Age is a question of matter over mind

I do like the fact that my not being able to drive means Tom chauffeurs me around.  This is an excellent time to natter at him.  Yesterday I found myself talking about how old age creeps up on us slowly, slowly, then, yow, fast.  Specifically, I recounted his father's story.  Jim was around 80 when he discovered he could not lift the 40-foot extension ladder to get up and clean the gutters.  (Italics his.) This fact impressed him so much that he told me the story at least twice, on different visits.  He had grown old when he wasn't looking. He couldn't get over it.

I was just a kid of, let's see, age 57, and believe me, I knew more than I know now, 12 years later.  I was prone to including in my practice The Five Remembrances (which you can find at the very bottom of this blog), for the purpose of being in touch with grim realities.  So my unspoken reaction to Jim's astonishment was, Jim, you're 80. Of course you're old. Get it over it.

But now I know that somehow age does creep up on you.  Watching yourself change is rather like watching a sunset, as I have often done, speculating on just how I would make that color with watercolors.  But "that color" is already gone, no longer apricot, now in the soft coral range, and so on.  And I didn't see it change.  I just see that it changed when I glanced away.

As I have gone around doing little quality-of-life things today, I have had the thought that the word "old" or even "age" is a concept, a label that tends to be encumbered by judgements firmly implanted by our culture.  It amused me to look up a quote from Satchel Paige, whose autobiography is titled Maybe I'll Pitch Forever---

Age is a question of mind over matter.  If you don't mind, age don't matter.

Satchel Paige in younger days

I couldn't help thinking, Yes, but it does matter. Aging is like a puppy who's got hold of a book (or a couch) and is thoroughly demolishing it.  The book gets in shreds whether you ignore it or watch.  Eventually, those who don't get hit by a flaming arrow of misfortune die of old age.  In Paige's case, it was a long season of heart trouble and emphysema that ended when he was, perhaps, 75 years old - he liked to be mysterious about his age. He had not been pitching those last uncomfortable years.

I'm just carrying on here because yesterday I woke up slowly from a long, good sleep, to realize my middle back was hurting, right there in the spine where there are severely deteriorated bones.  After a sleep like that I usually (or used to) wake up relaxed and pain-free.

It would all be so much easier if Wun felt that getting older meant automatically advancing to a position of respect, if Wun became An Elder Who Had Seen Many Things.  The baby Boomers, who are a few years behind me, have famously changed the culture at every age they went through.  But they've got the wrong idea about age: they think you can prevent it.  Like Ponce de Leon, looking for the Fountain of Youth, and he really was, I gather.

What I'd like to see happen is for the Boomers to realize old age is (usually) inevitable, and that our best shot is to make it gleam.  I know they can do it if they try.

And here's an irresistable bonus (from Wikipedia)

Paige's Guide to Longevity
To a world that marveled at his stamina as a 59-year-old pitcher, Satchel Paige often offered these ''master's maxims'' as his guide to longevity:
1. Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social rumble ain't restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.



~~~~~
[The puppy photo is from a blog by a very much younger woman.]

Why I erased my public blog roll

The fad among Buddhist bloggers of listing their favorite bloggers reminds me that whenever someone "wins" someone loses.

How this goes, the blogger is asked to single out her most helpful post, most beautiful, and so on, seven categories, and then to recommend five other bloggers to do the same.  At the moment this is working out to include bloggers who frame themselves as distinctly Zen.  And I am more electic, and - if you didn't know - the very idea of "Dalai" is Tibetan Buddhism.  Like Christians, like everyone, Buddhists tend to subdivide into tight little cliques.

Still, wouldn't you like to be liked even if you are a little weird?  Wouldn't you like to be picked?

It brings to my mind a workshop I attended at Earlham College several years ago, in fact, just before our lives blew up in our face, and Tom had to retire on disability and I went downhill with kidney failure.  In 2003 I was still able to travel and to drive several hours, still trying to build my courage to seek publication.  The writing conference was early fall, beautiful weather.  I was very pleased to be there, to have done this on my own. 

I don't know whether the teacher in my workshop meant to exclude me; but she didn't include me.  A young woman, she was on the faculty there and knew everyone else in the workshop by name, local women, apparently, who had taken workshops with her before.  She had us go around the room and introduce ourselves with one sentence.  She made a presentation.  Then we wrote a little on the theme, which was daily bread.  Then she selected one woman, and asked her to read what she wrote, and then to name who she would like to read next.

So each woman in turn selected someone she knew.  In this fashion, it zigzagged around the room until every one of the ten women there had read, except me.  I was excited about what I'd written, and anticipating my moment.  There were a few minutes left.  But the teacher visibly did not turn to me, sitting at her right.  She did some other talking, and dismissed the class.  One of the other women came up to me later and tacitly apologized. I went home early, and confused.

Could this teacher have been angry because I came in a few seconds after the bell (I had gone out to fill my water bottle), and she had begun talking?  That would seem to be a ridiculous response.  Whatever impelled her, it must have been intentional.  And the energy felt hostile.  I still feel somehow shamed as I remember it. Excluded, for no reason that I knew. 

My larger point is not this workshop, but to remind people that whenever you form an invitational group, you close doors.  The sandlot baseball we used to play in fifth and sixth grade, before puberty separated us by gender, that too depended on the team captains (the top players) picking people one at a time.  But there was a certain justice in it, in that it was based on winning the game.  The most skilled players were always chosen first.  I was always last, but as I say, that was fair - I couldn't catch or throw, and I couldn't hit the ball, so the fact that I couldn't run didn't come into it, really.  All I had going for me was enthusiasm and the desire to be part of the game.

Once though, a girl named Diane was captain, and she chose me first.  How kind that was! If I could remember her last name and find her, I'd send her a little card of gratitude all these years later.  I hope her life turned out well.  I wouldn't be surprised that it did.

The War Against Christmas

Here was my bad attitude this morning, just waiting for me to somnolently turn to Facebook with my coffee. There it was again - a post by a self-proclaimed Christian urging others of like belief to eschew the term Happy Holidays and righteously say "Merry Christmas."  And boycott Target or someone.  And share the post, of course.

I don't mind if people want to indicate connection by a shared vocabulary.  But I am not sure sometimes that everyone understands: America is not a Christian nation.  This is true despite the fact that since our founding there have always been the religious that are not content with being religious, as Jesus suggested, praying in secret, but have to pray openly. Now it's on the Facebook highway.  Their crusade is long-standing enough that Wikipedia notes ---

some Christian and non-Christians have claimed that an affront to Christmas (dubbed a "war on Christmas" by some) is ongoing. 

I know, if it bothers me I could be more selective in my "friending." Too late now, and also, you never know, do you?  And yes, I know I can "hide" people who get to being annoying.  And I do.  Then at some point I think of them and bring them back out of hiding.  In this case, that will probably be after the holidays.

Don't think I don't have problems with the secularization of Christmas.  I love the centering on the miracle of birth amidst poverty, the idea of the divine in our midst.  I end up in tears singing "Silent Night" in the candlelight service.  I was fit to be tied one year when the reins got loose at my church, and the Christmas Eve service featured "Jingle Bells" and the Christmas choir concert featured "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."  I don't go to church for this, and I don't think the children particularly benefit from it - they can see this on TV and at the mall.

But I do accept that Christmas has been secularized for quite a number of years now.  I grew up with it, with the ads for a fat Santa having a Coke at the fireside.  When I was five, I thought Christmas was about getting presents.  This is life in any society that has abundance and freedom of retail.  But read Wikipedia - the very date of Christmas is thought to have origins in pagan winter festivals. Look at it that way, you could say that the Christians degraded the pagan impulse. Yet I don't see my pagan friends agitating to boycott everyone who sells artificial Christmas trees and yule logs.

And if you really think those of us who wish our Buddhist, Muslim, Unitarian, Jewish, etc. friends "Happy Holidays" are involved in a war against Christmas, I invite you to look at history and the wars against religions.  Take the current Chinese oppression of the Falun Gong - go ahead, read about it.  And think about what freedom of religion really means, and let the rest of us have it.  Then put some cookies out for Santa.  Or a Coke, for all I care.

Deep encompassing gratitude

Today's post by James Ford is a deep encouragement to giving thanks. It includes a shocking five-minute movie; some thoughts that remind me that the whole mess is much bigger than my mess, and it is what it is; and a song you can't hear too often. I hope you have time for it.  And I wish everyone a good day punctuated frequently by gratitude.

There's more reality out there than you bargained for

I made a trivial mistake a while back of subscribing to a cooking magazine meant for another generation, for women who have fresh rosemary and currant jelly in their pantry, and who don't mind cooking and eating baby animals. (I just can't.)  Like every other magazine these days, it has an article about how meditation will help you continue to live an insanely ambitious, stressful life. Sigh.

So I turned to the Sunday paper and read there an advice column. The girl - okay, young woman - wanted to know if she should keep trying with her sincerely repentant boyfriend, The Cheater.  If she would ever learn to trust him.  The answer agreed with my understanding of reality: If you stick with him, understand that he will always have that trait. Ask yourself whether it's worth it anyway.

 The article mentioned that if you sit still and shut up and stop planning to make currant-glazed lamb chops with pistachio couscous for dinner, you will gain insight into your own mental patterns, and that will help you be less enslaved to them.  This is true, and it seems to be much emphasized in American Zen, as part of the search for happiness the Boomers ushered in.  Which has led me recently to study a book titled Ending the Search for Happiness by Zen psychiatrist Barry Magid.  What a relief!

Less talked about is that you will also begin to see the reality outside your mind. To see other people as they are, not through your filters and illusions.  That's awareness. The wisdom part is accepting that not only is the other person what he or she is, but that change, if it comes at all, will come slowly.  The very charm Confused Girl loves about the guy, that's something a lot of other girls respond to, too. I am not being facetious when I say that the only times I've seen important personality change in other people has been when they had a stroke, or a similarly dire stroke of reality.

I did adopt a new habit in one fell swoop, or swooping fall in early September, in which I broke my right arm, as I have complained about here, but not enough.  I began doing walking meditation every time I walk.  I don't mean just when I go for a walk or walk the track; I mean when I walk down the hall at home.  No dark hallways for me.  An example of how occasionally Life teaches you to watch your step.

How to do Good

When I follow a blog it's because I find there a real person living their life. A young mother with sick kids, a middle-aged cancer survivor with a sense of humor, a Zen student thinking about big life changes -- they have to do with lives I've lived.  From here, their lives are full of energy and interesting. 

There isn't much action in my life -- I'm sick again, depressed again.  I balance enduring pain with taking pain medication, my stomach is upset by the antibiotic, I can't drive, I'm lonely, I'm afraid I'm going to have to have that major surgery after all - I hear you clicking on to another blog as I write.  No one wants to listen to the internal struggles of that old person, or the same old frustration, the small triumphs of patience with the medical system, the envy of younger people who have goals and plans.  It's a bitch.  But for me, struggling to come up with some positive spin, some way to cheer you up so I don't depress you, has become too hard.  So has enduring the positive thinking of people who still believe you can do anything with enough determination. They don't know what neurochemical depression is, period.

Last week we stopped by the church to see if my pink rain-jacket was there.  It was the most useful and best coat I ever had - bright warm pink with a multicolored flower lining to the hood - I always got comments on how cheerful it was. And the arms were cut big, so it would go on over the fleece jackets I have to wear right now, since I can't get things on and off over my head because of the broken right arm. Worse, it had in a pocket my elastic gauntlet, a half-glove I wore on the right hand to minimize swelling - that's the arm with lymphedema. That coat is somewhere, but we've looked everywhere we go and can't find it.

I ran into Rev. Mark in the hall, and he asked me, "How are you doing?" like he meant it.  Maybe this is what makes a person a minister.  That ministering to the people who have dropped out of life and become invisible.  I told him, how it's hard, and we had a five or ten minute talk.  Mark is a trained professional.  Like other ministers in our church he doesn't dispense wisdom, he engages with you, shares and listens.  I was so down - sick as hell again with a UTI, discouraged - I could feel the bolt of healing it gave, like a shot of warm light.  That and a homemade dinner from an understanding friend got me through the week.

If I could give one lesson from old age to those who have not yet been dropped down on this foreign plain, it would be, be open to seeing and hearing your old mom, your grandma, the 90-year-old lady next door.  To do that you need to be open to your own discomfort with the realities of aging and sickness, your realization that you too could be suddenly disabled, confused, too tired to shower.  Just listen.  Don't do that reactive thing of rushing on or saying some imperious thing that will fix it.  (What you need to do is . . . ) Maybe that half-deaf old lady has done everything possible for her loss of hearing and there isn't a good fix.

If you want this in spiritual terms, it is love, or it is paying attention.  Maybe they are both the same thing.
~~~~~~
p.s. Then there's persistence. Tom insisted we stop by the Spine and Sport clinic, who said on the phone they didn't have the coat.  And there it was, hanging on a hanger on the coat rack. No gauntlet in the pocket.  So.

What to do about your suffering

"not to struggle against the pain in our life"

These were the turning words in the above talk I read recently on a British friend's blog.

I had been having various kinds of suffering or discomfort or pain---
disappointment in a Teacher . . . a widening distance from Zen . . . the pain from the slowly healing broken arm, the real handicaps of not driving, not painting, not cooking much (you try it with your nondominant hand) . . . the side effect of the pain medication in demotivating me. . . the anxiety of the bladder infections coming back, whether surgery is going to be necessary after all. And a second-hand criticism.

It went a lot of places for me. It went to how sensitive I am to criticism, to rejection, how thin-skinned.  How that affects my willingness to send my poetry out.  Then back to how I became thin-skinned, my father's relentless criticism of me, my mother's lack of caring.  It just went all over the place, though I sure didn't want it to.  I've had a hard year, the increasing loneliness of age and disability.  And I was in the grip of a depressing infection at that time.

So I struggled around fighting all this mental and emotional crap.  How could I alleviate my pain? And I didn't have any answers.  I wasn't talking myself out of my upset.

So for some reason - the moon was full - I was ready to hear what Pema said in the talk above.  Yes, we do have suffering.  Inevitably.  Sometimes people hurt and betray us.  We age.  We die.  People and animals we love die.  We are in pain from physical conditions, mental conditions, and maybe we're always going to be.  The point is, relax into it.  There it is.  There is no fixing a great many things, no cure.  You don't have to like your suffering, your pain.  But you don't get anywhere struggling against it.  There.
[p.s. Yes, I have another (or the same) bladder infection. Started antibiotic today.]

My Rick Perry Moments

All right, it's not nice to make fun of people, but humor very often depends on not being very nice - what we English majors call "transgression."  On the other hand, I am here to defend poor Rick Perry, who blanked out the other night in a debate.  The three agencies he was going to close the minute he took office.  There was A, there was B . . . and what the hell was C?  He couldn't remember.

the candidate

Anyway, it is better to call this kind of thing a Rick Perry moment than to call it a senior moment.  I am sick and tired of that.  Too many of my friends are Boomers, so of an age to have mental processing slow down and sometimes stall for a bit.  Inevitably, they say, "haha, senior moment."  Now wait.  I'm a senior here, three years older than the oldest Boomer.  Slower processing is usual, common, and for all I know, inevitable as you age.  And it really isn't nice to make fun of your grandma.

You talking about me?

I've had two forgetful moments this morning, and I've only been up a few hours.  The first was The Fated Laundry Load.  I had to kick-slide laundry basket to the chute (carrying it would kill my shoulder), feed the stuff down the chute, fill the basket again.  My arms were particularly bad this morning, due I think to an excess of indulging Tashi yesterday, letting her climb up on my shoulder (the one with the torn rotator cuff) and then holding her so she could lie on my heart.  You will admit, that is the sweetest thing.  It fills life with love.  But the arm holding her up was said left arm.  It is sick and tired of being overworked while the right arm, formerly known as the dominant arm, heals from the fracture incurred two months ago.  Not healed yet.

So down I went and now sorted the laundry into two baskets, you know the drill.  Kick-slid those across the laundry room.  Went through spraying stains, blabla, putting in right amount of detergent, putting in Downy fragrance-free.  Stood watching to see that I had the right amount of clothes in the right amount of water.  And . . . realized I'd put the wrong freaking detergent in.  The stuff from the big box I bought accidentally a while ago that has Spring Burst or some such fragrance.  I can't stand it on my clothes.  I mean, I seriously can't stand it.

Now, that was moment number one.  So after a nourishing breakfast of hummus, Wheat Thins and sunflower seeds I went down and ran the damn load all over again, this time with a little Biz to hopefully take the smell out, more Downy.  Sigh.

I said I had two of these this morning, but offhand I don't remember the other one.  Enough said.

You don't want to read this post

This is what a sex offender looks like

But not as badly as I don't want to write it.  But I have to, having read the disgusting details of the charges against Sandusky in today's Maureen Dowd column.  I sort of wish I hadn't read it - you never get over this stuff.  Having been an abused child is like having a war wound that aches from time to time.

I am talking about the huge sexual-abuse scandals topping the news today.  You know who they are, the football coaches, the political candidate who is trying to get you to believe eight women are conspiring against him.  Two different kinds of abuse, but both about men in positions of power forcing themselves upon the younger and weaker - the child in the locker room, the female job candidate.  Men above them in the heirarchy protecting them, dropping the ball, letting it slide.  Catholic church.  Penn State.  Politics.

As long as we valorize high testoserone, this is going to happen.  As long as we let men build masculine forts in which they all protect one another, this is going to happen.

Okay, but I'm not here to write the theory but just to say one thing I wish each reader would listen to:  there are probably children in your life.  Your own, your grandkids, your nieces and nephews.  Your younger brothers and sisters.  Protect them. They are powerless to protect themselves.

How?  When you see a child change, a behavior change that doesn't quite make sense, get interested.  A child should not suddenly develop insomnia or night terrors, should not suddenly get dark circles under her eyes or become listless or misbehave at school or take up drugs.  Don't see these things as "discipline problems" and lower the boom.  Talk to that kid.  The closer you are to them, the more important that you listen to them deeply.  If you just don't know what's happening, set that kid up with a counselor they might feel free to talk to.

I'll tell you just one little story and then I can't stand this.  When I was 11, I stood with my mother in their bedroom and said to her softly, with great embarassment, "Daddy has bad breath."

Believe me, my mother could not possibly go where that should have gone.  It could have gone to Why honey?  When did you notice that?  Not a chance.  She could not imagine a father violating his daughter.  Dependent on her husband as she was, caught in romantic illusions, she couldn't have any distance from him, couldn't see him as he was.  She lived in a sort of dream. And we do.

So she said, "I don't understand that.  If his breath gets bad, I say to him, 'Ed, I think your pyorrhea is acting up again."  (This was called trenchmouth in the war.)  And it was never mentioned again. 

My father was a scoutmaster, in fact rose to be a regional director in Boy Scouts of America.  He was a white-collar worker, a defense engineer.  We went to a high-class Congregational Church, where they contributed to the building campaign.  My parents kept a nice house, he painted it, mowed the lawn.  He wore nice suits and good shoes.  Him?  Abuse his daughter?  Never.

Your own husband can do it to his own children.  So can the kids' stepfather or your boyfriend.  The kid's grandfather or grandmother, sad to say, the coach, the priest, the teacher, the guy at the candy store or pizza shop.  A neighbor.  Take care of your children and the children you know, be watchful.  They can't protect themselves.  You don't want to think you live in a world like that.  Neither do I.  But we do.

It is upsetting me to even have this guy's face on my blog.  But I think it's important to look at him, look hard.  Believe it.

Frills, Thrills, the Essence of Life

You can make this apron for yourself.  See below

I want to do some deeper thinking about the subject of yesterday's post---leading the no-frills life---which has inspired some people to say, Hey, please, I need some frills.

In my thinking - and as far as I know, I have invented philosophizing on this subject - "frills" are those things or experiences that are superfluous, additions to our lives above our basic needs.  In my thinking, basic needs stand above mere survival needs.  To know what those are, consider the homeless Vet holding a sign:  Will work for food.  To stay alive we need food, water, shelter.  To stay alive longer we need other people - we are a social animal.  In a very real way, we must have the protection of society so we can relax and sleep, be helped when we are not able to help ourselves.  Society lends a stability to our lives.  Our non-magical Western science has demonstrated repeatedly that people with friends and social-spiritual groups (such as churches) live longer.

What I see people wanting is a break, small or large. There is so much marketing of short breaks these days, as the number of single mothers increases, as so many women both work and run a home.  Can't afford to travel, but you can afford a day at the spa.  A pedicure.  A massage.  Wine and whine.  New shoes, hey, more new clothes.  Breaks, a little sense of being nourished.  Groupon is one of the most successful new businesses now, and these are the things it offers day after day, pounding in that incentive to believe they will heal you somehow. Or refresh you so you can slog on.

Then there are the way bigger, more expensive toys and breaks people feel will make them happy.  You know what I mean - a new house, redecorating the one you have, a boat, a remodeled kitchen, a Mediterranean cruise. And wait, wait, a new person, undying romantic love.  I could go on forever. [I almost left out A Great New Car that will make a real man of you, or alternatively, be sleek and pretty and you'll feel carefree and it will provide some moments of pleasure every day.  Right? ] These are the things Americans bought on credit these last years and can't pay for now.  Are they any happier for having them?  Not that I can see.  Because the dream vacation ends, and all you have left now is memory and a whole lot of pictures of you obscuring the view of some monument.

I'm not against these things (though I can't stand even the idea of someone working on my toenails, so I hope I never get too old to clip them myself.)  Enjoy yourself.  But - they are only breaks.  They do not change your life.  And if you are desperate for this kind of luxury, your life is too stressful and there's no buying your way out of that  Changing that means actually changing your day, what you do, and yourself, how you do it.  Changing your habits of action and thought.

So what is the essence, what is basic to happiness, what makes life satisfying and rich?  Here's one inroad to finding our own answer: take, oh, an hour to get started write and expand on a list of ten things you've done in your life that you really enjoyed doing.  Think about this not from the standpoint of ecstasy or our-of-body experiences or super fun, think more about what skills or faculty you were using.

I'm sorry, I have degenerated into advice.  Forgive me, I'm a grandma.  That's what we do.

[Instructions for the apron are free at this delightful website.]

The no-frills life

The cat's feeling blue

Reading Len Penzo Dot Com, an intriguing post about living "a no-frills lifestyle."  Well, we do that, though with a lot more medical expense than he has, despite pretty decent insurance.  So it got me thinking about frills and no-frills.  A frill - charming word, say it - say it slowly, draw out those lll's - okay, a frill is an ornament, an extra, superfluous.  Aha.  In our life that would be travel; new clothes (instead of thrift store); eating at good restaurants; going out to movies, plays, concerts; consuming recreational substances; re-decorating when those chairs are perfectly good. . . .

We are thrilled (another fun word to say, roll the r) to be getting a lot of small electrical updating done in a couple of days, due to a coupon in Angie's List, which is not, strictly speaking, essential to sustain life, so maybe subscribing to it is a sort of frrrilllllllll.  But you can't just let a house fall down around you.

Where was I?  Of all these things, it is travel that hurts me.  It's my fault I read the NY Times and yearn to go to art exhibitions of all kinds.  And have a number of facebook friends who just travel their ass off and post the pictures from their smart phones.  Sigh.  But I do have a Droid now, and worth every penny to me.  You can actually live without even the most basic cellphone - I just talked to a woman the other day who doesn't have one.  No kidding.  I said, "You go out in your car at night without a phone?"  She nodded happily.

Here's the thing that it seems Tom and I picked up from our parents, who were Great Depression kids: there is a difference between what you need and what you want. I remain astounded at the number of people who don't understand that.  I knew a woman, single, working a modest white-collar job like me, whose washer broke or something, and she HAD TO have a brand new washer.

I said, "You could use a laundromat."  Did she shudder, maybe? or just look at me like I was crazy?

"My laundry is important to me," she said.  And indeed, her clothes were too, and kept her perpetually worrying her debt.  Buy new clothes to take your mind off your debt, wash them in your very own brand new washer.  I am serious - that woman believed she had to have that brand-new (not rebuilt like we bought) washer.  Had to.

I have been encouraged to write about how in olden days (the sixties) I washed on a wringer washer - it was nice, electrified - and hung clothes out in the summer, or in the furnace room in winter.  The house was previously owned by an old Italian lady, so the furnace room had these wooden things you could lace clothesline on, ready to go.

Yes, it is possible to live that way.  Though I was young and hey, I live here too, and I saw the commercials, so in time I, too, had an automatic washer and dryer, and still do.  And fancy?  The damn thing can tell when the clothes are dry.  Then it keeps tumbling them on air and calls for me.  It annoys me.  I have to stop playing Angry Birds and go fold the clothes.  And put them away, sometimes.  Why doesn't it do that for me?

I do sulk about that.  It's been a marvel to me how progress has not yet given me a life of uninterrupted leisure.  But as my mother would say, you'll get to rest soon enough.

[image: That is the color of Tashi's fur in the original photo. And BTW, she is a decidedly expensive frill.]

Especially for Janelle, but you can read it too

Read the right way, this poem is not negative. It makes horse droppings golden. You've been warned. You can read more about it at The Wondering Minstrel,a great site where you can get a random poem anytime you like.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
by James Wright
 

 Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
 Asleep on the black trunk,
 Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
 Down the ravine behind the empty house,
 The cowbells follow one another
 Into the distances of the afternoon.
 To my right,
 In a field of sunlight between two pines,
 The droppings of last year's horses
 Blaze up into golden stones.
 I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
 A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
 I have wasted my life.

Leaving Zen Mountain

I was just looking over a recent post about goals and time management--- I titled it "A useless post" with some irony, because it basically discouraged endeavor---though that is a very useful counterpoint to The American Way of Striving.  But I do try, as I come out of the hardest year of my life and awaken to the 10,000 things that need done around here.

First, a progress report.  Some scarves handled, though there is more to be done, and you can't see the dresser top yet.  Got the kitchen cleaned, though it must have made me uncomfortable, because I immediately strewed things all over the counters again. (A happy marriage is one in which you basically agree on the level of housekeeping.)  We became greener by mixing our own general cleaning spray from white vinegar and a few drops of dish detergent - saved a lot of money, reused the spray bottle, which would probably last seventy millenia in the Pacific Garbage Patch.  And I am using my right hand more all the time.  Today I was able to put a compression sleeve on, and thank God I didn't get cellulitis in this whole thing.  Bladder infection conquered, though I will spare you the descriptive details. Even had a couple of good nights' sleep.

Voted yesterday---we have "early" voting in Ohio; like absentee voting, but in person.  I tell you, I feel good when I vote.  It's a mess, our government, but it's our mess.  Don't think I didn't think about the Arab Spring, and all the people in this world who will lay down their lives for a chance to have a say in their government.

Seems my mind is available now for higher things.  And we went to the Unitarian church we belong to last night for a presentation by a Sufi teacher and scholar, Neil Douglas-Klotz.  This was my introduction to this mystical element in Islam, unless you count the movie Meetings with Remarkable Men, a great documentary which you can watch free here.  (This is a slow-moving film, but toward the end there is a section of Gurdjieff Dancers that is breath-taking.)  I also know one of his senior students, Elizabeth Reed, a well-known psychotherapist and spiritual leader here in Columbus.

Neil's approach is that of a scholar, a linguist, opening out the meaning of Jesus' words as they would have been spoken in Aramaic.  Awesome.  He is also a teacher and practitioner, and led us in two Aramaic chants; they call these "body prayers."  I was just seeing the end of my longtime Zen path, a sense that it had become dry for me - and more disappointment in practitioners and teachers.  I was aware of the empty space this was leaving, but I know that when something leaves your life, something else will come in out of the darkness, and I was waiting.  Here it was.

For years now the machismo of the Japanese tradition has bothered me.  Example: recently we watched a film on Dogen, an important Zen mystic and teacher.  It showed the monks meditating as Dogen died.  When he did die, seated upright among them, one wailed "Master!" and the leader shouted "Continue!" meaning shut up, swallow that grief, meditate.  Can't go there, folks. Do not see grief as an illusion or grasping.  Can't stand it when people are hit by the teacher's big stick. Can't go with meditating 14 hours a day, welcoming pain, keeping my eyes on the ground when the cherry trees are in bloom. I think it's wrong.

It's taken me a while to catch up to myself on this.  It's been a couple of years, 4, 5? since my last poetry chapbook was published, Leaving Zen Mountain.  The title poem had been inspired by a visit to a very formal (as in form-is-all) Zen center and monastery, where I was taken aback by the levels of heirarchy expressed in robes, and the cold and unwelcoming approach to visitors.  So as usual, I'm the last one to read my own story.