Paths of Desire

Not every thought deserves to be developed.  Here are some thoughts during my day -

A restless night, woke early. That doesn't mean I have to have a bad day.  It does make me think I am on screens too much. And that memoir of addiction I finished at 11 pm was too sad and disturbing.  Now I know what crack does to people. No more of those needed.
 ~
There is a part of our experience we are not aware of. This is not the same as attributing unconscious motivation to misplacing the pulleys I use for PT on my arm. Just rattling around not fully aware will do that. In fact, it's amazing how much trouble you can get into in one second (say, running a light, or kissing someone).
~
I am surprised by how easy it's been to get back in the habit of morning meditation. It was a habit, and the well-trodden path seems to be there still. I want to add evening meditation. This should be easy, to make it the thing I do when the alarm goes off for my 9 pm pills. I want to research why Zen teachers recommend 25 minutes.
~
Now.  Went to the foot doctor this morning, and on the way, took this

picture from the parking lot.  You are supposed to walk around to the right, down to the sidewalk, then up the doctor's sidewalk, which you see toward the top of the picture.  But what has everyone done? Taken the direct path. Architects call this by the most wonderfully evocative name, "the path of desire."  It is the way people want to get there, and they will.  You see these all over the OSU campus, which has an elegantly designed quadrant and sidewalks many people ignore.

 If an ordinary unbeautiful picture isn't enough for you, you can do this, to the left, in a few minutes. Neonized, tiny pixels, voila, you're an abstract artist. In fact, I have seen something much like this done in neon and LEDs in an art exhibit.

Or you just might want to use an app designed to do to the picture what a famous photographer does.  I admit, it looks better.  Ah, some days anything looks better than reality. That's pretty much the case with my painful foot, which has arthritis or chronic gout, or both, and may be treatable, depending on what the kidney doc thinks of adding yet another medication. The only good thing about this new diagnosis is that yet another part of my body is entitling me to pain medication. Not that I would abuse it, not after that memoir. I think I know about paths of desire.

(If you are curious, I'm referring to I am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell. It is a very tough book, and I could only continue with it because I knew he survived - somehow without getting HIV - and is happy now. I am not saying I recommend it, unless you want insight into the way alcohol and drug addictions can hold a person.)

How I learned to stop worrying

Mandala

 

I think the artistic creation above is more attractive than a photo of my ankles, so you will have to imagine my peripheral edema.  Peripheral means on the outskirts of your body, usually your lower legs, as they sort of hang down all day, which encourages fluid to accumulate in them.  Edema is the visible swelling caused by that fluid.  I only make a point of this because I know many of you have a grandma in your life who has to go to the store in bedroom slippers, and you don't understand it.

Here's the thing:  it's not good when both ankles swell, but when just one is swollen, everyone worries.  So several weeks ago we saw my primary care doctor about it - this was on a Thursday - and he scheduled the soonest possible ultrasound, the next Monday, to rule out blood clots.  You really don't want a blood clot to form and travel to your heart or lungs.

But Friday night we noticed how bad the ankle looked, and Tom called our doctor's clinic about it, hoping for reassurance.  But the doctor on call said, of course we should go right to the ER and get it scanned, and not end up suing them for negligence. 

So we did, and this is getting to be a long story.  So I will skip the part about how they shut the ultrasound down at night and those people go home, so it was spend the night in the ER, having many other stupid tests done.  And finally the scan in the morning, and finally they said it was just fine.  I did not have a blood clot.

I'm trying to wind my way to now, several weeks later. We went back to primary care doc yesterday, because the damn swelling hadn't gone down, and I also suspected another UTI.  And this led to a thorough review of all the stupid tests done in the ER, which are right there on his laptop (!).  Blood draws, liver, kidney, and so on.  And everything looks fine.  This was a huge relief to us.  Nobody had told us to see him for a follow-through. This is modern American medicine at its best, unless you are very rich.

He explained that with age the arteries and veins can grow slack, and edema happens.  We could see a vascular specialist, but it was clear enough that the only thing that would accomplish would be to assure us further that nothing was wrong.  I should wear my compression stockings.

But most interesting, he had gone to some computer program with the extensive list of my medications, and returned with three pages detailing which meds are most likely to cause - guess what - peripheral edema.  When a doctor does things like this, you don't mind if he's wearing bespoke pants and Italian leather shoes.

And guess what?  One of the immunosuppressants (Rapamune) is a HUGE culprit in this, causing it in over 50% of the poor transplant patients who have to take it.  And furthermore, it commonly, their word, causes half a dozen other things, some of which I don't have yet, like headaches (but I'm thinking about it).  Nobody tells you these things.

You may have come to this post hoping I had a clue about how not to worry.  In a way, it's implicit in the story.  Identify the problem, take steps, get information, don't push it away.  It is easier to face your worries when you meditate; in fact, it is impossible not to, eventually.  Sometimes it's when the anxieties start to break through the bliss that people drop the practice.  But that's when it's started working.

[The image is me having fun with a recent photograph.  Now we're down to it - you can do so much with photography, the only reason to paint or draw is that you enjoy the feel and smell of the materials.  Which is a good reason, after all.]

That's not perfect

It was my first koan, and I had never heard of koans.  It was a question in the little book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, which was the only Zen I'd seen at the time in my impoverished middle-American life.  I'll render it as a sort of haiku.

If you do not say good
and you do not say not-good -
then what is the nature of reality?

I mean, that puzzled me (though I didn't know it was supposed to).  It seemed to me the essence of being an adult was analyzing, making judgements, distinctions.  And having those feelings and reactions I've learned to call preferences.  They were me.  Growing up you make quite a thing of that, remember?  Who do you like, what is your favorite color, what car would you buy, what kind of ice cream do you like, how does your sandwich have to be cut?  So, what if I didn't have those identities?  I couldn't imagine.  That's where I was in the around 1980, when I remember studying that little book.  It's quite an introduction to some original texts.

And boy, it's been a long strange trip.

I don't think we find this looking beyond by deciding something.  I don't think one can do this with the conscious mind.  It is the conscious mind that's put a lot of effort into deciding what is Me, what is Not, what is friendly, what is enemy.  And what is just perfect, what is a fault.  Humans are such vulnerable little things, hardly any fur, worthless claws and teeth, not the fastest runners in the animal kingdom - we protect ourselves by making distinctions.  Once you've labeled good/bad, perfect/faulty, like that, it seems to take a a lot of work to get past it.  Hard retreats, being forced down on reality.  There are many routes to wisdom, but this is about discarding what you "know."

Maybe the road out of that labeling brain is the road in - that you turn away from the mind toward the heart.  Your heart can find a three-legged cat beautiful.  His heroic adjustment to reality, that staggered gait, his happiness, his ease, just like every cat - perfect.

[Three-legged kitty takes a nap, from Gail Guthrie Harsh]

That's all I know tonight.  I'll sleep on it and see if I have anything to add tomorrow.  It will probably be this: I don't mean to be making claims about myself.  I wish I had transcended these distinctions and could accept illness (for example) with equanimity.  Not so far.

Wait, wait, this isn't the way

Improving your life it's always the same catch - it's going to take time, energy, discipline, devotion.  We don't want to do that, as evidenced by the books that roll out, wave, after wave, promising to tell us exactly how to be happy, and in seven days. And the problems of recreational drug-taking, alcoholism, addiction to video games and other forms of escape . . . you don't need me to document how much trouble the search for happiness (confused with pleasure) causes.

And if you're reading this, I bet you already know what I have to say, since you are not flinching from the subtext, that thin, well-dressed debauchery may not be the answer, that religion and spiritual practice may play a part.

And if you are in the Buddhist/Taoist tradition, you know the really bad news: nobody can tell you what you need to do next, and then next - in other words, your path.  You have to take the next step into the dark, or the desert, or over the cliff.

But to find your path, you have to seek with a certain energy.  I've heard it somewhere, that by the time you sit down to meditate, you are enlightened. What I think that means is that by the time we STOP! and say to ourselves, I've got to change, I've got to do something, we have seen that our conditioned behavior isn't working. In other words, you have to become acutely unhappy.

Think about it.  Haven't you bumped your head against the same damn wall over annd over? Haven't you just tried harder, because it ought to work.  But maybe the road you're on is way too crowded, people are jostling you all the time. Or maybe it's too barren and lonely.  Or you are always tripping on barriers.  Maybe you fell down and are just going to sit there for a while. Maybe you want to wander off and dance, or sing.  It's your novel. Write it.

[image: a special daffodil planted by a previous owner of this house. The background shows my current interest in the work of Mark Rothko.]

The Nirvana Fallacy

Imagine my delight when I ran across the nirvana fallacy on Wikipedia!  (There, that's my one exclamation mark for this post.)  I am not making this up - here it is, not as a Buddhist idea, but one on the list of accepted fallacies.  It is the error of  -

comparing actual things with unrealistic, idealized alternatives. . . . [in working any problem] the choice is not between real world solutions and utopia; it is a choice between one realistic possibility and another which is merely better.

Now, turn from Western philosophy to the Tibetan teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, which I did yesterday on my iPad, for a while back I bought vol. 2 of his collected writings, a big book, a great bargain. I love reading it on this thing, being able to leave notes and highlights and not bother Tom if I'm reading in bed (it is backlit). And I really enjoy his unique, colloquial voice, which has been preserved in these carefully edited talks.  I happened to have left off last time reading about work.

Strangely enough the transcendental thing, the profound thing, exists in the kitchen sink, in the factory. It may not be particularly blissful to look at; it may not sound as good as the spiritual experiences that we read about, but somehow the actual reality exists there, in the simplicity of people and working with people and dealing with every problem that we are given. . . . The people who wrote the Vedas and the Dhammapada and all the scriptures were not intellectual, high-strung people.

Just the other day I found myself in an interesting conversation about this at brunch.  My friend, who teaches yoga, brought up the subject of nirvana, and stages of levels of bliss, or perhaps higher consciousness, that they work to attain in her discipline.  So I tried to explain how Zen teachers work to get us grounded in this. I quoted the line from Hakuin's Song of Zazen:

         This very place is the lotus land!

All this seemed to be news to the man sitting beside us, who had been talking about how bad a particular bar is to do karaoke in, and who asked a lot of questions that encouraged us, not to spar, but to explain our particular spiritual paths.

Most certainly I do not reject bliss when it comes my way, don't get me wrong. But you need to be careful with it. A well-rounded spiritual experience can leave you with your feet barely touching the ground and a disinclination to take the trash to the curb. But life is about carrying out the trash.  In fact, we are made of what was once dirt and (as the Zen Masters like to say) shit.  Trash, and these bodies will become trash again, to enter the great cycle of fertilizing life.

About Stanley in the cartoon above - what is his true self at the end of all his effort?  The guy with a briefcase and umbrella and morning news, in a suit, on his way to work.  Getting to know and be that guy through and through, or that crazy poet or politico or accountant or dog breeder that you are, that's the work.

A Discourse with Self, or Why I Don't Meditate

The thought in my mind this morning, planted there by reading Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, is that following our impulses is not real freedom. In fact, we can become slaves to them.  Now, in my case I will point to a really homely little thing, not hanging up my clothes.  It is related to changing outfits under the press of time and throwing things on the bed.  Or deciding I'm too tired at night and draping them over the brass rail thing beside the bed.  And that's what it's for.  So as I write it is occurring to me to take that incitement to disorder out of there. 

Anyway, this standing mess has led me to declare that my New Habit of the Week is hanging up my clothes or putting them in the hamper.  You see how this is not a matter of discipline vs. freedom? More discipline leading to freedom, the freedom of being able to find clean clothes without cursing your way through a heap.

And then there is meditating every day.  You'd be surprised the explanations I came up with yesterday just meandering, talking with my PT guy while he pulled my arm, breaking up lesions in the frozen shoulder.  It is good to talk while he does that, it takes my mind off the pain.  

But I am aware that talking about the reasons I don't do what I actually want to do is not very helpful. There's lots of Why.  In some quarters, explaining why you can't is called excuses, excuses.  I can imagine a dialogue with my higher self:

me: Ummmm

self:  Go ahead.

me:  Well, I was going to explain how it came to pass that I got out of the discipline of sitting every day.

self:  You were going to do that instead of meditate.

me:  Ummm.........  Anyway, they're not excuses.  They're, like, reasons. Cause and effect. Karma. Like how I'm on narcotics, and sick all the time. And the moodswings from the steroids. And this irregular schedule. I could go on all day.  It makes sense.  Really.  I have a lot of reasons.

self:  Uh-huh

me:  So anyway.  Guess I'll go meditate and get a little more friendly with you, this self that seems a little wiser than me. (Though I would like to explain how when the creative impulse hits, you have to go with it.  An artist's life is very messy.  Well, the unsuccessful artists, at least.   And all these medical appointments........

self: So you have lots of good reasons why you don't do what you really want to do.

me:  [struck silent]  

p.s. I did take the brass rail thing (a quilt rack) downstairs. I did meditate.

Against Fibromyalgia (a poem)

A crocus in my back yard, which some one I never knew may have planted, though the squirrels do that too. This is the only one like it there.











Against Fibromyalgia

Rain coming in. My hands start to ache.
Shoulder muscles hurt, neck, some strain
in my jaws. And the sky
beyond the clerestory windows
is gray. The spring buds have gone from green
to a quiet statement, withdrawn,
as it were to an old lady grey
(which I wish to spell the British way).
It is early yet. Nests can still be seen
easily, as last night in the park
we heard an unknown bird,
stood and listened, looked up
until the silhouette flew away.

    from Poems Written on 3x5 Cards (unpublished)

[In church on Sunday morning, I often feel a poem come on. I carry 3x5 index cards, so that's what I write on, and that does affect the form of the poem, though this one carried over to a second card. Writing by hand also seems qualitatively different than writing with a keyboard. These are not "difficult" enough for the literary journals, so I never send them out.  Today thought I would begin sharing, especially as this one moves from pain to remembered beauty. The title of the chapbook in which I would publish them is sheerly optimistic.]

Touched by compassion

Daffodils outside McConnell Heart Health Center yesterday

The way things happen, this pain in my abdomen (near the old scar from a hernia repair six years ago) had slowly, slowly been emerging.  Then this week, it began quickly quickly getting worse.

But I went in for my physical therapy yesterday (for the frozen shoulder, result of a fall and broken arm last September - and oh my, how healing drags on).  This PT is very important to me; unless I keep at it, I will never have the strength and range of motion in this arm to play guitar again.  I had recently grasped the unpleasant truth that a frozen shoulder is loosened up only by enduring pain regularly.  Every day at home, too. That's it. I take a pain pill before I go, and it still hurts to the max.

PT is very intimate, someone working with your body and caring about it.  I get to liking these people a lot.  Back when I was first getting lymphedema massage (post-breast cancer in 1997), I used to talk talk to the therapist and then cry, though that kind of PT didn't hurt much. It was like crying in shavasana, after yoga; you relax, it's a safe situation, the tears and healing chemicals just leak out.

Afterward I went over to make an appointment with my doctor. When I told Katie what the problem was, she talked to someone, and said they'd take me right in.  I started to remember how awful it was when the last hernia burst through - this is really extraordinary pain, and demanded flight to the ER and emergency surgery. 

It was a new doctor - my usual Saint, Jason Dapore - was off.  This John Diehl was every bit as sharp and focused.  He poked my abdomen while I stood, then had me lie down, then had me tense the muscles.  Ouch! marked the exact spot, I can feel the little protrusion there now.  Just like last time. Then they wrapped me in nice wide elastic, gave me two extra elastics, and set up a CT scan for Monday morning. (I always get sick on Friday.)

But here's what made me want to write about this.  In the course of questioning me, the new doctor learned that I am still being treated for shingles, and the shoulder, and that we are exploring the question of surgery to remove my old kidneys, which may be harboring infection.  He said quietly, "You really have a lot going on."  Writing that, tears came to my eyes again.

That's what I wanted to write about.  It seems I'd been being brave and matter-of-fact about all this because that's how I was conditioned in my alcoholic family:  never show weakness. After the doctor left the room, to my surprise, I started to cry.  Yes, I really do have a lot going on, and my left ankle's been aching again, too. I felt my insides - my heart - soften, my whole being softened toward myself.  I thought, That's the power of compassion.  Someone noticing. Listening. Affirming your reality.  It felt like an important spiritual experience to soften where I didn't know I was hard. And to feel physically how much even a light touch of compassion can mean.

Your one wild and precious day

[The title of this post is taken from Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day."  Oliver is a nature-mystic and the favorite poet of many people I know.  The image is my valiant African violet, which has survived Tashi's teeth, and my neglect, to bloom when it thinks it is spring. It's spring for me right now, too.]

When I am depressed, I have no motivation, no desires except to not be in that emotional pain - and, oddly, the flatlands are as painful as what Holly Golightly called "the screaming reds," that irritable, hypersensitive depression that hits me in August, season of decaying fire.

Just a week ago, on Saturday night, watching a rerun of House and playing Words on my iPad, I felt the barely perceptible lifting of the big February depression-with-shingles-and-UTI that meant I didn't post much.  "Lifting" is the word, as if some invisible bricks have been on you, weighing you down, and they are lifted off one by one.  The next morning I felt somewhat better.  Got all dressed, went to church, and there found I was so cold, cold to the bone. Cold.  Different than chills.  It's making me feel cold to try to describe it.

Left the worship center, wrapped up in my parka, sat around Fellowship Hall drinking decaf and being uncomfortably cold. Couldn't go out for lunch, had to go home and dive under my electric blanket set to 5.  So it was a dumb, very flat day.  Not exactly painful.  More, nothing.  And the next morning I woke up and my first sensation/thought was one of relief.  The damn thing was gone. I felt good.

If you are not bipolar, you may never have experienced this - your depressions or miseries may be situational, and relieved by things that happen to you or things you do, like exercise.  But I am describing this because you have a relative or spouse or friend, or you will, who has this illness.  I wanted to write "suffers from," so I will, despite thes Buddhist truism "Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."  This is bull, when it comes to these times of serious chemical imbalance, though I completely understand the truth it expresses, that we cause our own suffering by our thoughts and actions, by sticking to stuff and desires. I could write a book about how we cause our own suffering, based solely on my own experience.

Day after day this week I have felt good.  Not the swirling manic-high terrific, God forbid. But fine.  Loving, peaceful, calm, enjoying everything I do.  It is the perfect mood.  For my Buddhist friends, it's that mood you can have after a retreat, or even at the end of that first long day of meditation.  A day in this mood has that "wild and precious" sense to it - the silence of the house after the dishwasher has run is as pleasing as music or flowing water.  The laundry basket half-full of socks (depression leads to sock calamities - no motivation, you know) is amusing.  A good friend's invitation to an art-and-coffee day is delightful.  So is Tashi when she climbs up on my shoulder, descending to curl on my heart and purr, which I answer with imagining the identical vibration of Mu.

I've known a lot of bipolars, so I know that this mood is not entirely a chemical blessing, for we can tangle ourselves up thoroughly in our neurotic ideas and impulses and never enjoy a damn thing.  This mood is also the blessing of years of practice - meditation, prayer, writing poetry, paying attention to others, letting go of one fantasy after another.  Suzuki said we meditate so we can enjoy our old age.  It's true.  It's like a retirement saving's account that is going to be your salvation when the time comes.

I hope you have a wild and precious day, too.

Good shoes

[imagine you see a beautiful picture here]

This morning, wasting the first hour up, not fighting my resistance to my Artist's Way assignment (write morning pages first thing), and to meditating. I love to connect with friends on the internet over coffee. Always wanted to be able to do that. And roam around, having found again last night Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium, and the whole poem.  I read it to Tom in bed, the Norton footnotes too, how Yeats developed this belief in what we could call a Pure Land, which he thought was made of art and fine craftsmanship.  In this, it seems to me, he did not have the acceptance of this fine organic mess we try to cultivate, trying harder the messier it gets.  It was this poem, BTW, that begins with the line "This is no country for old men." And has several other immortal phrases, too.
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Went to six-month appointment with kidney doc this afternoon. It looks very much like we can't go on with these UTIs developing ever-more resistant bacteria, so we are proceeding to talk to a surgeon again about getting the useless old bad old stupid calcified shrunken cystic kidneys taken out, on the assumption that they are harboring infection.  There is a type of cystoscopy that could give more information, maybe, so we are trying to get that going.  I feel optimistic about this, since it might mean I could feel more well and healthy down the road. I don't know how many surgeries I've had now, and I'm pretty blase about them.

For the appointment I decided to dress up by wearing "real shoes" instead of my Avias.  This is it, folks, as dressy as it gets when you've had several stress fractures in your feet and must wear good (as opposed to pretty) shoes to protect them.  The adorable Mary Janes below are leather, not mesh and rubber and a lot of engineering. The autumn leaf socks were a special touch due to by poor sock laundry management.  I really need some Easter socks.

p.s. My ankles are not that fat - it's the perspective.

The best body you'll ever have

My desk - this is not a collage, yet

I follow a hilarious blogger named Karen who today told us of her adventures with a new exercise program, all in search of The Best Body You'll Ever Have. This is the way you get when you turn forty.

Well, this inspired me to comment on her blog, but my comment magically disappeared, due to the fact that I do not have the best mind I've ever had, for I am an unbelievable 29 years older than Karen, though no wiser, and am, in fact, old enough to be her grandmother.  Possibly.

And here's what I had to say:  at this moment you have a body that works.  And, I know how you feel.  I remember this moment well, standing in front of a mirror in the dark little half-bath in my apartment, seeing that I could no longer feel terrific in these expensive blush-pink pants I had, that went with a beautiful print shirt.  I was not a vision of spring but a middle-aged woman in need of a new fashion statement.

Things had happened to my parts while I wasn't paying attention.  Though I weighed almost what I had in high school, it had redistributed itself here and there.  My shoulders were still perfect, they're the last thing to go.  That was about it, in terms of the visuals. In terms of anything that counted, I had a great body.

When I turned forty, my heart had never gone into fibrillation.  My thyroid worked fine without lumps or assistance. I had never broken a bone or torn a rotator cuff. My hearing was perfect, my kidneys worked - and not for a moment did I consider this a miracle of perfect health.  I considered instead those sort of lumps on the outside of my thighs, which have always spent most of their time in a chair.  I considered breasts that did not tempt me to go braless ever again.  I saw that my stomach was rounder.  And under my chin . . .

Not a one of these revisions to my body affected the way it worked or the way I lived.  I could sleep at night, did I mention that?  I could easily get up off the floor anytime I wanted. I could walk three miles every morning, which I did, grimly, trying to be young again.  What was I thinking?

I don't blame myself.  After all, I was thinking like my mother before me, like everything I'd learned growing up, and saw in the culture. My not-so-perfect mind was stuffed full of concepts about my worth and identity that had nothing to do with reality, and less to do with happiness. This stuff is hard to crack, but if you get to live long enough, you start to get it - reality, I mean.

As for today's body---it still works, just more slowly.  It can walk unaided.  It can drive, eat, talk, type.  Sometimes it frustrates me, but I try to be nice to it---it's the best body I'll ever have.

The Dancing Onion

You can have fun on YouTube trying various versions of this wonderful song.  It comes to us so poignantly from the terrible heritage of slavery in this not-so-nice country.  And to imagine how slaves must have felt singing this in church, in the fields if they were allowed, feeling a resting place in God.

Our little one-act plays are always trivial in the light of history.  But not to us.  I am dancing this afternoon because the followup urine test showed clean!  Healed!  And within an hour the home health nurse was here to take out the PICC that was installed 13 days ago in a long tiring hungry stupid (ran out of adjectives) day at the hospital.  The infection wasn't that painful, but the depression that comes with it was.  And the antibiotic made food taste bad.  It got us grimly talking with the doctors (again) about getting my old kidneys removed.

So now I have asked the universe to give me a week of no new health events.  Just let me get over the shingles, let me get off the oxycodone without too much pain, please let me not fall, or Tom, or Cassie get in a wreck . . . you know, just a nice ordinary week with only 83 problems.  There you are, craving.

But it's hopeful all around.  I drove twice this week, including on the freeway - first time in six months.  And I concluded the weekly massages on my lymphedemic arm.  It is now back to the size it was before I broke my arm.  Another graduation.  And tomorrow I'm getting a haircut. You won't know me.

You can think about this act, "lay my burden down," in other contexts.  It is our practice in meditation to simply be here with no burden other than the present moment.  Practice being here.  No big sack of the past or the future or unfulfilled desires.  This is where you are safe, because you are safe right now as you read this, I am safe as I write this. Getting rid of all those burdens is not the work of a moment, more like peeling an onion down to its core.  I have been attracted to the onion on my kitchen windowsill, which thinks it is spring, and is dancing in its translucent skirt.

A note from an old - really old - friend led me to look up this song this morning.  It turns out to be an impressive effort of digital collage, no clue to the artist.  I am studying collage right now, and it made me think how you should never do art for posterity, or for the future, to gain something, because it will very soon be dead and gone.  Do it for ourselves, for the enjoyment of doing it.

Sometimes in art classes or writing we struggle.  There is an hilarious image in the writings of Ajahn Chah, how we have are like water buffalo - we have to be all bound up hand and foot before we will take our medicine.  This makes me smile just writing it, to see myself writhing around, trying so hard sometimes.

And as for the grand self-improvement project, the happiness project, how far have you gotten with it, really?  (See song.)