Noticing

The sky this morning was incredible. There were wispy clouds running in streaks across it, the cloud forms themselves a light lavender against the blue/black of the sky, and then stars – bright, singular and clustered stars – so that the sky was streaked in the most lovely way. It was nothing garish, but very soft and delicate.

The clouds were more fragmented than wispy, lumpy streaks with gaps that seemed to say that the clouds, like the stars, would soon be gone from view.

I’ve been so tired again that I thought I’d best get back to qigong and did that before heading out with Sam for a walk. The stars were already less evident and at the same time the dark was deeper. It was 6:30 and yet the very first time I’ve ever been out when I lost Sam in the darkness. It was a dull darkness that made everything indistinct and made me question my eyes…a feeling that this is what it would be like to have your sight dim. The loss of distinction was eerie. It wasn’t frightening but it was foreign. I’ve walked much earlier and never lost the dog…and it happened twice.

She too seemed disoriented. It may have been partially the fault of my reserve. I hesitated in this new darkness to go into the deep paths that usually thrill me so. Even on my shortest walk I take to the path to at least, for a moment, reach a point where nothing man-made can be seen. I don’t have to go far to shed the street light glow or cease to see the tops of near houses.

But having stood motionless at the start of the path, contemplating the depth of the darkness, hesitating, I soon decided to take the paved path, and that was where I lost Sam for a second time. Turning around to not see her behind me, I called out to her. I didn’t want to break the silence with too loud a holler, and clapped my hands with just the barest of audible sound. Still no Sam. I walked back the way I came and finally saw her near the street, turning in circles in its muted light. I called again and she looked in all directions, clearly confused.

This was the strength of the dull darkness. I joined Sam again near the street and we headed home, past houses just waking up, their warm glow welcome.

Two hours later it is full day but the light is still on in the cabin window. The Sunday paper has been read in parts, I’ve made an apple panekoken that no one ate but me, and Donny is off to work.

We were disjointed in our coming and going and it left a pall over the wonder of the morning. Once he was gone – gone while I was in the basement futzing with the laundry – I wished I’d said something. Sometimes I feel like attention to the breakfast or attention to the laundry is attention to my husband. It was only after he was gone that I realized that it was not and wished I could have the hour back to do it differently. To notice, as I did the morning, my husband’s mood without thought of food or clean clothes or the shape of the day.

Dilemmas, moral and otherwise

It’s been a long time since I came to the computer desperate to write. I got so irritated a bit ago over a tire situation with my car – let’s just say it was my fourth trip – over a tire that wasn’t fixed properly in the first place…and that no matter how many times I bring it back, the place won’t admit to any wrong-doing but will only say they’ll take care of it for me for free, as if this is a big gift, when actually they’ve inconvenienced me over and over again.

Of course, this was exasperated by having to get rides. Today, I was awaiting my ride from a woman battling a near 3 years-old over potty training. You’d think the world came to an end because the child pooped her diaper one more time. By the time I got my ride, about an hour later than I’d expected to go, I was rattled by the hysteria and wanting to tell the mother to quit calling her daughter “naughty”…while outwardly remaining calm and serving tea.

So I get dropped off finally to get my key to get my car, which is Still missing the hubcap that they broke the first time I was in, and the guy in front of me is chatting up the service guy, who won’t even look at me. After about 10 minutes, I fish my spare key out of my purse and storm out of there as the guy is calling “Madam,” and when I get home call, half to apologize to him, who had nothing to do with anything, and half to justify my irritation, because I hadn’t yet said a word about their shoddy service, which all hinged on their dishonesty about having broken my hubcap and lug nuts in the first place. There was still no admission coming as I recounted my history with them and why I became so impatient, and it was this lack of admission that had me as riled as the inconvenience.

I’d just read two articles – one on forgiveness and one on young people and moral values. The one on forgiveness was about not holding the grievance – for your own sake – and said “the content” of the grievance didn’t matter. It could be years of a horrid relationship and deep hurts leveled by your mom or the guy who stole your parking space. Either way, the same action, it said, was required: Feel what you feel, then let it go and return to calm.

The writer of the article asked, “But what if it keeps happening?” and it wasn’t until she asked, “How do I take care of myself?” that she started to get anywhere.

In the case of me and the tire, the answer is Don’t go back there. Get the problem solved and never return. The source of the forgiveness article was a guy who’d written a book, and he said, “Life is not fair.”

Okay. Point taken.

The other article, an editorial by David Brooks, was about young people and their take on morals and moral thinking, and even though Brooks found them to be nonjudgmental: “I can’t say what right and wrong is for anyone else. I don’t know how they feel,” he called the results of the research “depressing.”

He said the young folks, when asked to express a moral dilemma, as often as not didn’t speak of things that actually were moral dilemmas.

He concludes saying, “In most times and in most places, the group was seen to be the essential moral unit. A shared religion defined rules and practices. Cultures structured people’s imaginations and imposed moral disciplines. But now more people are led to assume that the free-floating individual is the essential moral unit. Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.”

It was the kind of paragraph that in another context I would have celebrated.

It begs the question of whether or not our hearts, and our feelings, can be our moral compass if we haven’t been schooled or inherited examples of morality.

Can we then know what is wrong or right based on how we feel?

I would have felt so much better if I had said, “You know, forget about the ride. I’ll do it later,” and gotten away from the mother I could only imagine telling gently and privately, not to get hysterical. The tea probably wasn’t the worst thing I could have done, but the hour had become a strain.

I knew I would have felt infinitely better if the car place had just admitted that they could have solved the problem the first time … had they been honest. So honesty became my moral issue of the day.

Life is unfair. It’s ridiculous to get upset over a nail in your tire or with a toddler-in-training, but it happens. Still, I don’t think it’s quite so ridiculous to get upset by simple problems made insufferable…which both of these had become for me through repeated exposure.

But my greatest ire is caused by wanting to “teach” or “preach” or right wrongs. Is this in itself a moral dilemma? Or is the moral dilemma exposed in how I respond…or don’t respond?

It seems to me our hearts could do a fine job, if we listened and acted in accord with them. But dilemmas, moral or otherwise, are not easy, which is why they are called dilemmas.

St. Paul Pioneer Press, 9-15-2011. David Brooks writing for the New York Times: Morality ‘It’s personal.’ Really?

The Dog Knows

I’m in the cabin and need to go in to the bathroom. Sam does not raise her head from her paws or move out of the cabin doorway to let me by. I step past her and say needlessly. “Stay. I’ll be right back.”

I am back at my cabin perch, ready to come in for the day, or needing to close up and go get Henry in the afternoon. As soon as my feet move Sam is on her feet and out the door. She knows.

Habits are a peculiar thing. A routine based on timing is different. That kind of routine finds the cats fighting or worse, (throwing up) to get my attention if I sleep past my usual hour. That routine is Sam whining at the side of the bed. It’s our little parade to the door and welcoming them back in with the standard phrase for breakfast, “Here it is. Here it comes. Here you go.” But the sensing of what is next by mere movement, particularly ones that seem the same as another, is an amazing thing to me. Do I do something differently?

It couldn’t be picking up my coffee cup because I do that almost every time I go in. I’m not shutting down the computer with any particular noise (if I’m shutting it down at all). Do I sigh? Do I square my shoulders and plant my feet just so? Or does Sam know from the minute I begin to think, It’s time to go in?

It’s a mystery of connection, familiarity, something shared between us.

On the other hand, as we head back to the house, she is not so accommodating. This is particularly pronounced when I’m wanting to fly, having stayed too long and in need of leaving post haste to pick Henry up on time. Then she is most prone to dawdle; to stand, halfway between cabin and house, and look at me as I call her. Sam come. Sam!

When I remember this tendency, I run behind her, herding her toward the house, urging her on from behind. But I forget, and even when I don’t, I am often struck by the realization that Sam is getting old. Sam has her own rhythms.

We all have our own rhythms. This is what dogs know.

How far do you have to go?

It’s 5 a.m.

When I left the house for the cabin I kept the yard light on. It’s been so long since I walked out in the dark that I felt I needed it I guess. I tested first for stars but it’s cloudy. If I’d been able to see the stars I would have left the light off.

On the walk to the cabin I got a full 30 seconds of quiet – which seems like a miracle. I could actually hear the yard pond gurgling. I’m still getting six or seven seconds of quiet at a time with an early bird thrown in. And it’s cool. Blessedly cool. The air feels fresh after two weeks of humid heat, one day breaking a heat-index record. I’d walk out the door and my glasses would steam up.

I guess I’m just awash in the appreciation that comes from absence.

I’ve been going a little crazy with the noise of living by the freeway lately. It started with this one video I did when the cottonwood trees were shedding. The cotton was drifting into the yard so heavily that I went and got my camera. It was such a cool visual – drifty and dreamy. But when I played it back, the sound was so loud – just on an ordinary afternoon in the middle of the yard. I wasn’t even as near the freeway fence as I usually am. I became aware.

Then construction started on the bridge over the freeway that’s about a block away and adjoins the edge of the woods. Jack hammering for two weeks and a lane closed since as work continues up the line. The traffic slows and trucks shift.

The final “awareness” hit me when I looked at two of the videos I did last summer from my new computer. I realized that my old computer had such poor sound that the full extent of the noise of the freeway was hidden from me. Suddenly it blared – a background noise that took over.

I’ve started thinking about moving but I probably won’t. The market is bad and people can be real particular. Who’d want to buy a house with this kind of noise level?

Maybe I’m one of those people who need the extremes before appreciation sets in. I don’t know if I’d ever feel this elation over quiet if it wasn’t rare. I think I would…now…but I could have needed this onslought of noise before I’d feel it.

Appreciation is so sweet. I close my eyes and feel the breeze coming through the window and my whole body drinks it in.

It brings forward all those things hidden in plain view. Like thoughts, and how when you see them they become a background noise that blares. And how there can seem to be as little choice about them as there is about staying in a house next to the freeway.

Once thoughts of leaving the noise behind enter, you start to wonder how far away you’d have to go to escape.

On my walks, I realize how a block would make a difference. Can’t hardly hear the freeway most days when I’ve trecked off to the park – even before I get there it’s lessened. But in my mind, on the noisy days, I think I need a spot at least an hour outside of the city.

The need to go far, far away.

It’s 5:30 now, the time I usually get up, and the blessed dark is lifting. Only a half hour separates me from a spot of quiet in the dark.

Little weasel mind's subtle ways

The simple ecstasy of not counting time.

It was my first morning out in the cabin before sunrise in a while – and the first one of doing my whole morning routine from here, which I did thanks to the bigger rug finally getting washed. It’s been a wet and muddy early summer and I hadn’t wanted to exercise on the floor of the cabin with or without the rug.

Now Sam’s lying there, which probably means I won’t want my face in it tomorrow, but that’s okay. There’s four sides when it’s folded. I’ll turn it when Sam gets up and put it away until tomorrow. It has become, as of today, my meditation and yoga mat. I know this, but I’m somewhat bugged that I do. It’s hard to explain.

When I got up to go in the house, Sam and the cats were all lying near the door – peaceful – like they’d been enjoying it as much as me. They followed me into the house. I fed them, got some tea, and then – there it was. The clock.

Once I looked at the clock, I thought, ‘okay – that was about an hour start to finish.’ I kind of nodded to myself. ‘Good, this is good.’

A minute later it hit me that I’d noticed the time that way; that I had to congratulate myself, as if I’d made it through a grueling task or done something I ‘ought’ to do. I don’t know how to convey this, but I was noticing another track of my thoughts…a track that seemed like nothing. Simple. Harmless. Just a little fact to tuck away. “That took an hour.”

All I’d really done differently was move my morning stretching exercises and meditation out to the cabin instead of doing them in the house. I already had a pretty good idea of how much time I spent with my new practice of qigong. The ‘hour’ was simply noticing how much time passed when I put the two together.

But I felt that what the ‘thought’ did was try to convince me that it mattered in a way that it didn’t.

The thought was like something I’d think if I started out walking to fulfill doctor’s orders. ‘Okay. I got in my 5,000 steps, that took me a half hour. I can quit now.” I knew it wasn’t like that. But there was some little weasel voice in me that was treating it that way, reducing it, and that part was not me. That part was old, old, old. An old track from an old record. A remnant from another time.

The moving of the rug that allowed me to bring it all together, being there at the time of day I love best, the animals all acting peaceful (instead of clamoring at the door in the house to go out), it all just happened. I wasn’t thinking ‘I should do this’ or, as soon as I found myself held by it, that ‘I should have done this before,’ or ‘this is the way to do it.’ I knew I’d found my way without thinking it. I guess you could say I was fully in the experience … until I looked at the clock and little weasel mind came back.

I guess the weasel may always be there, but catching it – well, all I can say after the sublime experience of my morning was that it was one of the clearest “not me” thoughts I’ve ever had. Simple and subtle – none of that flagrant bashing myself with a brick that I sometimes do, and in it’s own way, more deadly for its subtlety. Let’s just suck all of the life out of a thing!

There are times we need to make big deals out of our insights or experience. I really believe that. There’s times you need to because you have to declare yourself, or times you need to galvanize your passion into a creative force through action, or that you need to make a big deal out of your experience because, if you don’t, if you don’t hold it to yourself and let yourself see that it was a “call” or a message or a way-showing moment, you’ll file it away like last year’s taxes and not let it affect you.

But there are also times you don’t even want to notice what you’re doing because as soon as you notice you’ve brought your awareness a step away from your experience.

When you are the experience, even for an hour, all the thinking about it stuff becomes clear. It doesn’t feel particularly valuable that you see it either, even when you see that you don’t want it, because you get the feeling that, having seen it might make it harder to be the experience again. Oh shit, tomorrow I’ll be trying to be the experience. Damn.

So…I’m going to let it go as best as I can now. I just thought I’d share the insight because hey, I hadn’t seen it before in quite this way, and maybe there’s another person out there with the same weasel mind who will begin to see the subtle along with the flagrant, and to let it go.


PS: I'm writing more frequently now at this address:
http://blog.acourseoflove.com

The grapevines are coming back!

I just had to tell you that my grapevines are beginning to crawl up the fence once again. If you don't know the story, Donny cut them down last year to get more light to his fruit trees. I wrote a post about it.

I've missed them more than I've wanted to say. They created a mystery about walking back to the cabin and shielded if from view of the house. I felt perfectly sequestered out in the woods when they created their wall between cabin and yard.

It was almost as if they went with the soul of place...or mine.

And now they're returning -- all on their own -- the dears. I've tied some string to help guide them back over the trellis. By the end of summer...who knows? There may well be a wall again.

I've been away from myself, and their return and my own, feel linked, like our twin souls.

Storms of change and choice

For the last three months I’ve had the kind of time I haven’t had in ages. Angie was looking for a job and able to be with Henry the majority of the time. She took him to school, picked him up, took care of meals, baths and bedtime. I was still present and around enough to get casual time with Henry and a few babysitting gigs gave us some one-on-one, but for the most part, I was free. I was getting used to it. I loved it. It allowed my solo trip to the North Shore, whole days spent on my video meditation, gave me the ability to pick up and go almost whenever I chose.

Angie started a new job today.

Tonight Angie came home too tired to explain her complicated schedule. Working in a salon, I imagine there’ll be many more days like today where, other than for her dropping Henry off at school, our roles are pretty much reversed.

It was a fine day. Henry is at his best one-on-one – or on his best behavior anyway. When there’s three of us (me, his mom and his grandpa) hovering around, he acts up more.

But I wasn’t sorry Angie was too tired to go over her schedule with me. It’s been storming all night – one of those on again, off again storms that make you think it’s letting up just before the thunder resounds again and the rain goes from a quiet pitter-patter to a chorus that rumbles.

It’s been dark since 6:00 and I was in the throws of tricking Henry into an early bedtime when Angie got home, ready for bed herself, and I ran out here to the cabin.

I’ve realized that for years I’ve “run” for my time. A three month reprieve in which I got used to not doing that ought to mean something now, and I have hopes of not getting myself frantic again. That doesn’t mean I won’t come to the cabin, or even run when a busy day is through, but I’m willing to give enjoying where I am and what I’m doing a try. Then it’s a different kind of running.

It's still a little like the storm though. I might not have thought of it if the weather hadn't provided the impetus. It just seems to be the way life is. Right when you think things are letting up on you, the winds of change come around again.

This time, I’m telling myself I have a choice. If the childcare gets to be too much for me, I’ll let it be known. It’s really hard to love a child this much and still not want to be as tied to him as a parent.

I’ve gotten my first taste of grandparenting, I guess…and maybe the first taste of self-care I’ve had in a while. It’s been delicious.