Still Practicing

My favorite cat-not-living-with-me, Henri, le chat noir, sent me this this morning ~

I miscalculated when jumping from the floor to a chair today, and tumbled to the floor in a heap. I immediately began licking my paw nonchalantly, so I'm pretty sure no one noticed.



That's what I do when I fall, or my human version, which is running my hand through my hair to make sure it's okay.  But I am not okay from this last fall two weeks ago.

Yesterday I had my follow-up with my Good Doctor. . . .
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Actually, that was Wednesday.  It's Friday now.  I just saw another doctor.  But before I launch into these stories, I'll just comment that I may have post-concussion syndrome from that fall about two weeks ago, and that could last the rest of my life.  However, that might not be very long.

When I saw the Good Doctor Wednesday afternoon, I got bad news from the x-rays he took after the fall.  I'll quote from the imaging report:  "an apparent compression deformity at T8 with loss of central and anterior vertebral body height of up to 30%."  We discussed this.  No physical therapy, no.  No surgery recommended, no.  He prescribed a pain pill specific to spinal nerve pain, and it helps.  He talked about not doing things that put my arms behind my back, or reaching up high.  I'd already told him about how some things like walking and carrying a purse make it hurt much worse.  So does typing.  He said meaningfully, "Don't fall again."  Rest, etc.  I felt he had a look in his eyes like he was talking to a dead man.  You know I'm fanciful.

I didn't tell him that the night before when I showered I was puzzled by a feeling of thick skin in one breast.  It looks odd too, and so on.  I knew about skin like orange peel; my sister-in-law got it when she had cancer.

Just now we saw the Substitute Internist. (Mine was scheduled up.)  He seems intelligent, did a professional exam.   He said, yes, a mass, we will schedule a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound at Riverside, and then.  That will be next week.  Of course, we can't even schedule it until Tuesday.  You wouldn't want me to forget to complain that all the doctors will be taking a long weekend.  Monday is Memorial Day.  My peonies are in full bloom.


I almost don't want to post this because it is exactly don't know whether to laugh or cry.  I keep getting sort of silly and I love posting dumb things on Facebook and being in touch with people that way.  Went to the museum with a friend last night for a talk, and just loved it.  It's up/down anyway, you know me. Not long ago that was my worst problem.  Another thing - all my life I got through unbearable things by keeping up a front, which meant not telling anyone.  But I don't think that's a good idea, now. So in a way, posting this is practice on bearing witness to the truth of life.

How to Get $200 With Just a Few Keystrokes

I could write a letter to my grandson about this, but his life is hard enough, with his Mom, Stepdad Chris, and me all friending him on Facebook - and keeping an eye on it, too.  And really, it's one of those rediscoveries that seems so excellent I want to share it worldwide. 

Scenic train

This really is about how to get easy money, though not $5 million dollars and acreage in Nigeria.  This is real.  I, an old grandmother on pension, do have $200 in a savings account at my credit union, and all I had to do was set up one monthly e-transfer from my checking account.

If I'm e-banking, I can only think everyone else who has any dollars at all is, too.  In the course of setting up my new checking account (having realized that credit unions treat people better than big national banks that spend a lot on advertising) I protected myself against late fees by setting up a transfer of $20 on the first of each month to my personal credit card.  So I learned how to do that.

When I joined the credit union, they'd required that I set up a savings account, too, with $5 in it.  That's all I had to do. But I thought, Hmm.  I could just have them transfer $10 a month into that savings account.  I could do that and not miss it.  So I did.  And that mounted up without me noticing it.  When it hit $100, I thought, I wouldn't miss another $10 a month, either, so I changed it to $20 a month.  And today it went over $200.

Two hundred dollars.  That was beginning to impress me.  I could buy - oh, heck - lots of different luxuries with that.  A weekend retreat, if you want to be spiritual about it.  If you don't, a distinctive Hermes silk twill pocket square (and have a few dollars left over - very few). You never see those at the thrift store.

I had the wild thought that I should start a similar account for said grandson, just having $10 a month transferred into it for the next ten years.  When he graduates from college he could come into it.  Figuring at 2% compound interest (savings account interest is low these days, even at the credit union), it would come to $1,326.16.  If I wanted to grow it faster, when it hits $500 I could invest that in the stock market, and add to it with the next $500.  Invest in something with high-growth-potential like Contrafund. Even if I didn't do that, just let it sit there safe in the credit union, the money would buy him a nice Eurail pass, with the 35% discount for young people who don't mind travelling second class.  He could stay at hostels, have some fun.  I wish I'd done it when I still could, except I never really was that young.  (Insert rueful smile.)

I started my first savings account when I was about 12.  I don't remember much about that, except that interest was reliably 4% then.  This was the fifties, before credit cards became popular, so that's what people did - they saved until they could afford a new stove, or whatever.  I know, what a weird idea.  Getting along without something until you could pay for it.

I get the impression that these days a lot of Americans don't have any savings at all, that that's what's meant by living paycheck-to-paycheck.  Always a really bad idea.  It would make me very nervous.  I am convinced that anyone can save something.  The trick is, get it started.  Make it regular and automatic, and don't withdraw it the first impulse you get.  Save it for an important dream or a third notice from the gas company.

I'm not saving for anything right now.  I just enjoy watching it mount.  You never know.  There - "you never know" - that's a word of Zen.

Less and less afraid of death

A beautiful death

12:30 a.m. Technically, it's Monday.  It's still Sunday night for me, and I am again not falling asleep on schedule. August, all that decaying ripeness and weather.  And then, there has been a great deal happening energetically around our house; it could use a good Feng Shui cleansing - maybe I'll do that.  Just opened a window here in my study, for a start.  It's going down to 55 tonight, and it rained earlier, so the pollen count and air quality aren't bad.

Tom's sister Diane is here again for a few days, working with Tom to make sense of an estate that is confused and bewildering.  We are thinking so much about death, with their father in hospice and his dementia progressing and making him more difficult to be around. Tuesday their 90-year-old mother is having a hip replacement, and we know she might die on the table or develop anesthetic-related dementia.  The sister-in-law who is taking care of her has taken the family through choosing and cleaning a suit for Jim, a shirt and tie.  Despite this, I sense that none of the children actually believes Jim will die.

I am noticing how relatively accepting I have become of death since my father died unexpectedly some fifteen years ago.  My mother four years later, my brother the next year.  Then there was my own looming death from kidney failure.  Now it's one friend after another.  Sheer experience helps; repeated hospitalizations, sometimes with roommates who were dying, kept wearing down my sharp corners.  It's been clear to me that many people here in America handle aging and death very badly, their own and others'. 

Here are notes I made in my journal the other day about how I think Buddhist practice - both sitting and studying the philosophy - has changed me in this regard. (I see I fell into that "we" way of talking that American Buddhists seem  inordinately fond of.  Oh well.)
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Tashi confronts a demon

How Buddhism helps us inch out of our fear of death -

- as we become more awake to reality, we see that death is inevitable

- as we become less egocentric, we see that we are not special and exempt

- we realize connection, our nature as a single blade of grass among billions

-as we relax our attempts to control reality, we see that it is a vast rising wave of myriad things being born, rising, crashing over and pulling under the things that went before

- we fully realize the suffering of samsara, and how it can be good to be released from all kinds of pain and difficulty

- we realize Not Knowing is a fact, and stop trying to figure everything out

- we gain skill in welcoming the moment, friendly demon or otherwise

More Cool Boredom

This is a video in which not much happens - just two "natural enemies" hanging out. It epitomizes the kind of day I've been happy to have: cool boredom. I see I blogged about this last Tuesday.  So I suppose I don't have much conceptual to say.

I started my day - or did I end yesterday? - enjoying the smell of clary sage, which is supposed to be "balancing."  I doubt that that alone can cool a bipolar down in August, but what do I know?  It's a nice smell, unusual, hard to categorize, but a little piney.  Wikipedia says it "has a lengthy history as a medicinal herb, and is currently grown for its essential oil."  My oils are mostly Aura Cacia, which is sold in the sweet hippie-spiritual shop in our neighborhood called Pearls of Wisdom.  Descriptions of this herb's medical use go back to the 4th century BCE. 

Pearls is a great place to buy things like an endless-knot pendant or a votive candle holder carved out of rose quartz (which is believed to aid in kidney problems).  Quartz has a measurable vibration.  Just saying.  And I do have such a candle-holder, a gift from Tom one birthday.  He is a scientist, majored in physics, so he understands what a huge amount we don't know in this universe.  Don't Know is also a Zen concept, and that reminds me of a charming story I read recently in another blog, Wild Fox Zen.

Reminds me of a story James Ford told me which I see will be in his new book due out in September, If You’re Lucky, Your Heart Will Break: Field Notes From A Zen Life.
Way back in the late ’60′s he was given zazen instructions at San Francisco Zen Center and then brought into the zendo to sit. Then …
“…I was ushered into an interview with a senior priest. Dainin Katagiri Roshi, then called by the title sensei, was on duty. I made the bows as I was instructed and sat awkwardly before him.
He asked how long I’d been sitting.
I estimated three, maybe five minutes.
He said, “Good. Keep that mind.’”

There is a point there that Zen students know - as we ripen in meditation practice, we develop what Joko Beck called "tricks" for amusing ourselves or evading aspects of our reality that are trying to catch up with us.  In Zen, we are reminded to approach not only meditation, but every moment, as if we'd never been there before, never done that before.*

Back to my day.  I sat over the Thursday NY Times with Tom - my favorite paper of the week.  I clucked over the follies in the Style section, and Tom told me about the craziness in the Home section.  Ate a good breakfast, cereal, walnuts (for Omega-3), dried cranberries and organic milk.  Did my stretches and meditated.  Did weekly pill box which took a long time, but that was okay.  No rush.  Air quality is bad today, and so are molds in the air, and I don't have to go anywhere, so I'm not.  I'd have to wear a surgical mask if I did; the immunosuppressants have made my allergies terrible.  Made tuna salad for lunch, with cucumbers cut up in it (they are cooling). Made tuna melts in the toaster-oven.

And so on.  That kind of day.  Not manic, not depressed, just a nice cool day appreciating our air-conditioned and filtered air, our shade, and especially, being retired.

* If I had never seen this computer screen before, I'd be flabbergasted.