Hands Full of Stars

This beautiful early morning I meditated outside, in a screened lanai, while birds sang and pre-dawn breezes rustled through palm trees. I could do this because, while I live in the currently frozen North, I was able to escape for a few days to southern Florida. I could smell the damp grass just a few feet from my chair. The temperature was about 65 degrees, perfect for sitting in contemplation while wearing a light jacket. If I had my eyes open I would have seen the dark sky lighten gradually and perceptibly, as the faithful, tireless earth continued on its cosmic dance, and the miracle that is the sun manifested itself yet again.

As I meditated, a phrase came to mind - reaching for the moon, yet my hands are full of stars. And once again, I was reminded of what a privilege it is to just be in this moment. I am fortunate to be healthy, not in pain, fed, clothed, sheltered well in this lovely place. Are there problems? Of course there are problems. A myriad of problems, on many fronts. But that is what life is.

I can choose to spend all of my time in non-stop rumination of the ways in which things have not gone the way I wanted them too, as most of us can. I can choose to create imaginary scenarios in my head of the ways in which things in the future can go horribly wrong, and work myself into a lathered frenzy, which I will then get all over those around me. But I cannot change the past, and I cannot control the future, so those mental gymnastics are exercises in futility, not to mention really annoying and perplexing to others.

In the here and now, life is beautiful, as it is all of the time if I pay attention. I have within my grasp at all times the wonder of now if I can just see it with curiosity, and non-judgment, and kindness. And that is enough.

The True Zombie Apocalypse, and a Call to (Link) Arms

It has been a while since I last posted, about the re-arrangement of my innards. Another year has gone by, filled with the kind of stuff a year is filled with, both personal and global. We the family, immediate and extended, went through some things - debilitating storms, beautiful weather, two wonderful trips, a first job, a sort-of restraining order, more learning about mindfulness, a blissful retreat, a new studio for painting and meditation training, a death, a birth, graduations, jobs.

On the global front, much turbulence. Many people died, some famous, most not. It was a violent year, as many are. Last year, however, a pattern emerged, for me at least, manifesting a plague that infects people the world over, inexplicably, seemingly randomly. That pattern was the spread of terrorism all over the globe. I have also noticed that the incomprehensible rise in interest in all things zombie in the last few years parallels the growth of global terrorism. Perhaps, at some unconscious level, the biological entity that we most fear is not the Ebola virus, or the living dead, but the virus that is within us, to echo Pogo's long-ago statement recognizing the enemy as ourselves. We have within us the darkness we fear. In television, in movies, in graphic novels and comic books, we depict our fear that we will be subsumed by this darkness.

What is the true nature of this virus? It is not caused by religion, although religion can be used to justify the actions taken by infected persons. It is not caused by global social media, but rather spread and facilitated by global social media, much like tainted water can spread typhus. The source of the virus is the distorted thinking process of those infected; the idea that perceived slights need to be avenged, that an out of control environment can and should be controlled, that immortality will be achieved, that perceived impotence can be ended by striking a blow. Thoughts like these, incubated in a petri dish of poverty, hopelessness, alienation and despair, consume the lives of the infected, many of whom are the young, their self-absorption,vigor and idealism untempered by wisdom; these toxic thoughts are acted on as if they are truths.

This plague is not new. It has been with us for a long time. How can it be stopped? It will be enormously difficult.  But the concomitant spread of mindfulness and meditation (the practice of looking into ourselves and becoming aware of our own thinking), the spread of a culture that celebrates loving-kindness, compassion for self and others, and non-judgment - this is the best hope we have. We all contain within us the potential for immense love. Gandhi understood this; so did Martin Luther King Jr. The daily practice of mindfulness and meditation pulls us out of these dark places of the mind to celebrate the present moment for all of its beauty, even in difficult circumstances. We can contemplate the glories of creation just as easily as we can contemplate destruction. It takes dedication and discipline to do this, but the rewards are immeasurable.

I will counter the plague in my own small way every day, to the best of my ability. Perhaps together we can begin to spread a plague of love, by linking arms against a sea of troubles. Care to join me?

Hysteria

In a little more than a week, I am going into the hospital to have some of the furniture in the suite rearranged.

That is because part of the corpus has gone derelecti, if you will. It is about to bail out of the plane. Going rogue. Skipping out. The pod is leaving the mothership. The horse is escaping from the barn.

Am I being obscure? Good. I would not wish to offend any sensibilities.

I have never had surgery before. I have never even spent a night in the hospital before, except when my son was born 20 years ago this very day. And I was conscious then, the entire time. All 37 hours of labor. Hah, I exaggerate, it was only 36. I have been conscious ever since, with brief lapses between the hours of 10 or 11 at night and 6 or so in the morning. I think this is called "sleep" although you couldn't prove it by me. Eternal vigilance is my motto; in Latin, "semper vigilantis". This will no doubt be my epitaph. Nothing happens of which I am not aware.

And now, because of the laboriousness of the aforementioned 37-hour labor, which caused some of the trees in my orchard to become, shall we say, overly capacious, gravity is, in a manner of speaking, encouraging some of the fruit to fall out of the tree. Somewhat necessitating a harvesting and the pruning back of some branches, as it were.

Yes, the battleship is in need of an overhaul, which will cause me to undergo general anesthesia for the first time ever, and I will experience a complete loss of consciousness for the first time since the Great Colonoscopy Caper of 2008. That period of radio silence was for a total of 15 minutes. I cherish the memory. If I could pay someone to render me unconscious via really good drugs for 15 minutes on a regular basis I would do so.

This overhaul will involve permanent removal of the carburetor on the old Dusenberg, and a rearrangement of the hoses in the exhaust system.

Of course, the redesign of this particular vintage gown requires that the fabric be more of a denim texture and less of a chiffon. Fortunately, the hospital has plenty of fabric sizing, and many darts will be placed in appropriate places. The finished product, I am informed, will look brand new, which is great news.

The other welcome news is that in the editing process of this cinematic classic, some great dialog will remain unaltered. That is, they will leave the gun, but take the cannoli.

A Terrible Seed

The thing I remember most is the cadence of drums.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Rolllllll, Boom. Boom. Boom. Rolllllll, Boom. Boom. Boom. Rolllllll, Boom. Boom Ba-Boom.

Thousands of drumbeats, as the procession slowly made its way through the capital. It is burned into my memory, as I sat for hours in front of the TV watching this overwhelming death ritual with the wide-open and unfiltered acceptance of an eight year old. 

In the silences between each cadence, only the sound of horses' hooves.

It is always there whenever I contemplate this watershed event, that sound. Stark. Solemn. Ominous.

Flashes of visual memory – the riderless horse, boots backwards in stirrups. The flag-draped coffin on a horses-drawn hearse.  The mourners, walking behind, led by a woman swathed in black.

I did not understand then, but this is what I know now.

Whatever potential for greatness existed (or did not exist) was snuffed out in an instant, gone. The future, altered beyond comprehension. The truth that lay behind the act, unknowable, beyond one simple fact.

Lee Harvey Oswald was an apocalyptic gardener, and he sowed a terrible seed.

The Water Nymph

I have a new personal hero. Her name is Diana Nyad.

She is a long distance swimmer. Since 1979, her ambition has been to swim from Cuba to Key West.

Cuba to Key West. A total of 110 nautical miles. Shark-filled, jellyfish-infested, hurricane-prone miles. Just think about that for a minute.

She has tried. And tried. And tried. And tried. And, finally, tried again. And on that fifth try, which ended yesterday, she accomplished her goal.

She is 64 years old.

Imagine what that was like. In the water, ocean water, for something like 53 hours. Stroke after stroke after stroke, in open water, with nothing around her but more water, and her team of supporters. But they were not swimming; they were in a boat, or a kayak, and could not help her move her arms, or her legs. They could not converse with her, except when she briefly took nourishment. She was alone in the water, with her thoughts, and, apparently, Beatles songs, which she used to keep her stroke steady.

She swam continuously, without sleep, over two nights. How dark did it get, in the ocean, in the middle of the night, in the water by herself? How lonely? How cold? What thoughts surfaced? How tired must she have been. It must have seemed crazy, in those dark, lonely hours. Why do this? She must have faced, moment by moment, the existential crisis,  the paradox illuminated by Samuel Becket in The Unnameable: "It will be, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."

And yet, there was this goal, that occurred to her when she was 8, and first attempted when she was 29, to do something extreme, to journey from Cuba to Florida using nothing but her arms and legs, and her will, of which she obviously has plenty. She willed herself to, as she put it, "push Cuba away, and pull Florida toward her."

Diana Nyad has said that she hopes that this will serve as an inspiration to others, to dream and pursue the dream, no matter how extreme, or crazy, or how long it takes. She is clearly an extraordinary person, but her message is valid to those of us with less will, who discourage more easily. Our dreams give our lives meaning; without them, life is, in the words of Langston Hughes, "a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." Perhaps they are more modest, but they are unique to us, and we can accomplish them, however far away they may seem, if we will it, if we push away doubt, and pull our dreams towards us.

The Silence of the Loons

I stepped into the canoe bobbing gently at the dock with some trepidation; it has been many years since I ventured into watercraft. Norm held it steady and told me to place my foot in the center. Awkwardly I managed left foot and then right, and sat down on the floatation cushion at the front of the canoe, breathing a small sigh of relief.

In front of and around me stretched Oliver Pond, a body of water in the Adirondacks that is larger than its name suggests, perhaps a half-mile across and a mile long.  It is a pristine wilderness pond, designated as such by New York State; we were visiting my sister-in-law Gail who has for many years owned a cabin near the edge.  Northern forest rings the pond, tall pines and deciduous trees, reflecting in water as clear as the stuff that flows from my tap and as still as glass.

Norm climbed into the canoe; we untied the lines that tethered us to the dock, and dipped our paddles into the water. We glided through a silence so profound that the only sound was that of the paddles sluicing through the pond. And then, we heard the loons. Their cry echoed off of the water and surrounding trees, an eerie sound, filled with plaintiveness and loss. A keening sound which would indicate distress if uttered by a human, the note rises and breaks, and trails off. There is also a coloratura flutter, more excited than sad, in the repertoire. After the cry, the echo, and then silence; such a sound needs a counterpoint of space. And once again, the sound of the paddles dipped into the pond, and nothing else.

We arrived at the floating dock bobbing about two hundred yards from the shore, and tied up the canoe. Norm descended the ladder affixed to the side of the dock, fished a bar of Ivory Soap out of his pocket and proceeded to bathe. I lounged on the floating dock, amazed to be in such a beautiful and unspoiled place, his discarded tee shirt draped over my unprotected head to guard against the newly-emerged sun. Two kayakers drifted by, and we hailed each other, each of us happy to be where we were. The loons, excited by new arrivals, renewed their keening and fluttering, always allowing the echo to die before repeating their cry.

Norm climbed the ladder, his ablutions finished; he retrieved his shirt and we stepped back into the canoe. We pushed away and once again we paddled and slid through the stillness, back to the landing; the loons had fallen silent, and it was time to go.

An eye for an eye...

August 20, 2013

…leaves the whole world blind. That’s what Gandhi said, and this statement adorns the bumper on the back of my 2005 Subaru Forester. The only bumper sticker I have ever affixed to a car.

Today in the parking lot of my local supermarket, as I wheeled my grocery-laden cart up to the Subaru, a woman pulled up next to my car and asked me, “Where did you get that bumper sticker?” I told her that I had bought it at Kimberton Whole Foods. She began to pour out her story to me – she lived with people who were angry, who wanted revenge, who had different values than she did. The Girl Scouts, her brother, her parents – all people who caused her great disquiet of the mind. Her brother had held a gun to her head, she told me; he was angry because she, a single parent, had moved back home with her parents.  The Girl Scouts wanted to expel a 12-year-old who thought she might be bisexual; her daughter did not think this was right and did not understand why the Girl Scouts wanted this. The woman did not want her daughter to grow up thinking the way the Girl Scout leaders were thinking. She wanted the bumper sticker as a statement to these people, so that even if she did not say anything to them, it would show them how she felt. She wanted to be able to look at it and remind herself that tolerance, kindness, forgiveness were the values that she honored, no matter how vengeful and judgmental those around her were.

She spoke for about ten minutes, her words tumbling and circling around her, and I listened. After she had finished her tale, she thanked me for making her day, and drove on.