Wasting Time

It's a funny thing, being a poet, or an artist of any kind.  There's a great deal to learn, because art, as distinguished from self-expression, rests on craft and on the tradition, on all the discoveries of every poet who went before you.

It usually means you have a dedicated time to write most days.  You read other poets and are connected to some - these days, often on the web.  You practice the art without expecting to gain anything from it, though you could luck out.  But if you do it to become rich or famous, it tends to become commerce, which looks to the marketplace rather than the soul.

But the largest part, I think, is Being a Poet.  It is a way of being receptive to the whole world, outer and inner, of ambling along rather than always driving to some goal.  It has to do with the need or desire to experience new things, to expand yourself.

And it has to do with creating enough empty space in your life to "waste time".  I was doing that this morning, checking email, and clicked on a link in a post from Motionpoems, to which I subscribe.  They never disappoint.  There is also an article on the site by Angella Kasube, the creator of the video.  What a wonderful new use of new technology.  I hope you enjoy it, too.

The Truest Thing I Know

I know lots of important things, like Do the most important thing first  and There's always time for what's really important.  But the most important thing I've learned this last decade or so can be phrased in a piece of common folk wisdom:

It's always something.

Therefore, I make a point of enjoying the gaps between those somethings.

Buddhists may be noting already that this is a rephrase of what is called The First Noble Truth that Shakyamuni Buddha realized as he sat under the evening star:  Life is hard.  The word is dukkha, and I've most often seen it translated as suffering, anxiety, stress.  There are good reasons human life is hard.  All good things pass.  We pass, and we know we will.  We lose loved ones, friends, beloved pets, our health and vitality, our able-bodiedness, even our ability to think and recognize our world - and we know we might.  I know I probably haven't touched on the problems you and I have seen in our lives, and that you may be experiencing right now.

When I'm in a balanced mood I accept all that with the sort of equanimity with which we grandmothers sometimes say,  It's always something. (sigh)  If you can't accept this fact of life's difficulty emotionally, you can work on understanding that it is true.  Whether you like it or not.  And yet, this moment is safe.

Here I'd like to mention that these thoughts are growing out of me having a very good day.  A nice, quiet day following a lot of work yesterday, and some real visible progress on the major clean-this-house project, working right along with Tom, no conflicts.  I have seen enough suffering in life to realize the abiding pleasure of an agreeable relationship.  Today it is hot outside and the air quality bad, but we have electricity back, and our air-conditioner and Hepa filter are doing a good job in here.  My back doesn't hurt too much, and in a minute I'm going to prop up on a heating pad that works wonders for me.

I do live in an emotional hurricane zone, as Readers know.  I have a bipolar-ordered mind.  Right now I am neither depressed nor anxious-angry-manic, just right in that lovely middle.  Creative but not driven.  Not sick; maybe I've found the key steps to avoiding UTIs, maybe I can keep avoiding them. My history tells me those unlovely mood states will return and everything turn sludgy and gray, though I don't want to believe it.  I know it is my nature to get sick this way, that way; illness cannot be avoided (I know The Five Remembrances. which are at the bottom of this blog, by heart).

But today I can look around and run the mental gratitude journal.  And am not even arguing with the koan I have found most difficult of all:  Every day's a good day.  There it is, on the right, in calligraphy.  I am working on accepting that, preparing to see the shades of gray on those not-so-easy days.

A useless post about practically nothing

I subscribe to a (free) blog by one Peter Bregman, who writes often about time/self management. Mostly, I like his personality.  Of course, time management is a scoff in my life now.  When you are old, well, aging is a breakdown of systems, parts wearing out, though the shock absorbers do get better with practice. Your muscles actually lose a percentage every year, so you exercise to just stay even. And your brain slows down too, being busy with not falling.

The thing is, most time management is about Getting Things Done.  I myself, in fact, have a book by that title sitting right here at my relatively useless right hand.  I came across a reference to it recently, probably in Bregman's blog, and thought, I have that book somewhere.  Yep.  With post-its on it, too. I can't tell what year I bought it, but I was obviously ambitious.

The book asks us to sit down for a few hours or longer and write down every single damn thing we want to get done.  Everything.  All the things that have piled up around you for years, if you're a regular human being living the good life in America. For instance, that box of old photos and slides from the film era, which I have mentioned before: it cries out to be gone through, throw out the many bad pictures, convert the rest to digital - you know.  At least do the pictures of Sherlock, beloved cat of many years.  At least that.  And I bet you have a box like that too - though maybe some of my readers are so young they have always been digital. An amazing thought.

Well, I thought of writing that down - just that one undone project - and I quailed.  [to shrink back in fear, cower - and the synonyms are great]  To even think of seriously setting out to do that project, buying one of those converter things, creating a[nother] big mess . . . no, I thought, I'd do better to do something small, like figure out where to keep my headscarves.  Somehow they have all ended up on top of my dresser in a heap.

You know I must have a larger point, and it is this: when you are old enough you get to stop Getting Things Done.  You don't need to accomplish stuff anymore.  You are done accomplishing.  You can have the great pleasure of . . . doing not much. And knowing that it doesn't matter.

Law and disorder

There was a time in my life when my unhappiness was not at all about impulse.  Self was constructed of the cement of rules and role, and I didn't seem to have any Real Me in there at all, not even impulses.  NoWun. I was just what I had been told I should be. What satisfied my parents. What was permissible in their narrow thoughts. It's a small cage.  But it has a door that isn't locked.

It sort of amazes me how many lives I have had. That buttoned-up tight time was in my twenties. At that time, nice little house, no mess, because my husband wouldn't have liked mess, because my parents were fiends for neatness, my mother always picking up after all of us, always cleaning. Very little creativity in any of our lives. For a while mine found its out in sewing useful things.  I remember very fondly a pink terry-cloth bathrobe with a hood that I made for Cassie when she was still a toddler. She was so beautiful in it.  I used a pattern, never learned how to sew without one. Now I know people who make gorgeous fabric collages stitched with gold thread, who work with happenstance in their quilting. Back then all I ever saw was quilts according to patterns - even patchwork was done to a grid. Sometimes the question is about finding your impulses.

Reading Chogyam Trungpa this morning on Auspicious Coincidence.  He gets into questions about choice. And making choices is very much about being right in the center, right here, right with yourself and all of it, doing the central, sane thing.  He talks a bit about using divination when we feel stuck, and it made me think of my tarot cards. At another time in my life when I felt very browned-out and stuck, I learned to read tarot with the classic Rider deck.  And it was great for me, it helped move me along.  It is a way to put the Self and all its thoughts and rules aside and enter the situation wide open, put your energy into the cards as you shuffle and cut, so you are putting yourself out there a little.  Listen to the universe, be opened by the symbols on the cards, so that the answer becomes clear. Well, sometimes it doesn't.  But you approached the question.

Always looking for big answers. But I often think the question is, What are you going to do with the thing in your hand?  That's both tangible and a metaphor.

Sitting like a frog

Being, like a frog.  Being like a frog today, in fact.  Except a frog doesn't have to worry about the kitchen floor and go get a blood draw and order calcium online.

Recently read where some Teacher reminded us how special it is to be the only creature that can build a relatively safe, comfortable shelter from the weather.  Though even at this moment one thinks of the tornadoes that have barely missed us lately, of how Hurricane Ike sent high winds all the way to Ohio, and big trees fell in our neighborhood, where we are fortunate to have big trees, and we were out of power for seven days, and everything in the freezer and refrigerator finally went bad, though I did manage to give some chicken nuggets to Barb.

Yes, that's this beautiful mind today, open.  Big day yesterday, drove to Amish country to visit with Tom's folks and Uncle Ted, had an excellent lunch, a wonderful time.  Today, I am tired, a frog without the energy to stick my tongue out and catch a fly.

Trungpa's advice to just sit was exactly the advice of Suzuki Roshi, I remember - and it was Suzuki who told his students to just sit like a frog.  I didn't "get it" as well as I do now that I am reading it in Trungpa Rinpoche's book The Path is the Goal: A Basic Handook of Buddhist Meditation.  Whew, long title.  The idea is that the path is not a journey.  The goal is not to become a perfect human being.  Not to move along the path and get somewhere so you can be a student of a higher order.  The only goal is to get on the * path.  Just get both feet on it, take one step.  No, maybe it's just sit down on it.  That's all.  No going forward. It is a wonderful thing to hit this guy at this stage in my practice. He illuminates everything from another direction at a time when I have learned too many ways to occupy my mind while in meditation.

Ah yes, I am loosened up and happy today by a wonderful day with family yesterday, all that riding through gorgeous green landscapes unmarred by big farm machines. At the produce stand, there was a team of horses waiting.  An Amish man was showing a non-Amish neighbor the hoe he just bought - handmade.  Hand riveted.

But back to sitting, I mean, meditation.  Trungpa very emphatically wants us to begin practice at the very beginning, to sit down and do nothing.  Don't focus on a candle flame or your breath or your mantra or a visualization.  You begin at the very beginning by sitting down like a tired old frog on a lily pad on a hot day, not even waiting for a fly.  We humans call it "wasting time." Letting time go by, empty.


Furthermore, he maintains that there is no verb form for meditation in his tradition.  No such word as "meditating" in Sanskrit.  It is a noun.  You be in meditation.  You don't do it.  So think of it as a nice sort of closet of cool light you step into, sit down, and don't even wait.

Anyway, I felt quite odd today after doing my meditation, oh no, not doing it, just sitting there.  It was quite different for me.  I came out of it still feeling froggy or foggy, not having any idea what to do next.  Okay, got dressed.  Have to go do labs.  I don't do them, I submit to them.  I sit like a frog and people put big needles in me and take my blood away.  Like six vials every two weeks to make sure I'm as healthy as I look. And don't even give me a * cookie.  That's life post-transplant.

Barely Managing Time

My friend Kit says that the Ayurvedic tradition holds that when people have a strong fire element in their constitution (pitta), they tend to want to manage things.  I seem to be primarily vata-pitta, vata being air-space, typical artist, and pitta that streak of fire that emerges when vata is blown out of balance, which seems to be easy for me.

What is it about the week?  Monday so busy.  Tuesday frantically trying to get done what needed to be done on Monday.  Wednesday, they call it "hump day."  You begin gliding downhill. Water the plants. Earth, good for me, grounding.

Managing what?

Quick thoughts this morning, getting ready to go for acupuncture, then for an important blood draw.

Putting away clothes, I think, "It only takes a minute."  Takes a minute.  The phrase implies that there is a thing that is a minute, a chunk of time - so this is language forming the way we think.  "To take a minute" is to grab a chunk out of this flowing river named "time."

Then I thought, I spend so much time on time management.  Whoops.  To spend time.

Then, "to manage time."  It isn't time I manage at all, it's myself.  My actions.

Miss Shud likes to try to manage me/my time.  In the morning she starts right in with principles like, You should read dharma and meditate first thing in the morning.

I argue with her.  That is, Me - this body/mind.  She craves to check my e-mail, like a child waiting for the mail to come -and bring - maybe - a present.  (Have you noticed, e-mail seldom does.)  Body-mind tend to win over Miss Shud's principles.

Yet, what is the place of self-discipline?  Managing the self, unpleasant thought, let's see, choosing what to do right now.  Choosing.  You have to quiet the dialogue of of Shud and Me.  What do I really want to do right now?  An AA person I know says "Just do the next right thing."  I reply, "Just do this right thing."

And isn't that the whole point of spiritual practice or, if you like, of sobriety or self-improvement? - you want to do what you're doing with a whole heart, you want to choose, you want to remain aware.

And now I am relieved of all this thinking because I have to go to the Chinese doctor.  The drive takes 15 minutes.  A handy concept.
[image:  summer texture - just that, nothing more]

A minor event

A few days ago I got a request to co-lead a course this fall. Years ago, it's true, that sort of thing clenched me up. I was already doing too much, scattered all over the place, and it seemed I had to say No to someone twice a day, when saying No made me anxious. But then, I wanted to say yes to everything. Sometimes I did, and ended up having to cancel out. My life isn't like that anymore - an advantage of poor health - and the request felt like a compliment. I thought maybe I'd do it.

Then I remembered why I didn't want to. It has been impossible for as long as I can remember now to count on an hour a day of time/energy for my real work, my poetry. I am putting together a collection, and I'd like to get it out. I am pretty sure I'm not going to enjoy being posthumously published. Teaching this course would not only eat up an evening a week, it would take preparation, which takes more time. Time I want for my work.

There is some great mystical stuff in Zen about time and space. I have read it closely. It seems to imply that time is not real. I confess, it is for me, real as a puppy that has not been leash-trained. My control of it is uneasy at best. It keeps running along every day, downhill, and slips the leash to run out of sight when I turn my back.

If that metaphor makes you nervous, here's another: You get so many units of time at the start of the day. But with each passing minute, the units grow smaller and weaker, and more and more Things To Do appear on the scene, not your fault, and then your Special Forces Anti-To-Do Weapon seizes up and won't fire. It is like some horrible video game. You are almost relieved when you lose.

This afternoon I called the woman who asked me to do the course and explained to her, not feeling guilty, and we had a pleasant conversation. I got to know her a little better, and to admire her professionalism. When we hung up, I realized I felt warmed by this contact. Ten years ago the need to say No would have fretted me all morning and depleted my energy. It might seem like a small, ordinary thing to show for years of spiritual practice and therapy, certainly not a great mystical vision. But most joys are small and most days are ordinary.

[image: Gravity Probe B and space/time, courtesy of NASA]