Walking the Wall

I over analyze things. I am, after all, an English major and digging into a text is fun for me. But this over analyzing gets in the way sometimes, which is why small, simple books like For a Future to be Possible are good for me–because I am struck by the simple things that I loose in the continual shuffle of my mind. The terms “compassion” and “loving kindness” are akin to mantras in Buddhism–they are expounded on in nearly every book, every talk on the subject. I thought I’d given them a great deal of thought, but what I’d really given a great deal of thought to is compassion as somehow the two had blended together and had become synonymous. Being two aspects of love, they are deeply connected, but they are different:

“Compassion…is the intention and capacity to relieve the suffering of another person or living being. Loving kindness…is the intention and capacity to bring joy and happiness to another person or living being” (16).

There is strength in their connection–but a profoundness in their differences that I missed.

As I said before, March was completely hectic and overwhelming, by the end of it I was starting to get that drowning feeling that comes with having an unbalanced, crazy schedule. Monday I had the wonderful feeling of my head breaking out of the water and getting the first real gasp of air and then the serenity of floating on the top. It was warm (72 degrees F) and sunny and we spent the day outside or in our three season porch getting it cleaned up and ready to enjoy on the next lovely day that blows our way–the whole day was an excersize in meditation and meditation had been about non-existent last month! Not this month, the chaos of last month and some unsettling health issues with my son this week have shown me how much I need and miss the centering that meditation brings to me. I did remember to do Thich Nhat Hanh’s smiling meditation whenever I realized how tense I was and how tight my breathing was:

Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Breathing in, there is only the present moment.
Breathing out, it is a wonderful moment.

I am sure there were people passing me on the road or walking to class who really wondered at my deep breathing and ridiculous smile. Still, “Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy” (TNH). Not to mention a ridiculous smile is probably better than the ridiculous dancing and singing I’m usually doing while driving.

Speaking of singing and dancing, I’ve had my iPod Touch for a month now and I still love it completely–there really isn’t anything I don’t like about it. I’m looking forward to the software upgrade in June that will allow it to use third party programs (I’d like a word processor) and have games not dependent on a wi-fi connection. I have to say, though, that I’m nearly always close to one wi-fi spot or another and can pretty well check my email whenever I want throughout the day. The only problem I’ve had with it is the video capability. I thought I’d never use the video aspect of it–well, three seasons of Farscape later, I have to concede that I love the video capability a little too much. That, combined with the crazy month, combined with school has made it a little slow reading month–time to chop down my “currently reading” list to make room for summer reading. In an effort to cut down that list, I went to the bookstore last night.

Going to the bookstore for me is a very zen experience, I love to just walk through and run my fingers across the spines of books, browse through all the nick knacks, grab a cup of tea, and completely zone down. I walked out with some sticky arrows (love them), a zipper bag for receipts and such that is recycled from a rice bag, and another Thich Nhat Hanh book (albeit its a little one!): For a Future to be Possible. This is a great little book that just focuses on the five mindfulness trainings which are the basic statement of ethics and morality in Buddhism (here is the shorthand version, you can read TNH’s longer versions here):

1. I am committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of all beings.
2. I am committed to cultivating loving kindness and learning ways to work for the well being of all.
3. I am committed to cultivating sexual responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society.
4. I am committed to cultivating loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering.
5. I am committed to cultivating good health, both physically and mentally, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming.

Anyway, so far a great book to throw in my purse and snatch bits of reading on. I need to focus on #5!

I was seventeen years old when my sister Joanna was born and while babies were not unheard of in my family (I’m one of seven children and the second oldest)–I wasn’t too young to be annoyed or too old to care and she became a bit like my first child. I was in love at first sight and I think the feeling was mutual. I would steal her out of bed at night to sleep with me, or would climb into her crib and sleep with her. I took her everywhere I could. When I got married, she was about three and she was very confused and not very happy. She had to be removed during the wedding for being upset and when my new husband and I got in the car to leave–she tried to climb in the car as well. The first weeks I was married and would leave my mom’s to go to my new apartment, I remember her standing in the window of the house crying–it broke my heart.

I thought of that little girl when I saw her standing at the end of the aisle getting ready to walk down it to her very handsome husband to be (welcome to the family, Caleb) and it was bittersweet. Life goes by so fast, so very very fast. How did that little baby turn into a lovely bride–when did that happen? It just slipped in there and suddenly I was back in the church helping her out of her wedding dress and she was no longer a bride even–she was a woman, a wife, beautiful, strong…but still, and always, a baby sister.

I love you Joanna.

March was a completely insane month for me–my sister is getting married on Saturday, so it started at the beginning of the month with her wedding shower, then my husband’s 40th birthday party, then Easter, than another sister’s 20th birthday, then my son’s 18th birthday party, then….wait, let’s repeat that last.

My son turned 18 years old.

I will try not to get too mushy here as I already did that when he turned 16 and that does just fine to describe why his turning 18 is extra incredible. Suffice it to say that the first year of Michael’s life was difficult, everything we were told, everything we read said he wouldn’t live to be one year old. Doctors appointments 3x a week, hospital stays again and again, oxygen, feeding tubes, and then some how I found myself in the parking lot of Toys R Us with my husband and son to pick up something and it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks that he was turning one years old in the next week or two. I had blocked myself from thinking of his first birthday because it had changed the instant we learned what he was born with from a happy occasion to some kind of horrible dead line or expiration date. Needless to say, we went a little crazy in Toys R Us that day crash shopping for a beautiful first birthday.

Since then, birthdays for my son have always come with that mixed bag of emotions–elation, apprehension, joy for today, fear for the future all jumbled up together. Eighteen. Eighteen has hit me like the first birthday did–I never thought about his turning one–but, eighteen!

I am so proud of my son. I am proud of his strength of body and mind, but I am most proud of his spirit. He is what people might call a gentle soul and his intuitive compassion teaches me things that I struggle with all the time. Children sense it and are drawn to him, and animals sense it and are drawn to him–there is a quiet, compassionate strength in him that I find inspiring. He is quiet, most often, drawing 9 times out of 10, so that when he bursts into noisy exuberance (usually either when playing a favorite video game or in talking to his birds)–it’s surprising, shocking really, and even if it is so loud it is driving you crazy, you have to laugh because it is so full of pure enthusiasm.

I think turning eighteen was a little discombobulating to him as well, but he came to me with the conclusion that age didn’t really matter–he would just be himself whatever that meant, and that would be okay.

It’s more than okay. Happy Birthday, Michael, I look forward to many many more birthdays of you just being wonderfully you.

(Note: Click the picture above to see the slide show I put together for the party–you’ll have to imagine the music–Iz’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, then Five for Fighting’s “100 Years”, ending in the last part of Yael Naim’s “New Soul”)

I was turning 27 when I drove up a half hour to our community college to sign up for my first semester classes–I cried all the way home. I know how that sounds: mushy, sentimental, silly, gaggy. But the truth is, I cried all the way home. Joseph Campbell wrote a great deal about following your bliss–it’s become a bit of a catch phrase. Bliss is defined as “Identifying that pursuit which you are truly passionate about and attempting to give yourself absolutely to it. In so doing, you will find your fullest potential and serve your community to the greatest possible extent.” He said about it: “If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of trac that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”

For me, going to college to pursue literature and writing was following what I was truly passionate about–and 11 long years later as I come to the end of the first part of my degree seeking (bachelors degree), it is something that I am even more passionate about. Yes, it has taken a long time, and yes, I tell my daughter to do what I say and not what I did–get that degree first, then get married and have children. Still, I don’t regret this slower path because I have an appreciation for my education that I may not have had before and the luxury of knowing exactly what I want which I probably didn’t have at 18 years old.

Last Tuesday I went through interviews for getting a graduate assistantship and the questions only renewed that sense of purpose and of being where I am supposed to be, working towards doing what I am supposed to be doing. Wednesday, I received my formal acceptance into graduate school and while I didn’t cry all the way from the mailbox–there was the same sense of rightness and of doing what I should be doing that I felt 11 years ago.

There are many other choices I could have made, and considered making, that might have made me more money, more security, more options–but I knew that I would be in my early 40s when I would be shifting fully into that new career. By most people’s definition of living a long life, I would be going into the “second half of the rest of my life” and I wanted to be doing something that was important to me, that had value, that had me following my bliss.

Now I just need to get through the rest of this semester when motivation becomes an act of digging deep and summer break is looking like the real bliss!

The neighborhood shook with my screams of excitement when my husband came home from a long trip to Florida for work with my first iPod a few years ago. Actually, it was an iPod mini, 6 gig (of course I took a picture of it!)–he doesn’t know a great deal about technology (that’s my niche in our family unit) and was disappointed it wasn’t the color screen he thought it was. The next day he took himself off to rectify that and came back with a 30gig Photo (as pictured above to the left). My husband really understands to not bother with diamonds and bring on the toys!

To say that my iPod Photo was well used is an extreme understatement–it was used every day off and on all day long. Music in the kitchen, music in the bathroom getting ready, meditation music late at night, audible books and more music in the car on the way to school, yoga music and dance around the house with my daughter and sing at the top of my lungs music. It is most certainly my most prized possession which I should probably feel guilty about on some level of attachment but I love it too much to feel guilty.

My friend Liz killed it.

Okay, that might be a bit of an extreme statement–perhaps she just happened to be there PUSHING BUTTONS OVER AND OVER EVEN THOUGH IT WAS FROZEN when it happened to die. I got the iPod frowny face of doom and was up until 4am trying to repair it. By the next day I had tried everything recommended other than dropping it from the recommended by some10 feet. I was amazed to find that there are actually many forum threads devoted to the art of dropping your iPod when the hard drive goes. That morning my husband took matters into his own hand and dropped it on our hard wood floor–twice, for good measure. It started working again, all hail the internet! However, it only works intermittently and crunches and crackles as the hard drive spins and doesn’t cooperate well when hooked to the computer. The end of an Era.

Luckily I had planned to sell my Palm Tungsten E (it is on its way to a good home with my friend) and had saved a bit with the plan to get a Blackberry or some form of phone/pda combo. My husband, perhaps in an act of self preservation, took me out to the store that morning to look at the new incarnations of iPods with me being torn between the cute, square iPod Nano 8 gig and the gorgeous iPod Touch. I won’t give you a play by play as the suspense is already ruined by the picture at the top of the post but I walked out the door with an iPod Touch 8gig. Then given that my graduation after 11 long years is near and my husband believes the bigger the better, 20 minutes later I walked back out with an iPod Touch 16gig. So instead of a phone/pda combo I have an ipod/pda combo and it is a thing of great beauty.

Thank you, Liz, for killing my iPod.

One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s most beautiful and powerful poems is Call Me By My True Names, I had forgotten about another older by a Celtic poet and druid Amerigin that is very similar. I heard it on a Speaking of Faith podcast called The Inner Landscape of Beauty about John O’Donohue and was struck with how alike the concepts are:

I am the wind on the sea.
I am the ocean wave.
I am the sound of the billows.
I am the seven-horned stag.
I am the hawk on the cliff.
I am the dewdrop in sunlight.
I am the fairest of flowers.
I am the raging boar.
I am the salmon in the deep pool.
I am the lake on the plain.
I am the meaning of the poem.
I am the point of the spear.
I am the god that makes fire in the head.
Who levels the mountain?
Who speaks the age of the moon?
Who has been where the sun sleeps?
Who, if not I?

Years ago I read Isabel Allende’s Eva Luna and fell in love with her beautiful and lyrical style of writing and it became definitive to me for what magical realism is at its strongest. While arguing that there is a difference between fantasy and imagination, she defines imagination as the exaltation of reality–which in an of itself is a beautiful definition. She seems to be a bit at odds with her books being labeled as magical realism, though I’m not sure why. Regardless, she notes that the only element of it found in Daughter of Fortune, which I just finished, is the ghostly visitations of Tao’s wife Lin and she explains that it isn’t so much an element of fantasy but of another person’s reality:

In his culture, in the time that he lived, the idea of ghosts was ordinary, was completely real, so real that there were amulets in the houses so that spirits would not appear to you; there were streets where you couldn’t walk, etc. So in his culture, ghosts were perfectly possible. No American characters, for example, those who came to the Gold Rush in Daughter of Fortune, have any experiences of that sort because they live in a reality different from that of Tao Chi’en. What is reality? A combination of daily “reality” with a reality that is experienced in another manner?

This is a theme that runs through the book–the idea of cultural and even personal reality–and it is one I remember strongly from Eva Luna. She seems to work a lot with the idea that we all not only have personal stories, but are actively engaged in writing and rewriting our stories in ways that are often beautiful and strong–and sometimes in ways that are restricting and unhealthy. And really it goes a step further in that the stories we are writing and rewriting shape what reality is–so in a culture in which it is a shared reality that dead relations visit from beyond the grave, it comes about that ghosts truly exist on some level. Anyway, it is a beautifully written book and didn’t disappoint at all.