with your appetites, projections, pains, and pleasures.

I’m such a monk!–and I do identify with monks not nuns–because I loved the gong that signaled meals and wake-up hour, which was 4 a.m., and called us to meditation in the center’s hall. (Lights out at 9:30!)

If in medieval Europe or further centuries and civilizations from my birth and nearer decades prior to it or in cites invisible and inaudible to the human senses energies coalesced that have brought this Joanna into being, more than once those energies materialized as a monk, one who lived in near-silent orders or conditions. At the retreat I loved the silence. Shared silence.

Silence has been one of my natural habitats since childhood, so it came easily. So did the silencing of communication through facial expressions or bodily gestures. Silence guides a person into herself and sustains her solitude among a community of other silent meditators.

Morning/yoga/dance

I usually go to a vinyasa class on Wednesday mornings. Vinyasa is a yoga practice in which asanas, poses, flow together and often feel and look dance-like. Vinyasa combines movement and breathing, both rhythmic, and can be moderately to extremely energetic as it helps a person to develop flexibility, strength, stamina, and cardiovascular fitness. Sweat, elegance, and meditation, the latter possible even during chaturanga, which is a push-up, draw me to vinyasa classes.

Yesterday was especially vigorous and included an asana called, in English, Goddess Squat.

In the pictures below, my stance is Goddess Squat. If I were strictly in the pose, my arms would be symmetrically raised with upper arms parallel to the floor, forearms and hands facing forward, and palms open with fingers spread.

GoddessSquat_head back

GoddessSquat_head to side

In Goddess Squat we shifted to the right and to the left, holding the squat while further increasing its intensity with dynamic arm gestures. We were dancing to a primally exciting audio of drumming and activating a lot of heat.

Our instructor, Michelle, in whose spirited honesty and vulnerability I learn to further love those qualities within myself, laughed as she promised, “We’ll be here a while!”  I felt taxed, and then came a loosening of the mind, a transcendence of Oh, I’m not strong enough physically to continue, to enjoy this. I became stronger, and so did my pleasure. Felt great then and feels great now!

Battleground of beauty

A friend emailed me a photo of her a couple days post-cosmetic surgery and laser resurfacing. Her closed eyes, sores, bruises, bandages, and covered-up hair create, for me, an unidentifiable person. In the text her tone is characteristically spirited and full of humor, as she tells me that the photo was taken before she could open her eyes and that she doesn’t look much different 3 days later. She notes happily that her partner, who presumably took the picture and maybe wrote the email, kissed her. Yay, him! Whose spirit and humor complement hers.

My friend in the photo is the only close friend of mine to undergo selective cosmetic surgery, and we talked a lot about her doing it throughout the process, from her wanting the procedures to her questioning her rationale to her first consultation with the surgeon to her pre- and post-operative medications to her feelings in the late afternoon before the morning when she would enter the hospital. My friend and I were born the same year. She is deeply intelligent and thoughtful, independent, and self-accepting, and as she became clear about proceeding with the surgery, I encouraged her to go ahead with it.

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Maiden elder

A regular reader of this blog, a younger woman who hasn’t yet posted anything, wrote me a long and eloquent email about women, beauty, and age. She included a request:

I’d love to read your take, and others’, on the tremendous soul-accepting difference between “looking younger” and “looking more beautiful.”

Immediately, an essay that I wrote recently and haven’t yet published jumped to mind. It’s called “Maiden Elder,” and I think that the excerpt, below, that I quote from it, initiates some satisfaction to her request.

“Maiden Elder” excerpt

In Issai Chozanshi’s The Demon’s Sermon on the Martial Arts, a philosophical “guidebook” for samurai written in the eighteenth century, the demon in the title advises a swordsman, “When you follow your own true character and are not a slave to your passions and desires, your spirit will not be troubled.” Speaking from my own true character, feminism works for the freedom of all human beings, glamour grows from a person’s knowing herself and following that knowledge, and maiden and elder have little to do with a woman’s age and everything to do with her exceeding their culturally determined boundaries, such as limitations on her self-representation and self-creation, both of which I equate with self-discovery. Self-representation is an external manifestation of one’s own true character. My definitions of glamour and feminism are intended to stir the imagination. Maiden elder is a term of endearment.

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Kissing him

You’re eating a meal with someone and he mentions a delicious taste from the food in his mouth. You want to share that taste with him. You want to kiss him, deeply.

Imagine the beginning of the same scenario, through the first sentence of the above paragraph. Then . . . rather than wanting to share and kiss, you feel repulsed. Lips, tongue, teeth, palate–what could be worse?

I’ve experienced such attractions mostly with men and such repulsions with both women and men. I felt those kinds of repulsions in my younger years, but I suppressed them much better than I now can. I did my best to stay unaware of them. People feel without awareness all the time. In effect, they feel without feeling. That causes confusion, unhappiness, misreading of others, and a loss of clarity, clear sight, and intuition. In that state, people’s actions bring unhappiness to both themselves and others. If you don’t know how you feel–and feeling requires awareness of one’s body–your thinking cannot save you.

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