I'm a poor Artist, you're a Jerk

Actually, what Eric Berne wrote long ago was that the world is divided into jerks - heavy parental types - and sulks - childish types.  I dislike half of that.  I am a creative person.  Though this means I have retained access to my inner child, it does not mean I'm undeveloped and highly unsuccessful at life - if you think so, hey, you're a jerk.  But actually, I have no reason to think one single jerk reads my blog.  They're busy cleaning, earning, bragging.

Francis Bacon's Studio

Part of being an Artist, a real one, is a certain disorder - in fact, famously, many creative studios feature a dozen projects underway, abandoned, past deadline.  Jerkdom can be defined as orderly.  Now, it could be Apollinian, and often thinks it is - rational, clear.  I have known a couple of those in my life, and liked them.  I don't like the amateur or failed jerks who basically make themselves feel good by judging their mothers to be ditzy, their fathers to be stupid failures, and me - all of the above.

I will know I'm enlightened when one of them can offer me free fixing and I don't mind, not then, not later, not even when I'm in the grip of a depression.  I used to have a "friend" who obviously believed my realism was pessimism, cynicism, and that she should and could fix me.  She went so far as to urge me to subscribe to a nauseating positive good happiness news feed.  What?  I get my news from professional media, I'm not stupid.  Finally, after many many insults of this kind, I blew up at her.  Wish I'd done it years sooner.  You have to blow up at some people to get them to let go of you, because they so enjoy feeling superior, even though they suspect maybe you've got something going here with your irresponsible creativity (unfinished projects!) and happiness and scepticism.

That's it - a jerk is someone who wants to think that everyone whose life is not as structured and conventional, predictable and dull, as theirs is inferior to them.  And can't help but let you know. They may ask at Thanksgiving, "So have you sold any paintings lately?" and the whole table falls silent, leaning into it, enjoying the proof of your uselessness, your total lack of real success.

Should such a question come your way, I advise you tell them you have.  But be too modest to go into it.  Later you can let one nosy person know it sold for $82,000 but you were wrong to let it go for that.  What was it about, they'll ask.  An abstract, you say.  That will stop them for a while.  But be aware that they will go home and google you.  And how lies demand more lies.  No, don't say anything.  Just shrug and look mysterious.  Let me know how it goes.

Another unattractive day

Okay, I just try to be authentic.

Just interrupted by 2 people at the door.  Did not know them.  What did he want?  He kept saying meaningless things like did I know so and so down the street.  Finally something comes thru about inspecting foundations.  No, I said.  What?  No, and closed the door.  I'm sorry if I made his day worse.  I try to protect the world from me when I'm like this.  At times my anger comes up at old things, like the shrink who kept me on lithium even as it destroyed my kidneys, and I want to write a really angry letter.  When I feel better, I don't care, it's not what I want to be doing with a good hour.  The anger is not "real."  This is a chemical mess, or chaos in my neurochemistry.  Point is, you just get through this.

Saw pdoc today, this deep depression is news to both of us.  He does not want to put me on a new medication, obviously, I take 20 different things.  One is Seroquel at night, cools the mind, I can usually get to sleep.  We're going to try doubling the low dose.  The downside of this drug is that it has taken away most of my creativity.  But creativity is worthless if you're depressed, like sequined red shoes gathering dust on the closet floor.  It's a mood stabilizer too, he says.Call him in two weeks.  Gave me his direct line phone no.  I refrained from telling him my sports doc gave me his cell no.  There, a bit of humor.

Tomorrow, another dr.  Seem to have a new bladder infection.  That itself causes depression.  Stopped to fill scrip, killed my left shoulder, the other one, the one with a torn rotator cuff, lifting a half gallon of milk, which weighs 4 lbs.  Both sides hurt, I'm sure it's good news that I have oxycontin for it.  I am so depressed it does not make me happy.

A very depressing birthday visit from one of those people in my life.  It doesn't matter what I say, how light-hearted, any small talk, she can always incisively suggest what I should have done, The Answer.  I realize this is a virtually psychotic adaptation to life, people who honestly think there's always an answer,  things can be fixed.  As if I couldn't think of going to the hairdresser to get my hair washed, since it is so painful for me to do with the rotator cuff injury in the arm I can use.  As if I don't have a reason (a very painful neck) for not going to the hairdresser.  So let it go, she's like that.  But this is depression - it does not have perspective.  It can be obsessive.  It is your worst Monday morning.

Read something from a big wisdom blog on aging and snorted.  It is absolutely inevitable on these that people write in comments bragging about how f- happy they are.  And they're not old inside! And they love life.  And you can tell they think they deserve this, they think they earned it.

Okay, good news.  Tashi has recovered enough from our absence to come and ask for a cuddle twice, that's when she climbs up on my shoulder and lays across my heart, purring.  She likes it when I breathe on her head.  Above, an awfully good picture of her.

Oh, the phone.  I am not answering.

Birthday Thoughts

 So here is my private journal this morning, lightly censored.

damn - the pleasure of a new page
nice to sit here and people are wishing me happy birthday on facebook
woke up from my nap ystrda w this quiet groundedness - sanity

ystrda after church was into expressing my outrage at the whole damn thing, the year, the years before, what i have been through in the belief that a transplant would give me a life.  It was a good thing Wossname didn’t say “It’s all good” like she likes to mindlessly in her pursuit of a spiritual attitude or of being good or forcing happiness.

last night my feet and legs swollen awfully - need to find my compression sox see if we can get them on.  take it easy on salt today. 

so this morning, there’s the mindless optimism online.  it is a salve people put on.  why shd it anger me?  here you are in a f------ garbage heap.  maybe the sun is out, sun on your head and back is the greatest blessing.  maybe there’s some shiny thing you can pick.  but that’s not how they want to see it - they want to transform the world into a storybook cottage w picket fence and pink roses and white curtains and the sun coming thru and a decorous cat on the windowsill, and everything’s all right.  And pain, loss, illness, death are just oh, a nuisance you don’t have to pay attention to. 

No, life is hard.  The point is, get with the reality, but do not stick to your suffering either.  Handle the reality as well as you can.  But you don’t handle it if you refuse to see it.

i had a lot of outrage to express ystrda and i did.  found myself after church surrounded by the women I like most in the world, Liz, Gini, Terry, Pat, Laurie, we called ourselves the Crazy Artists - we are the ones who don’t go to meetings of artists.  they weren’t flinching from my bad language and anger about my f------ year.  Maybe they like someone saying how it is.

In sum, this has been a very hard year, if you want to know, go back and read this blog.  and the years before, trying dialysis, trying to get on the f------ transplant list, jumping thru flaming hoops to do it, then waiting, trying so hard to hold on to the little k function i had, why?  why did I want so goddamn bad to stay alive?  i don't know.  maybe it is a conditioned desire.  it's a stupid one after a point, and i'm over it.  I'm old, 69 today.  I am going to die.  I am no longer going to do excessive treatments or focus my life around not dying.  Not aging? that's a crock.

Coffee good this morning.  Might have t take me to Kohl's buy some comfortable underpants and maybe a treat, a wide-neck shirt i can get in and out of with this broken arm.  Have a good day, Reader, if you can, or some good moments.

[image: accidental calligraphy on a curb - if you know what it says, let me know]

The First Noble Truth, Again

My life

Day by day the depression has retreated, like a dark smog going out to sea.  I am not so bad this morning, but left with the realities of illness in both mind and body.  This mind has resumed an active ability to be depressed that I haven't had in many years, just the way my body has revealed weaknesses now that I have the energy to use it more.  (Back story: kidney transplant 11 months ago; age 68).  When Sleeping Beauty wakes up, it is to a mess.

This morning an image came to my mind, of life as a hooded Torturer who says to me, "This is the way it's going to be from now on - always some new disability or loss, some new pain.  Maybe several things at a time.  You will never know what it's going to be or when, sometimes it will be very hard.  And the only way out of here is death."

I say, "But I didn't do anything to deserve this."

He shrugs.  "You were born."

"I didn't ask to be born."  The adolescent cry, meaning, I wouldn't have bought a ticket if I thought the ride was going to be like this.  (Manic-depression has something in common with adolescence, heightened emotions connected with internal, maybe hormonal, changes. Also, an adolescent is being born out of childhood into a different less-fun world, new ways of seeing.)

So the question becomes, How do you live in prison for life under these lousy circumstances, knowing the torturer can visit anytime?

First, get with the reality; cultivate awareness of the reality, the kind of food you can expect here.  This was the Buddha's First Noble Truth - Life sucks. If you don't like this reality, you'll have no trouble finding people who want to feed you sugary pap.  That's their approach. 

One example of my bad attitude

A very bad stupid day yesterday, which maybe meant I hit bottom and turned the corner from the depression.  This morning coming in here w my coffee I noticed some faint negative thoughts, I mean the pissy thoughts about people whose crap makes my life even harder, but I noticed the thoughts, so there was a witness looking at my poor overloaded mind.  I wrote a poem this morning.  I meditated for the first time since we got back, briefly, knowing I had to do these things before the pain got bad and I took the first oxycontin, because on opiates you just don't care.

(I guess that's partly how they ruin lives. That, and the fact that they're illegal unless prescribed; and I suppose it is illegal to prescribe them just because someone likes the way they make you float and appreciate beauty.  It is a stupid law that has resulted in our prisons being crammed with mostly black young men who did nothing violent, just sold drugs.)

This has all involved how hard I worked these last years to stay alive, how vigilant I was, had to be.  Then what, you're walking toward the bathroom to fill your water pitcher because you have to drink 3 liters of water a day, you trip over nothing and down you go, flat, and a broken arm that is going to make every minute of your life a hassle for six weeks.  One second of inattention.

It was a second during which I was thinking how unresponsive and useless dokusan had been that morning, how I wasn't going to do another one, how I just had one *&%$# day to get through, then we could go home, thinking I probably would never come back on this retreat.  Yes, I had things on my mind.  But I don't care what you do, you can not guarantee you won't fall.  Could have struck my temple on the doorframe and been a functional vegetable the rest of my life.

It hurt, and it shocked me the way a fall can, and let loose all the misery and anxiety of these last years trying not to die.  And now what?  Almost a year after transplant and it's been a lousy, difficult year, not worth living.  I will never have another transplant, or go on dialysis again.  Done with extraordinary measures.

In all this depression there was something I decided about letting go my anxious vigilance.  I don't mind dying, people - in fact, at this point I'd welcome it.  God, gets me out of here.  I will do what I know I have to do to (maybe) keep living, take the damn drugs 7 times a day, get labs done, drink the *&%$# water.  But I'm done dragging myself through things that supposedly will protect me.  I enjoy food.  I will eat what I like.  I find exercise boring, so today while Tom did his I walked around McConnell with my camera.  Watching every *&%$# step, believe it.  Enjoyed it.  Well, there you are.  An update. Where I'm calling from.
~~~~~~~~~~
p.s. It's been 12 weeks now, and the arm is still a problem, not even ready for PT to get range of motion back (Wun hopes).
 

priorities

Recently thought my priorities are -

Stay alive
Do what I enjoy.

Much is subsumed under staying alive, such as having love, friendships, community, laughing, relaxing, and I suppose meditating. Along with all the usual crap about exercise, eat fiber . . .survival, resilience.

Doing what I enjoy has to deal with learning to enjoy or accept or laugh at what I have to do that I don't do for pleasure. Like do pills every week - making it least obnoxious, most efficient. Also scrutinizing things I think I have to do - do I really?  Also learning what I enjoy, not doing stuff the culture thinks I should or should not enjoy (like watching football).

Bad luck

Thurs morning I fell - a split second of inattention inside - flat on my front, the right shoulder taking it.  The head of the arm bone is fractured, in a sling.  Had to come home from retreat, see Dr. here.   It has been 4 very tiring days learning how to do everything. 

What you do with your dominant hand, or both hands:  eat, brush & floss, drive, touch type, write, dial a phone, lock a door, make coffee, dice celery, tie your shoes - everything.  I can only sleep in a supported posture on my left side.  It is tricky and painful to change t-shirts. Have yet to figure out how to support the arm with straps so I can shower.

As for pain, the torn rotator cuff in the left shoulder is child's play compared to bone pain, and also the pain from the splint around my neck.  We have ordered a high-design splint that may help.  Sometimes you roll on your back in sleep, and the pain wakes you up.  Well, I have no wrap up on this. Dumb with pain pills.  Time for bedtime pills.

What practice is about

It is about awakening to the reality of your life, and the courage needed to live it, to really live it and not stand around procrastinating a million easy things and waiting for a poem to hit you.

It is about running through pain. I wrote this poem so many years ago I can't remember, and it just came back to me.


Running through Pain
My therapist dreams about shopping for tuna.
She wants me to take up running, to learn
to run from no one to nowhere, then
to run back home again.

Working with Depression

As for yesterday's gloom - this morning, again the pain in the SI joint when I walk or sit still for long.  That, plus being almost late, or was I late? for the first sit because when you're old, everything takes so long.  I hated this * old age thing, and all those who say "You're only as old as you feel."  Bull - you feel as old as you are.  I'd like to see them spend a day in this body, then see how old they feel.

So I was wordlessly grieved out in dokusan, and AMA Samy said, "Okay, it's okay."
"Not okay," I growled, leaving.  It wasn't funny then; extreme emotion is like that. I thought how wise my grandson was.  When he was born he came out really pissed off - Who are all these people? bright lights! I'm cold!  Later, his first words were "Don't want!"  That's how I felt - DON'T WANT!!!

Then somehow I got with it - the sun was just coming up orange, the color of joy.  I kept standing outside the zendo leaning on the railing, which was easy on my back - and then breakfast.  Walking hurts, is not good for the SI joint, ouch, so I found a folding chair and sat outside with my back to the sun, a blessing, and after a while read a little Trungpa on the Kindle on my phone, which is always with me because it is my camera.  He cuts like a diamond.  Took a Vicodin at last,  time to sit (meditate), so came in and did lying-on-heating-pad meditating, being choiceless, letting mind flow - it even went into some hypnagogic images.

Now, in all this I was not "working with" the depression, and I think that's a key point.  What I was doing was paying close attention to my physical needs, and the environment, which is beautiful and peaceful.  Sometimes it is called "not clinging" or "not sticking to anything."  Especially not to any idea of yourself or of evaluating your life.  Not getting hung up in Want! Don't Want! One of our chant begins -

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who do not pick and choose.

How you learn not to pick and choose all the time, you meditate for ten or fifteen years - it's a start, anyway.

On crying as a practice

By now, I know more about the process of bipolar disorder than any psychiatrist.  That's 35 years of studying and experiencing, not counting the outbreak when I was 16, that got shoved back down until I was 32.  Then I had three years incorrectly diagnosed - and there was no excuse for missing it -and twenty more on lots of drugs, then twelve on few or no drugs, years given to working with the progressive kidney disease lithium caused.

One thing I learned: if you feel like you want to cry but can't, you're in big trouble.  Mental health screening tests see that as a sign of major depression.

In 1999, when a new shrink yanked me off lithium and three other psychotropics (yes, that was very stupid), I began crying again, a lot. I remember crying six times during one church service.   I know now that suppressing tears is a big mistake.  Womens' tears release certain chemicals, and that changes the chemical balance in your brain. 

Why I cried just now? so damn much pain I could neither sit or walk kinhin in the zendo. The SI joint is inflamed again, the torn rotator cuff hurt no matter how I positioned my arm.  I  had to leave, come to my room and meditate lying on my big heating pad, and think hard about taking a Vicodin, and then do crying practice, out of both frustration and pain.  This is at least the tenth time I've cried since we got here four days ago. And the depression I came here with it much better.  (Though it is not so easy to change the body.)

Our practice here is being, on the cushion and off.  Acknowlede everything, let it float on. Be brave, but don't be stupid - take your pain pills. 

Sunrise at Grailville

Dark Cloud

Appropriately, this photo is a negative effect shot of a stunning cumulus cloud.  A horrible day.  Couldn't get internet in my room until now, ashamed to be visible outside with it.  So I felt horribly lonely.   This is not like garden-variety "I walk the streets of town alone" realization.  I hope maybe some relatives of bipolars read this - I am trying to express how it feels. Or look at Van Gogh's self-portrait.

I did sit mid-morning, but obsessed madly on a problematic relationship - it was like my first retreat, not much better mental control. Cried about the death of Sherlock two years ago (not the first time). It was worse than not sitting.  Not talking added to it - you express energy talking.  That's why anxious people babble. I'm sure I need a shower.  My novels didn't even engage me. Hugging Tom helped - he is a pillar of flesh. Petting the two roving kittens helped terrifically. And taking a few photos. Why are bipolars so creative?  There you are - it helps. And kind notes from two facebook friends, women from church, as well as a note from a beloved Teacher that told me he knew how I feel.  I can't tell you how much connection means. Very few people don't turn away from acute suffering. People have to be realized and grounded.

There is only one Buddhist thought that helps - this, too, shall pass. Other beautiful minds know how long every minute is in a bad depression.  But it has passed other times. Being able to write this has absorbed me, too.

DNR Me

Far fields

We got here yesterday to set up the sound, but retreat is just starting now, and silence, thank god. I got overstressed by the week, the packing, the change of everything, and went into a really bad mood last night. I assure you undiagnosed people - what Tom calls Temporarily Able-Bodied - you do not know what depression is.  I write about this because I know there are bipolars and borderlines who read this, and who do know.  It has been a day to just get through.  I took to hiding in my room so I would not run into some chirpy smiley Hey how are you girl and snarl at her.  It's not their fault but fact is, their suffering inflicts me.

The outlook in depression is also real, though not balanced.  Mine has led me to see something I think is going to feel like a big relief after I get a night's sleep. Because you think about death, and how you're just so tired of all this.  Most of all I am tired of knowing tomorrow this kidney could fail.  This is less likely the further I get from transplant - 11 months now - but shit, I have a torn rotator cuff and will probably never play guitar again, an inflamed SI joint, crumbling vertebrae, a worsening hip, a bad knee, an incurable  toenail fungus, what might be gout on the other big toe, a tendency to blood sugar problems, can't drink ... people, getting old sucks as much as being young (except you can get good drugs legally). Add to that having my very dear friend almost snatched away by a heart attack, and no telling how she'll be after lots of rehab.  You learn a major Buddhist truth - you can read  The Five Remembrances on the side of this blog - anything can be taken from you in a flash.

And I thought, if this kidney fails, I'm done.  I'm not going to die slowly on dialysis.  I've had it.

Would I take another transplant if some miraculous kidney was offered again?  Don't know.  What an ordeal this year has been with 11 infections, steroid flashbacks, and  all the usual crap of normal life.  I am not likely to get to make that decision, so forget it.  I am about to turn 69, and that's part of my depression.  I lost the last five years to severely low kidney function.  The five years before that were a hell of mother dying, brother dying, Tom becoming too disabled to work.  Jesus, when did I have a good year?  Maybe next year?

So that's where I'm at after 14 years of pretty dedicated, not to say intense, spiritual practice.  Right there in reality.  Which sucks sometimes.  If anybody tells me to look on the bright side, I will hunt her down and kill her.  But quickly - I do have some compassion and, I guess, still a sense of humor.

Taking an experimental approach

Spring - remember?

Often I inspire myself in my own morning post to a good friend.  Today I wrote to her . . . "I guess our big huge stupid brains can't see the simple straightforward, that's the problem.  In fact, that is the problem." We build huge castles around our simple problems.  Interesting.

I think a certain amount of that is because we want to do it perfectly.  Get that answer, get it right the first time, have it all turn out the way we want it.  

Another way to go is to try something.  Explore it.  Expect to often change your mind or your tactics.  My favorite of all quotes is from an ancient Zen mystic named Dogen, who said, "My life has been a series of mistakes."  Now, how could it be anything else?  It's all new, every day full of stuff you never did before.  My ideal would be to be like a happy baby - fall down, laugh, get up and start lurching across the room again.

Who do you hate?

You all know that I am against hatred, meanness, violence.  As far as I can see, we haven't gone very far in terms of eradicating that big boy's game of war with real weapons.  Dogfighting is illegal but boxing, football, hockey, and other sports that we know often lead to brain damage are not.  This is a patriarchal culture, and was founded as a violent overtaking of other humans, with the nice excuse that they weren't really human like us.  It is still patriarchal, meaning it values and rewards the aggressions of high-testoserone males in business, academia, the economy, god, they even rule the kitchens now, taking a job traditionally done by women in the service of nourishing and community and turning it into a screaming competitive hell.

Okay.  So it has started on facebook already, the vicious posting about that act of terrorism by a handful of deranged young men almost 10 years ago.  And I was in an unpleasant mood yesterday to start with.  So I got into it with someone who was deploring the very idea of "building a mosque at Ground Zero".  He had his facts all wrong - here's an article about the proposed construction at Park51 that explains what the building will house - but the issue for me was the vindictive hatred I was seeing in the comments on this post.  Self-righteous, and backed up by their idea of Christianity.  I had good experiences in my Christian youth, and that ticked me off too - Jesus did not tell us to hate one another.  So I got into it.

I restrained myself, that wasn't the issue.  But my anger surprised me somewhat - maybe it was just a high-fire day.  I often sat and listened to racism and bigotry and idiotic parroting of talk radio hatemongers from our fathers, not rising to the bait to argue or even get mad.  Maybe my long patience was just worn out.

But if I hate the bigot and assign him/her to the category of subhuman (sub me that is), am I not as bad as him? And go further - don't you know liberals who self-righteously hate the sitting ducks of the right - it used to be George W.  Now it's Sarah Palin.  In the privacy of my own livingroom I am not a model of compassion and kindness about a number of people, definitely including that Dominique Strauss-Kahn person.

If you want a spiritual exercise, think about putting some person whose politics you abhor into your lovingkindness meditation, in the spot of "enemy" or "difficult person."  If even thinking about it increases your stomach acid, well here's an opportunity, I guess.  Meanwhile, none of us should be too hard on ourselves - it doesn't help.  Lovingkindness starts with us.  Well, maybe the cat first, then us.

The shadow of things unseen

It comes on the wings of the morning
Through the mists of an azure screen,

To tint with prophetic linings
The shadow of things unseen. 

Charles J. North

The Hymn Immortal 

 Image: detail, altar, August 28, 2011, Rev. Mark Belletini

Where in the world are you coming from?

As Readers know, I was born in another world (1942, that is) that was much more insular.  Some people had a pen pal in England or France (in other words, in Europe), but my schools weren't that advanced.  As for the rest of the world, I bet the term "Pacific Rim" was unknown.

I am still not very well traveled, so I like it when I look at this blog and see that someone is reading it in - Edinburgh!  India! - out on the Coast (West US, that is), which I may never get to visit again.  So, being quite determinedly idle today, I have begun a list (see right margin), but I'm not on most of the time to see who's here.  If you like, drop a comment to this post telling me where you're located, so I can add it to the list.

The Commitments You Don't Keep

You probably think the commitments to others are the really important ones: making the dentist appointment on time, going to someone's birthday dinner, going to work every day, being faithful to the Wun you said you'd be faithful to (trying to be modern here and not just say "your spouse").  I'm not saying they aren't.  But I'm not sure how much they need to be talked about, because we all tend to take them seriously.

The Wun we don't take seriously is ourself.  Oh, you know where I'm going with this.  But before I go on, really, I need to slow down this flow of word and thought and . . . you know where I'm going with this . . . do my practice.

Part of my practice these days is easy photography, catching texture or color or light, or Tashi in her infinite beautiful poses.  My new Droid has been a great help with this - a basic point-and-shoot that I always have with me.  I bought the book Contemplative Photography to encourage me to do this, and it has worked.  I haven't read it all the way through or done the exercises, exactly - but it helped me along with this.

So, not too strict, not too loose, that's right effort.  And if you just won't do something, like meditate every day, maybe you need to sit down and really think about it.  Maybe it's not the practice for you.  Maybe the commitment came from the mother in your head, and maybe the child in you is doing a healthy rebellion.  And there are a dozen or a thousand other reasons we don't take time for ourself, none of them good reasons.  Not one.

Why I Wish You'd Meditate

This today via AMA Samy, from Mysticism in Religion - Three Ways to View the Sunset by Fr. Richard Rohr -

Consciously or not, far too much organized religion has a vested interest in keeping you . . .  where all can be put into proper  language and deemed certain. This keeps you coming back to church, and it keeps us clergy in business.  This is not usually the result of ill will on anybody's part; it's just that you can lead people only as far as you yourself have gone. Transformed people transform people.

It got me thinking about the many bad "therapists" I've touched down on, and the world's worst psychiatrists, all of whom I've surely seen, the really bad doctors, and ministers, yes.  It is exactly true that people whose level of enlightenment or transformation is low will deal with you from their own interests. 

These days meditation is often sold and sought for personal gain of the most superficial and immediate sort:  I feel so peaceful afterward.  But what we mean to do in Zen is much more than you can get from a good massage - loosen the bonds of our conditioned self, be less driven by its egocentric project.  Awakening means knowing what we're doing, and thus being able to avoid doing harm.

Tired tonight, often I don't post things like this that feel abstract, but I think I will.

My goal

A poet is a man who stands outside in thunderstorms hoping to be struck by lightning, and if he is lucky he may be struck three or four times in a lifetime.
Randall Jarrell

Of course I am drawn to interesting people - in the blogosphere and in life - and maybe it follows that they are younger and healthier than me.  Almost everyone is.  Is that true?  I went to US Census data, which is quite a strain on the left brain, and I did find there that over 40 million people in the US are over 65.  Now, consider that I am 68, almost 69, which is almost 70.  The aged population dwindles with every year of life, so the graph looks like an upside-down top.  Therefore my statement is true, at least the part that most people are younger than me.  And it's reasonable to deduce that most younger people are healthier, more vigorous than me (or my close friends, in fact).

Bear with me, because I am tired today and having trouble following myself.  These younger people often have goals in life, short-term, long-term, and maybe what is now called a Bucket List but used to be a Life List back when I made one, when I didn't know what life is all about.  I thought it was about great experiences, that seemed to involve sensual pleasure, novelty, travel, fun.  I guess.  But I think most of my desires were symbolic - you know, to fly, to float, to whirl.

Beyond that, I was really into accomplishing things, like learning to relax (and wouldn't be here if I hadn't) and learning to play the guitar.  And finding love, which I really misunderstood.  I'd been too humbled as a girl to have career goals, except when I was around 50 and decided that I'd always yearned to go back and teach college, and so entered a PhD program in umm, literary theory, a decision I still don't understand.  I did accomplish that, by the way, I have to mention it since the stress caused me to develop cancer.  In fulfilling the dream of that degree, I did learn that I didn't want any part of the academic rat race and the faux teaching - sometimes you just have to do that to get over your romantic delusions.

Now, naturally my overriding goal right now is that of all sentient beings, to stay alive, and as the Constant Reader knows, I spend a lot of time on that.  It goes with another desire, to be happy, which the Dalai Lama says we all share, and of course we don't mean sappy-happy.  Toward that I spend time on spiritual practice, thoughtful living, being with those I love, and so on - stuff we Buddhists are in danger of writing about too much.

On the career side, I just finished a big piece of work, a submission for an arts grant in poetry, and so I have found within myself a humble goal, or desire.  It is not really anything you can bring about, like passing the French test or going to the health club three times a week.  It is to be struck by lightning, not just a few times in my life, but several times a year, to be frank, and write - or be the vehicle for - good poetry.  This means shaping my life around "being a poet," and is more complicated than just leaving empty time, spacious time to write.  I'm thinking about it today (too tired to do much beyond think and oh, a tiresome followup dr. visit later today, and grocery shopping . . . ).  How to encourage my creativity.

Right now the sun is shining, sky blue, all the green and gold outside my window moving in the breezes.  There it is, right there.  I hope it is shining for you.