A few years ago a friend told me something that was very important in my understanding of introverts. He pointed out that introverts are often very social, and that they like being out sharing the world with other people, but that there was one key difference that drew the line between introverts and extroverts. Extroverts are energized by people, and introverts are drained by them.

Suddenly I was able to understand some of my very powerful, social friends. They loved creating big events and conducting symphonies of humans building, creating, sharing and reveling. They loved intense conversations. They loved going to parties. They just also knew that they were on a clock, using up a battery, and that for every minute they spent in a world dense with people they were going to have to be completely alone to recharge.

Those Who Hail are Loud

Susan Cain talks about introversion in modern America at TED. In reference to my metaphor above, she talks about being a minority in a world shaped by a very different majority in much the same way that Yashir’s great piece If Men Had Periods: Women Would Know All About It talks about this experience for women. There are so many often invisible ways that a society reinforces one way of being and denigrates another. Our society has been shaped by loud people.

Before the CO, I could run forever on human presence. It was like I had a solar cell in my forehead and people beamed sunlight. I could be lying exhausted from twenty or more hours of nonstop work and if one person came up to me and asked a question, I could grunt a response. If they stuck around, within minutes my brain would be spinning back up, lifting me like a helicopter into a seated position, and then with a loud whine the jet engines would kick in and I would rush into full speed, talking and listening and telling stories and leaping around like I had just won the lottery and a degree in counseling.

I could run off of this energy for days with little sleep and I was well rewarded for it. People that looked and acted like me were hailed for having created an internet revolution. Few people know Steve Wozniak. Everyone knows about Steve Jobs. Apple Computer would not exist without both. Steve Wozniak did much of the work building the famous computer without which you would never have heard of Steve Jobs. Wozniak is now relegated to consulting on Steve Jobs’ biopic. There is no question where our society puts value.

The Other Side

Last weekend I went ziplining with some friends. We had a great low key morning zooming through the sky and ended up at a friend’s house where, admittedly, most people were also ready to take naps or take it easy after all of that time in the sun. I ended up on a couch talking with someone I find endlessly fascinating and a little of the energy kicked in. We had a good conversation but then I reached a point where the ache in my head was too much to ignore and it was hard to keep talking. She wandered off and I thought I would just take a nap but somehow I couldn’t relax. I needed to sleep or rest but I felt a weird tension, even though the people in the room were either asleep, working quietly on computers, or reading books.

My friend Ori Sofer was there and he’s like a brother to me. We’ve been through years of road trips, adventures, and construction debacles. I felt this weird need to get out of that house and back to his. Somehow just being in a room with people was draining me but I felt oddly like somehow he wouldn’t. Thankfully, I managed to get this message across and as soon as I was away it was like I had been hanging for hours over a pit of steel spikes and I was suddenly easing into a comfortable sofa. The mild sense of panic vanished and I didn’t even have to nap right away.

My friend Sarah Miller laughed at my glimpse of her world. She says there are always people like this. Her husband is this way for her. She can be around him and somehow relax and recharge as though she’s alone, although interestingly enough she can’t do this with her kids.

In fact, the more I talk about this the more people come out to me as introverts. I’m getting better at spotting them, no matter how many massive armies of people they lead into the desert or festivals they run. They tell me it’s not so bad. They get a lot done in their alone time. It’s so much easier to be focused when you don’t have to run around finding new people to recharge you.

I haven’t become a woman. My race isn’t going to change. I’ll likely never truly know what it’s like to be an introvert, but at least I have a small rare glimpse into another experience. I’m still struggling with how much to accept this new, perhaps temporary, version of myself, but I am appreciating what I’m learning. And maybe, with new understanding, I’ll do a better job of making space for the people around me.

Being back in Austin feels like I just popped into the bathroom and wandered back out. It was a year, but everything looks and feels basically the same. Some wonderful people who were together are even more together by marrying. A few have replicated themselves. Life rolls on. There are a few tweaks around the edges of things. A new swanky restaurant or bar in the once poor part of town. A few more ultrahip people who, apparently, can’t afford jeans big enough to fit them.

A small southern town in China changes more in two days than the last year in Austin. Maybe it’s just that my sense of scale has been completely thrown off by buildings that go up in fifteen days and restaurants that turn into clothing boutiques in one.

Learning to nap

The odd thing about returning to a familiar place is that the completely different world I inhabited for a year now seems so far away that my experiences there can’t possibly be real. Then I step into a Chinese restaurant and find myself talking to the owner in Chinese. Suddenly I can’t deny the reality of having been in China, and my time in China seems like the real reality… and who are all of these strange people around me?!

Correction

Since posting this next section, I’ve had a lot of worried phone calls. I edited it a bit to be more clear but I thought I should also say upfront that everything is basically fine, I just have to take it easy and not overdo things the way I used to. Lisa also pointed out that my complaints are essentially that I’m no longer able to stop bullets with my chest and fly!

The CO Brain

I haven’t been able to be as crazy active as I’d like. I did really well the first few days but then started getting tired while talking to people in the intense way I love. The CO brain is still doing its best to slow me down. I cancelled all of my meetups (two-three a day) for the rest of my time to take it easy and make sure I was getting enough recovery rest. I’m now trying to schedule a maximum of one event every day and take one day breaks in between.

I’m also trying to learn how to nap, but failing miserably. How do you people do this?! When I get tired, I can’t do anything but lie around bored. If I do fall asleep it’s for several hours and I’m an irritating grump as I crawl through the wake up process. (That part is perfectly normal!)

The result of all of this is that despite being in Austin for some time now, I still haven’t seen many people or do all of the things I love to do. I managed to make it to one Tango class and a writer’s group and then couldn’t power up for the Milonga (Tango dance) that night. Fail. I’ve barely begun the giant list of people I’d like to see, although couch surfing has helped make some of that happen.

Hilariously, some of my friends are getting to like this new version of me. When I showed up a little wound down to meet with Lisa Kaselak, she thought I had a marvelous gravitas and loved that there were pauses in our conversation and fewer simultaneous topics roaring along at ninety miles an hour. As a conversational speed freak it drives me nuts, but perhaps bodes well for my future as a 道教 (Daoist) monk.

I’ve extended my time in Austin a bit to see if I can work more in gradually. I do appreciate time with friends when I get it and access to Yoga and Tango. 慢慢来。 (Màn man lái : go slowly).

You can punch me. Kick me with combat boots. Beat me with rods. I’ll gladly bleed before letting a needle touch my skin. I once made my friend Ori pull over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in Arizona and wait, silently, barely breathing, while I dug a splinter out of my hand because I couldn’t take it any longer. There’s something horrifying about a sharp object breaking the barrier, piercing through from what is not me into what is me.

In hospitals I give a little speech each time. Then I sing loudly, staring at an opposite wall and gripping the chair arm for dear life while the hapless nurse giving me a shot struggles not to laugh. Or doesn’t bother struggling. I keep explaining that it’s not the pain. There isn’t much these days beyond a quick pinch but that little sting tells me all I need to know: something sharp and manufactured is now a part of me and out of my control.

And now there I was: in a room full of needles. It was worse than a room full of cats.

OK, ok, a room full of cats when you’re as deathly allergic as I am. Maybe you cat lovers can imagine cats brandishing needles. Not knitting needles! OK, skip that, moving on.

Joanne showed me how simple the acupuncture needles were. Tiny. Wobbly. It didn’t help. “Just go for it,” I told her, gripping my knee and casting around the room for something to stare it. I started deep breathing and extended my right arm. I was supertuned to the slightest sensation, and so the moment of puncture was like a bone snapping. “Gah!” I winced and held my breath for a second, then remember to go back to deep breathing. “Did it hurt,” she asked, genuinely amazed. “No,” I breathed, “I can’t even feel it. I just know it’s there.”

Then I started the process. Just a peek at first. I could see it, a metal flag of the enemy having staked a claim. I was going to turn that into my victory flag. But first, I had to look away again as fast as possible and keep breathing. Bit by bit, minute by minute, I built up the courage to look longer and longer. The needle just sat here, in my arm on the couch. It was right in one of the points I’d learned to use when grabbing and throwing someone to the ground in Kuk Sool Won. That was so much easier.

Eventually I was able to get myself swept up in conversation. The needle got smaller and smaller. After about an hour I could look right at it. At last, I owned it. It was part of me.

This was round one. I have a ways to go. There’s something so invigorating about facing fears. In fact, my new fear is that I’ll love facing this one too much and soon enough you’ll see posts of me in suspension… Gah! I just looked at that site. Maybe not.

images always link to photographer’s site

At Norman Alger’s memorial service this weekend in his hometown of Mantua, Ohio I thought a lot about what would make someone choose to be a farmer. My dad grew up on a farm but turned to physics. Despite this, he and my mother churned up the soil surrounding every house we ever lived in to make space for food to pour up from the ground. My friends used to laugh at the fact that my father worked with a particle accelerator all day and came home to drag a huge homemade wooden plow through the mud. He told me there was something about the magic of seeing things grow that was hard to explain, and for a farmer that used to also mean the independence of running your own business and playing directly with the forces of nature.

While it’s easy to imagine the thrill of the wind in your hair and walking your own land, plenty of people remember Norman as the guy dozing off on the lounger because he’d already been working hard since four in the morning. The neighbor across the street remembered Norman yelling at the cows when he got frustrated, cows he’d named after his ex-girlfriends. Being on a farm you can’t put off your chores or wait until later. There are animals that need your constant care, and crops that have to be harvested at the precise moment they have the most nutritional value but haven’t been soaked by the next rain. You learn to get out and get things done, and that work ethic can carry you your whole life.

When uncle Norman was carried away on a submarine in World War II he kept a collection of pictures in his pocket. It’s not hard to imagine those guys curling up in their bunks at night and trying to make a connection with home by looking through the window of a photograph. There were no phone calls, no email, no sights or sounds for months at a time; just a black and white image of a couple of your brothers or friends grinning around a tractor, waiting for you to come back and help them out.

Now the farm is quiet. The silos were pulled down a long time ago, and the storage bay that replaced them is cold and barren, nothing stored for the next year. Eventually the innovations ran out and there wasn’t any oil or gravel left to sell to cover the costs and keep farming. Norman, like so many that worked so hard for so long, had to close down despite all he had accomplished. He had gathered local farmers together in a milk coop, and was even able to get everyone healthcare, but these days there are forces bigger than individuals, families, and collectives. As in America, now in India and China, factories are replacing personal connections with the land and farmers are packing up and moving away.

And yet, here in America there is a little green sprout of a movement. Couples unleash chickens to roam their back yards. Gardens are appearing in unlikely places, on rooftops and in two foot wide yards. Guerilla gardeners sneak into alleys and onto the edges of constructions sites and leave kale and tomatoes. Somehow each of these unlikely farmers caught a little of the sunlight, the warm glow of seeing something green break through the soil. Somewhere in each of them is a bit of what lit up my uncle Norman’s smile.

Like Superman in his icy Fortress of Solitude this frozen land keeps me from the distractions and dangers of humanity. The solitude in this distant wilderness of the suburbs protects me as I am nursed back to health. My only visitors are passing deer, pausing to look up into windows, holding for a moment before moving on, knowing we are alone and safe from the hunter’s sight. The snow falls gently, filling their tracks behind them.

Like Huo Yuanjia in Fearless, the seasons pass quickly here as I recover. The thick snow and cold of winter blankets the earth only until the sun’s return brings the warmth and melting of spring… which is suddenly replaced again by winter who’s grey clouds rush back in before suddenly springing away again into… What the..?!

Like Linghu Chong in the Smiling Proud Wanderer I find strength in the study of music, and study Kung Fu alone atop this small hill.

On even days I awake to breathe my way through Ashtanga yoga. My balance grows steadily stronger. My headstands smoother and longer. I am, for the first time, beginning to feel myself float as I glide and exhale between poses.

On opposing days I run the elliptical. At first my knees could only handle five minutes before the pain returned. Slowly that number has grown and my breath grows more steady. I get ever closer to making it through a complete Chinese Pod lesson.

Each day I add a little bit more of my chosen Kung Fu style, Ziranmen‘s, 身法。（Shēnfǎ : Body method). For now my upper body briefly rolls and flows through the movements, a little bit each time. As my knees grow stronger I’ll be able to add more and more of my body, completing the ripple from heel to fingertip.

There was one thing I was told more often than any other in China. I heard it from teachers, fellow students, Kung Fu brothers, my master and even people I met on the street: 慢慢来：(màn màn lái : go slowly). I got frustrated with my Chinese language progress. I pushed my body to the limit every day in Kung Fu training until I broke. My 师父 （Shīfu : master) says each day of training is like laying down a piece of tissue paper on a slowly growing pile. Progress is the weight of it over time.

Màn màn lái. Go slowly. Now I am stacking tissue paper here, day by day. 谢谢为汤妈妈和爸爸。(Xièxiè wèi tāng māmā hé bà ba : Thanks for the soup mom and dad).

The oils that naturally keep your head and hair healthy are replaced when you remove them. If you strip away all of the natural oil with shampoo, that wonderfully efficient little machine you live in (your body) responds by pumping out more. It takes a while for it to recognize that not stealing the oil isn’t a one time thing and you’re serious about letting your head do its job. In the transition, about 3-4 weeks, it’s gonna get thick up there as the little pump keeps running at the same high speed.

Washing with water every day I’ve had no trouble. My hair feels thick when I wash it, but it doesn’t smell or feel dirty. Some people worry about that, or experience small amounts of itching, and they resort to a baking soda wash to remove some of the buildup. I’m guessing that this only slows down the process as your head says, “see, see?! I knew you didn’t really mean it! I’m not cutting back the oil supply!”

At the same time… I was fascinated. What would happen? I kept putting it off, wanting to let my head know I was serious. Today I caved in. I had to know. I mixed up a little cup of baking soda and water and brought two half lemons into the shower. I poured the baking soda in my hair first and let it sit for a few minutes. I massaged it in and then rinsed it out. Immediately my hair was twice as light. Terror gripped me. I’d gone too far! Wasted two weeks! It did, however, feel really nice and soft.

The next step is recommended so that your hair doesn’t smell like baking soda, although I’m guessing it’s also because you need the vinegar, an acid, to neutralize the baking soda, a base. I couldn’t find vinegar fast enough so I grabbed a lemon, also very acidic.

Now, here’s the trick with lemons in the shower. It turns out that picking up lemon seeds off of a wet floor is like wresting a greased pig. With your thumbs. They kept creeping closer and closer to the drain but I couldn’t get a hold of the feisty little critters. I finally slid them, ever so carefully, all the way up the shower wall until they hit the soap dish. There was a tiny lip, and my hope was that… if I just barely tipped them over the edge onto my waiting thumb… I could just… and with a yelp of triumph, I popped them off the wall! …and back onto the floor. The third time was the charm and I managed to wrestle them into their original plastic bag.

The comb was the finishing touch. I ran it through my hair briefly and then looked down in horror. There were thick chunks of something coming off of my head! Was it globs of grease? Chunks of skin?! What disgusting or terrifying thing was happening to me?! Then I looked a little closer. And took a taste. Mmmm! Zesty! It was chunks of lemon peel.

And so here I am, smelling zesty and feeling good. My hair feels great. I hope I haven’t backpedaled too far. I’ll keep you updated.

I’ve had some pretty weird hair colors and styles over the years (and have stuck with the dilbus) but I’ve always washed it every day. The thing is, when you’re home with your parents recovering and not leaving the house… suddenly you have time to try whacky new things. The whole “no shampoo” thing has been going on for a while now. The process takes about a month, it seems, before your head stops freaking out and trying to make up for all the oil the shampoo bubble squad was stealing every day. Once it settles down it is, apparently, quite nice and low maintenance. The bonus is that you don’t dump a lot of questionable chemicals onto your head. Even better, for me, it means that my ultralight travel pile gets one bottle lighter!

Of course, no shampoo doesn’t mean I’ll never wash my hair. It just means I’ll do it with water. There are a number of other solutions to use during the transition time, including apple vinegar and baking soda, but I’m sure that’s just for wusses.

So today it begins: 30 days without shampoo. And then..?

Here is a pile of blogged scribblings about other people’s experiences:

Sean Bonner

Sean Bonner update on Boing Boing

Fulfilled Homemaking

Ridiculously Extraordinary Karol Gajda

Free The Animal, although this guy is too willing to be a freak to make this seem mainstream!

Living the Simple Life

Sadly, he died back in April, 2000. Our plans of dancing beside him amidst some kind of bizarre beach party near his place in Hawaii were wrinkled and twisted and now, here we are, with Terence sliding around through the ether somewhere and Steve and I separated by a continent.

Happy New Years Steve and Terence. I’ll find a way to make this up to you guys.

Watch Terence do his thing: (skip video forward to 2:45 where he appears)

I think this is why I’ve never been particularly aggressive about getting other people to hear these songs. Their role is not to entertain, win women, or make cash. Apparently, that’s what my more recent children’s songs are for.

In an interesting shift, I’m finding that as the muse wakes me at four in the morning I’m striking different bargains. I wrestle with her a bit, I have my own demands. I take what she gives me and fight to turn it into something I can make childlike, simple, and fun. Suddenly that angry riff becomes a high energy background to childish excitement. Suddenly that sad finger rolling melody is the old tan curtain behind a storyteller.

The magic now is in taking the learnings themselves, the essence of all of those old spells, and making them simple enough for children to absorb and integrate so that they too can breath them in, laugh them out, and tuck them away for a time when it matches one of their own struggles.

Yes, just like an inoculation through a vaccination, giving them Antibodies.

The problems with this system are obvious. It doesn’t matter that a child is eight years old when it happened; when a child’s parents die the child often takes on a lifetime of guilt, wondering what they did to cause or deserve this. When the seeming impossibility of someone so young being to blame is too much, some systems of belief incorporate a series of former yous that are to blame. (Past lives.) This means that you can feel all of the guilt of having done something terrible without actually having any known history of doing something terrible. At eight years old you’ve already been a brutal dictator who must be punished. In Christianity, there is even the idea that you are “born into sin” and never had a chance to begin with.

My current situation certainly gives me plenty of leverage to get cranky. I came to China fired up to work hard. I pushed myself and trained every day, doing what was “good” in the system that I understood: if you work hard without fail, you will be rewarded. Instead I overdid it and injured my knees so badly that it will now take more than six months to heal. Most of my time in China so far has been spent unable to freely walk and explore.

If I look at this as a punishment, it’s miserable to deal with. I’m being punished for knowledge I didn’t have at the time. It doesn’t seem fair. If I had known that the particular type of pain I was feeling was a clue to stop training for a while instead of pushing on I would be strong and healthy today. But I didn’t know.

Many years ago I also did what I thought was right and invested my money instead of letting it sit in a bank, and if I’d just diversified or pulled it out I’d still have money today. But the younger me didn’t and couldn’t have known these things and so I lost it all.

Now instead of guilt I’d like to introduce another concept, a concept that I’ve also seen used by religious people that are not so extreme. Everything that happens has a result. I can’t walk while I’m in an exciting new country and I don’t have any money left from all of my hard work. Those sound like pretty crappy outcomes. But one of the things that, say, a monotheist might say is that, “all things happen for a reason as part of God’s plan.” Atheists and others sometimes refer to the, “will of the universe” or things, “being as they should be”. This is radically different from looking for blame. In fact, because things happened the way they were supposed to, and always do, there is neither blame nor praise for anything you did to cause it. It just was. In fact, you don’t even have to look for a way it fits into someone else’s plan, be they god or universe. You can find ways it’s offered new opportunities for you or those you love. With this new pair of spectacles to see the world it’s time to reframe the results.

If I hadn’t lost all of my money I might have followed my plan at the time and been quicker to rush out into the world. Having not stayed in Austin I would never have moved into the fantastic Pink Palace and learned and taught so much there. I would never have met so many incredible people who are lifelong friends. I would never have experienced so many incredible loves. I might not have taken a class where I learned the word, “reframe”. You might not be reading this blog post right now, because I might have been traveling and not have started a blog and, even then, if I was still able to train kung fu here I wouldn’t have time to write right now.

So, there you have it. The universe/God/Goddess/the Great Spirt/any way you like it has willed that I write this blog post and that you read it. I have suffered a lot so that you can have this before you. I hope it was worth it!

Addendum

There seems to be some confusion, so to clarify: the last line is a joke. Otherwise it would negate the whole point! Of course it’s worth it, even if it sometimes takes looking from the right angle to see how. It’s something I’ve made a habit, and while I’m not perfect it continually transforms my life “setbacks” into a constant source of amusement and new challenges. As I mentioned in the comments, I wouldn’t even be able to speak Chinese now if I hadn’t been injured and given enough time, let alone met so many fun Chinese students from all over the world!