It's Spring!

Absolutely everything these days is turning me toward Grandmother's Heart, specifically, how we women need to learn to turn that heart toward ourselves.  I don't mean to exclude men at all; I just know that many or most men have women nurturing them, mother, wife, sisters.  Then you turn around and women neglect themselves and are downright mean to other women.

It is natural for women to nurture - heck, it is natural for cats.  Uh-oh, I'm envisioning a cute cat picture.
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Later -
It's sunny, it's spring, I've done enough work for the day, and I'm tired of thinking.  So here's a link to my friend in Japan, with beautiful pictures.  Let her be an inspiration to you, as a gardener and a Woman.  Person, I mean.  Human.  Sentient being.*

And find your own cute cat pic.  Pix.  I'm going to go nurture myself.

* I was going to say, If you're reading this you're a sentient being, but not true.  Not anymore.  Hello Google.

Inside My Bipolar Week

At the beginning of this month I vowed to change my life, starting with working harder on my mind. Is it working? Maybe. I am keeping on with it. That's what I can say. Waking up is so hard to do, from one standpoint. Easy from another: All you have to do is follow own breath in...out...rest.  For even the few seconds of one complete breath you are turning away from your itches and wallows and, as the Buddha said, "when you forget yourself, you are free." Unfortunately, it isn't as easy as one breath; if it were, everyone would be enlightened.

In the mess of my last five years of sick and sicker, I thought the first thing to get in place was my practice. I have been reliably doing my morning practice for some time now, and added an evening sit with Tom. He and I are each in a conflagration of problems with difficult people in our lives, and meditating together helps us get to the evening practice. Part of what you are practice when you sit zazen is putting your gnawing problems aside. The problems are still in motion, reality is gnawing at everyone involved and changing them, and you get off the carousel for awhile.

My biggest problem this past year has been my mood swings.  They have been dramatic, and the psychiatrist washed his hands of me, afraid to try any other chemicals.  So I've been trying to get a handle on them myself.  Recently I was looking at TCM and hypothesized that I might be expending a lot of energy/dopamine on a good day, talkinglaughingcookingmakingartgeneratingideas, so that the next day I am naturally exhausted (from the Latin, emptied out, drained).  So I set out to curb my enthusiasms, to move more quietly through  high-energy days. Impulse control. This was hard the first day, but is getting easier with practice.  Sitting still and poised, no matter how you feel, is central to zazen, and maybe to equanimity.

Yesterday seemed to be somewhat better, as bad days go. I didn't cry or carry on angrily at anyone. I got a couple of important practical things done by following my day's to-do list strictly in priority.  I still went semi-comatose around 4:00 pm, despite an infusion of energy from a visit from Chris, and a few minutes enjoying the garden with her. I was sad that I can't work in the gardens myself anymore, but happy to have her help getting the peonies under control.

I talked too much visiting with Chris. I keep doing that. Right speech-and-listening is a lifetime project. In fact, it's singled out on the Eightfold Path.

Chris is a kind person, and tolerated me well. We couldn't hug because she was covered in allergens. That's another thing I accomplished yesterday; I made an appointment with a local acupuncturist my grandson found for me, who has special training in allergy.

There's much more to a week, of course, but I'll close with touching down on my sleep and lack of it. Last night I felt clammy and discouraged, and couldn't fall asleep until after midnight.  Then I awoke at the traditional time for insomniacs, 3:00 am.  However, I remembered the intention I set before I went to bed, to light some incense and meditate if that happened, and I did.

Meditating by candlelight in a dark house in the middle of the night is pleasant, quiet and easy. It is not yet full Pink Moon, but getting closer. The moon is always full, of course. "Full moon" means only that we can see it all from where we stand.

Pink Moon phlox

Contemplating Bad (I think) Karma

Well, Gentle Readers, it's heartening to check my stats just now and see that this tiny blog gets read, even though I haven't been around much.  I've been awfully busy dealing with that statin AE (I started writing about it back here), and not back to myself yet.  Not driving because the right foot and calf are still numb.  And I don't know if I ever will be.  Even if I get back to that norm, I've lost three+ weeks of my life, days that can never be recovered, and so has Tom, taking care of me full-time.

I wish I thought someone could learn from my experience, but does anyone ever learn the easy way?  Do you?  I remember vividly learning the wrong thing at least once.

Plenty of time to think propped in bed, icing the ankles alternately.  How to handle the "friends" who didn't come through.  Keep?  Discard?  Express my feelings to?  Put them on Most Unwanted posters in my study?  Vow every morning to remember what they did or didn't do?

I don't know yet.  I do know I've revised my concepts of several people and of our relationships.  It's given me lots of practice in restraining my impulses, especially speech and online writing.  And I've had difficult spots when my raft kept bumping against rocks of vindictiveness, for even sweet old ladies are human.

I feel wronged by a lot of people, most of all Big Pharm, which campaigned vigorously to get doctors and citizens alike to believe statins (think Lipitor) work, and to minimize the incidence of horrific side effects.

Buddhism has lots of guidance on these issues, such as "Hatred is never overcome by hatred, but by love alone." That doesn't mean I have put away the idea of litigation.  Somebody has to use the courts, or the legal system wouldn't work at all, as opposed to just being a travesty, or at least a muddle. (However, I'm glad to live in a country that has one.)

How is other people's carelessness overcome?  Every mother and manager deals with this all the time.  It's one thing when it's your kids or employees, but what if it's friends and family?  This whole thing has demanded I work overtime on these questions. 

I am also putting energy into having compassion for myself in this sorry mess of a life as the designated scapegoat in an abusive alcoholic family.  This is crappy karma (I think), and you know what they say about karma.

All these years later, and most of my family dead, I keep tripping over alcoholics and addicts.  They take a lot of forms, you know.  There are many who buy the marketers' picture of the good life and are worn out partying and travelling and consuming arts and entertainments and more stuff and stuff to organize it in and expensive food and wine.  Naturally, Wun resents that other people are out doing all this while Wun sits home in a bathrobe too sick and tottery to shower, but in fact, it calls for compassion.

Perhaps fortunately for the world, this illness coincided with an opportunity to begin working with a Zen Master, which feels somewhat like the hand of God throwing out a lifeline. Every Zen Master I've met or corresponded with embodies kindness, and that's the goal.  I keep remembering that every goddamn rotten painful thing that descends on you is a chance to learn, to correct your course. I couldn't tell you how helpful it is to be on a Way.  But if you're reading this, I bet you know.

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Sick, and Tired of it, With Comments on the Spiritual Path

I was reminded this morning of what took me from trying out all kinds of Buddhist practice to focusing on Zen - I met a Teacher.  Then I met another one.

Both these men, Daniel Terragno and Ama Samy, come to Grailville in Ohio once a year from far places to hold retreats, and snagged me on my very first retreats.  I've also met another Zen Teacher, James Ford, a unique Unitarian minister, and corresponded with a few others.  Now I am gratefully undertaking to practice "distantly" with Dosho Port of Wild Fox Zen, who is extending himself to work with us solitary and destitute types via internet methods. 

Every single one of these people has treated me with the attention you would give to the most important person on earth.  Their attitude is not just about the calmness and general slowing-down that we gradually learn through zazen.  It's about the practice of open-heartedness.  You can think of it as treating everything and every little yellow buttercup as sacred.  Or you can think of it as kindness.

I thought about this watching one of Dosho Roshi's videos this morning, in which he explains the above.  It is not at all abstract to me.  I have been so ill for so long here (see previous posts), and it is frustrating to wait for phone calls from the nurse, the doctor, home health.  It is easy to get resentful of friends who are too busy to offer some homemade soup (see cartoon above).  It is easy to feel entitled to inflict on others the occasional crankiness natural to this situation.

That crankiness comes from animal nature, perhaps, but the Eight-fold Path asks me to refrain from expressing it in harmful ways.  And it reminds me that I am actually not the center of other people's universe.  Jeez.  That I am no more sacred than everyone else.  That we are all seeking happiness.  Even poor Tardar Sauce (above), the cat who looked grumpy from birth.  And maybe was and is, I don't know.  I love him (her?) anyway.

Where I'm Calling From

You're probably wondering, Where is Jeanne?  Did she die?  I could, you know. Mic the redness in this painfully swollen right foot is cellulitis, it could make me septic and kill me.  I told Tom, that should be worth oh, $10 million just for pain and suffering.  If they have to amputate it, tha's worth My real dwelling has no pillars and no roof either, so rain cannot soak it and wind cannot blow it down. -Ikkyu Sojun

It drives me crazy to write on my iPad.  Look what it just did, pasting when I was trying to get a cursor.  

Okay.  This is not funny on a bad day, and every other day is lousy for this bipolar self beyond the help of chemistry.  But today it's funny.  That's the interesting thing, and led me to suddenly understand a koan assigned to me years ago, Seigo the Chinese girl, has two souls... There's a folk tale with it, you can find it easily enough thes days.

I can't sit at my computer and write because I haven't figured out how to do that and have my legs,out straight in front of me, let alone feet higher than heart.  That's the recipe for this dependent edema wished upon me by a f----- statin drug as I wrote last week.  Next week I'll be scheduling lymph edema massage for it.  I have to be transported by van and wheelchair.  I can only be on my feet as necessary, that is, to go to the bathroom, to shower.  That's it.

Today my lovely friend Darlene who cleans for us periodically helpd

me with massive wardrobe reorganization.  I've been so tired with all this medical stuff I stopped even intending to hang up clothes.  Anyway, you have to do that standing up.  I sat on the bed and straw bossed her. That meant my legs hung down.  I wasn't even standing on them.  But I wasn't elevating and icing.  I ended up in excruciating pain.

I am documenting this shit, even posted a photo of my feet on Facebook.  This was just plain bad medicine giving me that.  It was unnecessary and not the most reliable statin, either, I am told.  Fortunately, I have other doctors, good doctors, who are helping me through this and I never have to see that arrogant bastard again.  Who, may I say, was on vacation last week AND the guy covering for him didn't answer the nurse's page.  Well, everyone busy celebrating Easter.  But me and Tom.  We did not get to church.  I hope to go this Sunday, if I have a wheelchair.

You want to see something, you should see doctors painstakingly not say anything negative about another doctor while trying to patch up his mess.  But they will have to tell the truth if called on in court.  I am just not into being a nice girl anymore.
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I can't get my wonderful toy, the iPad,  to do labels on posts, either, or get at my major photo trove, or move a photo where I want it.  And making corrections is too hard.  Typos.  And I was an English major.  More suffering.

:). As we say on Facebook.  Where, BTW you could follow my page, if you were on Facebook.  (Don't knock it.  We chronic invalids love it.)