Winter Bloom

Today I am over the cold and most of the symptoms; not anxious, though I have the usual problems I am sometimes anxious about; and neither high nor low.  I feel balanced.  Not blissed, but happy in a quiet, contented way.  I thought readers might like to hear from me in that mood now and then.

It does seem that an occasional day of feeling balanced and at peace with life is nothing to remark on, but I guess it is for me.  Or has been for quite a while - but who knows what tomorrow will bring?  Meanwhile, art is more fun than words, so I will conclude by posting photos of some of the things I'm grateful for these days.

Tashi luminous in morning sun

 

Mums Tom picked up grocery shopping last week, in a vase that was a housewarming gift from Marie

Rules in the Sunday School room we do creative movement in

.  I count myself among the Nice tigers.

Watercolor sunset tonight after Art Journaling

Winter bloom (red-orange) on a tree in the church courtyard

Is Art Necessary?

A while ago I was telling Tom how much work cooking is - it took me half an hour to put together the base for a pork roast:  sauerkraut, raisins, apple slices. Then I remembered how struck I was by the beauty of the apples, and the shadows the bright overhead track lights threw on the counter, and I thought, when apples are so beautiful, why do we bother doing art?  So I'd reached for my camera.





Of course, my little Samsung phone camera does much more than I ever could do with film, including this kind of shot, which is negative......





and then the Picasa editing system auto-fixed the shot that had been a little under-exposed......

I had to laugh.  No wonder it took me half an hour to slice a couple of apples. 

And I had to laugh again when I realized that even as I questioned the necessity of art, I had paused to do art then and there, not having time (or expertise) to paint a still life.  Was this exploration of the beauty of apples needed?  Obviously, if you were really hungry you'd eat the damn apple.  But if you do have the luxuries of food and shelter and time to regard an apple and record its beauty, then your pleasure has been magnified.  Then too, there's something grounding and relaxing in appreciating what is right in front of you. It felt like time out for meditation. And I think that's all useful.

Enlightenment

Stella Doro lily doesn't know it's too late to bloom.  Note the sheltered ladybug.

Salvation, if we can talk about it at all, is the end of ambition, which is when you become completely one with your experience. Knowledge becomes one with wisdom, which is called buddhahood or the awakened state of mind. You realize that you never needed to make the journey at all . . .
Chogyam Trungpa, “The Human Realm,” in Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos, page 258.

My main practice is Zen, but with an interest in other streams.  A year or so ago I bought "The Practice of Contemplative Photography," which includes some photographs by Trungpa Rinpoche, and that stimulated my interest in his work.  Like Shunryu Suzuki, he is more difficult to understand than his American followers, but worth the effort.

What these words remind me of is that I am perfectly what I am, what I was made to be by long and wide streams of karma, national, genetic, historical, environmental, and so on.  In Zen we talk about "the self," or "the conditioned self."  At one time I believed my task was to get rid of it.  I did, I believed that, because it was becoming clear to me that my histrionic hypersensitive over-responsible and bipolar self was the source of my suffering.  I remember Daniel Terragno asking me reasonably, "How could you do that?"  I thought we weren't communicating very well.

You cannot not be who you are. Your brain and your butt are the shape they are.  And you are okay.  But (as many teachers have added), you still need to work a little harder.  You may be OCD, but you can learn how to throw away a cereal box. You may be hypersensitive to criticism, but you can learn whose criticism to avoid or how to deflect it. It's bit by bit, inch by inch. There's always work to do

When I started a regular meditation practice, it was in a frenzy of fear that the cancer in my breast would kill me.  This was irrational; it had been discovered on a mammogram at stage one.  Nevertheless, I began doing a white light healing meditation you can find taught all over the world.  From there I somehow moved into just sitting following my breath, then a lot of other practices.  At this point in my life, I was also in torment with my alcoholic family, and they weren't the only people in my life driving me crazy.  That was how I saw life then: they drove me crazy.

There was some truth to that.  Some people are hard to take, and you should have a really good reason to spend time with them.  Over the next couple of years I was going to leave behind several people who just weren't good for me.  It was hard every single time.  Now I am amazed that I ever tolerated them.  But I didn't see the reality then.  My reality was governed by an idea that I should like everyone, tolerate rudeness, cultivate patience, and enjoy pool parties.  I mean, of course. 

You know what?  I like a genuine beach and a nice big body of water, as well as a creek and a waterfall.  I hate swimming pools, chlorine, cold water. It's a matter of personal preferences.  But I had to take swimming lessons and push push push myself to try and try harder - in the face of fibromyalgia pain - because, well, everyone said swimming was good for you.  And I thought I should learn to like it.  And certainly I had to go to my brother's pool parties because, well, he invited me.  Though another thing I really don't like is being around people who are devoting themselves to drinking all day.

One of the things Zen says is that when you are enlightened, you will taste a cup of tea and know for yourself whether the water is hot or cold.  It's a metaphor.  You learn you don't like Carol, and you're cold when you're cold, and hungry when you're hungry.  Other children of alcoholics may recognize the denial of ordinary needs that was enforced in my childhood.

I thought practice would teach me how to handle all the problems in my life back then. It has, including that some things can't be solved.  Also, I often see more clearly now where the problem lies, and how it can be handled.  This is hard for me to say, but there's actually nothing wrong with Carol, and I bet some people like her.  She is what she is.  I just - sorry, I just didn't like her.  And don't miss her.

In short, what I am gradually approaching with practice is not universal joy but being aware.  That includes, though it is not limited to, what you like and don't like, moment by moment.  It applies to many mundane things that can add up to STRESS.  It's very interesting how the little raft takes you far, but not where you thought it was going. 

[In looking up the hot and cold thing, I was led to a dharma talk I think must be by Shinge Roshi, for those who want to think more about this.]

Zen and Bipolar: What to do When You're Going High, Part 1

This morning I'm having fun with a three-month-old list I made titled 100 Cool and Stupid Things to Do.  It is gratifying to see that though I closed that file and forgot about it, I got a lot of those things done.  (And am reminded to do others.)

One thing on that list was the suggestion to write this post, as part of a larger project about Zen for Bipolars.  I'm neither low nor high today, just in that nice balanced space between waves, so I'll take advantage of that and begin.

Starting up on a manic moodswing is similar to being pleasantly excited for a normie (I don't like that word, we're not abnormal, but what else can I call people-who-don't-have-moodswings?  Maybe "ordinary people"?)  But it includes the allure of a mental shapness and confidence.  And it will not naturally subside.  That's my experience, and I was just ordinary until I was 33, so I know the difference.  This difference highlights the crucial fact that bipolar is a neurochemical dis-order.  That's why chemicals are often useful in the treatment.

Science is telling us these days about brain plasticity, that is, how we can change our brains even into old age.  There's a lot of further research on the specific effects of meditation on the brain. My own experience is that nothing will calm you down better when you're too excited than meditation, which has been briefly described like this: 

Sit down.
Shut up.
Breathe.

Teachers of young children call this a time-out.  It works.  Even little ones can follow those directions for a few minutes.  For kids with temper or panic attacks, a one-minute meditation of three deep breaths, exhaling all the way, can work magic.

But the little ones have an advantage over us; someone is making them do it.  (Most elementary school is a formidable training in doing what an authority tells you to do.)  As a grown-up, you have to exert this control over yourself, unless a manic episode gets so bad that you are hospitalized.  Then you will be medicated.  If  you are really bothering people, you will sometimes be shut in a 'quiet room" for a time.  Interestingly, a quiet room is rather like a Zen meditation hall:  empty, clean, quiet.  No screens, no one to talk to, no stimulation, nothing but a mattress on the floor. But we can actually arrange our own quiet times.

They can have the same calming effect as contemplating nature.  That doesn't mean hiking, climbing, caving, making a big effort to accomplish something.  Contemplation is simply walking or wandering alone in a park or woods, just for the sake of experiencing nature.  I love doing that on retreat.  (Caution: it is  stimulating to be exposed to sun, heat, and light.)

To the left is a photo I took at Grailville in 2010, a month before my scheduled transplant, when I was very sick and very frightened.  It was a good retreat for me, given that. Perhaps you can see how calming it was.

I like the subtle colors and shadows in the photo, which is of the hedge that separates Grailville from a meadow; if you look, you might be able to make out the wire fence in the late-morning shadows.  I took photos that year for the first time; it became a contemplative activity for me, and neither the teacher nor anyone else chastised me.  Ama Samy's retreats are relaxed and kind in the way I understand retreats are at Springwater Center, founded by Toni Packer.

[If you know someone who is bipolar, or close to a bipolar, feel free to share this post on Facebook or elsewhere.  You can use the little icons below.]

How to Simplify Your . . .

this version?

or this version?

In order to be worthy as a Zen student 

I must go straight on a narrow mountain road

That has ninety-nine curves.

[koan in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition]

Google "How to simplify" and you get almost 4 million hits.  It is charming. My goodness, how many of us in the modern world feel our lives are overly complicated. 

There are, it turns out, mathematical technique for simplifying equations.  But most of the hits are about how to simplify your life, your house, your clutter, your day.  I liked the simplified approach to simplifying on wikiHow, which is a commons how-to-do-anything manual I'd never explored:

1.  identify what is most important to you
2.  eliminate everything else

This is the approach I'm taking to the move in our future.  Easy.  Take the kitchen, for example.  I'll just pack the items we actually use and leave the rest in the house for the tag sale. That's going to mean that dream items (maybe someday I'll make another baba au rhum and need that bundt cake pan) has to go.  I can handle it. It will be harder for Tom, who loves each and every book he ever bought.  And actually, I have to go through all those good clothes I haven't worn for years . . .

If you think stuff is a problem, try simplifying your whole life.  I've been working at that for years, decades, and have realized my fundamental survival instinct:  The most important thing is to stay alive.  If it weren't, I'd never have done dialysis or undergone a transplant.  And even surviving can be complicated.  Would you rush back into a burning house for your child or cat or manuscript?  Would you endanger your own life for others?  For people you don't even know?  (Firemen do it all the time.)  Would you stop eating potato chips to lower your blood pressure?  Surviving can get complicated.

As a student of Zen I naturally turn to the more difficult problem of simplifying my busy mind in the face of the choices available in a life of luxury (by luxury I mean that I have a fairly secure home and food, and don't need to work for them anymore).  Right now I should be eating breakfast or actually, meditating - meditation goes best for me in the morning, and I'm running behind on my personal schedule. Or really, this is the best time to work with poetry.

But I want to finish this post, which is my work now, and am very interested in exploring the how-to-Zen articles on wikiHow (How to create a Zen bedroom!).  And I see Jeff responded to my e-mail last night . . . and I wish my photos of  Tashi would upload to Picasa so I can pick one for this post . . .

Maybe these are the ninety-nine curves of that narrow road each of us walks on.  No big deal, each and every moment.  But it is.  

Just this

Heat

 

Painting Like Van Gogh

Vincent's Room at Arles

You don't have to. That's what I realized last night. I don't have to paint like Van Gogh; I don't have to paint at all.

Now, for some time I have been interested in learning to paint with oils, and knew I needed to learn a lot about this difficult art, not just muddle around in it.  I can go to the local university, OSU, and sit in on classes free, but the huge campus is hard for me to navigate, parking is horrible, and so on.  Tom suggested I could look at course syllabi online and at least find what books are used.  So I did.

And that laid out for me just how hard it is to learn to paint in oils.  It looked daunting.  And - as you know - I am almost 70 and have limited energy and a small tremor.  And my right (dominant) arm still hurts every day because when I fell down last September I not only broke a bone, but damaged the rotator cuff.  I do know a painter can fit herself out with assistive devices, like Chuck Close.

However, I told Tom, "It looks hard."

He said, "You don't have to do that.  You could just do art appreciation."

Sometimes it is very powerful when someone reminds you that you don't have to do something.  I felt my relief in my body.  I thought, I don't have to accomplish anything anymore.  I think this is realistic. And it was also true when I was fifty.  I wish I'd known.

It is realistic to remember that we are very small, and we don't have to be big, we don't have to be driven like poor Van Gogh, whose life was so hard that I have had to stop reading the biography right now.  We can just be ourselves.  We can be devoted to being.  We can just enjoy the acid green spring leaves against the French blue sky.  In our daily lives we always have opportunities to do simple acts of kindness, like listening, or bringing Grandma some chocolate (thank you again, Don), or answering an e-mail with care, or being patient with your very old neighbor when she is locked out of the house.  Things like that relieve the suffering we humans are prone to.

I do enjoy photography every day.  That doesn't mean I have to buy a really good camera.  Or even edit what I do.  I just came across the above.  I don't know what the shadow is, but I have figured out what it is a picture of.  Anyone?

Meaningful Work

Full moon over Westbrook's

I've known many people who were unhappy because their work was not meaningful - maybe that was more common in the 1960's and 70's.  But I've noticed that most of the work in this world is very indirectly related to reality, like doing the quality control on bearings or heck, underwear elastic.  I myself had jobs I thought were unimportant and meaningless.  One was being secretary to a group of engineers who kept the calenders running at Firestone.  So, Firestone made tires, they are made with calenders, who cared?  Now I see it better - if you can be involved in the making of a good product that's needed, if you can bring a pleasant attitude to that, it's not meaningless just because your own work is very indirect (typing letters).

Full moon, impressionistic rendering

Many people in the low-wage jobs in the fast-food industry resent their jobs and show it.  But at the White Castle we like to frequent, there is a woman at the drive-through window who is convincingly cheerful and glad to help you.  We look forward to seeing her.

This morning I called my doctor's office to get an appointment about this painful rash.  When I told the receptionist I thought I had shingles, she said "Oh, you poor dear."  And you know, I felt a little warmer: somebody knew what it's like.  I believe there are few jobs in which you don't have the opportunity to be kind, helpful, even compassionate.  A friendly face, a smile - these things are meaningful in this suffering world, and probably more important than you think.

What are you sticking to?

So this morning The Onion tweets me a link on an article titled Terrible Idea Committed to Paper.  It is amusing, how we can be so in love with our ideas and inspirations.  I was struck yesterday with a personal realization about that as I walked, fully enjoying practicing contemplative photography, just seeing without conceptions.

There is a lot you can't do without the use of your dominant hand, and furthermore, a torn rotator cuff in the other shoulder - I don't feel like trying to paint, forget drawing, I can't even sign my name, much typing is out - this already hurts.  I can't even use the camera conventionally, using only one hand to hold it, focus, and click, and I can only use it vertically.  But what a pleasure it was to do that.   

And into my idle mind came Suzuki Roshi's admonition that Zen is about "not sticking to anything."  You know what I've been sticking to?  The idea that I Am a Poet.

I slowly formed this idea in 1997, when I began to write a kind and quality of poetry new to me.  My father's sudden death and my own cancer had broken me open into the need to express creatively my very difficult feelings.  At that time, my skills were only verbal.  My first serious poem was an elegy for the best friend who died when we were eleven.  Fortunately, Ellin Carter, the friendly professor I called and asked to have a look at it, was kind and supportive.  Yes, she said, this is poetry.  Very nice, she murmured, reading it.  For many years after that I worked hard at poetry, loving the sustained act of being in the flow that comes when you're just right.

Right now - maybe I've mentioned this - I am on a higher dose of a psychoactive drug called Seroquel that seems to me to cut down right-brain activity.  Even the lower dose cut my production of poetry way down when I started on it several months ago - I felt it happen and could expect the higher dose to do more of that.  I was willing to lose that kind of creativity for a while to avoid the kind of awful depression that hit me last month.  So the decision demanded a loosening up of my ideas about what I need to do to be happy.

It hit me yesterday as I stood by the pond, listening to the fountains, watching the water ripple and the hanging branches of the willow sway, as I walked, selecting big fallen leaves to crunch underfoot, that taking photographs of this was deeply satisfying and natural, while attempting to make poetry of it was a different sort of effort that took me further away from the reality.  It struck me that I've been sticking to the idea that I am a poet.  Like a noun, a fixed identity.  So this feels more free and easy, and it is another beautiful day.  October is delivering.

Battling the Big Guy

Lace

 

I had a rest-less (good word) night due to extraordinary pain that had me on Vicodin all day - sometimes I can go without even Tylenol except at night.  Pain in left shoulder and that damn left hip, which I hurt last Saturday at the health club by doing one small new back exercise with care. Let your pain be your guide, the sport-spine doctor's mantra, ran through my thick head, and I was careful, and thought yes, the little leg lift was a little painful, not bad.  But it turned out it was bad.  Now I think the SI joint on that side is inflamed.  I woke up with these two areas hurting, a bad sign, as being prone for some hours is usually very helpful.

But my mantra is, It won't kill you.  Also, Being in pain doesn't mean you have to be unhappy.  Also, Having limitations doesn't mean you need to be unhappy. I used to have ideas in my head that these things did necessitate unhappiness. No, unless you cling to your desires to do things you used to be able to do.  Things have changed, that's what happens to carbon-based life forms.  If you don't want to change, you should have been born a hunk of granite.  Then you wouldn't change very fast. (Wondering now whether granite is based on carbon.)

Often I read about someone's determination to find a cure for cancer. There's a big uproar now about women wanting the FDA to keep Avastin listed as appropriate for metastasized breast cancer, though there is no reputable scientific study that shows any benefit.  One warrior said she wanted every possible weapon in her arsenal against this dread fiend.  I thought, yes, but this is a gun that never hits the target and can backfire and kill you.  The problem seems to be that if the FDA does remove its temporary sanction, insurance companies can refuse to pay the $88,000 a year it costs to take the drug. The women want anecdotal evidence to reign; in other words, if one person taking it felt better, they want it.  You know I have many reservations about Western science and medicine, but it does have its uses.

Here's where I want to go on this:  The good old Five Remembrances (see sidebar on this blog).  I guess I should have them tattooed on my forehead.  Barring accident, we are all going to have pain, we are going to get sick and die of something.  If not cancer, something else. Doing your best to be alive - really alive - I heartily recommend, but accept reality, you'll be glad you did. As for pain, I am trying to befriend it, if you know what I mean. "Oh, there's my rheumatiz again" type of thing.

When things change, there might be a benefit in there somewhere.  The bad shoulder (Bad shoulder, Bad!) and back mean I no longer have to do the weeding.  So my dear friend and Grand Master of the Gardens, Karen, is coming this afternoon to pull many more oak seedlings and generally set things right in the front gardens. She earns money doing what she does so well and loves.  I feel relieved.  The neighbors are relieved.  I get to sit here and play with my photographs.

Limitation is okay once you accept it and stop yearning to never grow old, certainly to never die, to always be able to do what you feel like doing.  I posted a John Tarrant quote on that a while back, so I won't add it here. Grandmas do tend to repeat ourselves, maybe because nobody heard us the first time.  (Insert smile here.)

Assignment: see color

Green

Green autofixed

Green J's fix

After several weeks of thinking about it, I bought myself Contemplative Photography. Why was I reluctant? I don't know. I have been leafing around in it (sorry, pun) and caught the first assignment - Color. It's like any kind of awareness until you are a Buddha, perhaps, and have no lapses - now wait, I think that's wrong - I am told we lapsed beings are Buddhas, though we are cautioned to try a little harder, nevertheless.

My life: I have only 10 more minutes here, and was just interrupted by a much desired phone call from my transplant nurse-coordinator, Joanie. The dr. wants to raise my Norvasc - I had sent her another fax with a week's blood pressure readings that showed it is still too high for someone whose parents both died from stroke. This concern got moved recently from cardiologist to tx kidney doc, for the kidney plays a part in controlling your BP.  The new one doesn't seem to have caught on.

Back to the more spiritual. Creating art.  Catching photos with the 5-pixel camera on my phone, which turn out pretty nice, especially in outdoor light  The top photo above was my spontaneous catch this morning - I was amazed to see the backs of the leaves were really that light, and stuck with that amazement long enough to take one picture.

Below that, the auto-fix available on Pikasa's editing program.  As soon as I saw it I knew why most photos on the internet look somehow alike.  The program has been tapped to make them conform to a formula.

Below that, the result after I played with it awhile. The more I did, the less I liked it, and I don't like it now.  I tried cropping it different ways - nothing pleased me.  I still prefer the original, the point-and-shoot.  I told Tom I am going to invent The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Visuals.  See it, stay with that- don't mess it up with conceptualizing-, and click.  One take.  The book calls it three stages: the flash of perception, visual discernment, forming the equivalent (or taking the picture). It's just like washing lettuce or talking to a friend - be aware, stay aware, stay aware again.  It's what we practice doing when we meditate. That's why we call it practice.

Smoke

 

I took a number of shots of my altar just now before I realized what it was I wanted to photograph. Maybe I should video it - the smoke is the only thing visibly dancing on the empty altar. And it will change all day long as the light changes.

Empty