After yesterday’s rain there was bright sun, crisp air, and a stiff breeze on the water at 7:45 a.m. I pointed my boat up river into the wind—choosing to have the “uphill battle” while I’m fresh and then glide easily home afterwards. This choice might just be a life strategy, too. I can see it more clearly on the river than anywhere else.
Today I paddled farther than ever before, stretching to go a little bit farther, just to see what’s there. I went far enough to see three blue chairs poised between the white birch shade and the water shadows. Those three blue chairs could become a destination in themselves, but today I went beyond the chairs to see the dock with the fairy lights.
Note to family with “MELENEY” painted in block letters on a float north of Edgewater beach, just off the beach in your own neighborhood: “Your sailboat—RI0334S—is restless. What do you think it is doing when you are not looking? Do you think it is resting peacefully just off shore waiting blankly for you to return? It is not. Your boat is restless. It pivots gracefully around the tether like a young horse, golden in the early morning light. The other sailboats are resting; your boat is not.”
Watching the little ripples on the water gives no clue whatsoever to the random movements of this boat. The breeze holds steadily from one direction and yet the filly swings her head to a different drummer. She is restless and yet, she is also thoughtful and deliberate. And unpredictable, so I keep my distance. Perhaps I seem the same to her or to any other observer—a blank entity, resting on a paddle, floating in the current? But I am most active and alive, filled with intentions and processes. If asked, “What are you doing just sitting there?” I would say, “I am writing a book.”
I balance the paddle across my boat and let go to see what happens next. If home is at 12 o’clock and the direction I’m heading now is toward 6 o’clock, the head of my boat swings counterclockwise slowly to 11 o’clock, silently unwinding me.
No ducks today.
A few days ago I took my own storm to the water and paddled uphill in both directions. There was a stiff wind, but my internal turbulence trumped its force. “What puzzle did I bring to the water, hoping for a solution by throwing my being into propulsion?”
Learning to share is a lesson we repeat over and over for toddlers and children, but as adults we need to keep learning it over and over as well. As the oldest of five children, forced by circumstances to share everything, I may be more sensitive than others. Sharing is more complex than we think, and out on the water in my own initiative, I can contemplate sharing at a safe distance. It calls for mountain climbing effort to reach the peak where a gift is set entirely free from expectations, and all inconveniences are forgiven. I find myself caught in a misty humid morning at sea level. I brought no joy; I found no meaning.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Driving in Italy
The seaside community of Fano was described as a “sleepy little town” in our guide book, but we found it to be fairly large with energetic crowds of vacationers and vigorous street life. In fact, from our room at Hotel Roma, Viale Dante Alighieri, we were immersed in street life for about twenty hours a day! Just as we thought things were calming down around 3 a.m. on our first night, there was a horrendous metallic crash just outside our window. We were surprised not to hear shouting from the drivers involved (a crash sound is always followed by shouting in our experience). In the morning, litter from the event and a crumpled guard rail remained as evidence of the nocturnal collision. On our second day we were sitting at an outdoor café less than a block away when we witnessed another accident on the same corner. Needless to say, our departure from the hotel in a rented car was rather stressful given the record of one accident per day on that corner!!
After a long morning walk north along the waterfront of Fano, we departed with vague directions for reaching Urbino. Driving in Italy requires quick decisions based on sketchy information. Everyone else knows where they are going, and there are far too many traffic circles! We are used to 4-way stop signs or traffic lights. Even though I know that traffic circles are demonstrably safer than, say left turns against oncoming traffic, I still prefer the full stop to the ambiguous glide. It seems to me that traffic circles bring on a collective, and very literal, agoraphobia.
Highways in Italy are kind to the landscape. They are built with many bridges and tunnels in order to accommodate the hills and valleys. These roads seem soft, unlike those where a bulldozer rearranges the earth to make a straight new thoroughfare.
Urbino’s signature is “Emozioni in forma di città,” and we learned it the hard way. The drive from Fano to Urbino seemed quick compared with the time it took us to locate the conference site once we arrived! We quickly found the location of the “Seven Deadly Sins” meeting we had attended eleven years before at the Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo, but that entire campus is now under construction. That didn’t hinder people from sending us to three or four buildings based entirely on rumors. An hour later, when two recommendations converged on the fact that we needed to go to another campus 5 km out of town, we were not surprised, but were disappointed that we would not be within walking distance of Urbino.
The Sogesta campus is isolated from any village by 5 km of very steep, curvy, narrow roads. Even after we found the main building, it was difficult to find the registration desk for the conference. On the other hand we were able to register for our room right away and discovered that it was air conditioned!! We both remembered a torrid room facing the afternoon sun at the other campus.
I had a wonderful pranzo in the cafeteria (chicken, vegetables, salad, fruit, wine) and then took a nap. I hope to do the same every day! Being isolated on this campus all day was frustrating, so we decided to take an excursion to Fermignano, reportedly closer than Urbino. As we approached a stop sign just outside the town, I shouted to Vincent to stop, and so he did, causing the car behind to hit us.
The driver got out and began shouting at us in Italian. When Vincent got out of our car, looking a little dazed and confused, the other driver got progressively more and more angry at my husband’s silence. Finally, after two long minutes of this shouting and pointing, I regained the presence of mind to say, “No capisce Italiano.” The formerly aggressive driver shifted his tone and began to apologize (I think). Vincent and I were both shaken by this episode although neither car was damaged at all. We tried to go to a grocery store in Fermignano, which, of course, was closed, so we cautiously drove right back to the campus parking lot and went to our room to compose ourselves before dinner. I felt a little like a character in the short story, “The Appointment in Samarra” by Somerset Maugham. After all of our efforts to avoid the “crash-a-day” we witnessed in Fano, “fate” followed us all the way to Urbino, and came close enough to give us a fright!
We had a very nice dinner on campus with our friends, and found a ride into Urbino for a nightcap afterwards. Vincent offered to drive, but fortunately someone else won that joust. We sat outside a café in the Piazza de la Republica, drinking Campari while water sparkled from the fountain like a curtain of jewels.
After a long morning walk north along the waterfront of Fano, we departed with vague directions for reaching Urbino. Driving in Italy requires quick decisions based on sketchy information. Everyone else knows where they are going, and there are far too many traffic circles! We are used to 4-way stop signs or traffic lights. Even though I know that traffic circles are demonstrably safer than, say left turns against oncoming traffic, I still prefer the full stop to the ambiguous glide. It seems to me that traffic circles bring on a collective, and very literal, agoraphobia.
Highways in Italy are kind to the landscape. They are built with many bridges and tunnels in order to accommodate the hills and valleys. These roads seem soft, unlike those where a bulldozer rearranges the earth to make a straight new thoroughfare.
Urbino’s signature is “Emozioni in forma di città,” and we learned it the hard way. The drive from Fano to Urbino seemed quick compared with the time it took us to locate the conference site once we arrived! We quickly found the location of the “Seven Deadly Sins” meeting we had attended eleven years before at the Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo, but that entire campus is now under construction. That didn’t hinder people from sending us to three or four buildings based entirely on rumors. An hour later, when two recommendations converged on the fact that we needed to go to another campus 5 km out of town, we were not surprised, but were disappointed that we would not be within walking distance of Urbino.
The Sogesta campus is isolated from any village by 5 km of very steep, curvy, narrow roads. Even after we found the main building, it was difficult to find the registration desk for the conference. On the other hand we were able to register for our room right away and discovered that it was air conditioned!! We both remembered a torrid room facing the afternoon sun at the other campus.
I had a wonderful pranzo in the cafeteria (chicken, vegetables, salad, fruit, wine) and then took a nap. I hope to do the same every day! Being isolated on this campus all day was frustrating, so we decided to take an excursion to Fermignano, reportedly closer than Urbino. As we approached a stop sign just outside the town, I shouted to Vincent to stop, and so he did, causing the car behind to hit us.
The driver got out and began shouting at us in Italian. When Vincent got out of our car, looking a little dazed and confused, the other driver got progressively more and more angry at my husband’s silence. Finally, after two long minutes of this shouting and pointing, I regained the presence of mind to say, “No capisce Italiano.” The formerly aggressive driver shifted his tone and began to apologize (I think). Vincent and I were both shaken by this episode although neither car was damaged at all. We tried to go to a grocery store in Fermignano, which, of course, was closed, so we cautiously drove right back to the campus parking lot and went to our room to compose ourselves before dinner. I felt a little like a character in the short story, “The Appointment in Samarra” by Somerset Maugham. After all of our efforts to avoid the “crash-a-day” we witnessed in Fano, “fate” followed us all the way to Urbino, and came close enough to give us a fright!
We had a very nice dinner on campus with our friends, and found a ride into Urbino for a nightcap afterwards. Vincent offered to drive, but fortunately someone else won that joust. We sat outside a café in the Piazza de la Republica, drinking Campari while water sparkled from the fountain like a curtain of jewels.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
I Love Maps!
I love maps. Maps are affordable gateways to movement and transformation; the intrinsic pleasure of stretching out an arm and reaching deep into the universe to grasp a star or a starfish. They are finite in shape, size, and data, but infinite as sinkholes into a jungle, desert, city, pyramid, marketplace, river, cave, museum, tundra, or fireside. Love of maps is similar to love of travel, and Pico Iyer describes that joy as “the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.” (www.salon.com, March 18, 2000).
I love maps. When I taught seventh grade in my twenties, I petitioned AAA to donate a classroom set of USA road maps. I created individual student assignments to write directions from, say, Ypisilanti, Michigan to Portola, California. Each student would slowly read his or her directions while everyone else traced the route at their own desks. The goal was to skillfully guide everyone in the class from the starting point to the destination. It was a lot of fun, everyone participated, and I hope they learned something about giving (and following) directions! When my own two children were about middle school age, we bought a white van, customized it with a plywood seat/convertible bed, and set out across the country. Each day, one of the kids would be in charge of maps and directions, letting us know where we were, how far to the next destination, what crossroads or major intersections we should encounter, etc. That was a long car trip for young adolescents and I devised quite a few activities in addition to maps to occupy them through long stretches between territorial targets. There were no seatbelts in the van, the air conditioning stopped functioning before we hit Texas, and we had more than a few battles over who sleeps in the tent vs. the van!
I love maps. Several years after being lost on a highway near the wrong Las Vegas, I was clutching a subway map and learning the byways of Manhattan. One of my first assignments upon joining a small publishing house at the very bottom of the pecking order was to go to the map room of the New York Public Library and identify maps for a book called Christianity Comes to the Americas. It was a plum of a mission; I was the proverbial “kid in a candy store.” With the authority of being “on assignment,” I looked at many more maps than necessary, completely fascinated by early perspectives of territory and experience. I recently came across this quote attributed to Christopher Columbus, “For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.” (www.brainyquote.com) Columbus does not, however, disavow using stories which long-preceded maps as inspiration for exploration. Philosopher Michel de Certeau comments on the evolution of present day maps from narratives. “Maps of medieval times, which were really illustrated stories telling of journeys made and of memorable encounters along the way, were gradually supplanted during the early history of modernity by spatial representations of the earth’s surface.”*
I love maps. While I am out in the world spinning my own narrative thread, I often integrate a variety of maps. I superimpose maps one on another: for example, a simple grid marked only with numbers keyed to an index of site names is superimposed in my mind with a full color map that has little pictures of churches, monuments, tramcars, fountains, ships, etc. On a trip to Helsinki, Finland, I collected and carried around four maps: a guidebook map cut with a razor out of the big fat travel book, a color grid of streets, a tram map superimposed over light grey streets, and a sketch of the city with destinations of interest highlighted. I studied my maps frequently, seeking the layered knowledge of the city they offered. I was a visitor to Helsinki, but when a city dweller knows her or his city, it becomes a series of layered internalized maps, many more than my four maps of Helsinki. For example, one layer would be a map of daily routines; another might be be a map of significant sites in this person’s life as lived in this city.
I love maps! My most recent map purchase is a world map called, “What’s Up? South!” by ODT, Inc. It is based on the simple premise that our typical representation of north at the top of a map is somewhat arbitrary. How strange and unfamiliar the continents look when the whole scheme is reversed! I should have learned this lesson years ago from my favorite Sesame Street animation and jingle, “That’s about the size of it.” It’s a lesson about relative sizes to be sure, but the refrain of “where you put your eyes” is significant when considering the perspective of a snail versus the whole universe, and those of us wandering in between, both near and far.
*According to Tim Ingold (“Up, Across, and Along” p. 48, accessed online at http://www.spacesyntax.tudelft.nl//media/Long%20papers%20I/tim%20ingold.pdf) who reports on de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life. 1984: 120-1)
I love maps. When I taught seventh grade in my twenties, I petitioned AAA to donate a classroom set of USA road maps. I created individual student assignments to write directions from, say, Ypisilanti, Michigan to Portola, California. Each student would slowly read his or her directions while everyone else traced the route at their own desks. The goal was to skillfully guide everyone in the class from the starting point to the destination. It was a lot of fun, everyone participated, and I hope they learned something about giving (and following) directions! When my own two children were about middle school age, we bought a white van, customized it with a plywood seat/convertible bed, and set out across the country. Each day, one of the kids would be in charge of maps and directions, letting us know where we were, how far to the next destination, what crossroads or major intersections we should encounter, etc. That was a long car trip for young adolescents and I devised quite a few activities in addition to maps to occupy them through long stretches between territorial targets. There were no seatbelts in the van, the air conditioning stopped functioning before we hit Texas, and we had more than a few battles over who sleeps in the tent vs. the van!
I love maps. Several years after being lost on a highway near the wrong Las Vegas, I was clutching a subway map and learning the byways of Manhattan. One of my first assignments upon joining a small publishing house at the very bottom of the pecking order was to go to the map room of the New York Public Library and identify maps for a book called Christianity Comes to the Americas. It was a plum of a mission; I was the proverbial “kid in a candy store.” With the authority of being “on assignment,” I looked at many more maps than necessary, completely fascinated by early perspectives of territory and experience. I recently came across this quote attributed to Christopher Columbus, “For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.” (www.brainyquote.com) Columbus does not, however, disavow using stories which long-preceded maps as inspiration for exploration. Philosopher Michel de Certeau comments on the evolution of present day maps from narratives. “Maps of medieval times, which were really illustrated stories telling of journeys made and of memorable encounters along the way, were gradually supplanted during the early history of modernity by spatial representations of the earth’s surface.”*
I love maps. While I am out in the world spinning my own narrative thread, I often integrate a variety of maps. I superimpose maps one on another: for example, a simple grid marked only with numbers keyed to an index of site names is superimposed in my mind with a full color map that has little pictures of churches, monuments, tramcars, fountains, ships, etc. On a trip to Helsinki, Finland, I collected and carried around four maps: a guidebook map cut with a razor out of the big fat travel book, a color grid of streets, a tram map superimposed over light grey streets, and a sketch of the city with destinations of interest highlighted. I studied my maps frequently, seeking the layered knowledge of the city they offered. I was a visitor to Helsinki, but when a city dweller knows her or his city, it becomes a series of layered internalized maps, many more than my four maps of Helsinki. For example, one layer would be a map of daily routines; another might be be a map of significant sites in this person’s life as lived in this city.
I love maps! My most recent map purchase is a world map called, “What’s Up? South!” by ODT, Inc. It is based on the simple premise that our typical representation of north at the top of a map is somewhat arbitrary. How strange and unfamiliar the continents look when the whole scheme is reversed! I should have learned this lesson years ago from my favorite Sesame Street animation and jingle, “That’s about the size of it.” It’s a lesson about relative sizes to be sure, but the refrain of “where you put your eyes” is significant when considering the perspective of a snail versus the whole universe, and those of us wandering in between, both near and far.
*According to Tim Ingold (“Up, Across, and Along” p. 48, accessed online at http://www.spacesyntax.tudelft.nl//media/Long%20papers%20I/tim%20ingold.pdf) who reports on de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life. 1984: 120-1)
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Kayak Chronicle (#1)
When my father died at age 91 in April of 2012, I received a small inheritance from the sale of the house that held nearly all of the life wealth of my parents. My brother Andrew, the executor of his will, hosted the five sibling beneficiaries on the anniversary of Dad’s landing on Omaha Beach, and wrote a check for each of us. I knew that my parents—my mother in particular—would have wanted me to appreciate at least part of this inter-generational gift through some adventure, transforming the solid foundations of home into flight, laughter, and new horizons. As I drove for three hours from New York to Rhode Island, toward a little blue cottage on Narrow River, the kayak bloomed into my life.
About a month later, on the very day that the mango-and-flame-colored boat was delivered, a Friday, my husband Vincent helped me attach the little wheeled contraption to one end to roll the boat down to our neighborhood beach to launch it. This was the first water craft that either of us had owned. We each wobbled around on the water for about twenty minutes while the other watched from shore. It was an awkward birth.
The next afternoon, Vincent delivered me to the beach and then went home. I spent about an hour paddling up and down about twenty feet off the shoreline. It was Saturday and there were weekend jet ski people and speedboat people out there making waves that rushed into collisions, multiplied, and collapsed into me. It was a lively scene from “Storm At Sea: The Kayak Disaster Movie.”
Skip Sunday and Monday.
On Tuesday, I intended to get up by 7 a.m. and try a new solution to the kayak transportation issue. I wanted to be completely independent in moving my kayak from the driveway to the beach and back again. If I am dependent, I know I won’t be going to the river as often. I created an auxiliary transportation device out of our son’s skateboard taped with bubble wrap as a cushion to protect both the board and the boat. Bungee cords from Ocean State Job Lots and an old green towel completed the scheme. After testing on the driveway, I abandoned the ragamuffinly, towel-ends-dragging contrivance and arranged another assist from my patient husband. I vowed to give this another try when it was not 90 degrees out. After all this, I forgot my paddle at home and had to walk back to get it.
When I finally got out on the water, it was approaching 9 am and the sun was shining unabashedly. The water was still and green, thick and opaque. My paddles and a black duck created only the slightest turbulence. Once I got into a rhythm of not dipping too deep, I found myself gliding with minimal “point oscillation” (front end of kayak pointing left and right as I dipped the paddle on opposite sides of the boat). Finally, I understood what salespeople were saying about my 9-foot boat being very stable, and that the longer, thinner boats “track” better. Ah-h-h, yes!
No other boats were active that morning, save for a solitary motor boat with a standing driver racing inexplicably up and down a short section of the river for about fifteen minutes. The wake from this boat reached me in sheets of flexible mirrored surfaces. I let my boat face the curves coming at us quietly like “shining from shook foil.” Not long after, the intense sun chased me back to my beach and a call for help to get home.
On Wednesday morning I set my alarm clock for 7 a.m. and, even so, the sun was up way before me. I remembered the paddle, but almost forgot the cellphone and life jacket! I was on the water by 7:30 a.m. and found that I could comfortably trace the shade along the east bank of the river where tall trees would hold slumbering shadows in their arms for another hour or so.
Alone with black ducks (Anas rubripes) and dragonflies (Anisoptera), this fourth expedition was the experience I had been hoping for . . . gliding without knowing effort; floating without sensing weight; and just being a bundle of elements continuous with elements above and below, inside and outside.
I set myself the challenge of sliding between two buoys on which serene black ducks were perched. I focused on not hitting the sides of the boat with the paddle, not splashing, not making any noise at all. Slowly, I drifted between the ducks without making eye contact. If I don’t make eye contact, I don’t exist. For one brief instant while crossing the line between two ducks contemplating morning, I became a black duck looking at the same quiet water, feeling the same light breeze ruffle my feathers.
Shortly after I crossed that line, the duck on my right broke the spell, lifted off the float, and skimmed in a wide arc through liminal space; not quite air, not quite water. I placed my palms flat on the water on both sides of my boat-skin and felt a synesthesia of temperature and texture: air . . . water . . . thick, warm, deep: breathing water; floating on air; which is which, both . . . and . . . I am, I am.
When my father died at age 91 in April of 2012, I received a small inheritance from the sale of the house that held nearly all of the life wealth of my parents. My brother Andrew, the executor of his will, hosted the five sibling beneficiaries on the anniversary of Dad’s landing on Omaha Beach, and wrote a check for each of us. I knew that my parents—my mother in particular—would have wanted me to appreciate at least part of this inter-generational gift through some adventure, transforming the solid foundations of home into flight, laughter, and new horizons. As I drove for three hours from New York to Rhode Island, toward a little blue cottage on Narrow River, the kayak bloomed into my life.
About a month later, on the very day that the mango-and-flame-colored boat was delivered, a Friday, my husband Vincent helped me attach the little wheeled contraption to one end to roll the boat down to our neighborhood beach to launch it. This was the first water craft that either of us had owned. We each wobbled around on the water for about twenty minutes while the other watched from shore. It was an awkward birth.
The next afternoon, Vincent delivered me to the beach and then went home. I spent about an hour paddling up and down about twenty feet off the shoreline. It was Saturday and there were weekend jet ski people and speedboat people out there making waves that rushed into collisions, multiplied, and collapsed into me. It was a lively scene from “Storm At Sea: The Kayak Disaster Movie.”
Skip Sunday and Monday.
On Tuesday, I intended to get up by 7 a.m. and try a new solution to the kayak transportation issue. I wanted to be completely independent in moving my kayak from the driveway to the beach and back again. If I am dependent, I know I won’t be going to the river as often. I created an auxiliary transportation device out of our son’s skateboard taped with bubble wrap as a cushion to protect both the board and the boat. Bungee cords from Ocean State Job Lots and an old green towel completed the scheme. After testing on the driveway, I abandoned the ragamuffinly, towel-ends-dragging contrivance and arranged another assist from my patient husband. I vowed to give this another try when it was not 90 degrees out. After all this, I forgot my paddle at home and had to walk back to get it.
When I finally got out on the water, it was approaching 9 am and the sun was shining unabashedly. The water was still and green, thick and opaque. My paddles and a black duck created only the slightest turbulence. Once I got into a rhythm of not dipping too deep, I found myself gliding with minimal “point oscillation” (front end of kayak pointing left and right as I dipped the paddle on opposite sides of the boat). Finally, I understood what salespeople were saying about my 9-foot boat being very stable, and that the longer, thinner boats “track” better. Ah-h-h, yes!
No other boats were active that morning, save for a solitary motor boat with a standing driver racing inexplicably up and down a short section of the river for about fifteen minutes. The wake from this boat reached me in sheets of flexible mirrored surfaces. I let my boat face the curves coming at us quietly like “shining from shook foil.” Not long after, the intense sun chased me back to my beach and a call for help to get home.
On Wednesday morning I set my alarm clock for 7 a.m. and, even so, the sun was up way before me. I remembered the paddle, but almost forgot the cellphone and life jacket! I was on the water by 7:30 a.m. and found that I could comfortably trace the shade along the east bank of the river where tall trees would hold slumbering shadows in their arms for another hour or so.
Alone with black ducks (Anas rubripes) and dragonflies (Anisoptera), this fourth expedition was the experience I had been hoping for . . . gliding without knowing effort; floating without sensing weight; and just being a bundle of elements continuous with elements above and below, inside and outside.
I set myself the challenge of sliding between two buoys on which serene black ducks were perched. I focused on not hitting the sides of the boat with the paddle, not splashing, not making any noise at all. Slowly, I drifted between the ducks without making eye contact. If I don’t make eye contact, I don’t exist. For one brief instant while crossing the line between two ducks contemplating morning, I became a black duck looking at the same quiet water, feeling the same light breeze ruffle my feathers.
Shortly after I crossed that line, the duck on my right broke the spell, lifted off the float, and skimmed in a wide arc through liminal space; not quite air, not quite water. I placed my palms flat on the water on both sides of my boat-skin and felt a synesthesia of temperature and texture: air . . . water . . . thick, warm, deep: breathing water; floating on air; which is which, both . . . and . . . I am, I am.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Un-words
Writers need respite from words. After a day of wordsmithing, I need to escape the linear chute of language into other symbol systems, other frames of knowledge, other mindscapes and creativities. I’m fine with images or with a film or television program where words may come towards me but require little in return of language.
My body needs to be refreshed from the postures of writing as well. There aren’t that many postures of writing so it usually means sitting. Sitting at my desk is not awfully different from sitting at a café table or holding my notebook on my lap in the living room. I suppose I could get a kneeling chair or write standing up as Virginia Woolf was said to do. If I am the reincarnation of VW (another story), I should take a look at this option (and stay away from rivers).
Walking, gardening, cooking, quilting, and tai chi are my favored relief activities when I am exhausted mentally or physically by hours of scribbling or clicking away at one or another of my keyboards. If I were a musician, I can imagine that playing my oboe or guitar or piano would be another release from the garments of prose.
Walking delivers a cool, refreshing shower of sensory droplets. I see the house with new owners change slightly day by day, smell the tiny white blossoms on this hedge and that, notice the uneven sidewalk blocks and don’t trip, feel the air under this heavy shade, pump thigh muscles with oxygenated blood, suck in that belly, feel a stretched spine reaching for the sky, and more.
Walking is also a meditation on the world outside my head. Writing pushes at my skull from the inside, as if something is trying to get out. Walking equalizes the pressure by exposing me to exterior stimuli: other people, scenery, traffic, little scenarios transacted within my view, wall murals, public buildings, public services, costumes, disguises, and temptations. I step outside my front door and enter the pages of Martin Handford’s Where’s Waldo? or Richard Scarry’s What do People Do All Day? There is so much bright color and high contrast some days and so much mystical haze other days.
Walking brings worms into my field of vision. I don’t need to see worms slowly drying on the sidewalks every day, but if I didn’t ever see them at all, how much less I would know about my own environment. Like witnessing the death of worms, I see other peripheral stories abandoned in the grass or perambulating through my slice of world. Today it’s a red plastic bat dropped on a side lawn and a man in a white sports jacket entering a cafe. I could pause to reflect on the stories that murmur around them in a tempting nimbus, but then I would be writing!
Walking brings me face to face with the dilemmas of eye contact and greeting strangers. I don’t have a predetermined strategy, so it is a new decision to be made twenty times (or more) on a typical walk. Unlike the confusion of greeting strangers, a clear advantage of walking is spontaneous conversations with neighbors hanging out clothes or planting hosta in a shady corner garden. The threads of neighborhood are spun into fabric by such encounters.
Mark Strand’s poem, “Keeping Things Whole” is one way to sum up the experience of walking. This is an excerpt.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Everyone gardens for their own reasons, too. I garden to keep the wilderness at bay. I’m not even sure that what I do out there can properly be called gardening anyway. I believe that in a past life I was a machete-toting bushwacker of some sort. I have this imagined quest going on inside my head while I am weeding or clearing overgrown brush. Just the very word, quest, feels resonant to me as if Quetzalcoatl was my middle name and jungle was my game.
My “gardening” habit is typically neglect for two or three years while I am writing intensively, and then a year of hacking my way through prolific vines and sharp thorny hedges with sharp tools. I may have fallen and impaled myself on a crude prototype of these tools in one of my lives because I am vividly aware of the potential piercing power of the blades I am holding during battles with sinuous woody serpents.
While sweating and ripping and shredding in my little swath of wilderness, I am in constant conversation with the invasive species. I compliment them on their cleverness of disguises, on their audacity in climbing my house, and on their innocence in being marked for death or disruption when they may have tremendously valuable, but unknown, properties. This activity, taken in small doses after hours at the keyboard, is refreshing and salutary. In larger doses, it might be deemed psychotic. I shower immediately afterwards because poison ivy is flourishing this year.
Cooking might seem to be a merely domestic activity, especially when a woman works at home. To me it is a primitive pleasure. I’ve seen amateur chefs labor for hours with numerous, costly ingredients to present a fluffy, complex amuse bouche that barely skims the taste buds. This isn’t my refreshment of choice after a day of writing. I am restored and rebalanced by chopping and stirring. Risotto, jambalaya, or soup is the best holiday from vocabulary I can imagine.
Quilting is my newest reprieve from hours of lexical maneuverings. I get up from my desk chair at one end of the house and walk to the dining room table at the farthest end where a cornucopia of colors and shapes revives my eyes.
My tools of quilting are so completely different from my tools of writing! What a relief to pick up a rotary blade or a long, cool plank of ruled plastic. The numbers I use don’t beg to be strung together or manipulated; they just want to be obeyed in their most literal sense, no connotation or interpretation allowed.
After working in black and white all day, I am a big fan of purple and red with turquoise trim. Just looking at the juxtaposition of contrasting batiks on my table reminds me of those little Smarties candies, a burst of sugar and flavor right where you need it.
I love the little pieces of fabric spread like gems under the dining room chandelier. They are real; they have textures and shapes. I actually made them with my own hands and I will touch them again to make more out of them.
Like writing, I suppose, these humming bits of excitement will become more meaningful as they are joined with other little bits. The sum will be greater than the parts. But where the protocols of writing impose a linear direction most of the time, these modest triangles, squares, and rectangles will be stitched together along all sides, forming multi-dimensional images, perhaps summoning up a foaming, surging storm at sea.
I can be exhausted by 7:00 p.m. and still turn to my colors and shapes and feel invigorated for two more hours of creativity on the other side of the house. Yesterday when I finished trimming tiny triangles from “little sister” squares within squares, I let the scraps flow through my fingers. What can I do with these fractures of the spectrum? I tossed big handfuls of light, color, and shape, for now, into the litter jar of thread and fabric clippings. Quilting is about deliberately making use of scraps, but where do we draw the line? Is it below an inch? Is it a single word?
Tai chi releases me from the compulsion of words through welcome silence and a shift to kinesthetic sense. Others in my class ask our teacher about where to put their left foot during a repulse monkey move, but I ask her, “What is in your mind when you are doing tai chi?” She tells me to focus on one of the six principles of loosened joints, slow continuous motion, moving against resistance, conscious weight transference, upright posture and alignment, and quiet mindful focus. Even the process of enumerating the six principles helps me relax out of the profusion of gushing language where I live most of the day. Gratefully, I move . . . slowly, continuously, against resistance, and with mindful focus . . . to keep things whole.
For Your Writing
Thinking about what we do as RESPITE from writing is not the same as figuring out what we do to AVOID writing. Make three lists: (1) what you are intending to write, (2) what you do to avoid writing, and (3) what you do as relief after writing. Pick one from each list and do them all today!
Quotation for Percolation:
“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” Edwin Schlossberg
My body needs to be refreshed from the postures of writing as well. There aren’t that many postures of writing so it usually means sitting. Sitting at my desk is not awfully different from sitting at a café table or holding my notebook on my lap in the living room. I suppose I could get a kneeling chair or write standing up as Virginia Woolf was said to do. If I am the reincarnation of VW (another story), I should take a look at this option (and stay away from rivers).
Walking, gardening, cooking, quilting, and tai chi are my favored relief activities when I am exhausted mentally or physically by hours of scribbling or clicking away at one or another of my keyboards. If I were a musician, I can imagine that playing my oboe or guitar or piano would be another release from the garments of prose.
Walking delivers a cool, refreshing shower of sensory droplets. I see the house with new owners change slightly day by day, smell the tiny white blossoms on this hedge and that, notice the uneven sidewalk blocks and don’t trip, feel the air under this heavy shade, pump thigh muscles with oxygenated blood, suck in that belly, feel a stretched spine reaching for the sky, and more.
Walking is also a meditation on the world outside my head. Writing pushes at my skull from the inside, as if something is trying to get out. Walking equalizes the pressure by exposing me to exterior stimuli: other people, scenery, traffic, little scenarios transacted within my view, wall murals, public buildings, public services, costumes, disguises, and temptations. I step outside my front door and enter the pages of Martin Handford’s Where’s Waldo? or Richard Scarry’s What do People Do All Day? There is so much bright color and high contrast some days and so much mystical haze other days.
Walking brings worms into my field of vision. I don’t need to see worms slowly drying on the sidewalks every day, but if I didn’t ever see them at all, how much less I would know about my own environment. Like witnessing the death of worms, I see other peripheral stories abandoned in the grass or perambulating through my slice of world. Today it’s a red plastic bat dropped on a side lawn and a man in a white sports jacket entering a cafe. I could pause to reflect on the stories that murmur around them in a tempting nimbus, but then I would be writing!
Walking brings me face to face with the dilemmas of eye contact and greeting strangers. I don’t have a predetermined strategy, so it is a new decision to be made twenty times (or more) on a typical walk. Unlike the confusion of greeting strangers, a clear advantage of walking is spontaneous conversations with neighbors hanging out clothes or planting hosta in a shady corner garden. The threads of neighborhood are spun into fabric by such encounters.
Mark Strand’s poem, “Keeping Things Whole” is one way to sum up the experience of walking. This is an excerpt.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Everyone gardens for their own reasons, too. I garden to keep the wilderness at bay. I’m not even sure that what I do out there can properly be called gardening anyway. I believe that in a past life I was a machete-toting bushwacker of some sort. I have this imagined quest going on inside my head while I am weeding or clearing overgrown brush. Just the very word, quest, feels resonant to me as if Quetzalcoatl was my middle name and jungle was my game.
My “gardening” habit is typically neglect for two or three years while I am writing intensively, and then a year of hacking my way through prolific vines and sharp thorny hedges with sharp tools. I may have fallen and impaled myself on a crude prototype of these tools in one of my lives because I am vividly aware of the potential piercing power of the blades I am holding during battles with sinuous woody serpents.
While sweating and ripping and shredding in my little swath of wilderness, I am in constant conversation with the invasive species. I compliment them on their cleverness of disguises, on their audacity in climbing my house, and on their innocence in being marked for death or disruption when they may have tremendously valuable, but unknown, properties. This activity, taken in small doses after hours at the keyboard, is refreshing and salutary. In larger doses, it might be deemed psychotic. I shower immediately afterwards because poison ivy is flourishing this year.
Cooking might seem to be a merely domestic activity, especially when a woman works at home. To me it is a primitive pleasure. I’ve seen amateur chefs labor for hours with numerous, costly ingredients to present a fluffy, complex amuse bouche that barely skims the taste buds. This isn’t my refreshment of choice after a day of writing. I am restored and rebalanced by chopping and stirring. Risotto, jambalaya, or soup is the best holiday from vocabulary I can imagine.
Quilting is my newest reprieve from hours of lexical maneuverings. I get up from my desk chair at one end of the house and walk to the dining room table at the farthest end where a cornucopia of colors and shapes revives my eyes.
My tools of quilting are so completely different from my tools of writing! What a relief to pick up a rotary blade or a long, cool plank of ruled plastic. The numbers I use don’t beg to be strung together or manipulated; they just want to be obeyed in their most literal sense, no connotation or interpretation allowed.
After working in black and white all day, I am a big fan of purple and red with turquoise trim. Just looking at the juxtaposition of contrasting batiks on my table reminds me of those little Smarties candies, a burst of sugar and flavor right where you need it.
I love the little pieces of fabric spread like gems under the dining room chandelier. They are real; they have textures and shapes. I actually made them with my own hands and I will touch them again to make more out of them.
Like writing, I suppose, these humming bits of excitement will become more meaningful as they are joined with other little bits. The sum will be greater than the parts. But where the protocols of writing impose a linear direction most of the time, these modest triangles, squares, and rectangles will be stitched together along all sides, forming multi-dimensional images, perhaps summoning up a foaming, surging storm at sea.
I can be exhausted by 7:00 p.m. and still turn to my colors and shapes and feel invigorated for two more hours of creativity on the other side of the house. Yesterday when I finished trimming tiny triangles from “little sister” squares within squares, I let the scraps flow through my fingers. What can I do with these fractures of the spectrum? I tossed big handfuls of light, color, and shape, for now, into the litter jar of thread and fabric clippings. Quilting is about deliberately making use of scraps, but where do we draw the line? Is it below an inch? Is it a single word?
Tai chi releases me from the compulsion of words through welcome silence and a shift to kinesthetic sense. Others in my class ask our teacher about where to put their left foot during a repulse monkey move, but I ask her, “What is in your mind when you are doing tai chi?” She tells me to focus on one of the six principles of loosened joints, slow continuous motion, moving against resistance, conscious weight transference, upright posture and alignment, and quiet mindful focus. Even the process of enumerating the six principles helps me relax out of the profusion of gushing language where I live most of the day. Gratefully, I move . . . slowly, continuously, against resistance, and with mindful focus . . . to keep things whole.
For Your Writing
Thinking about what we do as RESPITE from writing is not the same as figuring out what we do to AVOID writing. Make three lists: (1) what you are intending to write, (2) what you do to avoid writing, and (3) what you do as relief after writing. Pick one from each list and do them all today!
Quotation for Percolation:
“The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” Edwin Schlossberg
Monday, February 16, 2009
Feed Me!
We have all heard the expression, “food for thought,” but what does it mean, literally, to be attentive to our mental diet?
I can’t say that I’ve developed a food triangle, or even basic food groups for thinking. I do know that I’m hungry all the time, and I’m determined to take stock of what’s in my pantry and maybe even start a food-for-thought diary. If I look around—on the bedside table, on my desk, beside my desk, on the piano stool next to my favorite chair, on the kitchen counter, I can see evidence of hearty meals and healthy snacks, but also of munchies and sugary sweets.
Books seem like well-balanced meals, but perhaps this is only true if you read them one at a time, straight through. Is a book a well-balanced meal if you get up from the table, snack from the fridge, take a walk, visit a café for a bagel and tea, and then sit back down at the table to finish your steak? A good book can be a steak and potatoes experience, or Cajun blackened chicken and okra, or it can be a three-course vegan extravaganza. Currently, I am (r)eating two novels simultaneously, and I have four additional books warming in the microwave. I’m filling my plate this week with Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet, and often, after I finish a serving of this entrée, I consume four or five chapters of a murder-mystery manuscript concocted by a dear friend (who is also a terrific cook).
Defrosting, near at hand, I have The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz for my next book group. I’m keeping three other books warm and ready for instant refreshment: Blink (signed copy) by Malcolm Gladwell (a Christmas gift from my daughter), Behind Closed Doors: Her Father’s House and Other Stories of Sicily by Maria Messina (on loan from my sister), and The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh (perpetually warm and nourishing; comfort food). Within my sight lines as I write this, I can see five or six more meals ready to be brought to the table.*
If those books are the meals in my larder, what am I enjoying as snacks for thought? This may be more literal than I thought, since I love to read and eat at the same time. There should be a word for this particular bliss. The sounds of crunching and munching are accompaniment and condiment to the euphoria of feasting on words. I reach for a magazine or newspaper with breakfast, lunch, and afternoon refreshments. What could be better . . . not even vitamins. This conversation on conversation inside my head fulfills a whole range of nutritional needs.
We have a subscription to the local daily newspaper that I read standing up in the kitchen, cannibalizing it for the weather, headlines, University highlights, and photos. When I sit down to breakfast or lunch, I seek a broader palate of flavors, one of the weekly or monthly magazines we receive. For light fare, I prefer Newsweek. The photos go well with toast, granola, soups, and sandwiches. For more sophisticated food, The New Yorker provides a richer, deeper experience for the palate. It also engrosses me for longer, stretching lunch right into afternoon snack or possibly all the way into the cocktail hour.
Some weekday meals are leftovers from Sunday’s New York Times. It’s certainly enough to last three or four days! Other classic snacks are FastCompany, any cookbook or food magazine, health newsletters, and, on rare occasions, the catalogs that typically pass through our house in the twenty steps from front door to recycling bin.
If I don’t (r)eat for several days, I feel grumpy and flat. This morning, I located my new issue of FastCompany under my husband’s pile of nutritious reading, and I had it for breakfast. I got calories and energy along with two or three jolts of inspiration in the time it took me to eat a small bowl of granola with walnuts and 2% milk. I clipped a grid of football statistics to discuss with my husband, and I made note of a potential contributor to one of my writing projects. I learned about some new products and trends. Now, after ingesting this food for thought, I am ready and awake to begin the day. Still, I can’t help thinking, “What’s for lunch?”
*Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark, Tim Cahill’s Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, Per Petterson’s In the Wake, Liza Kerwin’s With Love: Artists’ Letters and Illustrated Notes, and Top 10 Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, & Ghent from DK Eyewitness Travel.
For Your Writing
Keep a food-for-thought journal for several days, making note of reading material, music, conversation, TV, or other stimuli that jolt you into thinking. After you have kept the journal for awhile, choose one or several entries to develop. What thinking arose from your snack on an article in the Sunday paper? Did you sip on an overheard conversation? What thinking arose from the taste?
Quotation for Percolation
“How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone.” Vincent van Gogh
I can’t say that I’ve developed a food triangle, or even basic food groups for thinking. I do know that I’m hungry all the time, and I’m determined to take stock of what’s in my pantry and maybe even start a food-for-thought diary. If I look around—on the bedside table, on my desk, beside my desk, on the piano stool next to my favorite chair, on the kitchen counter, I can see evidence of hearty meals and healthy snacks, but also of munchies and sugary sweets.
Books seem like well-balanced meals, but perhaps this is only true if you read them one at a time, straight through. Is a book a well-balanced meal if you get up from the table, snack from the fridge, take a walk, visit a café for a bagel and tea, and then sit back down at the table to finish your steak? A good book can be a steak and potatoes experience, or Cajun blackened chicken and okra, or it can be a three-course vegan extravaganza. Currently, I am (r)eating two novels simultaneously, and I have four additional books warming in the microwave. I’m filling my plate this week with Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet, and often, after I finish a serving of this entrée, I consume four or five chapters of a murder-mystery manuscript concocted by a dear friend (who is also a terrific cook).
Defrosting, near at hand, I have The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz for my next book group. I’m keeping three other books warm and ready for instant refreshment: Blink (signed copy) by Malcolm Gladwell (a Christmas gift from my daughter), Behind Closed Doors: Her Father’s House and Other Stories of Sicily by Maria Messina (on loan from my sister), and The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh (perpetually warm and nourishing; comfort food). Within my sight lines as I write this, I can see five or six more meals ready to be brought to the table.*
If those books are the meals in my larder, what am I enjoying as snacks for thought? This may be more literal than I thought, since I love to read and eat at the same time. There should be a word for this particular bliss. The sounds of crunching and munching are accompaniment and condiment to the euphoria of feasting on words. I reach for a magazine or newspaper with breakfast, lunch, and afternoon refreshments. What could be better . . . not even vitamins. This conversation on conversation inside my head fulfills a whole range of nutritional needs.
We have a subscription to the local daily newspaper that I read standing up in the kitchen, cannibalizing it for the weather, headlines, University highlights, and photos. When I sit down to breakfast or lunch, I seek a broader palate of flavors, one of the weekly or monthly magazines we receive. For light fare, I prefer Newsweek. The photos go well with toast, granola, soups, and sandwiches. For more sophisticated food, The New Yorker provides a richer, deeper experience for the palate. It also engrosses me for longer, stretching lunch right into afternoon snack or possibly all the way into the cocktail hour.
Some weekday meals are leftovers from Sunday’s New York Times. It’s certainly enough to last three or four days! Other classic snacks are FastCompany, any cookbook or food magazine, health newsletters, and, on rare occasions, the catalogs that typically pass through our house in the twenty steps from front door to recycling bin.
If I don’t (r)eat for several days, I feel grumpy and flat. This morning, I located my new issue of FastCompany under my husband’s pile of nutritious reading, and I had it for breakfast. I got calories and energy along with two or three jolts of inspiration in the time it took me to eat a small bowl of granola with walnuts and 2% milk. I clipped a grid of football statistics to discuss with my husband, and I made note of a potential contributor to one of my writing projects. I learned about some new products and trends. Now, after ingesting this food for thought, I am ready and awake to begin the day. Still, I can’t help thinking, “What’s for lunch?”
*Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark, Tim Cahill’s Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, Per Petterson’s In the Wake, Liza Kerwin’s With Love: Artists’ Letters and Illustrated Notes, and Top 10 Brussels, Bruges, Antwerp, & Ghent from DK Eyewitness Travel.
For Your Writing
Keep a food-for-thought journal for several days, making note of reading material, music, conversation, TV, or other stimuli that jolt you into thinking. After you have kept the journal for awhile, choose one or several entries to develop. What thinking arose from your snack on an article in the Sunday paper? Did you sip on an overheard conversation? What thinking arose from the taste?
Quotation for Percolation
“How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone.” Vincent van Gogh
Thursday, January 8, 2009
My Mistake; Your Mistake
William approached my study where I was absorbed in a manuscript and said, "I messed up."
William (not his real name) is a completely reliable craftsman who has done a lot of work for us over the past several years. Being nearly incompetent ourselves when it comes to repairing, painting, electrical work, tile, and almost anything else around the house, we have been so pleased to have someone who is careful and competent to take care of these things for us. William is easy to be around, always returns phone calls, and seems to take care of our little jobs as if they were in his own home.
I followed William to the kitchen where we looked at the situation together. When my husband and I decided to purchase twelve double-cell blinds to insulate our windows, we first asked William if he had the time to measure the windows and install the blinds for us. If he didn’t have time, we might not have undertaken the project at all. I created a spreadsheet of the windows with a name for each one and William measured them all and wrote the measurements in large legible numerals on the list.
"I think I wrote the wrong number on the sheet," said William. "This blind is one inch too narrow." William had not yet put the shade into the bracket he had just installed within the window frame next to the stove.
"Let’s see how it looks when you put it up," I suggested, postponing any conclusions until we could see the full effect of the discrepancy. What was going through my mind at that moment? I tested myself to see if I was thinking that I should have measured the windows myself. Nope, I wasn’t thinking that. Was I thinking that if William made the mistake, he should pay to fix it? No, even though he offered to do so immediately, I wasn’t thinking that I could let him do that. Was I angry or upset? No, I was calm and sure that the situation wouldn’t be bad, and if it was bad, it would be fixed easily.
When it was installed, sure enough, the shade was an inch too narrow, but it still covered all the glass of the window, and if you didn’t know to look right at that gap between the shade and the window frame, you wouldn’t notice that it was narrower than the others. I persuaded William to leave this shade in place only by promising that I was going to install drapes that would cover the space along that side. It was so easy for me to see this as a slight miscalculation with minimal consequences. William confiscated the order form for the shade so he would be able to purchase a new one for us if we had a moment’s hesitation about this one.
William’s error was specific and minor, easily forgiven and forgotten. Not so when the situation was reversed and I made a mistake just a day or two later. I’m not talking about pouring warm decaf hazelnut coffee all over myself by tipping the cup toward my lips before I secured the lid. That made a thorough mess, but no one seemed to notice, and I was reading a new book on Buddhism at the time, so I thought of it as my first test.
No, the mistake I’m talking about was more "public, like a frog." Even telling it elicits waves of recrimination! I phoned the oil delivery and heating company where we have a service contract to report that one of our heating zones wasn’t working. Some variation of this has happened enough times over the years that they know my name and address well. I think they dread my calls. Well, I dread having to call, maybe even more! In the conversation about the current issue, I got into a little tussle with the service manager about when they provide yearly maintenance and whether “bleeding” the radiators is covered in our policy. My point was about preventive maintenance versus servicing our furnace in the middle of the night on a weekend because the filters were clogged causing the temperature to plunge to below fifty degrees when we were away for a few days. Enough said. We agreed that the situation on this particular morning was not urgent and could wait until the next day. Several hours later I received a call that they could come immediately because of a cancellation. Great!
The two service men checked the furnace and found nothing obviously wrong. One of them came to the door and asked to see the thermostat from the non-operative zone. Ugh! He switched it on and the furnace began to purr immediately. My mistake! I had changed the battery recently, and in the process of prying the cover off and snapping it back on, I must have switched the lever to the “Off” position.
I’m still not over this mistake! In fact, I doubt if I will ever call this company again for service. We will either have to change service companies, wait until spring to get warm, or it’s going to be my husband’s turn to call from now until the end of time. Why is it one of my most dreaded occasions to make a call for help only to find that I don’t need it? Like taking a feverish child to the doctor, and by the time you get there, the child is jolly and cool.
Stepping back in perspective, even this mistake is simple, specific, and minor, though definitely embarrassing. Oh, but what about those serious errors in judgment years ago that potentially could have derailed a life or two? Learning to forgive myself is apparently one of the essential principles of Buddhism, but I was raised Roman Catholic. Mortal sins, I was taught, leave a dark smudge on your soul. How did I accept this belief so firmly and lose sight of forgiveness along with everything else about this brand of faith?
No, about these personal failures, I have not yet forgiven myself. I am horrified to look back and see the smudges still there, turbulent with emotion. Regret doesn’t cut it, and divine intervention isn’t currently available. William came to me and said, "I messed up." It was so easy to let it go, a feather drifting through my consciousness. When it comes to my own mistakes, I’ve got the whole live albatross struggling in my arms.
For Your Writing:
Achieving compassion and forgiveness can be a major accomplishment involving months or years of reflection and personal growth. Focus first on times when you have forgiven someone else for "mistakes" both big and small. Stay with this for awhile, starting with the easy forgiveness occasions and working up to some that were more difficult for you. Is it easier for you to forgive a stranger or acquaintance than to forgive someone close to you? If you feel open to more heavy lifting on this topic, reflect on several small, recent mistakes or accidents of your own. Can you achieve compassion and clear your conscience on these? Early adulthood is a fruitful time for making mistakes that matter. If you are looking back on your twenties or thirties, perhaps you may have one or more of these complex behaviors to write about. Forgiveness is a lifelong process.
Quotation for Percolation:
"Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings."
Jack Kornfield (peacequotes@livingcompassion.org)
William (not his real name) is a completely reliable craftsman who has done a lot of work for us over the past several years. Being nearly incompetent ourselves when it comes to repairing, painting, electrical work, tile, and almost anything else around the house, we have been so pleased to have someone who is careful and competent to take care of these things for us. William is easy to be around, always returns phone calls, and seems to take care of our little jobs as if they were in his own home.
I followed William to the kitchen where we looked at the situation together. When my husband and I decided to purchase twelve double-cell blinds to insulate our windows, we first asked William if he had the time to measure the windows and install the blinds for us. If he didn’t have time, we might not have undertaken the project at all. I created a spreadsheet of the windows with a name for each one and William measured them all and wrote the measurements in large legible numerals on the list.
"I think I wrote the wrong number on the sheet," said William. "This blind is one inch too narrow." William had not yet put the shade into the bracket he had just installed within the window frame next to the stove.
"Let’s see how it looks when you put it up," I suggested, postponing any conclusions until we could see the full effect of the discrepancy. What was going through my mind at that moment? I tested myself to see if I was thinking that I should have measured the windows myself. Nope, I wasn’t thinking that. Was I thinking that if William made the mistake, he should pay to fix it? No, even though he offered to do so immediately, I wasn’t thinking that I could let him do that. Was I angry or upset? No, I was calm and sure that the situation wouldn’t be bad, and if it was bad, it would be fixed easily.
When it was installed, sure enough, the shade was an inch too narrow, but it still covered all the glass of the window, and if you didn’t know to look right at that gap between the shade and the window frame, you wouldn’t notice that it was narrower than the others. I persuaded William to leave this shade in place only by promising that I was going to install drapes that would cover the space along that side. It was so easy for me to see this as a slight miscalculation with minimal consequences. William confiscated the order form for the shade so he would be able to purchase a new one for us if we had a moment’s hesitation about this one.
William’s error was specific and minor, easily forgiven and forgotten. Not so when the situation was reversed and I made a mistake just a day or two later. I’m not talking about pouring warm decaf hazelnut coffee all over myself by tipping the cup toward my lips before I secured the lid. That made a thorough mess, but no one seemed to notice, and I was reading a new book on Buddhism at the time, so I thought of it as my first test.
No, the mistake I’m talking about was more "public, like a frog." Even telling it elicits waves of recrimination! I phoned the oil delivery and heating company where we have a service contract to report that one of our heating zones wasn’t working. Some variation of this has happened enough times over the years that they know my name and address well. I think they dread my calls. Well, I dread having to call, maybe even more! In the conversation about the current issue, I got into a little tussle with the service manager about when they provide yearly maintenance and whether “bleeding” the radiators is covered in our policy. My point was about preventive maintenance versus servicing our furnace in the middle of the night on a weekend because the filters were clogged causing the temperature to plunge to below fifty degrees when we were away for a few days. Enough said. We agreed that the situation on this particular morning was not urgent and could wait until the next day. Several hours later I received a call that they could come immediately because of a cancellation. Great!
The two service men checked the furnace and found nothing obviously wrong. One of them came to the door and asked to see the thermostat from the non-operative zone. Ugh! He switched it on and the furnace began to purr immediately. My mistake! I had changed the battery recently, and in the process of prying the cover off and snapping it back on, I must have switched the lever to the “Off” position.
I’m still not over this mistake! In fact, I doubt if I will ever call this company again for service. We will either have to change service companies, wait until spring to get warm, or it’s going to be my husband’s turn to call from now until the end of time. Why is it one of my most dreaded occasions to make a call for help only to find that I don’t need it? Like taking a feverish child to the doctor, and by the time you get there, the child is jolly and cool.
Stepping back in perspective, even this mistake is simple, specific, and minor, though definitely embarrassing. Oh, but what about those serious errors in judgment years ago that potentially could have derailed a life or two? Learning to forgive myself is apparently one of the essential principles of Buddhism, but I was raised Roman Catholic. Mortal sins, I was taught, leave a dark smudge on your soul. How did I accept this belief so firmly and lose sight of forgiveness along with everything else about this brand of faith?
No, about these personal failures, I have not yet forgiven myself. I am horrified to look back and see the smudges still there, turbulent with emotion. Regret doesn’t cut it, and divine intervention isn’t currently available. William came to me and said, "I messed up." It was so easy to let it go, a feather drifting through my consciousness. When it comes to my own mistakes, I’ve got the whole live albatross struggling in my arms.
For Your Writing:
Achieving compassion and forgiveness can be a major accomplishment involving months or years of reflection and personal growth. Focus first on times when you have forgiven someone else for "mistakes" both big and small. Stay with this for awhile, starting with the easy forgiveness occasions and working up to some that were more difficult for you. Is it easier for you to forgive a stranger or acquaintance than to forgive someone close to you? If you feel open to more heavy lifting on this topic, reflect on several small, recent mistakes or accidents of your own. Can you achieve compassion and clear your conscience on these? Early adulthood is a fruitful time for making mistakes that matter. If you are looking back on your twenties or thirties, perhaps you may have one or more of these complex behaviors to write about. Forgiveness is a lifelong process.
Quotation for Percolation:
"Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings."
Jack Kornfield (peacequotes@livingcompassion.org)
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