Spring opener

Written Sunday:

The spring opening of the cabin is like no other time, no other day, no other year. Just like the shadows are never the same, or unfuckupable man, who is, today, eating snow. I’ve got to get that on my way back in.

I swept out a week or two ago, dusted down the cobwebs a few days ago before my visitor from Maine came out, but today is the real opener. I’m here by myself and not to sweep or dust. I’m here with my laptop. The sun is shining and the slats of the chair are shadowing the seat, and I have my camera. Yes, this is it.

It’s toasty warm for the heater having been on since 12:30. Now she’s quietly resting on “auto”, the freeway noise is largely kept out by the closed windows, and the occasional tings that let me know the “auto” is working are just right – soft, like the ticking of a clock but with only one tick per minute. Time is different here.

Oh, all the reasons why we take ourselves away! They’re countless!

Spring!

Out the front window and there it is – a dark, rain slicked street glistening in the light of street lamps. Out the back door, a train whistle sounding through the morning. All the yard a glitter. Spring – on her day. Everywhere – spring!

read these leaves

Advice from Walt Whitman from the Preface to Leaves of Grass:

THIS IS WHAT YOU SHALL DO

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air of every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

I found this quote on the website of my friend, the brilliant astrologer Pat Kaluza.

An old board

I have home improvements going on. One thing keeps leading to another and another. You take everything down off your walls so that you can paint, and first you have to dust and wash. You take down the curtains and you have to wash the windows. Then you wash the curtains. Then you iron them.

It’s the ironing that I had to come write about. I started it yesterday and after about an hour, my arm was really getting sore, so I left it. Later in the day I was at the store and happened to spot ironing board covers.

My ironing board is about a hundred years old – seriously. It came from Donny’s grandma’s house. I’ve seen these wooden boards in antique shops. I love it…but.

All these years that we’ve had it, I’ve put up with this vinyl cover that is cracked and patched. One reason is I don’t do that much ironing. Half the time, if I’m just putting a crease in a pant leg, I throw a towel on the floor and iron there instead of going down in the basement and hauling out the old board.

Last time I ironed the curtains, I brought the board upstairs. This time, I swept the laundry room, moved a few things out of the way, and was doing my ironing there.

Because I was ironing sheers, and a lot of them, that cracked ironing board cover was really a pain in the neck, and so having spotted this austere item that’s not exactly front and center when you’re walking through Target, I bought it.

Today, I took off the vinyl cover. It was held together by ancient metal clips. I hated to throw it, and them, away.

Then I found a pad underneath. Maybe it’s not homemade, but it could have been, and whether it is or isn’t, it’s got these touches – this extra padding – as if Donny’s grandma was a diehard ironer and she had wanted it just so. It’s yellowed from all the ironing she did (okay...and from age). I started imagining all those white dress shirts being starched, and the tablecloths and napkins back before there was wash and wear.

I did manage to toss the vinyl, but for now I’ve kept that pad. I would have kept it on the board but the new pad wouldn’t fit around it.

The new pad is nice too. It made me want to really clean and organize my laundry room so that I can keep the ironing board set up with it’s jaunty blue cover.

It’s been amazing to me the way this thing has spiraled out of control. One minute you’re just ironing. The next you’re shopping, and the next you’re recovering, and the next you’re planning for a spic and span laundry room with neat places to put things. What’s next? Coordinated hampers?

This kind of behavior doesn’t fall into the category of being “like me.” I’m doing this spiffing up because I haven’t done it in fifteen years – and you know what happens when you let things go that long. But I’m enjoying the surprise of finding a side of myself that is happy doing it. It feels like a fresh start, and that always translates…or maybe, as they say “as within/so without,” it could even mean the new start has gotten going inside of me. There’s always much more going on than meets the eye.

Now…if only I knew what to do with that old pad!

Access, technology, and temptations

Daylight saving time has struck again, this time the spring forward part, and I feel happy with it. When I woke up it was dark. My cell phone immediately adjusted, although I didn’t know it would. When I got up at 6:00… it was 6:00… not 7:00 as I thought it would be. The computer adjusted too.

As I sit down in my sunroom for the start of this Sunday, it’s light and bright out my window, a little less dull in that wintery way of mornings full of moisture tending toward the look and feel of fog without the mist. And today, I’m still an ordinary, flawed human being, watching the world out my window as dozens of thoughts dart out in all directions – many of them of what I could write about today – like the earthquake/tsunami that hit Japan.

The images, shown over and over again on television, feel etched in those memory banks that stand behind our eyes like news reels. This force of nature happened on Friday and I watched all morning with my eldercare client, the scenes looking just like the disaster movies and making them feel like predictions of things to come. I wouldn’t have known it had happened if I hadn’t been on the computer early on Friday.

The internet is where most of us, I bet, got the news first. The news came too late for the morning paper. When I arrived at the home of my companion she didn’t know it had happened, nor did her daughter.

In that way it was reminiscent of 9/11, the first news coming after most people had gone to work, read their papers. That morning, nearly ten years ago, Mia called from the coffee shop saying, “Turn on the TV, something’s happened.” I doubt many people first heard of that from their computers. I know I didn’t have a Google page that fed me news as I logged on to get my emails.

In 2001, the cabin wasn’t built yet. When I first got it, I didn’t have access to email out there and once it came available, it changed things – like carrying a cell phone in your pocket does. All those reasons to stay instantly reachable. Available. Even when you don’t want to be.

The access is a temptation. You might miss some news. Or a call for help.

Access and availability/reaching out and connecting. It’s a conundrum these days.

Strangely enough, this very conundrum is the story behind the readings that start Lent. One is the Gospel that shares Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. The other is the creation story.

In the temptation story “the devil” (like our thoughts) tempts with the meeting of physical needs, sets the things of this world against of the things of God, and tempts us to put God to the test.

In the creation story, God saw all of creation on the first day and pronounced “It is all good.” Then on the second day, he said for the first time: “It is not good”… “It is not good for man to be alone.”

So it’s technology and access that strikes me this morning – technology, access, and the temptations of them. One idea they breed is that we can be prepared. We can have faith in preparedness, we can be tempted to have more faith in ourselves than in God – to put God to the test. Another is that if we can reach out and touch each other, see what’s going on, communicate, then we will come together and be okay.

Ultimately, the stories work well together. We use everything we know to take care of ourselves and each other, and we also surrender to God – sometimes because we have no choice – and sometimes as a choice.

Frozen Shoulder and "The Yank"

When you’ve got frozen shoulder you might, after a while, come to appreciate a few “new ways of doing things”. There’s a certain mindfulness that comes of pain. (If only it worked as quickly with thoughts!) Honestly, after mere months of finding that the simplest action – like ripping a paper towel off the rack – causes pain, you quit doing it. You don’t try to yank anything. You don’t attempt to rip the plastic off of a magazine that comes in the mail, yank a towel off the rack, yank the lid off of the Tupperware, yank a car door open – or, for that matter, to slam it shut.

I never thought of myself as a yanker until developing frozen shoulder. I’m a yanker no more.

But there are a couple of funner things that I want to share.

Having frozen shoulder gave me insight about my coffee pot – and maybe yours. For years I’ve kept a red and black checked drying towel sitting on top of the coffee pot so that I could wipe up the spills that come – simply from pouring coffee. I go to a friend’s house and she has the same problem. There seems no way, with a pot built for pouring, to pour without spilling.

Then I started pouring with my left hand.

I have discovered that coffee pots must be universally designed by the left-handed. Try pouring left-handed sometime. You’ll see what I mean.

Another thing I discovered was how to have the “messy hair look.” If you’re a woman, you know what I mean. If you’re a guy, you might need to know that this is the tousled look that appears casual and effortless but that is achieved either through a certain know-how or through total accident. It’s the ponytail that doesn’t look severe. It’s the “hair swept back” that doesn’t look plastered into place. It’s the endearing loose tendril. Some of us, not good with working with hair, are incapable of achieving this look.

Well, just try putting your hair in a clip or a ponytail when you’ve got frozen shoulder. Your arm doesn’t move in the right way for this small task. I like my hair to be off my face, so I continue to try, usually getting the ponytail or clip off to the side. Surprisingly, what I got was “the messy look.”

And, since I mentioned thinking, I will admit that this awareness of what causes pain actually has made me more aware of the thoughts that cause me pain. This is a great thing. But the thoughts haven’t disappeared in the same number of months. I don’t know that they ever disappear. The idea isn’t to get rid of them, but to notice, release, do it again. Anyway, I’ve found my thoughts a little easier to catch. I catch them before they do the yank; before they get a hold of me. A small few of them still seem necessary – as if – if I didn’t worry an issue to death, it would stay alive longer. But most of the thoughts that cause me distress, if not pain, are simply habitual thoughts – old ways of thinking that are clearly unnecessary.

Thoughts “do the yank.” They pull us out of feelings of ease and yank us into feelings of stress.

It occurs to me that awareness tends to come to us in roundabout ways, even when (maybe especially when) we’ve been working at it for a long time.

Across Boundaries

In David Brook’s editorial: “Culture matters. So do aspirations for dignity”, he talks about a book by Samuel Huntington called The Clash of Civilizations? It was written in the early 90’s and said that there was, basically, no hope of avoiding the clash of cultures with the Arab world because our aspirations were so different.

Brooks’ theme is that the quest for dignity is inherent in all human beings.

I always like it when I see the word “spiritual” in the context of an editorial and he uses it here. Brooks, after saying that Huntington argued that people in Arab lands didn’t hunger for pluralism and democracy, explained, “It now appears as though they were simply living in circumstances that did not allow those spiritual hungers to come to the surface.”

Liberty is a spiritual hunger.

Like many of us with the freedom to pursue spiritual qualities, I spend a great deal of time focused on liberating myself from the tyranny of my own thoughts. These thoughts, too, are at least partially dictated by culture. Our fears, frustrations, and expectations may be different across cultures but when we confront them face-to-face, or begin to see the glimmer of a chance for change, the inspiration and hopefulness is similar across boundaries.

Brooks speaks here as well, of having many authentic selves. “It now appears that people in these nations, like people in all nations, have multiple authentic selves. In some circumstances, one set of identities manifest itself, but when those circumstances change, other equally authentic identities and desires get activated.”

Brooks is so kind and nonjudgmental here. He’s not calling former ways of being false, only seeing that circumstances activate equally authentic identities and desires. It reminds me of the practices in A Course of Love that I’ve been writing about in my pubjournal blog. They’ve been reminding me of that. The first belief/practice is in accomplishment. One of the things it says, appropriate to this context, is that you weren’t “wrong” before. You were always accomplished. You’re accomplished right now – even as you struggle and as surely when you’re having new authentic identities and desires activated – and even when they begin with your thoughts.

(David Brooks’ column appeared in my Sunday St. Paul Pioneer Press (3-6-2011, 10B) courtesy of The New York Times.)

Me and My Analogies

A few days ago, my friend Bob and I were flipping analogies back and forth as we proofed A Course of Love for its transformation to the Kindle. It was sort of a Buddhist/Christian mishmash. He started it. I think the first analogy he proffered was of watercolor painting. Of clouds.

It was kind of fun, but also one of those things you do when you’re proofing. My own personal limit (or so I found) was eight chapters at a time. I’m not sure what Bob’s limit was, or Jeremy’s, another friend who offered a third pair of eyes.

I’ve also just received the proof of the Course books from Create Space, Amazon’s print-on-demand arm. They tell you to proof your new copy three times. Once for layout. Once for images. Once for typos. Since my files are the same ones as used previously, I’m not proofing for typos. This isn’t because the books are perfect, but because they’re in PDF form and to change the few small typos is not doable for me or cost-effective to have done by someone else. That’s the nice thing about the Kindle (at least when you have a little help from your friends). You can go forth with the idea that with three pairs of eyes, you’ll find everything. You’ll get perfection. You’ll use semi-colons when you need to. (I could definitely find an analogy there about going for perfection.)

But you get the idea from which I’m writing. I’m flipping pages. This is a labor of love but the desire to get up and, oh, I don’t know, clean the toilet or make dinner, is almost as strong as the analogy craze.

Since I’ve been so wrapped up in this stuff, my mind has gone kind of blank. I want to sit and just write something fun or creative, respond to the latest excellent editorial from David Brooks, anything that is off this track I’ve been on…just for the variety of it.

But something prevents me. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s fuzzy brain. I hope so. It feels almost like writer’s block, that dreaded malady about which you are told Write through it! I could make an analogy out of that too. I’m seeing a lot of analogies instead of friends. We’re getting buddy-buddy. Me and my analogies.

The writing one would look, (as everything else does) like a spiritual analogy. But I’m too fuzzy-brained to make it good, so I’ll share instead my vacuum cleaner analogy.

My son gave me, for my birthday, a robot that does my vacuuming. Great sin of useless luxury, but nice both for my arm and the fights Angie and I have had about it (since it's her chore...oh what useless falderal all that’s been). Anyway, you can’t set the darn thing down where all the cat hair is and have it get it up. No. It is programmed to “find the perimeter.” The theory goes that once it finds the four corners of the room, it will go back and get the middle. This actually works in a room like my bedroom that is virtually a square and has a door I can close. But in the living room/dining room area there is too much openness. I’ve tried blocking the open places but this is like doing all kinds of work to avoid work. (I could make an analogy out of that too.)

I'm not exactly sure I can spell out the robot analogy either, but here’s what I suggested to Bob (which means I’m borrowing from my own e-mail writing to write this blog! …under the theory of working my way through not having anything to write). Anyway, here it is.

This finding of the perimeter seems a bit like what we do in life. We head off to the four corners, defining our territory and thinking we’ll get back and clean up the center. But if we remain open, there’s so much ground to cover we might feel as if we never get back to the shit pile (oh, did I mean the cat hair pile?), and if we create barriers to openness or close the door, we get clean, but we’re closed off.

I’ve become content with letting the robot vacuum the rooms that sit at the outer reaches of the house (it’s a rambler): my sunroom office on one side, and my bedroom on the other. For the middle, the big sweeping “L” of the living and dining room, I do the work myself.

That's it. All I've got tonight!