Nobody Understands Me

My favorite Cezanne, Still Life With Apples

Remember that little song from childhood?

Everybody hates me, nobody loves me,
Think I'll go eat worms...

I'll stop there.  It was common in my youth, maybe because it poked fun at something we all feel sometimes - that nobody understands us.  And still do, even in old age.  That is especially true if you are making some radical change in your life.  Your actions make other people wonder if, well, maybe they should join the Peace Corps or go vegan.  Even when you mind your own business, if you are different than the flock, you are an agent of change.  A therapist cautioned me once that nobody likes an agent of change.  She didn't say this, but look what they did to Jesus.  Gandhi.  Martin Luther King.*

So recently I found myself high on a windy hill, and I gave this some thought.  One of my conclusions was, If somebody feels overly responsible to you (a parent, a sibling, a grown child), they get frightened that they're going to have to bail you out.  I think being over-responsible is itself a stressful way to live.  Another thought was, If somebody really would never think of doing what you're doing, but now if you do it, they might have to think about it - obviously, that could engender defensiveness and hostility.  Or if what you're doing scares them for whatever reason, they may prefer to detach from you.

And so it is.  When people you know and love are critical and reactive about a choice you're making, they have a problem.  You have an opportunity to examine your actions thoughtfully, and be brave.  You have a problem insofar as you depend on someone else's affection or understanding. 

In spiritual traditions the idea seems to emerge time and again, that maturing is sometimes a lonely road.  I remember the chills I got when I read the first lines of Dante's Inferno:

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself / In dark woods, the right road lost.

 There is also an intriguing Zen koan that John Tarrant has spoken to:

 "The moon sets at midnight; I walk the streets of the town alone."

And there you are, with nothing but your vow of pilgrimage and maybe a map (though, as we know, the map is not the territory).  And these days, your GPS.
~~~~~~~~~~
*Not that I compare myself to them. Joan of Arc, maybe.
 

Change, change, what else is new?

Tashi watching out for change

This has been a really tough, emotional week, starting last Thursday with having to call the squad for Tom's father, and now all the things that can arise with elderly parents have arisen, so Tom and his siblings are putting many hours into working the problems.

This morning we finally met with the kidney surgeon, the same guy who took a kidney from my donor, Laurie Brown, and with whom we met last year.  This year we were ready to tell him to schedule the removal of my native kidneys.  A big decision.  It might stop these increasingly dangerous UTIs; there's no way to be sure.  But it is sure that well-evolved e-coli kills people every day - bacteria that are outstripping our ability to invent antibiotics. And don't ask - we've done everything, talked to everyone from ID to our private kidney doc and our transplant center kidney doc and our family doc, done scans, and this is what it comes to.  Taking a chance.  If you follow this blog you know I've had something like 15 UTIs in 16 months.

I knew I was anxious about this meeting when I had acid reflux last night, then when I woke up at 5:00 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep.  Yet I was surprised to find myself exhaling as we walked out of the transplant center.  A lot.  And then, in a comic touch, burping several times; apparently my stomach was holding its breath too.  I still feel good, almost high with relief.

Who did I tell? Maybe yesterday I talked a little with my physical therapist about this, and said, "I've been sick most of the time since 2005," and felt tears well up.  It's true.  And I had to laugh this morning when the nurse asked me the various screening questions they do before the doctor comes in:  "Are you in any pain today?"  Well, the usual, left ankle, right rotator cuff, flare-up of the sciatic nerve.  Nothing significant to them, as long as my abdomen feels good.

Change, change.  It's really weird to be a carbon-based life form.  It could be good to be silicon-based next time, or a tree, or a river, the kind made of water.

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.

What the little cat knows

Contemplation

The Little Cat loves routine. Three times a day my cellphone alarm goes off, I come to the kitchen and take my immunosuppressants, I feed her.  While I take the pills she rubs daintily around my ankles.  After she tastes the food she jumps up on my kitchen chair and holds her front legs up to me, an invitation to let her climb on my shoulder and settle down on my chest, purring.  The world is running the same old way, and she feels safe. Food, safe shelter, predictability, these make her actively happy.

It makes sense for an animal to be anxious about change; predictability spells out food and shelter to them.  So I suppose that we, in our animal body, are the same - comforted by routine.  But we are capable of understanding that things always change.  I mean always, every minute.  That's what organic life does.  Here in Ohio, you can count on the blue sky being gone in an hour, the temperature dropped 20 degrees.  People complain about it all the time, wanting the more equable skies of California, perhaps, without the mudslides and early freezes, of course.

Suzuki Roshi once said that the central teaching of Buddhism is "Things change."  When I first read that years ago, it didn't seem real inspiring.  Now that I am 68 many experiences have taught me that it's true.  Some 70 tornadoes went through the American midwest yesterday.  A high wind is the ultimate in chaos.  No telling where that tornado will touch down, whose house will be leveled.  Me personally, last summer I had the shock of being offered a kidney by a friend.  This promised to give me many more years of life, to take me from what had become very old age and physical degeneration back to being an active 68-year-old.

Since then I've had either 8 or 9 UTI's and two or three hospitalizations, lost count.  Inbetween all that, I've had glimpses of feeling alive all over again.

So far the UTI's are unpredictable and we've been unable to prevent them.  The good luck is that - so far - the bacteria involved have been responsive to antibiotics.  So far.  The spread of resistant bacteria is scaring everyone in the medical field.

Like all other living things, from strawberries to Bengal Tigers, our safety is never guaranteed.  We ourselves and all forms of life constantly change, and age.  Felt great Wednesday, Thursday woke up with urge incontinence, a fever, and urine full of white cells.  So we had to postpone the bladder scope that we hope will tell us why I have all these infections, and thus how to stop them. Had to cancel three appointments on Friday.  I reminded myself of The Five Remembrances (you can find them at the bottom of this page), which many Buddhists recite every day .  I focused on  "I am of the nature to grow ill; I cannot escape illness."  That is, don't count on anything.  And don't get too caught up in your desires; that way you won't be too disappointed.

Years ago I knew a woman who was convinced that if she did the right things and had a strong will and stayed hopeful ("a positive attitude") she would survive metastasized cancer and live to be 94, the number she felt entitled to after taking a test in a women's magazine.  She died at 72, pissed off, still sure that if you only did all the right things, all of them, you could live, well, forever.  Still not accepting reality, I'm sorry to say, which is, Do what you can, and let your craving for a certain outcome diminish.  Life is as unpredictable as a high wind.  Take refuge.

Change

What a wonderful morning. What a wonderful moment - I am sitting at my computer facing north. I have a view of the beautiful old cedar in Carter's yard, several great oaks, other evergreens, bushes that attract birds. It's like having a new study. And all without the terrible anxiety of moving, of someone else having your prized things in their truck. In moving, you are for the moment homeless. I myself feel that keenly.

Back story: a week ago I decided I didn't want to put up anymore with the problem of facing west when I was at my computer. Most afternoons it was too bright to work, unless you pulled down an obstreperous room-darkening blind, which created an unpleasant atmosphere, and didn't want to go back up - yes, a roller blind that came with the house.

As I stood in my study doorway considering the problem, a simple answer struck me - move my project table under the west window, and my computer under the north window. I know that even now there are people chuckling at the idea that this would be simple, what with a PC and two printers, one of which is hooked up to a fax. I think we're dinosaurs in this respect - we don't use laptops. Tom doesn't like the idea of carrying a computer - you might drop it.

We go back a ways with all this. He got our first PC when they came out, around 1981 was it? He couldn't resist. He loves this stuff, and if he could fill my study with a mainframe, he just might. As it is, a regular PC seems huge compared to my friends' slim pretty laptops. Separate system unit, separate ergonomic keyboard, separate speakers and monitor, all those wires. We did streamline the mouse recently, went to wireless. I know one thing we get for this is that Tom can tear things apart, install more memory, things like that, and we never have to spend a lot on computers at any one time.

This morning our lovely friend Greg came over to help with our List: the weird miscellany of things that need done around the house, the little things that eventually drive old people to move to a retirement village if they don't have a handy child or friend like Greg. Getting ready for the move, I cleared away the detritus of my creativity - a quartz half-sphere, the Shaker boxes that hold shells and rocks, the stuffed ferret - and they sprang into action. I wisely left the room (you do learn some things with age). In no time, Tom called me: there it was, my PC was booting up.

It was hard being without it for that half hour, though, at my own most creative hour of the day. Ideas for the blog kept floating into my mind as I folded dishtowels - there's a subject, folding dishtowels. Thinking about it fanned out like a cloud to Aunt Doris, who sent her nieces and nephews each a linen calendar towel at Christmas. Even the one from 1984 is still perfectly good, though I don't know where a lot of missing years are. I also remembered Aunt Evelyn, who by example taught me how to do the most menial household task with care. When you fold dishtowels or socks, you keep scissors at hand to cut loose threads.

My angst at missing the opportunity to write about these women, who have departed, and about many other things connected to dishtowels, like how I resented it my health meant I had to stop ironing them . . . I recognized that forlorn feeling. It comes over me when I arrive at retreat empty-handed. No laptop. I might take a yellow pad and two pens, but at a Zen retreat you're not supposed to write. Doing that in free time is breaking a contract that may or may not be spoken. Now I have a little netbook, which would really be easy to sneak in, but will I?

Ah yes, this morning I missed the moment to write in depth about that. But here I am, back in my Zen tree house, hooked up again, facing that even north light. Everything just as it ought to be.

Meeting High Water

[image: Oak Creek and Cathedral Rock, by JoelDeluxe]
In Appalachia, which isn't too far from here, there is a saying people use when agreeing to do something in the future - "The good Lord willing an' the creek don't rise." Through my dharma lens, that's a bow to all the things that can happen to prevent us from meeting our goals, keeping our promises. All that reality out there that doesn't care what you want, and gives rise to a future you can't predict.

An' the creek don't rise.

We were in the Honda Civic, out west, Arizona, driving through the Superstition Mountains. There must have been a lot of snow and a lot of thaw. I was driving along enjoying the curving road and the mountain scenery until we came to a dip in the road labeled "Punkin Creek." The road there was filled with brown, rushing water, and there was a sign posted, High Water. The water didn't look that high, maybe ankle-deep, but I rolled to a stop. I thought about how hard it was going to be to turn around and go a long way back to take another route. I didn't see why I shouldn't try it.

Tom said, "Ahh, I don't think we should try to go through that." Something like that, calm and reasonable.

I protested. I have always been more of a risk-taker than him, except when it comes to buying electronics. But he told me what rushing water can do - carry you and your car downstream and into big trouble - and I reluctantly turned around. Some people are always spoiling all the fun.

To his satisfaction, we learned later that the town on the other side of that rushing water, which was also named Punkin Creek, was cut off from civilization as we know it (i.e. even 4-wheel drive vehicles) for three days. Three days! You could run out of bread.

The good Lord willin'.

I don't know about the good Lord, whether there is an overriding unembodied Consciousness, if it has a will. The question doesn't worry me. It would be interesting to find out about it after death. I think of "the good Lord" as a metaphor for all those braided forces, like the woven strands of run-off that make a creek rise. I know now that what looks like a little obstacle can have mighty force.

And where there is snow melt and fast-running water and no bridge, you can find yourself stranded downstream. The ordinary natural world, a thousand little run-offs from high up the mountain, can defeat you without even trying. You thought that getting to a certain restaurant for lunch, or passing your generals, or making a marriage "work," whatever your ambition, was something you could do if you just did the right thing. But sometimes all the determination in the world is just going to dig you deeper in the mud. It's a good idea to respect the High Water sign and consider another way around the mountain.

Smart Change and Just Change

Thinking so much about death these days, and about change, Change, which is fitting - it is the end of autumn, winter setting in. Every day in this depression seems like such a waste, one more irretrievable day gone, life so short, I am 67! One more day wasted just getting through the day. But then, you waste your whole life that way until you wake up.

Today my rather aimless tracking around the Cloud led me to a photo in a blog called Dashh. Can't get anywhere from the blog to find out if he is still writing. Tom has promised to have a look at my PC, which is often spinning its wheels lately. I wonder whether it picks up my garbled, failed energy. I know Sheba does. One day last week she was just awful, yowling, and finally made a pass at biting/scratching me. We realized she was anxious because I was so different. If you want to make a case that there is nothing in this world you can't measure with your instruments, I don't care. You can say I just didn't pet her enough, it was all behavioral. But the fact is, that kind of science is arrogant. People don't realize it is, because we are all inside of it, it is the Western mind, the mind of the conqueror. There is still a great deal we don't know. Who said he felt like a child playing with a shell on the beach while all around him an ocean roars? Some scientist. You could google it. bing it. If your computer works better than mine.

Dashh was or is being anonymous on the blog. Trying to email him just has the search engine spinning. Alive or dead? Another of the lebenty-zillion blogs sitting there in the cloud, karmic traces of people who have passed by this intersection? Too many people, too many! I don't want to know all of them! It is a crowd.

Last night Tom said Do you realize what has happened these past five years? He was thinking about this kind of thing: Facebook. Smart phones. Twitter. Snail mail, real letters, have just about passed into oblivion. I said, when I was young I guess we had health insurance through Firestone. Nobody gave it any thought. People just died at 62 of a heart attack.

And actually, for all this Smart Change the basic facts of being old are the same, never mind those who want to believe aging is a disease and if you take Spirulina every day you can live forever. I return from the graveside to tell you, it isn't so. It isn't a matter of will. We wanted to stay young and vigorous and healthy. But here we are, slowed down, cautious, wondering what truck will come out of the fog and hit us next.

Still, it was a pleasure to be led to the Pink Floyd video above, from 1994, when they still made good videos. Like life, so many wonderful things just gone, like some kind of great, fancy parade. I think Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about an elephant going down her street. I don't know if a real elephant did, or if it was, you know, just a wild rhinoceros.

So change again

I've always liked the story that a Buddhist bookstore had a little sign on a bowl by the checkout: If you fear change, leave yours here. Don't you wish you could sometimes?

As if I needed any more reminders of impermanence these days, I got another blast of change this weekend, an invasion of bacteria. Monday at 4:00 p.m. I entered the doctor's office, the image of a pathetic kidney patient, dark splotches under my eyes so I looked a little like a white pansy with purple splotches. Two hours later we were back home, the UTI confirmed by Science, and I took a Levaquin - a simple little tablet, an antibiotic. I will take four more of these over the next nine days.

It is not for nothing that antibiotics were called "miracle drugs" when they were discovered. Now - 10:00 a.m. Tuesday - I am awake to the world again. I am alive. I am much more "my self." This self, the Buddhist teachers insist, is impermanent, just a collection of parts that are going to come apart again someday. The idea is almost amusing, as if you were a car and the drive train fell out, but I am not convinced. I don't feel like a sort of column of fog created on the stage for a moment, then blown away. No, I want to be Someone, and get things in place. God knows I want those I love, like Sherlock, to stay, and I want to keep the Me that I am when I feel good. I want to discover the secret to making that healthy, cheerful self permanent, and then have a life.

But I have overwhelming evidence once again that "I" can be completely changed by one microscopic bacteria that finds its way through my shredded immune defenses and happily colonizes. And that "I" am a different person a few hours after ingesting a bit of anti-bacteria. So which me is real? And why won't she just stand still?

Well there you are. I am only a poet, but I have a close, personal understanding of the Law of Entropy, which I once read tells us, Everything is constantly going to hell.

This seems like an abrupt place to end this little monologue, but I have been interrupted three times. Now Tom has come to my door suggesting we go out and sit in an outdoor restaurant and watch traffic go up and down High Street. It is a lovely day. So I think it's time to gracefully change my plan.

[image: Impermanence of Containment Installation, by Shawn O. Porter]