Love Others As Your Self

It's a suggestion that begs the question of how do I love myself?

And basically my answer is that I put up with myself because I am unable to get away from myself. I'm left with making the best of things with myself because there's no escaping being ever in my own presence.

But with others, the proximity is not so close nor so immediately necessary. Not only can I remove myself from being in the presence of others, I can't help but be removed from being in the presence of most people most of the time. So I can't really love them the way I love myself in terms of time allotment. I can't attend to them moment by moment like I attend to myself.

So it must mean something else. Some quality having to do with when I'm in the presence of others. And then perhaps it's suggesting that I would have to put up with them like I put up with myself. I would have to take them for all their goods and bads, like I have to take myself. I would have to take responsibility for their faults and errors and mistakes, just as I have to take responsibility for my own. I would have to include them in my personal responsibility, just as I attend to my own. Hm. That sounds pretty impossible, or at least quite imposing, difficult, overwhelming.

I like the idea of people taking care of themselves for the most part. I notice society gives a lot of lip service to that, too. "Nobody can make you feel any certain way. It's your own responsibility for how you interpret and process your feelings." "Anyone can be anything they want to be if they put their mind to it." "Nobody is a victim." "Everyone is responsible for their own happiness."

"Loving" is a rather vague word much magnified by the power breathed in it by culture. It vaguely, almost admonishingly, suggests we should all be more loving toward each other. "Love is the highest calling." "What the world needs now is love sweet love." "Love is all you need." Meanwhile, I rather like loving what I find lovable which has to do with my own preferences, aesthetics, interests, tolerances, choices as to who and what and how much I deal with at any given time. I like to express my personal traits for discernment. And this has a way of measuring some people more in and more worthy and interesting and satisfying to relate to than others. I rather like that freedom to decide. In utter frankness, I have to say I like turning away from some people while turning more toward others. Ugly as that sounds.

But I notice it gets me into trouble. I have my list of people I've turned away from. And that doesn't make me so happy that they're not happy with my turning away. I'm actually not always all that proud of my aesthetics. They encroach like a prejudice willing to abandon that which doesn't live up to my intrinsic or acquired tastes. And I notice they tend to like to get more refined over time. Quite self congratulatory! Yet I also notice there's something ugly about their increasingly sensitive justification for rejecting that which appears too ugly to relate to.

So, love the ugliness? Love the murderer, the confused and deranged and dysfunctional, the bore, the kook, the rude, the irritating? As though all of these qualities are in me to love in myself, too? I'm not sure I like the sound or challenge of that.

How strange the universe should make such unlikenesses, and then send a savior down to suggest we get along anyway. Where after all, is the likeness among so much unlikeness? Why create creatures who tend to be increasingly ever so finely attuning to their own tastes and temperaments, and then mess with them by suggesting they love beyond their limits? And why wouldn't a savior take their own advise and love us as we are, without asking us to change a thing about ourselves?

There must be fun is such maddening conundrums, of which, the universe has made me such a fine fit to be tied to.


--Steve

All About Relationships

It's so simple when looked at from one basic premise: Life is the opportunity to relate. And then so magnificently difficult the complexity of how much we have to relate it. It is as if out of God's desire to make sure there are relationship, such an abundance has been made that we almost can't help but recurrently be overstressed among the ubiquity of what do make and do and how to feel among them all!

It would be like being given infinity for Christmas, where no amount of opening will ever open all of the gifts of relating poured out to us. And everywhere you turn, more and more and more. The tedium of them, the tiresome endless stream of them, the questionable nature of each, the cautions and excitements we quake at our questions of how to relate, how much, how little, what's sufficient, how do we feel in response to their relating to us? And on and on. This excess of relationships, and still we can want more and different and other and better and more particularly satisfying, and less of what doesn't feel so good, and all the guilts and resentments and jostling for position when feeling too left out of some and too caught up in others!

JESUS and Hallelujah! that we get to relate!
And OMG! how will we manage it all?
And then on top of it all
another Christmas comes around
and those damn wise men had to go and give baby Jesus those gifts
and now we're obliged to give likewise
to the already too many relationship we're trying to juggle and balance
and attend to and be enough for the maintenance of.
And meanwhile, the Kingdom of Heaven
is apparently already inside us.
And how sharply our attentions can shift
to feeling anything but already heavenly filled.

So, yes to relationships
and may we each get very good at being involved
with just enough
to not overwhelm ourselves
turning the whole thing against the value
it started out to be
which is very simply
to simply have something to relate to.

--Steve

A Slow Trickle of Blood

This is hard to write. Hard to write because long ago I learned the hard way that writing about other people can lead to misunderstandings that don't untangle easily.

But I've been thinking over the past few days about old wounds. The kind that never heal. The kind that don't boil over, but instead just trickle.

Its strange how much power these wounds have, leaping forward from the past to the present, seeping into the day to day living. Like, lets say for the sake of argument, a little girl who didn't just feel unloved, but who felt in the core of her being that she was unlovable. She isn't of course. In fact she is adored. But lets say that there was a parent who had a problem. And that problem came from something completely unassociated with the little girl, but the little girl became the emodiment in the parent's mind of the problem. In that case, at the age of three and six and nine and twelve, does the little girl have the sophistication to understand whats really going on. Probably not. Definitely not. She is only going to see what is in front of her, and feel only the effects of the parent's reaction.

Lets say she remembers trying to be good. And she remembers trying to be pretty. And she remembers that nothing she ever did made any difference. She tried to love more, and was rebuffed. She tried to be beautiful and was mocked. Is there every going to be a time when she is enough? In her own mind?

Years and years go by. The people around her are confused. The more she tries the more they wonder. The more they wonder the more she tries. She grows into a beautiful and accomplished woman, but the mirror still reflects the little girl. The one whose brother tied her hair into pigtails with bailing twine because he was helping her to be enough. Which somehow didn't work.

What happens next? She is able to understand now, with her adult mind and her advanced training, she is able to understand what was happening. And yet the wound still slowly bleeds. The struggle now involves more people, and more efforts, and it is becoming exhausting. Not becoming, it has always been exhausting, only now the weight is becoming unbearable.

How does she unlearn the false lesson of those many years ago, and come into an understanding of her own worth as a person, not based on what she does, or how she looks, or how much she makes, but simply her own worth as a person on this planet whose space and value never had anything to do with anything more than her presence.

Can she learn to see the love that is around her as all the love she needs, and let go of the need for that one love? Can she learn to walk past the dry and ungiving well without longing to look one last time for a drop of water?

Does a wound inflicted on the giving flesh of a child ever heal enough? Can love withheld ever be replaced even if it can't be restored?

I have my own answers. But then my life is my own, my experiences, my wounds, my loves, my accomplishments. I don't know about the wounds of others. I know the answers that have staunched my own bleeding, but this slow trickle is not etched into me.

I wonder.

Other People's Stories

This is the kind of thing that makes me happy.

The other day I was at Walmart. Walmart itself does not make me happy. In fact, there is nothing about Walmart that I find happy. I don't even find the smiley face button happy. I find it desperate.

But I had some things to pick up for the school, so I was there. And I was being checked out by this guy who I could have easily overlooked. There was nothing about him that seemed like he had an interesting story to tell. But to pass the time, I struck up a conversation about the upcoming Black Friday and how that must be kind of a nightmare to deal with. Which it was of course, will be of course.

"But I don't have to come in until 8," he told me. "Last year I had to come in at 4:30. This will be the first year since I've been here that I haven't come in at 4:30."

"How long have you been here?"

"Fifteen years. There's a group of us, who were the first employees when the store first opened."

Jesus. Really? I mean really? And then. Why not?

Then a woman walked over, and the three of us were talking, joined in by the woman behind me in line. The woman who also worked there, had been there less time. Only thirteen years. She and the guy started talking about whether the people who came in at 4:30 would be on break or on lunch when they came in. It was decided they would be on lunch, because otherwise the register would time them out.

"We dated for so long," the guy tells me, "That we still finish each other's conversations. We dated for eight years."

Now this is not that fascinating, and yet it is. Its an entire world inside this flourescent lit cube, that has played out over all these years. I can go through life saying "Hello, and have a nice day," to every stranger I meet, and that would be polite and proper. Or I can listen. I can ask people about themselves and enjoy the story that comes out, because how often in my life do I get to meet a couple whose entire relationship was played out inside a Walmart in Bristol Virginia. Beginning. Middle. End.

I wish I could remember that more. I wish I could remember how little I know. I wish I could remember how the surface rarely reflects the interior. I wish I could remember how interesting people are for the simple fact that they are living. Because life is endlessly interesting. Its like an equation that I understand only on alternate Fridays and in between its blankly convoluted. But really, its all very simple.

On another note, I am ecstatic because a short piece of fiction I rattled off and submitted to Red Line Blues which is this really cool literary journal published out of Asheville and Brooklyn was accepted for their next issue.

I am so grateful.

Radio

I'm remembering radio.

When I was growing up in North Idaho, the only radio stations we could pick up were from Spokane, WA and for some reason a station in Vancouver BC. By pick up, I mean if you were in exactly the right location to pick up the faint single being bounced off the tower on Black Mountain. On the North Bench you could pick up the Vancouver BC station with minimal static, and I remember hearing Foreigner's Hot Blooded for the first time while driving with my brother through the darkness on our way to somewhere. We had an ancient old radio from somewhere out in the barn, and for the most part it only squawked, but on one clear spring day it let us hear Glen Campbell singing Rhinestone Cowboy.

Then KBFI happened. Bonners Ferry finally had a tiny weak little AM station, and music blasted into my life. KBFI played a mix of everything the program director thought anyone in Bonners Ferry might want to hear, regardless of age or interest. A three song set could easily include Kenny Rogers, Andy Gibb and Frank Sinatra. Why not? Someone was bound to like something. The A&W also had a jukebox, and to this day I can't hear Kansas's Blowing in the Wind without smelling a a Papa Bear and onion rings.

Music was an avenue into the world that I had not ever experienced. Suddenly, for the first time, I had some small thing in common with other people. Knowing the same songs was almost like being related. One Christmas we got Realistic tape decks from Radio Shack, and after that browsing the music racks at Tafts became a ritual. We listened to Fleetwood Mac, and The Eagles, and The Moody Blues, and Al Stewart, and Anne Murray, and Air Supply, and Supertramp, and Steely Dan, and Loggins and Messina with almost religious fervor, playing the songs over and over until we knew every word.

A few years ago, when I was working on a project that seemed to need a blast of sense memory, I created a playlist on my Ipod which is an almost exact duplicate of a week's worth of music on KBFI. I threw everything on there, everything which would take me to a place where I could realistically create the world of Bonners Ferry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And today, for the first time in I don't know when, I punched it up.

I had already milked the cow, and I had already collected the eggs. The pig was fed, and the chickens watered. I needed to make bread because the students are coming back tomorrow, so I figured as long as I had to do that, I might as well get a jump on tomorrow. So I took my ipod down to the school, and got to work.

The first thing that happened is I didn't work, because I had to clap my hands and shake my ass and Mick dance like a maniac all over the kitchen to Start Me Up.

Then I got the sponge started for the bread, and while that was working I mixed up the ingredients for Parmesan Chicken. While Carly Simon sang about Jesse, I mixed the wet and dry ingredients for Porridge Rolls, and then Gordon Lightfoot was doing Old Dan's Records while I went to the root cellar for potatoes.

The bread was ready to be kneeded, and Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, Steve Miller doing Fly Like an Eagle, and Trouble by Cat Stevens helped get me through that. I set the bread to rise and started making brownies while ELO blasted through Living Things, and Linda Rondstadt wandered through Blue Bayou, and Supertramp Took the Long Way Home, and Mac Davis warned Don't Get Hooked on Me.

I got the stuff out for expedition check-in and lined it up on the porch, and put the students' names on the check-in lists as Rickie Lee Jones sang about Chuck E's in Love and The Eagle's bemoaned Your Lyin' Eyes, and the Beatles sang The Ballad of John and Yoko. Christ you know it ain't easy...you know how hard it can be...the way things are going...they're gonna crucify me.

The timer went off and I gave the bread a second knead and then formed the loaves. Jackson Brown sang Before the Deluge and John Denver sang Matthew, and Nazareth sang Love Hurts. The brownies came out of the oven, and I went downstairs to start the woodburning furnace. Through the grate I could hear Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty wailing Stop Dragging My Heart Around.

Back upstairs the bread went in, and I went back to the root cellar for a jar of green beans. As I came back through the door 38 Special was telling me to Hold on Loosely which gave way to Boz Scaggs doing the Lido Shuffle.

Then the Beatles again. The Long and Winding Road. As I waited for the bread to finish baking, I thought about The Long and Winding Road. That leads me to your door.

To come full circle I would have to be back in Idaho, but if I were, I could not be doing anything that so exactly duplicates the experiences of my parents when they were my age. When I listened to these songs, I was 11, 12, 13, 14 years old. The rythmn of life in that place was the only rythmn I knew. And I hated it.

I wanted to faster staccato rythmn of my cousins, I wanted to be in the middle of everything. I didn't want to be in a quiet place.

But today, as I salted the butter I had just churned, from cream from the cow I had just milked, smelling the baking bread I had just made, I became still in my gratitude for the experience I am having. I think nothing could be more appropriate, for all the roads I have traveled to have lead me to this place, where for this time, I do the simplest things with the greatest satisfaction. Yesterday I struggled mightily with passages from my book, untangling things I had written before and seeking a new way to say something important. That is my love and my soul and my breathing, but today...today was simpler.

And it was the music. It was the recollection of a time and a place and the people who inhabited it. It was a memory of Mom and Dad and Susan Hepler and yeah, you Steve, and Scott Simpson and Dean McFalls and Mac Schneider, and Dave Ottavi and Dan and Pachy Larson and Barb and Charlie McCrum and all these people who did for their time, what I am doing now. Living a simple life, albeit among sometimes complicated people, and I became so aware of the legacy and the importance and the great gift I have been blessed to experience, and the sense of having shared with those people I named above, something truly special.

So with my music and my milking and my baking and my fire building I come to the end of the day, and I am grateful for KBFI and the jukebox at A&W and even that scratchy distant radio station in Vancouver. The music I heard then is the music I heard today. And the music ultimately allowed me to be in two places in two different times doing the exact same thing. And in that, I realized, not for the first time, but at an important time, the amazing beautiful gift I have been given.

So here's to radio!

Yesterday was the last day of our second summer. Sunlit days and warm temperatures, gave way to clouds and gusts of blustering wind. I had come to feel like that little kid in the beginning of Monster House, riding her tricycle down the street, "LA LA LA LA LA Hello leaves LA LA LA LA Hello house..."

I've enjoyed these quiet days, more than I thought I would. I longed to go out on expedition, and yet walking the path to the back of the property to check on the cows, feeling the sun on my neck as I fed the pig, leaning into Cocoa as I milked her, all of these things turned out to be soothing. I had wanted the calm forces of nature, and trees overhead to quiet some chaotic thinking, and I've found that here, the chaos has quieted.

It's early morning, I have my coffee, Cocoa is lying in the field outside my window, and I have lots to do today. My morning meditations have been leading me into quiet and still places. Places with guiding words that say "wait." That say "listen." That say "turn inwards." That say "turn to the forces of joy." Today was no exception.

While I wish sometimes that the guiding words would say "turn left at the crossroad ahead, proceed four miles, then turn right and go another twelve miles and you will be there," that doesn't seem to be whats happening. Instead, whatever messages are drifting down to me seem to be more along the line of "hold in your breath 'til you come back up in full, hold in your breath 'til you've thought it through you foolish child..."

Anyone know that song? Yeah...that one. You know the one that gets inside you and kind of plagues you and makes you feel like crying and laughing altogether in a coughing burst.

So as the weather turns again, and winter, which had gone off on it's own quiet wandering, circles back around because it has a job to do, I also have a job to do. According to my reading this morning it goes like this: "What you need to know will come. Look for it in your heart, not the world..." or rather..."If you read nothing and wisdom sees your fervor, awareness will sit in  your hand like a tamed dove."

Beginning Again at the End of the World

So, yesterday was Sunday. On a wave of good feelings after having found some old files on Mom's computer, I took myself into Virginia, down through the canyon of leafless trees alongside Laurel Creek, on through Damascus and into the spreading fields leading to Abingdon. Margaret and Mike and the kids had left earlier that day on a road trip, and the students are off on expedition until Thursday. So with no pressures on deck, I drove off to see 2012, because, and I mean this with no irony, something that always makes me happy is watching the world be destroyed in the most cinematic way possible. Not because I hate the world, but because I love disaster movies and I love special effects, and when they come together this spectacularly I am filled with glee.

So, I'm in the car. And I've finished listening to my lecture series on Monsters, Gods and Heroes: A History of the Epic (which was great by the way, should you want to check it out) and I wasn't in the mood to listen to Regina Spektor which was the musical choice. Earlier that day I had packed up some speaker tapes and cds to send to my friend Chris, who needs them to decide if I'm flying to LA to speak at the convention, and I had found this old blank cassette.

I pop it in, and to my surprise my voice emerges.

Its one of the cassettes I made driving across country from Baltimore to LA when I moved there in 1993. I had picked up a handheld cassette recorder in order to preserve every passing thought I had as I drove away from a well worn life into one that bore no etchings. It seemed monumental at the time, it was monumental. I had been living a life in Baltimore that had taken on a kind of inexorable momentum that was leading me towards a future in which I just couldn't see myself. I was fading out of my own life, vanishing into a murky misty kind of phantom who walked and talked and every day became less a part of the world. At the time I lacked the ability to even know that, to see that, to feel it. I don't even quite remember now how I felt. Choices were made that were not my own, because I had lost the ability to make choices for myself, and I had begun to come awake in a cold cold winter of snow and ice and highways with hard ruts. Thats literal by the way, not metaphor.

So I packed up my car, and headed west. Outside of Atlanta I picked up the handheld.

So, now...16 years later, I'm listening to the young man I was observe his surroundings and ponder his future. To a soundtrack of background music including Kirstie McCall, Erasure, REM, Pearl Jam, The Smashing Pumpkins and occasional snippets of music from pop radio stations he passed along the way, I listened as he contemplated picking up hitchhikers, dealt with boredom, observed passing tourist traps, battled a cold, and in between, thought and thought about his future.

I laughed as I listened to this young man I once was swear not to make the same mistakes again, and I spoke back from 16 years in the future and told him "yes, you will." And I forgave him for those mistakes and forgave myself. I listened as he told me about how he would never get caught up in a job to the extent that it compromised this living of his life. And I said, "Oh honey, I'm sorry. You will." And I laughed. I listened as he told me that he would never again throw away his sense of himself in order to find companionship with a lover. "Oh," I said. "Really?"

He drove on and on. He stopped in Phoenix to visit his brother, and flew with him to the Grand Canyon. He became excited as he saw signs for California, and even more excited when he passed palm trees. I thought about his adventures there. I wanted to tell him that he would make a life there. That he would fall in love there. That he would fall out of love, and that it would hurt, but he would survive even when he felt like he couldn't. That he would be succesful. That his dream of living in a house overlooking downtown LA would come true. It would take time, but it would come true. I wanted to tell him that he would be lonely at times, but it would all be okay. I wanted to tell him that his dream of being a writer would come true in ways he was not expecting. I wanted to tell him to not drink so much. I wanted to tell him to not let silly little things hurt him so much. But I couldn't of course, and I'm glad. Because he had a grand adventure.

He talked about that. He talked about adventure. He talked about how the road trip hadn't turned out to be the adventure he wanted it to be, and I wanted to tell him that that was OK, because he would take other road trips and they would infuse him with joy. And they would be adventures. But more than that, he would have adventures unlike any he could even conceive of. He would find God staring down at him as he sat crying on a rock watching the sun set over Joshua Tree. He would set aside his fears and then encounter their embodiment a few moments later and stand and watch and marvel at the beauty of the pattern on the skin of a snake. He would roam his landscape with marvelous friends, the likes of whom he had always dreamed. And they would hold him up, and stare him down, and make him laugh, and soothe his burning. Such a great life, such a great adventure he was beginning.

Oh, what a gift. What a gift to hear this young man. What a joy to know what lay ahead for him. What a joy to understand how good, how true, how exciting life would be. So I think about my own bumps and bruises, and I think about a man, living far in the future, well beyond 2012, and he is listening to me now. And he is smiling. And he is laughing. And he is remembering. And he is telling me, "Oh, what a grand adventure lies ahead for you. You have no idea!"

--Dan

Tom

I attended a pot luck last Friday, the starts of a series of films having to do with climate change, money, 2012, global shift, etc. I almost didn't go because partly I've heard so much about this kind of thing, and I tend to come up feeling left out, no sense of how to apply any of the information in a positive way. But I thought I'd give it one more try, be willing to be open another step further. I thought maybe some connection would come along that could give me some further sense of direction.

I met this guy named Tom and we got to talking about this house he's building not far from where I live. He's trying to make it efficient and self sufficient and a possible teaching aid for the community. Turns out he could use some help, and since I'm only part time employed, I said I was interested.

I visited him Tuesday, and we spent a good three hours while he showed me the house and we got to know each other better. Interesting guy. Three years older than me. Done the hippie thing, the PhD thing, large scale compost system engineering in the UK... Really has a drive to give back to the community, share his knowledge, create something of enduring value, have fun and keep learning.  He's quite agile. A successful college football player who practiced ballet to help with his sense of balance and movement. Pretty well connected in town among other tradesmen who like to help each other on a give and give back basis. Very resourceful, doesn't mind making mistakes, likes big projects.

I started yesterday working for him. But he'd like to say working "with" him. We exceeded his expectations on what he hoped to accomplish. Worked well together. Going into it this time, I really tried to be aware of any concerns I might have getting involved with him. But we keep working things out to my satisfaction. I really can't think of any concerns I have, other than working 30 feet off the ground on rather questionable support structures. But he's relatively safety oriented, and heck, if it's my time to go, well, I go.

So this could be a very cool next adventure for me. Practicing in the construction trades, dry wall, flooring, woodwork, finishing, landscaping, etc etc. So far so good. And that makes me happy, finding something I can sink my interests and abilities into, that has some opening for perhaps long term investing and rewards in something I find meaningful, not too stressful, in the spirit of fun and learning and making positive contributions.

--Steve

lush tropics

Last weekend  I went back to Colorado to visit my daughters.  It was my first visit back since I moved to Oregon in May, after getting married to someone who lives here....My daughter Emily is 22, married and both she and her husband work for a church.  Julia is 19 and a sophomore at CSU studying music therapy.  They needed new clothes, tires, oil changes and since they are both valiantly trying to make a go of things (and in Emily's case working for God doesn't pay so great) it was my pleasure to throw all their needs on my lovely credit card.

Then yesterday I had a tooth ache and the dentist that I work for (as a hygienist) took a kajillion x-rays and I have a cracked tooth that needs a crown and 2 wisdom teeth need to be violently (my imagination)extracted because one of them has an abcess, though I can't feel it.

So yeah, I feel like I'm hemorraging money.

Last night I dreamt that my husband Mac and I were trying to get away for a tropical vacation and kept being thwarted by a huge wolf, an unhappy housesitter and some problem with transportation.  The wolf I can still see.  But I also see that I am now in a happy marriage that feels like a tropical vacation every beautiful day.  And yeah, sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and send thanks into the mess.  Thank you beautiful daughters who show me how to be strong and idealistic again.  Thank you kind Mac who makes me want to be kinder.  Thank you abcess, for, uhm, not hurting? 

I notice my interest and inability to always see the all in everything. The default tends to have me cut everything up into more or less of this or that and then to filter each through my preferences for how much of every quality I want more or less of at the moment I'm in contact. :-)

Meawhile, each is the Alpha and bloody Omega, shot through with disguises, so often looking in a mirror as though the one holding the mirror is some other creature entirely.

All this makes me both happy and disconcerted, alternately.

--Steve

still pursuing...

I have been cooking today.  A lamb ragu which will go over penne pasta and then some roasted, carmelized cauliflower for a side note.  Earlier, Mac and I went for a quick bike ride on this gorgeous fall day.  Tonight, the little Central Oregon symphony is playing Mozart and we'll be there for that.  So yeah, I love to cook and savor and listen to music and riding a bike is the best way to feel 9 years old again....when riding a bike no hands was so wicked fun.  Remember?

I was thinking about homemade.  How homemade can feel so happy and earthy and satisfying--a slower way....like how cooking ragu is a lesson in patience.  Adding half cup after half cup of wine, then broth, then tomatoes......reducing it all down to this mellow rich essence.

It's a funny way to get happy but it's completely workin' for me today.  Bon appetit!

Bridging the Cocoons

The ability to hold different points of view simultaneously. That's the skill to develop. Everyone getting to have their say and everyone being able to navigate all that's expressed for the full comprehension and appreciation of all.

Anything short of that brings resentment, misunderstanding, bullying, unilateral decision making, leaving others out, stepping on toes, disprespecting. And that's no fun.

I wonder why we don't do this better. Not wanting to risk losing the stability of our own positions? Inability to comprehend other points of view? Preference for one's own point of view over everyone else's? Not wanting to be bullied by others? Insecurity about holding one's own? Fear of boggling?

We are biased toward our own cocoons. Bridging beyond them is the great challenge. And that means being able to be open to what's going on in others' cocoons.

--Steve

Audiences and Artists

We're all audiences and artists in turns, and not always well matching. Some artists aren't even looking for audiences, yet audiences happen along to critique them anyway. Other artists are dying for audiences to the point of trying to force people to pay attention and show some respect! Meanwhile, audiences are hungry to satisfy their particulars, and quite capable of shrillness when artists don't happen to live up to the kinds of performances they're after. It's nice when artists and audiences happen to find a good fit with each other. That this tends to be rather rare, makes it all the more satisfying when it arrives. The rest seems about damage control, neither being too hurt nor too hurting, too outraged or outrageous, too crazy or crazed, however ill-fitting, one against the other.

It's hard to be any better or different kind of artist than we all naturally are. In fact, it looks bad even trying to be. The spider spins its web not to impress people, and yet, people may be quite impressed. A contestant on So You Think You Can Dance may be trying ever so hard to gain the approval of judges and audiences, and fail miserably, even if inside him self he's having a very good time in his internal reverie.

So, you know, it's touchy, this thing between performers and viewers. Not always an easy relationship. Curious finding the sweet spot between trying one's best but not too hard and for the true right reasons and not the ones destined to disappoint.

--Steve

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Has anyone else read "The Elegance of the Hedgehog"?  I'm half through and it feels like such an original. 

One of the themes in the book is loneliness--how we seem hard-wired for community and really seem to flounder without it..  Thinking, too, about Steve's blog of the concert and how the two people he went with were looking to connect more with him and he was looking to connect more with the music.  And even Tim's passing.....how that could have been such a lonely stretch for Tim and Suzanne but instead it was a gorgeous picture of community.  A small world, really, built around him and finishing their house with family and friends and Eagles music and drinking and laughter.

So in this book, Elegance of the Hedgehog, it's about one expensive apartment building in Paris and the concierge of the building and a 12 year old resident and the new Japanese owner of one of the apartments. All very subtle and wonderfully rich but yeah, loneliness keeps coming up.

It's been hard for me to live apart from my daughters the last few months and my women friends of long-standing and my wonderful hairdresser/shrink Beau.  I really had created such a rich complete world in Colorado.  But I go for walks in the dry canyon near our home here and more often then not I walk with one of my Colorado friends via cellphone.  So I stay connected with all the richness but I build new life here with Mac.  I feel such a completeness here with him.  We went for a walk last night in the blustery chilly wind and I could warm my hands in his and then we made our first fire of the season in our woodstove and read by it's warm glow.  So this is another world we are co-creating, the world of marital happiness, and it has its own cycles and I am trying to savor all the nuances.  That's what I'm learning from the book.....nuances are way cool.

Tim

This morning I woke up with the words "I've got a peaceful, easy feeling..." in my head. The Eagles were Tim's favorite band, bar none. Oh sure, he got into Metallica and Godsmack and the like, but it was always The Eagles above and beyond them all.

So I'm taking this to mean that we are to have a peaceful easy day, today, September 30. I'm on it. Get on it.

September 29

This morning I wrote this letter to a friend. Then I thought, hey this applies to me. So I'm posting it as is:

Good Morning,

So, last night I was lying in bed watching the moon fly. It tore across the sky, blinding in its whiteness, then dove headlong into a patch of clouds, dipping and dodging, tattered fragments of atmosphere clinging to it momentarily like cobwebs, before it emerged again and raced clean and clear against the stars. And even when it battled the clouds, even when the clouds gathered round it and clung to it, obscuring it completely, its light gilded their edges, and used their own efforts against them to cast a new and bright light.

I know the moon doesn’t really race. I know the clouds were the ones moving in the wind. But that isn’t what it looked like. So it doesn’t matter. I saw what I saw, and it was beautiful.

This morning, well it is this morning, I’ve just finished casting a simple spread from my Rumi deck as the means of getting something going in the foggy recesses of my brain towards a morning meditation, and as always it was more revealing than I wanted. Rumi is like that. Uncomfortable and terrible and terrifying and magnificently gorgeous all in one. Well sometimes, depends on where you are sitting and what you’d like to hear I guess.
Going further, I am pondering this quote today: It comes ripping across seven centuries from the mind of Mahmud Shabistari. “The past has flown away. The coming month and year do not exist. Ours only is the present’s tiny point.”

I’m grateful for today, September 29…this is the day pesky Mercury begins to move in the other direction, and this awkward month of mis-steps and communications gone round the corner comes to an end. What a cause for celebration. I would dance in the rain if the rain came again today.

So its 6:20am and I’m up and about. My house is chilly what with the windows open, but the coffee is hot. In about an hour I’ll walk down to the school and clean the floors with my student crew. Then I’ll talk about personal inventories for half an hour. Then I’ll be done for a bit, and then this afternoon I’ll return to the task of harvesting food, and this evening I’ll teach a class on language. It looks so schizophrenic spelled out that way, but I love the patchwork of it because it all ties together.

So, my friend, today for you…I wish you the moon’s passage. Tear across the world, shining a bright bright light no matter what clings to you. I’m looking forward to seeing you soon.

Keep smiling,

Dan

Earth Dance

I went to Earth Dance at Arcosanti Saturday night with a friend and a friend of hers. We got high. I really got into the surreal free form electronic dance scene with Cirque De Soleil performers mingling in costume and on stilts and swinging from long fabric streams hooked to the high ceiling. My reverie was mostly inside me, me and the music making this architectural energy ride for me to find my rhythmic way with. What I didn't do very well was include this friend and her friend. I was sort of going solo and assuming they were finding there way among all the energy fields just fine without me. But then it appeared after the fact, that I didn't measure up to there desire to be included very well.

So you know, it can be hard to include everything and everybody simultaneously. Always the probability of leaving someone out. And that can chip away at feeling entirely triumphant in one's lust for life. But I suppose it all continues to add to the the gathering storying we're always about. Everyone gets to play all the characters in some kind of random chancing at taking turns and being turned. And I'm apparently many persons depending on what other persons are measuring me for. Sometimes I measure very poorly, even though no actual agreement was ever made for how we would attend each other. So easy to disappoint while assuming the best, and even while having a rather good time in the moment.

-Steve

Getting What I Want

It's been hot. Damn hot here. Sweaty, sticky, baking sun on rain drenched earth hot. Yesterday I agreed when one of the students said they couldn't wait for it to cool down. Last night it cooled down. This morning, I'm almost chilly.

What if it was always that simple. Ask for it, and it happens. Yeah, thats my power, to change the weather. I'm like an X-Man. I can do that. Wait, no I can't. But what if it was that simple?

Sometimes, and this occurs to me in random moments, though, it is.

Thats where I am right now. Something elusive in my life has come knocking. Something I thought about, something I wanted. Something good.

And now... well I don't know what the hell to do.

It's like going to bed in the heat and waking up in the cool. You have to ask yourself, did I do that? And if I did, what do I do next? How do I respond to a Universe which says yes. I think the answer might be to go ahead and show up, and say OK, thanks for that gift. I think the answer might be to be grateful, rather than to pick it apart at the seams and find all the reasons why it wasn't what I wanted after all.

So, now I'm wondering if I can do that.

Because the ride is worth it.

This is a pretty profound sum of just why souls choose Earth life, risky as it is...

http://www.lawofattractioninteraction.com/video/The_Most_Profound_Q.html

-Steve

Amazing news...

My daughter Emily just called me to say that she is pregnant.  She has been married for 2 years to Sterling and they are ecstatic.  And so am I.  I will be a grandmother for the first time and she will get to be a mother, the best gift of all.  Talk about happiness?  I can't stop crying.....tears of joy.  :)

Looking for September 29

I don't live my life by the zodiac. Never have.

But the last three days have been classic Mercury in retrograde days. Navigating the tripwires and little buried triggers that make up my emotional minefield has been a tricky business. My desire to set off explosions which will satisfy my "NEED TO KNOW NOW" impulses has been an almost constant and obsessive drive.

So I turned to this set of directions: "During this time of revision, change is compounded and confusion is created by our reactions to the ever-changing situations. Thus anything started during this time will ultimately be taken back or even revised further, making for a high-frustration time. This will be especially true with changing our minds, reviewing new ideas and our communication being improved and honed so not to be mis-understood. The best mode to be in during a Mercury retrograde is one of "non-reaction", and with air signs being impacts, things will be changing continually during a Mercury retrograde Treat the time period as a time of gathering information, yet because the information will be in constant change it would be like trying to comb your hair in a wind storm. Best to wait until the changes stop before attempting to make things orderly. Therefore, just let the winds of situations blow around you without reacting. Once Mercury turns direct, take a look at the information that is still around at that time and go about putting everything in order, while maintaining the fine art of flexibility."

Mercury goes direct on September 29.

With that in mind, I am setting a task for myself to float. Just float. And to keep in mind this:

"Tempest tossed souls, wherever ye may be, under whatsoever conditions ye may live, know this -- in the ocean of life the isles of Blessedness are smiling, and the sunny shore of your Ideal awaits your coming. Keep your hand firmly upon the helm of thought. In the bark of your soul reclines the commanding Master; He does by sleep; wake Him. Self-control is strength; Right thought is mastery; Calmness is poer. Say unto your heart, 'Peace, be still.'"

May the forces of the universe be with me and you and all around the world.

Walking on Air

Last night I finally got around to watching Man on Wire, and today I'm still floating on the hangover feelings of elation.

The chord that rang and rang for me was towards the end, when Phillipe was questioned by the police and the media, and the question of "why?" was asked over and over. There was no answer to the question other than "because."

Did you see? Did you see me walking on the clouds? How can you ask the question why?

Live your passion is a theme I need to revisit often.

Summer Clothes

At 6:15am this morning, I folded my summer clothes. I had run home between lunch and chores and done a load of laundry, then bolted back to the school, leaving it in the dryer. This morning I took care of that.

And so there I am, coffee in hand, folding shorts, and swim trunks, and t-shirts, and all this goes through my mind.

Where did it go? This summer, that I looked forward to for so many months back in April and May. What happened? It came and I missed it, I let it slip away, let it slide by too lazy to reach out and grab it, and now its gone, and it won't return for so many months, and I will regret its passing.

Bollocks, I think to myself.

It came, and it was, and it stayed for as long as it should. And I swam in the pond when it was hot, and I bucked hay bails, and sat in the grass and watched Night at the Museum at the drive in, and I watched fireworks, and I drove across country, and I ate at Muggsys with Suzanne and Carol, and I picked carrots with PL, and weeded in the morning with Margaret while Liam read aloud. I browsed art in Chattanooga and walked along the river in Knoxville. I saw friends, and I saw family, and I worked and I laughed. I played with the kids, and rode the Virginia Creeper Trail. I milked the cow, and fed the chickens. I went bowling. I saw movies.

I didn't write a novel. I thought I might, but I didn't.

So, I can focus on what did not happen, and see it all a grand loss...a space of time marked by not enough and too little.

But if I itemize, break it down to the days and the months and the faces and the voices and the landscapes and the miles and the music and the conversations. If I break it down to the number of times I just sat talking, and the number of books I read, and the dawns I watched, and the calf that was born...it was a grand summer. It was my summer. It was the summer I needed most.

So I put away the shorts and I rolled up the beach towel, and I dressed in my school uniform, and I drank another cup of coffee. And now, I'm looking forward to the day ahead. The week ahead. The month and the months ahead. Will this be an easy year? I don't know. Chances are good it will be one of my most challenging years, and chances are better it will be one of my most rewarding.

So, rather than look towards June, I will sit in September, and I will examine the leaves of the day as they turn. And I am grateful.

Straw for the fire

I am reading a book called "Straw for the Fire"......a collection from notebooks of the poet Theodore Roethke, compiled by his student after Roethke's death.     Roethke left behind 277 spiral notebooks filled with poetry fragments, journal entries, random phrases, and various brilliant miscellany.  They used 12 of the notebooks for the book.  It's a pleasure to read.  Random sentences that feel like green and clear ponds-- struggled to through undergrowth.  My own mind is such a tangle.  But maybe, like his, we can glean out a few thoughts that are worth saving?

Here's one of Roethke's:  "Like the paper birch I delight in the company of conifers and the presence of water."

And one of mine?  Poetry intimidates but my best moments are in its presence.  Same with love.....

Saturday Morning

I slept so well last night, it was almost as though it was the first sleep. I am awake now, coffee by my side, and silence. A mouse, which has a strange habit of running from my laundry room into the bathroom every morning, has just made it's trek.

My head is full of thoughts about so many things today. None of them seem connected, and yet in their lack of connection they seem to be a puzzle to be assembled. If I can turn them right, I can find what I need.

The Van Gogh quote, "I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart," has been on a run through my brain for these two hours I have been awake. Also running through my head are my thoughts on the Crusades and the Inquisition. Strange yes, but I have been listening to a history of these two events over the past couple of weeks. Also running through my head is how I should feel about Joe Wilson, or whether I should feel anything.

And ever present is the school year, which begins tomorrow. We look at this differently, we are preparing, we are recruiting, we are nailing down the last of the young unformed persons who will walk through our doors tomorrow. They are doing nothing but arriving.

What is all this? Is it passion? Is it passion which makes a man yell in frustration at the most inappropriate of moments? Is it passion which drives a knight onto his horse and across all the miles to the deserts of North Africa? Is it passion which drives a monk to torture a man in order to ascertain his allegiance to God?

Maybe I should rein in my interests, in order to keep my focus? Am I too distracted by the energies of the various histories present and past which swirl through my mind?

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." Grand but what of context? Why was this written, or spoken? About what, and when? How can I simultaneously revere these words while knowing of the eventual suicide of the man from which they originated?

I can't stop thinking, I can't stop wondering.

I am looking for my crusade.

Idaho

I'm in Idaho this week, visiting Carol who I have known since 1977.  She is one of the contributors on this blog and will write soon.  (She keeps talking to me and I say "Write that on the blog....") and she will, once her garden-on-steroids quits producing like a 100 tomatoes a day.

Anyway, I'm in Idaho.  Everyone is at work and soon I will hop in the hot tub in the early fall chill.  The Selkirk's are obscured by puffy white clouds but Paradise Valley is clear and achingly lovely below.

I had a piece of apple pie for breakfest.  Carol and I decided that we would make one new pie every day this week from a new cookbook she gave me called "Sweety Pies".  The crust from the cookbook is to die for and so far all the pie's themselves get up and sing happiness.  Huckleberry the other day, Apple last night and Lemon will be this afternoon.  Plus, to add another note to a good song-- the huckleberries Carol herself picked and the apples I plucked from her orchard.

I've given up pursuing happiness because it just shows up all on it's own.

Donna

Mist

Fields above are vanishing this morning, fading into tracings of trees and blades of grass in the mist. But I'm clear, and I'm real, and I'm grateful. My lines are firm, and I know where I begin and end.

Expectations

The bathroom didn't turn out like I expected. The top layer of old existing paint on the walls was less stable than I'd hoped, so I spent a bunch of time chipping it away, sweeping up all the debris, and finally accepting it was more trouble that it was worth to remove all of the old top coat. The unevenness of the seam between ceiling and walls made it impossible to paint a smooth straight edge, not to mention the not so great brushes I was trying to paint with and the awkward position of having to paint while looking up steeply, and the fickleness of my paint delivery. Then I found that the earthy red paint that Rosie chose went on too thin to cover with a first coat. 

What I've ended up with so far doesn't match my image of the results I was hoping for. The off-white underneath is showing through, some places are much darker than others, and the edges are all rough and wobbly looking. Definitely not the even and clean look I was anticipating.

Somehow, this didn't really upset me too much. I sorted through the mess of stuff packed away in cupboards and shelves. I got to listen to a bunch of interesting podcasts. I stopped and ate chocolate now and then. I got the bathroom a lot cleaner than it was before. And the way it looks now sort of makes me laugh. It's satisfyingly odd and quirky and defiantly disordered. It looks like something a peasant might have done in 16th century Europe.

I can put another coat of paint on eventually. And meanwhile, I can enjoy the relative artful chaos as it stands now.

I could have been perturbed that the results didn't match my expectations. But I wasn't for some reason. I guess I just didn't want to get that upset. What happened, happened. Kind of amusing, actually. I'd say I found a satisfying amount of happiness throughout the overall process, quite aside from the limits of my expectations. Maybe expectations aren't all they're built up to be.

--Steve

Herbal Remedies

I have a to do list and a deadline. The deadline is September 13, when the new school year begins. The to do list is all the things we have to do, in order to be ready and able to welcome the new students. Anxiety around all of this...new students, new school year, enough students, enough money, enough time, enough skill, enough paper, enough clothing, enough tents...oh, and those last three...not on my to do list, however i'm more than available to absorb the anxiety from the lists running alongside mine.

Anxiety, and I will use Steve's term, is oh so NHI.

Now the picture, for all of the above, improves daily. The to do list gets whittled away , and the students sign up. But not at my pace. Not fast enough. Not good enough. Not enough enough.

Yesterday, was herb harvesting day for me. A line on my to do list. Harvest herbs.

What is the point of that? You must be kidding? In the grand scheme of things, with all that is to be done, and all that is still unknown, I should harvest herbs? Not likely. I should really walk around with my brain ponderously jitterbugging, throwing my hands up in frustrated despair, perhaps cussing. I should conceive of Plan B, and Plan C, and Plan D. I should immediately begin work on Plan B, and then abandon it to begin work on Plan C which I will toss to the side to commence Plan D. Then, with the to do list undone, and three alternate plans incomplete, I should erupt and then collapse. A better use of my time for sure.

Instead, I forced myself to harvest mint, lemon balm, dill, and coriander.

The sun was hot and the bugs plentiful in the herb garden. Flies buzzed and tiny gnats whizzed in and out of my ears. The mint and lemon balm was a tangled jungle of snaking vines, frustrating any attempt to cut in an orderly fashion. I snipped away at whatever came before me, taking this and that and accumulating little in my buckets. I began to seethe at how many hours this was going to take. How much wasted time. How little I had to show for all of my sweaty distracted work. And the flies buzzed and the gnats whizzed and the vines remained tangled.

By accident, standing on the edge of the timber that borders the herb garden, I dislodged it. It fell away from the tangle of vines, and as I bent to replace it I saw, nestled against the dirt, a thick wooden vine, from which sprouted, probably 20 additional vines. With my clippers I cut at the base, and pulled, and a huge tree of mint came away.

Now in view, sprouting directly from the earth, were more and more of these thick vines. Pushing my face forward into the shady jungle floor I began to clip. One, two, three, four. And the jungle in that spot was cleared. From that perspective I could easily see where the mint and lemon balm separated. I clipped away at the mint filling bucket after bucket. Then I started on the lemon balm. More buckets. More clearing. In almost no time at all, that section of the bed was cleared, and I had hauled three or four five gallon buckets of mint and four or five buckets of lemon balm to the kitchen.

I used the same technique of on the towering, exploding dill and cilantro. That took less time.

The sun moved east, and cooling shadows crept in from the surrounding woods. I was upstairs in the school, removing thousands of dill seeds from the spindly stalks I had collected earlier. Frustration returned.

As seeds scattered about, and barely an inch developed in my bag, I again thought to myself. What is the damn point of this? I will be doing this until midnight, and I still have the coriander. Plus I have to tie up and hang all the mint and lemon balm. I'll just do this tomorrow.

But I didn't want to carry it over until tomorrow. Tomorrow has its own lines on the list.

Then I picked up my mail, and I had netflix. I've Loved You for So Long and The Wrestler. Haven't seen either. So I lit a kerosene lamp and pulled the school TV out of the closet, and watched movies in the dark, and plucked seeds. Then I buried my arms to the elbows in cool damp fragrant mint and lemon balm and hung them to dry. And the day ended. And I scratched something off my to do list. And the school will have lots and lots of tea, and we can make dilled sourdough and serve it with a spicy stew seasoned with coriander. And I watched two amazing performances. And today's list is waiting, so rather than get out my hammer and nail down what all this means, I'll move on. Suffice to say, I learned what I needed to learn.

Mirrors, Realms, Spheres, Levels, Categories All

Yesterday, I was driving home from work and volunteer litter pick-up along a walkway constructed under a major new overpass project up by the Mall. I was thinking about what kind of take-off on the Gandhi quote (You must be the change you wish to see in the world) that I could see putting up in places where I notice people like to gather and trash public areas. In this lulling preoccupation, I happened to spot a bird standing sideways on a stalk of mullen:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPwu7Tkxrggb5c2hUkYWaInwDDLGS7eTjz4rDiBAvxbLngTuVlskRghCin8V9La7JFvvgOYUTUjiKaIl7nS_2ElfRMrmILLBY609pKmI_1XeP4fC-SopLmUuyXnC8w1S3FVYbVnhzf2FY/s400/Mullen2.jpg

- which grows wild along country roads out our way. And it made me laugh suddenly, to see this bird perched at a funny right angle to the seed stalk, feeding away. And that got me seeing how my awareness operates on many levels, and how varied they are, and how they don't necessarily inform each other, but live distinctly separate lives and processes. And that got me thinking about how happiness can be very present on some levels, like the sudden instance of me seeing that bird, while being quite absent on other levels, like concern over people who trash public through-ways and what to do to encourage them to be a presence they are actually proud of being in the world.

And then I thought about how there are way deeper levels than that, like the podcast I had been listening to while picking up trash. It was called "The Cruelty of Children", Episode #27 on This American Life -available for free at iTunes Store or at NPR website. I especially thought of Dan, as this first story was about a guy reflecting on his realization that he liked guys, and how difficult that was for this story teller growing up among the teasing and taunting of peers as well as the awkwardness of teachers and culture in general. But actually, his story was quite funny, read more like a dark comedy, and he had a way of really entertaining his audience with his wincing stories. Laughter of recognition, of confession, of relief!

And that made me think of how happiness seems to need its opposites, like hardship, suffering, isolation, confusion, constriction, whatever that essence is that makes happiness feel good as a liberation from all that seems to hem things in, make things feel harsh and difficult to endure. Happiness is the relief from those hardships. Happiness is an aha! after some amount of oppression.

And that reminded me of a theory I have, that this human plane seems to be curiously, cleverly devised to set people into limits that then make happiness show up in contrast to the limits. And we're all sort of experimental limits set into play in order to reap the best bang for our buck of happiness. Like there's a correlation between amount of suffering and how much happiness can come in contrast to it. In other words, if you have a relatively light easy upbringing, then profound happiness may be less likely in contrast. Whereas, if you have a miserable upbringing, then happiness is perhaps bound to show up much more pronouncedly. -There's something perhaps morbid in this dirty little secret, but it might explain why so often it seems the worst personal catastrophes get the most air play. The best bragging rights come from those with the most obvious and outrageous suffering. Happiness stands on the shoulders of mounting suffering.

But back to this piece's title and this theme of the weave of things and how consciousness lives in so many realms and categories and levels and spheres in this hall of mirrors many-mansioned universe we find ourselves in. One's upbringing realm may be seething with sores, while the horizontal bird catches some other sector of our eye's aptitude for that kind of bird/nature amusement. An ongoing story line having to do with a particular friend/relation may be winding a curiously hand-wringing path in some sphere of our preoccupation completely disregarding the upbringing realm or the bird sphere, or perhaps finds ways to integrate them in. The point being, how amazingly we are capable of investing so vividly in all these extraordinary ordinary states of mind that cubby us this way and that, level upon level, sphere next to sphere, all hall of mirrors reflecting things interesting enough, captivating enough, if not exactly happiness cultivating, but lulling us to go further and further in to see what's in there. Or staying out, for fear of the uglies or pains or intolerables. And meanwhile, happiness is sprinkled among it all, like little bright spots, little rings of the bell, little packets of refresh that in and of themselves help to sustain us, animate us, get our tails wagging, even while inner and outer wars may be waging in other concomitant spheres.

We are among a legion of everything with happiness sprinkled among tuned to the frequency of our capacities to see and feel happiness there, even while certain bottles drain dry, and sustenance wains and infinity floods in unannounced and relentless.

How to take all of that in, in any overall sense of how much it makes us happy or not, is a not any easy reconciling. But it does make me wonder, and somewhat wide-eyedly, even happily so.

--Steve

In the Mix of Happiness and Not Happiness

 (I meant to put this as a comment after Dan's last entry, but it was too long. :-)

Wow, Dan, what a great story from so many angles. You really brought something out here.

To me, Jane is symbolizing that part of us that would like simply to reduce everything to its utter absolute nature, of either totally good or totally bad, right or wrong, brilliant or shitty. Something about our more basic thinking/reacting, maybe due to fight or flight reactions which must make decisions very quickly to avoid harm. But this tendency to overgeneralize a complex field, can very much have people thinking that for example the Bible is the word of God, and Muslims are all terrorists, and the American flag is a symbol of absolute good in the world, and I really hate my step sister, and black people are only 2/3 human, and as Jane was wont to affirm, life is totally shitty, etc etc.

It feels good to be absolutely certain in one's assessment of a thing. Certainty feels empowering. Meanwhile, the more accurate truth may be that rarely are things very certain.

For example, yesterday, after work, I decided to take our dog, Milo, for a walk in the woods. He'd been cooped up all day, and I feel for his frustration. Now, granted, I'm not much of an alpha leader for dogs. So they tend to sense they can get away with doing their own thing without having to give in to my power over them. I'm kind of happy about this and yet not always happy with the outcomes. I didn't choose to have this dog be a part of our lives. Kim and Rosie did. But I often feel Milo's urge to get out of the confines of the house, and partly I like to oblige him.

So, during this walk, I've got a big trash bag and gloves and a litter picker-upper, and Milo's trotting along in front of me sniffing around and so forth. Even our cat, Cora, is following along, which she only occasionally does. And we're getting pretty far out in the woods, and I'm in basic overall happiness mode, listening to a podcast about the kindness of strangers, and then I can't find Milo. I'd noticed a group playing paintball some distance off. So I leave my trash gear and walk toward them, and sure enough, Milo was making new friends.

What I noticed, in terms of pursuit of happiness, is what a mix it can be between that which is felt to be happiness-inducing and that which feels not-happiness-inducing. We can abbreviate to H.I. And N.H.I. So taking the walk was H.I. with a bit of not N.H.I of feeling somewhat obliged to relieve Milo of his cabin fever, which wasn't really my responsibility, but I felt bad for him feeling bad. Picking up trash is also some combination of pro and con H.I. as really it's not my trash in the first place, and I'd prefer people took care of their own trash. But there it is, and I feel good about helping to keep the forest looking nice and trash free. Then finding Milo had run away was N.H.I, though when I did find him making new friends, that was H.I. and fun for me to meet new people and see how much they liked Milo and see how happy Milo was to be among this new stimulation. But then trying to keep him with me as we were leaving this group was mostly N.H.I. because I could tell he was still in independent spirit mode, and not really caring much to respect my wishes that he stay with me. And sure enough he wandered off again while I was wanting to finish up my trash collecting and get back home, which of themselves were H.I. for the most part, though I was getting my fill of those pursuits so beginning to feel somewhat more to the side of N.H.I. Then I had to go back and find Milo again which was more N.H.I. And I went into that scoldy emotional state toward Milo, at what a bad boy he was being, which of course was only from my point of view, wishing he'd keep to my bidding. But then I notice how much I like my freedom from having to oblige myself to others, how there are definitely parts of me that find the pursuit of happiness in going my own way and leaving others out of communication with me when I'm enjoying going off on my own unaccounted for.

So, what I'm seeing is that going through life triggers a kind of alternating current between the things that add happiness vs the things that subtract it, and this can happen within the same thing so that we're among a kind of variable register of how much everything's inducing happiness even while partly it may be inducing unhappiness. It's all a mix of qualities rarely totally one way or the other, but a sort of linear on/off switch of gathering yes's and no's that do add up being either mostly happiness inducing or mostly not happiness inducing, were we to give an overall assessment, even while some of both happiness and not happiness are sprinkled among all experiences. "Woven in" as we've said.

And I think as Dan points out, as we get better at staying open for the good stuff, the less we are shut down by that part of us that wants to paint the whole thing black or white. Black is really almost always too black and white is often too white. Too much pessimism misses whatever joy may actually be there, and too much optimism is at risk of being sorely disappointed eventually at expecting too much of a thing that really can't deliver the good as much as you might like.

We're really always among a mix of qualities, and happiness can suddenly jump out of situations that could seem convincingly horrible through and through. So congratulations and thanks to Dan for seeing further into the complexity and staying open, even beyond very challenging suggestions to the contrary, to close off, shut down, and join Jane in this overgeneralized assessment that life IS shitty! and look at all her evidence to prove it.

For me, then, "faith", as Dan pointed out, is the willingness to stay open for happiness to show up even in the places you might be completely convinced there is no happiness to be found. And of course, I'm quite imperfect at this, though at times, I do manage to see through some of my own limitations at this.

You might have heard the story of the Buddhist Monk is running away from a tiger, then falls over a cliff, is hanging from a branch about to drop to his death, and look, he spies a fresh ripe wild strawberry! He plucks it, pops it in his mouth, savors it. Ah, happiness for that moment, quite aside from his probably demise.

--Steve

Further thoughts on "Among the Weave"

Good Morning --

I'm really enjoying what Steve's blog triggered for me. I know, I know, this should all go into the comments section, but what the heck. I think, more than anything, what I'm feeling after reading his post is how it captured the whole bloody point of this exercise for me.

This is where I can go: That didn't work out, so damn it...everything sucks. Like this, my friend Bob has this friend Jane. All this happened years and years ago,...anyway, Jane was dramatic, she seemed somehow to have cast herself as the tragic heroine in her own story. And the universe responded. In large ways and small, like one time we were eating dinner. Eating dinner with Jane always had this air of suspense, because she would never really quite get to eating. She would load her fork and then talk, and raise the fork, and stop, and talk some more, the fork suspended. Then the fork would descend back to the plate, still full, unload itself, and reload. And rise slowly, while she was still talking. And I would find myself beginning to focus on whether or not the fork would ever find its destination, or would simply contine to rise and fall without ever delivering its payload. And all the while, a story was unfolding, a story of injustice, and how nothing in life ever ever succumbed correctly to her careful manipulations. Adding to that were moments, such as this particular dinner, when in watching the fork rise and fall, I began to notice something. There is something odd about her salad. Is it the lighting? Is it my eyesight? Then Jane looked down, finally, at her meal and screamed. Not a small shriek, but a full throated, goggle eyed berserker of a scream. Heads turned, hearts stopped, and in the middle of it, we all were drawn to notice that Jane's salad was moving. The whole thing. Undulating almost. Her salad was full of small green worms. There was another time involving a sandwich. I wasn't there for this, but I heard about it. They were eating in an outdoor cafe, and the sandwich rose and fell and rose and fell, until just as it was finally finally approaching her mouth, a bird unloaded on her hand. Inches from her open mouth.

So anyway, Jane went with Bob to see Sophie's Choice. Now, granted, there is not much to celebrate in that particular film. But they emerged from the theater in silence, and walked part way to the parking lot, where Jane stopped, and firmly announced that "That just proves that everything is shit." And then she burst into tears.  Like I said, there is not much joy to wrangle out of Sophie's Choice, but I'm not sure exactly how it can be summed up thematically with that statement.

But then again, as a matter of choice, everything can be summed up with that statement. Its all dependant upon the part you look at. I can choose to look at what I don't like. Or I can choose to find what I love, what works for me. And focus my attention there.

For example. I'm uncomfortable around born again Christians sometimes. Okay, that's not even fair. I'm uncomfortable around zealotry. It doesn't matter where it originates. I get a sinking elevator feeling when I find myself caught up in it's web. Like yesterday.

I had a loose crown. So I went to the dentist and had it fixed. The woman, and I really wish I was better with names, because she was really nice, and I'd like to say more than "the woman," and I were chatting, and she said everything looked fine.

"So, I don't need a root canal?"

"Oh, no."

"Great. The whole time I was driving over here, I was praying, please please please don't let me have to have a root canal."

"It's nice when He answers our prayers."

Oh. Well, I was speaking more rhetorically. I wasn't really praying.

"Right," I said.

Anyway, we were off and running on to the topic of dental stuff, and comparing wisdom teeth stories, and we both had had two dry sockets when we had our wisdom teeth out.

"Yeah, oh it was horrible, I woke up at two in the morning, nothing to do for hours, but lie on the floor and moan," I told her, "And say 'please please please just let me die...'"

I don't learn the first time.

"I bet your glad that He didn't answer that prayer..."

Really? Why? Why is this conversation happening? I don't want this conversation to be happening. I don't want to have to pretend to agree with you because you have sharp instruments in your hands.

But the big deal is exactly what? My discomfort is about me. She's perfectly fine, and after all I was the one who brought up praying, albeit inadvertently. Then she had a coughing fit and had to leave the room. When she returned she explained she had bronchitis, and that she was fine, but the cough stuck around. We compared notes on that, laughing, and then she said that she was a little worried because she was supposed to have surgery, but she knew they wouldn't do it while she still had the cough. We were wrapping up, and I said, well I'll keep my fingers crossed (I had learned about the praying thing...) that your cough goes away before the surgery.

"Well, we're still praying that the surgery won't be necessary..."

I didn't ask, what the surgery was for. I figured that if she wanted to tell me, she would.

She continued by saying, that the whole thing was in God's hands, and she was really fine with that.

"It's the scariest thing thats ever happened to me, but I've never been more at peace."

At this point, I'm so glad I kept my mouth shut. I'm so glad I didn't feel the need to announce that I wasn't on her page. Because in that statement, she nailed it. In that statement she and I got to the exact same place.

"Thats fantastic," I told her. "Thats really what faith is right? I mean its easy to have faith when everything is going great and you're just pushing your grocery cart through the store."

She laughed.

We all find ourselves in the dark from time to time. Scared. Lonely. Hurt. Faith is the thing behind us, the thing we can reach out in that darkness and hold onto, the arms we can fall back into. I have that. She has that. We call it by different names. So what?

And I'm grateful that I didn't stumble over the detritus on the tracks of our earliest words together, those bits of gravel and broken things that might have kept me from experiencing something with her. I'm glad I kept my mouth shut. I'm glad she was so kind and sweet that she kept my mind open to her. Because I got to lie in that chair, while she leaned against the counter, and we looked into each other's eyes and shared something. Found our common ground and recognized each other as simply beautifully real and human.

Like you said Steve, its among the weave.

--Dan

Among the Weave

Yesterday, I was noticing how happiness shows up among the greater weave of all things showing up. Happiness is sprinkled among it. Things that make me happy tend to come forward while everything else recedes in the undulation of everything weaving together.

I noticed that first glances at things can be at first disconcerting, like the shape of that man's head, or the pull of that other man's voice, or that gift store with too many things to look at. Relaxing and looking again can see through initial prickly reactions, and new appreciations can form.

I attended a performance last night by the poet fiddler of Alaska - something like that. I didn't really like his sloppy look or his subtly oppressive need to speak. But if I closed my eyes and let the music and words play in my imagination, I got into it, could hear the wisdom in the fiddle music beyond the performer, could let go all those words having to be gathered and made sense of.

On the way home, so many things registered as happiness-inducing. Too many to list. But they zoomed forward into my line of sight and my inner ear, leaving the rest of the weave of all things tp draw back into the shadows. Were I not driving from theater to home, I wouldn't have had occasion to experience all those parts of happiness. So much of happiness arrives simply by driving into it without any idea what of it will come.

During sleep, I dreamed of a romance that may well only ever exist there in that dream. The pursuit of it pulled all my attention. The embrace of it rewarded me with happiness, though without the same pull toward me as I toward the pursued. Perhaps that made it all the more entrancing.

After all, we're talking about the pursuit of happiness, which implies not being it, but reaching out for it as though it is not already here.

I notice the French chose *fraternity* over the *pursuit of happiness* in their constitution. I hear their conversations are more a gathering of reflections about a shared topic than what in America is often more about who can talk about themselves the most impressively.

Here's to the happiness in both pursuits,

--Steve

poetry

Good morning everyone.  And it is a good one.  It's that late summer feeling.  A bit cooler and crisper in the morning and at night.  I went for a walk last night with my new (3 months now!) husband, Mac, around Suttle Lake in the Cascades 30 minutes west of us.  It's a 3 mile loop and it was sunsetting time so I'm still living in the afterglow of that.  I feel spoiled by the varied lavishness of nature around here and the generous heart of Mac.

Something you wrote Dan this morning.....something towards the end of your message about not overthinking things.  To just take things/gifts at face value and not say "well, in the grand scheme of things, what does this really matter?"  I'm not even sure if that was your meaning but it triggered a thought in me.  Isn't pursuit of happiness a slap in the face of cynicism?

The Week Begins (at least for me...)

Quick entry this morning. Yesterday I was thinking I needed to write to Donna and let her know that I could not open her poem, because it is in a newer version of word than my computer supports. And it occurred to me to think, how cool it is that I need to write to someone and let her know I can't open her poem. I know someone who writes poetry. I know someone who writes poetry and wants to share it. How lucky I am.

Yesterday before I went to bed, I was texting back and forth with someone who made me feel special. That was a good thing to. Little rings on my cel phone to let me know that I was visible. Hmmmm...make of that what you will. But don't we all need that from time to time?

I laughed so hard yesterday. I can't say what I was laughing about, because, well...it was as we sometimes say a "who did that bless, little hurty thing..." but what the hey...I was laughing and laughing. And thats good.

Today's entry is just for the purpose of touching base with what is grand and good in my life. Sometimes, try as I might, recognizing the awesome beauty and power of the universe in a state of grateful humility, is more than I can muster. And when that happens, I feel like a bad citizen of this world...not properly in tune.

But all of it is part of the power, maybe...so selecting those things that come to mind, selecting those things that are rushing with warmth, and recognizing them as they occur, rather than looking at them and thinking, "yes, but in the grand scheme off things what are they really?" I don't know. Maybe they are the grand scheme, or at least, for today, my part in it.

So thank you. Thank you Donna. Thank you Margaret. Thank you David.

And thank you Mark, for your marvelous entry yesterday.

--Dan

Jumping In With Both Feet Tied Behind My Back...

Actually, I don't know where the hell that title is coming from...it's one of those "just let the subconscious rip" kind of days.  The sort of thing that comes up when you wake up to the sight of a massive smoke plume from your bedroom window, look to the orange-gray light that washes over everything out-of-doors and make a snap decision to venture outside as little as you can get away with today.  I had set the alarm early enough to get myself somewhere at 10:00 am.  Now the goal wasn't so much "pursuit of happiness" but more along the lines of "avoidance of asthmatic seizure".

But that's alright, there's a lot of happiness right here at home.  At the start of the year a friend and I began a Proust reading group -- we're taking about a year-and-a-half to read the entire "In Search of Lost Time" cycle.  We meet the last Monday of every month at Skylight Books in Los Feliz.  Late this morning I finished the stretch that we'd set up for tomorrow night's discussion.  Two happinesses out of that today: first, getting the "required reading" read, and, second, the reading itself.  Today, the last sequence of Part One of "The Guermantes Way", the narrator's annoyance with his grandmother taking so long in a park's bathroom facility and holding him up from meeting up with his friends, not yet aware the reason he was being inconvenienced was that she was having a stroke.  How I admire and enjoy Proust's ability to put us inside his own consciousness at that specific moment while, side-by-side, both-at-once, enabling us to see the failures of the consciousness in that particular moment.

Another happiness of the day -- lunch!  Breakfast was perfunctory, but lunch was pure pleasure.  Several days ago I'd made a from-scratch roasted green salsa and cooked it with diced potatoes and scallops.  Now I used some of the leftovers from that as a salsa to accompany a cheese and green chile tamale.  The pleasant blandness of the tamale with the spicy lemony-tang of the salsa...joy!  And that with the both-at-once quality of scallop-brineyness with potato-earthiness...well, few things can put me as firmly in the here-and-now as the immediate sensation of good food.  Much can be said, much has been said, about food as a form of self-medication, food as an obsession, food as sublimation, but much can be said, has been said, will be said, about food as alchemy, food as connection, food as something that can put one smack-dab in the present moment in the healthiest, happiest way.

That's enough for now.  I can feel my attention span shortening..shortening...gone!

Thanks for inviting me into this process, Dan!

--Mark Sprecher

Hamburgers

I like hamburgers. I've come to realize recently that hamburgers might be my favorite food in the world. I love other things too. I love sushi, and pad thai, and chicken tikka masala, and yeah, you get the drift...I'm international like that, because thats how I do cool. Nah, not really...I just love food, and I don't care where it comes from. Golden Corral is, after all one of my go to choices when it comes time to eat.

But back to hamburgers. Loose crown and all, wrapping my maw around a gloppy mix of charred beef, lettuce, tomato, cheese, pesto, mayo, and bread just makes me so damn happy. I could get all hyperbolic and write about heaven, and nirvana, and state of bliss and that, but the truth is simpler. It just makes me happy. Happy is just fine. I don't need to make it bigger.

Add this though. The face of Maura, across the table, scrunched up and laughing while we tell stories about Idaho, and the horrible barnyard animals. Like the turkeys that chased us. And the psychotic little banty rooster named Lavoris who used to explode out of the bushes like a feathered cannonball, and rake our calves with his horrible spurs when all we were trying to do was walk to the pond. Ah, how she laughed. And Liam and Aidan too.

We all did. Mom and Dad, telling their own stories about the malevolent geese in the orchard who weaved back and forth like Nagaina, before lowering their serpent necks and streaking across the grass to grasp bits of human flesh in their beaks and twist. For no reason apparently, other than pure sadism.

More laughter. More hamburgers.

In my family, despite all the love in the world, we don't always...well, play well together, you know? Particularly in large groups. We are all still recouping, licking wounds, setting aside resentments, picking up where we left off, etc... after a week together at Folly Beach, in a grand sprawling house on the sand, which despite its long arms and expansive heart was still not big enough to hide us from each other. And enough said about that, the point is not what we aren't, but what we are.

The point is not, what we could be, but what we are. The point is not what we cannot do, but what we can. The point is not how we come up short, but how we succeed.

Like hamburgers. Simpler fare, and satisfying in ways that surprise me, because so much of what is simpler, hangs about like curtains, always there but never seen.

Yeah, you know...we might never get to that place where we can all share space in perfect love and harmony. Yes, indeed, I'm joking. We won't. Thats cool. So, whats left?

More than enough. And that makes me happy.Happy like pizza. And pie.
-_DC

Lor, that is the amazing Donna next to your bio. Don't know how you got so lucky. Donna meet Lor, Lor meet Donna...Lor and I are the same person. You are apparently the same person too.

On that note, I'm grateful for this site. Donna, Steve, Lor...I'm loving what I'm reading. A huge deal for me.

the little things

It's the little things that made me happy today.  This morning, it was indoor plumbing and coffee.  I'd gotten up late, with smoke induced grogginess, covered in a thin, grungy coat of sweat, oil and ash.  Sixteen hours later, the elements have again beaten back the curative effects of the shower, and I remain grateful for the plumbing.  Showers will bookend this day.
In between, there was a visit to my mom, a little shopping for her, a little shopping for me, a couple of actions around my job search, a meeting with fellowship after at Home, and more fellowship after that at Masa.  My dogs have given up hanging out with me as I write, opting instead for the coolness of the night air.  They're smart and wise and happy for no reason other than the pack is all present and accounted for.  Ah, the little things.  And now, a shower.
~ LAF

Walking as a form of mindfulness

I have been trying to walk the Dry Creek Canyon near my house every morning.  It's a paved path at the bottom of a narrow, deepish canyon.  Junipers and sage lie low and their scent is the prevailing one here in central Oregon.  It's a nice smell--spicy and astringent.

And I try really hard to notice things, to center down, to be fully present.  One day it was Lucy in a stroller with big eyes and the generosity of her 6 month old smile.  Another day it was a young woman trying, and failing, to keep up with her boyfriend, riding too fast on his bike.  Been there/done that, I thought, and wanted to tell her to turn around and ride by herself.  See if he even notices her absence. 

Mindfulness, taking the now in, is harder than it sounds.  Noticing the girl on a slower bike triggers old junk.  So I try to get back to gratitude.  Not with him anymore.  I'm better.  I left.  I started over.  I pedaled away and my breath slows and deepens. 

Today

"The horizons you've promised will be brilliant with signs; I am sick of shadows; Blind me with you!"

Some days, when I'm on track, I begin the day by pulling a card from my Rumi deck. I never quite know what to do with it. There was a time when I used to do a simple three card spread...what brought up the present situation; the present; the future and how to deal with it. Lately though I've just been pulling and seeing, reading and wondering. Today's card seems in line.

I've struggled with sleep. Part of it is the heat. Part of it is anxiety. Its something that used to be such a way of my life, and then it wasn't. Acceptance has become a challenge. Tossing today and tomorrow about in the darkness of my bed has become an almost involuntary excercise; one which leaves me breathless and panicky. That will be a good first place to start.

Today is.

Yesterday is not anymore. Tomorrow is not yet. What can I do with this moment, this singular, individual, perfect, precious moment? I can distract myself from it. I can refuse to look at it.

Why would I do that though? That hasn't worked for me. It has absolutely positively never worked for me. But in absence of conscious choice, it has become my go to.

I have work to do. I will do that, and I will let others do theirs. Really I can't do more than that. I can only imagine that I can do more than that. I can only imagine that I can pull the strings. Life ain't no puppet show though. So I can choose to become tangled, and in that I am choosing to never sleep again.

Not the greatest choice there ever was.

--DC