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Category: Compassion

Brave New World

So much has happened in the last month I cannot even begin to catch up. At the same time it is as if nothing has happened at all. I am still here, in Knoxville, life still goes on, all is well. It is a life of little excitement, and that is often all to the good. But even that is ambiguous. I am excited. I am excited at small things, and increasing energy, at the ability to vacuum the cobwebs out of the corners of the ceilings and the light fixtures. I am excited that the various piles of life, the things neglected, are less neglected now, and that energy grows steadily, in small increments. The truth is that even joy takes energy.

Two weeks ago, well almost two weeks ago, I cleaned out the garage. This took most of an afternoon and it was dark by the time I finished. The box in the middle (green stripe) is now gone. The pile of black things in the driveway also. That was a floor-standing bike rack that worked in my apartment, but not in the garage because it is meant to lean against a wall and the floors of the garage slope slightly toward the center in order to drain any errant water that might find its way inside. Sold.

I abandoned the garage in the early summer. Oh I walked through it to get to my car. But it was filled with dirty shovels and bags of dirt, spills on the floor, cobwebs I hadn't the energy to tackle. Mess and nature were taking over and this fed my own bitter inner voices. How could I live here two years (almost 2 1/2 years now) and not yet have put up shelves, of organized the garage, have kept up with the mess? My inner voices moved beyond gentle admonitions to chiding to shrieks of outrage and disappointment.

But wait. I was in the middle of planting when suddenly I simply could not. it was not a question of what I would rather do, but one of what I actually could do. The question was "do I lift this shovel from the floor?" "Do I sweep up this dirt?" Or do I use what small remaining bit of energy remains to drag myself up the steps and back into the house. "Do I even have enough energy for that?"

Wait! I have lived here 2 1/2 years, but over 1 1/2 years of that time I have been dealing with other issues, health issues, energy issues, the push-pull of dreams versus the reality of limited energy. It is time to cut myself some slack. I can be happy with neat but not organized. Yes, there is more that could be done. The possibility of more always exists. I have always been subject to the whims of "more is more", to gluttony, not just in having, but in doing. I was trained from early childhood for a life of gluttony: the gluttony of doing; of being; the need to be "smarter than"; the push to be "more accomplished"; the drive to achieve. The call of "more" is yet another trap.

There have been other progresses. The espresso machine started leaking. It started leaking at the worst possible time, when my energy was low, when my brain was also trapped in a pit of molasses. It could flood the kitchen cabinet between my first and second expresso if I grew roots in my chair, if I allowed too much time to elapse. And then……. The flood and its aftermath would overwhelm my energy levels and send me back to bed, exhausted and coffee-less. But this was but a small crisis, a crisis of luck and even privilege in a world of greater crises.

A month later the coffee corner is back in business. The biggest source of the leak has been addressed, although there are still a few small adjustments to be made, as there are also a few small tweaks to be made adjusting the grind back to my normal house espresso grind after a month of grinding coffee much more coarsely. I can live with tweaks. To live is to master the need for constant tweaking of one's hold on reality.

Some piles have simply been shifted to other piles, it is true.

I cleaned out my closet. I dreaded going in there. I didn't know what would fit, what would not. I wore the same few garments over and over again, and I was happy with the cohort of limited choice. But the closet still loomed. In the last month it has all been addressed. Everything, from undergarments to coats and everything in between has been tried on and divided up. The standard divisions were strictly maintained: keep, donate, mend or remake. Surprisingly, it all came out pretty evenly. About 1/3 of the contents of my closet remains, although that is more heavily weighted toward shoes and accessories.

Above is the pile of potentialities: things that need mending, things that can be altered or remade, things that show promise of transformation because the fabric or the yarn can be reused, reconfigured, reimagined. Of course, in the immediate future this just means one more pile in the studio.

I haven't sorted the studio out yet. It remains more a house of dreams than a fully functioning work space, although I am beginning, just beginning, to work there again. My hands itch at the prospect while simultaneously protesting as they struggle with fine motor skills. Every day my hands and my head come a little closer together. Every day dreams and reality butt heads. Every day the walls shift, even minutely.

November 22, 2021
What the Mannequins Taught Me

Meet Abigail and Matilda

Matilda is the older of the two; the one wearing the evening dress, and Abigail is the younger. But even she must be at least 15 years old.

Both Matilda and Abigail were in storage for essentially a couple of years, since I moved out of the condo and into this house. Their rediscovery has been revelatory. First of all, dressing them was a bit of a challenge. Then, when I looked at them across the room, for the first time really in a long long time, I noticed how long, small and willowy Matilda was. Both are my height. Both are wearing my old clothes, garments I have loved and worn again and again. But I never, in my entire life, considered myself willowy.

That seems sad.

I dubbed them Laurel and Hardy, for reasons I will now explain. Size and the perception of size are interesting things. Stan Laurel, for example was not particularly thin. He was of average size but looked small and thin compared to Oliver Hardy who was 6’1” and bulky. Matilda probably is slender but still curvaceous, as was I at that time, but her smallness, as compared to her height, surprised and almost shocked me. She is probably closest to an American size 6, if there is any standard. Abigail is probably closest to an American size 14 or 16, and she looks large compared to Matilda, but she is closer in size to the average American woman.

I named them Laurel and Hardy because of the shock factor, of the idea of the terms “skinny” and “fat” which I have come to realize more often than not have nothing to do with actual scientific data and relate more to cultural norms and biases. When most women say they feel skinny, they mean attractive, and this is triggered by a cultural bias in which women are supposed to be small, take up little space, to be insignificant. Of course many will argue with me. I know women who consider thinness and the ability to wear towering heels as a symbol of power; I may have been one of those women. Turning a symbol of weakness into supposed power is not new, but it may also not be helpful. The same is true of the word fat, at least as it applies to women’s appearance. When I say I am fat, I am basically saying I feel unhappy about myself, and more often than not, that has nothing to do with my actual weight. I am fairly confident that I am not alone. These words are the words of shaming. Matilda and Abigail reminded me of this, and reminded me to stop it. And we all should. But I don’t want to go into shaming and shaming words in this post.

When I wore that evening dress. I did not consider myself willowy. In fact I probably thought of myself as fat. I was probably a good 30 or 40 pounds heavier than I had been in college, but even then, I never thought of myself as thin. I did not have an eating disorder, but I was deeply conditioned into the way I thought about myself and if I had not been “fortunate” enough that I could eat anything and everything and still remain unusually thin, I might well have developed an eating disorder. But eating disorders are not really about weight. And despite the fact that we tell ourselves that “thin” is healthy and “fat” is not, this is belief is based only partially in fact and does not correlate in the way our biases assume. The obverse can just as easily true, and often is.

So, if I was shocked to see Matilda dressed, I was equally surprised by Abigail. I had always planned to pad Matilda out eventually and use her for fitting as I started to sew again. I knew I would never look like Matilda again. Discovering I was celiac (a malabsorption syndrome) and having an atrial septal defect (which made my heart work extra hard just to move my skinny self around) repaired, put a stop to that. But in my head I kept telling myself “if only I can get back to being as thin as Abigail again, I will be happy”. But there are no conditions on love, including self love. I remember telling my (step) children that there is no such thing as “I love you, but…” or “I will love you if….” But did I apply that to myself? to self-love? Obviously not.

So dressing Abigail was a shock. None of my current clothes fit her. In fact I could not get them on her. Abigail is bigger than I am, so why am I condemning myself? Yes, Abigail’s waist is smaller than mine, but Abigail is eternally in her early 40s and I most certainly am not. When I say I am fat, I don’t mean that I am obese. I am not. A little overweight yes. But really I am saying that I can’t walk as far as I want. I don’t have as much energy as I would like. I have trouble with the first 10 or 15 minutes I walk, and in fact may always as that is a residual effect stemming from my scoliosis. Some of those things I can change, some of them I cannot. I honestly don’t believe attractiveness has anything to do with weight. In fact I think almost every woman, or man, I meet is attractive. But Abigail and Matilda reminded me that I did not extend the same courtesy to myself. And this was in large part a big reason that I pulled inward and away from the blog for a while. Because I know my self-criticisms are not true, that the little girl who was shamed is grown up now, that I only have to please myself.

The plan was always to pad Matilda out eventually. I thought I would be padding Abigail out as well, but we will see. She has padding now, and she captures the curve of my spine well because she was made from a cast of my actual body. The dress Abigail is wearing is a dress I loved and plan to copy. I still plan to copy it even though it is a bit big now and I am less curvy.

Abigail and Matilda reminded me to stop fretting. I had several beloved things I had made but not worn for a while, things I would say that will look better when I am ……. Surprisingly, or not actually, they all fit better than I thought they would. I cannot wear them in the same way I did when I was 45, but who cares about that? I have been wearing the cashmere cardigan seen above, knit sometime before 2005, which is when I joined Ravelry. Yesterday I wore a sweater I knit in 2008. The photo below is from 2008. But I am just as happy with the sweater now as I was then.

But this is not really about wearing old things, or trying to regain lost youth. It is about settling into who I am now without burdens. This process of settling is physical, is mental, is emotional. It is time to let go. This is my space. This is my time. Here I am.

February 5, 2020
Abandon all hope….

Of coherent thought at least, of being able to string together sentences, or even more so, whole paragraphs…..

I am still in nesting mode I suppose, and scattered. There are days when I have plans and ideas and those plans are constantly interrupted by other necessities. Then, when all is quiet I pick up the pieces and try to finish the myriad half-done projects. It is minor. It is a privilege actually, but that does not mean there are not days when I do not wonder if I will ever be able to think again, much less write. At least I am able to connect my computer to the internet, and the solution was all my doing. After a couple of phone calls, I realized that all Apple support was doing was trying to follow a chart, a rote if-this, then-that routine that was skirting around my issues and never getting to the heart of it. Sounds like a metaphor for my life at the moment. In which case there is hope after all.

This past weekend was the first weekend in which there were no workmen here. You might think I would have gotten a lot done and I would argue that this was not the case, that I spent a lot of time just reveling in the silence, and that would be true. It was also a working weekend for me, as the first weekend of the month is my altar guild weekend, and I had a funeral on Saturday and then church services on Sunday. I don't really like Saturday funerals because they interfere with my Saturday Farmer's Market habit, but in the end, doing what you want to do is not where meaning comes from in life. Meaning comes from helping others. And need rarely cooperates with want; helping someone when you are least inclined to do it because you are tired, or frustrated, or had been planning to do something else taps into the essence of our humanity. When we interrupt our own ego-driven pursuits and help others we open ourselves up to joy.

Besides, altar guild suits me. I like the idea of making sure that things work, that everything is pretty, and that what you need is there and ready, and not having to be the public face of anything.

I finished organizing the kitchen, putting away the last few things that were stacked up, waiting to find a home. Oh there are a few glitches here and there, a couple of extra shelves have been ordered, and space is different from my previous kitchens so the organization needs a bit of fine-tuning. But basically it is done, and just in time as well. The painters came in and finished up today, installing the hardware for the windows and the screens, my wonderful side-opening screens, there when I need them and out of sight when I don't.

I spent the biggest part of the weekend organizing books. I'm still only about half done, but it is of course getting easier simply because the pile of unsorted books grows smaller and smaller so finding things is faster. I actually have far more bookshelf space than I need, which seems like a minor miracle, and I may have to space the books out more on the shelves. For a few moments I thought of all the books I gave away and donated before moving to Tennessee 7 years ago, but no, there are actually very few books that have been replaced, and a library needs room to grow….

And finally I spent time knitting and reading Ninth Street Women, which I adore. These women amaze me and I love the way the author interweaves the story with themes from their lives and their art, not necessarily always chronologically but in a way that makes sense in the flow of the art and the relationships, which, to mind at least, is how our experience of life tends to evolve, chronological yes, because we can't avoid time, but also simultaneously separate from that chronology, because what matters to us, and what shapes us, has its own way of interfering with timelines. The knitting is going slowly simply because I knit with linen more slowly than I can knit with wool, but I now see enough color that I eagerly look forward to the next change. My knitting is much like the book in a way then, worth any added effort in the revelation of what appears next.

August 5, 2019
Tuesday: Fragmented Thoughts

My brain has felt fragmented of late, as if I cannot hold onto thoughts — they skitter away like mice seeking shelter. I played bridge yesterday, for the first time in a couple of months, but after an initial semi-burst of focus, my attentions wandered, bouncing around the room, flitting between conversations, everywhere and nowhere all at once. I lost count. When I was supposed to deal I shuffled. I don't remember being this scattered after a move before. Perhaps I was and have simply forgotten; the fractures in memory perhaps a gift.

Perhaps I should just capitalize on that, meandering and fragmented thoughts today, assuming that cohesion and coherence will follow in their own good time.

(1)

This is the first week that I am not constantly exhausted, that I awake with a glad heart rather than yearning to burrow deeply beneath the covers, seeking rest but really unable to slow myself down enough to actually achieve a restful state. Actually, I started to feel rested over the weekend, and I took a break from exercise, which may have helped. Rebooting my exercise regime while moving may have been a tad ambitious; but then I've always tended to operate at either full-throttle or full-stop. Overdone or undone: one has no recourse but toward self-compassion.

(2)

The shelves for the master bathroom finally arrived last week and I was able to finally unpack and begin to organize. This photo was taken when there was still a yellow film over the window. I posted another picture yesterday, of the other set of shelves once the window was revealed. I am well aware that open shelves would not work for everyone, but I've come to hate drawers. They are never the right size for the things I want to store in them, and I am very particular about things being grouped and lined up particular ways, about there not being a mess. No junk drawers for me. If it can't be lined up in a way that everything is visible, then there is simply too much.

My mom is probably rolling with laughter at that because she well knows how much I tend to create huge messes when I am in the throws of some creative inspiration. Perhaps that is exactly why I want the rest of my life to be orderly. Perhaps this is also the constant struggle in my own walk through life, how to balance my need for peace and orderliness with the danger and messiness of creation, tinged as it is with a basic underlying laziness. One thing about maturity, one does eventually learn that it is easier to maintain a system than it is to wrest orderliness out of chaos. There is always some spot of chaos in my house, in my relationships, everywhere really. I don't think you can force life into a particular mold. Life is never really perfectly balanced, always a delicate dance along a fine line.

(3)

I wrapped the shade around the Alta Costura lamp last night and it is finally standing in my living room, for the first time since moving into this house. The shape is made by the artful shaping of a long rectangle of translucent PVC. Designed by Joseph Aregall in 1992, the lamp is inspired by the work of Balenciaga, and is a wonderful lesson in the art of draping, and a reminder of what I like about dressmaking. It is always that transformation that appeals to me, in sewing and knitting as well, as taking a simple line or a simple 2-dimensional rectangle and creating something three-dimensional that flatters and is beautiful.

This detail, this small thing, somehow in my heart, cries "home at last".

July 9, 2019
The Tendrils of My Thoughts

I am a little scattered this morning. My sinuses are draining, which may account for at least some of the randomness of my thoughts as every time I seem to get settled on a particular track, I am stopped and rerouted by a trip to the tissue box.

It seems therefore that this is proving to be the perfect morning for a few random bits.

I replaced the hose on my gravity feed iron this morning. The previous (yellow) hose had proven to be a problem when I was working on the Christening gown, not surprisingly as it was actually a piece of medical tubing I had dug out of George's box of essential supplies after he passed away. The hose had served for a few years, when I was only sewing lightly and in short bursts, but it did not stand up to the prolonged heat necessary for a larger project. This is not surprising; it was never meant to go on a hot iron. Admitting defeat, I ordered a proper hose, one intended for use with a hot iron. Yesterday I removed the old hose, which also required some scraping, soaking, and general work to remove areas of melted rubber from the metal parts of the iron. This morning the new hose went into place, and I am ready for prolonged work in the studio, without the frustrations of working with inadequate equipment. Of course the problem was one of my own making, but that seems to be often the case with human endeavor, not that I am willing to go down that path very often (admitting to mistakes, not the making of them, a process in which I engage far too frequently).

One of the amaryllis bulbs is about to open. I am very much looking forward to the big reveal.

A friend and I attended a reception yesterday evening, where the upcoming season of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra was announced. It was a lovely evening, and the presentation was interspersed with musical interludes performed by the symphony's Wind Quintet, Looking at the amaryllis bulb this morning reminds me of one such interlude, where they musicians were playing some 17th century Hungarian dances. The music felt joyous and peaceful, and wrapped itself around my thoughts like the tendrils of a climbing vine, gently winding their way into my thoughts and opening up, like a flower into new vistas.

Such I suppose will be the case with the Amaryllis. I am looking forward to the exuberance of the big reveal, and already in a musical state of mind, I am reminded of the vibrant joyousness of last week's symphony performance, which ended with an excess of joyful exuberance as the Knoxville Symphony and the members of the Youth Symphony performed Dvorak's Symphony #9, "From the New World". I was particularly tickled by this (I have always loved that symphony) because George always hated it, thinking it was far too populist and overwrought. And yet George's memory accompanied me to that concert as the Dvorak, among other things, was paired with one of George's favorite pieces, Korngold's Violin Concerto in D major. It is quite possible that in my youth I felt much the same way about the Korngold as George did about the Dvorak. Anyway, the Korngold was stunningly performed. Tessa Lark brought a beauty and lyricism to the piece, which too my ears had always seemed to full of schmaltz for comfort. I think I believe both new depths and new lightness was revealed, a newly discovered sense of joy, as well as the deep peacefulness that comes when one recognizes how one is shaped by one's past, and yet not necessarily defined by it.

And lastly, Tikka. Here she is sleeping in my closet, her head resting on some metal hand weights. This seems particularly uncomfortable to me, but as it is one of her favorite spots, I must assume our understandings and experiences of comfort are different.

Tikka was diagnosed with Cushing's Disease around Christmas and it took a few weeks to get the details of the diagnosis and treatment squared away. She started her new medicine late last week, and although not all of her symptoms have abated, she is already a much lighter spirited, bouncier and happier dog. I am reminded of how she slowed down over a period of months and how we thought the problem was back or hip issues, both of which are present, but now I see that this disease was probably just building up slowly, see how things can sneak up on us before we realize what is going on, see how powerful healing can be.

January 23, 2019
The Week in Review

The first full week of 2019 has come to a close, and already I am not managing to maintain a schedule. But are schedules necessary? or are they artificial constructs?

Actually, if this first week is any indication, 2019 is off to a good start. A week ago Sunday I had a lovely lunch with my step-daughter, chatting and laughing, regaled with tales of her recent trip to California, and getting caught up on visits with her childhood and college friends. Lunch was at one of my favorite spots in Knoxville, a place I got to eat twice this week, and it was half-way from my house to the UT campus, where I had a concert on Sunday afternoon.

In fact, I was so enjoying our lunch and the conversations that I was late to the concert, late enough to miss the first piece, but I did make it in time to hear Mozart's Oboe Quartet in F Major (which was fabulous, by the way). This was followed by a Schubert Octet, also beautifully performed, but long. I must admit I grew restless and slipped out the door early. This had nothing to do with the concert and everything to do with me, a result of over scheduling and a yearning to be outside. Luckily, being late to begin with, I was near the door, making it easy to slip out again about 3/4 of the way through the piece. I spent the remainder of the afternoon planting bulbs, the 400 bulbs I reported planting previously, before impending darkness and the increasing cold drove me inside. Mozart was bouncing around my head the entire time I was planting, and afterwards, when I lay on the floor with my feet up on the sofa, allowing my back some time to recover.

There was more bulb planting over the next four days, another 350 bulbs or so, although planting smaller numbers per day was easier on my back. It all seems a little excessive, no? Well yes. I had ordered the bulbs early, almost as soon as the catalogs were available, because I knew some of the bulbs would sell out, ordered the bulbs when I still thought I would be living in my house, before I knew the yard would be torn up, before I knew so many things. Now the whole order seems excessive, and perhaps foolish, but it is too late for regrets. Sometimes all one can do is move forward; sometimes one must just plunge one's hands in the dirt and hope for the best.

Tuesday I went to Knoxville's new Change Center; a trip which filled me with inspiration and hope. And yet, at the same time, my head was also filled with questions. I am proud to be a member of a city that is putting such effort into helping at risk youth and yet I also wonder how I can do more, partly just in volunteering to help on an individual basis, but also what role I can play in bridging the divides in this city that also often seems like two cities, the more affluent, educated, western city, and the less affluent, at risk, eastern city. It is not a situation that is unique to this city; in many ways we are a microcosm of the country, but that does not make the divide any less shocking, or the need any less crucial. We inhabitants of the western city tell ourselves it is not about race, but of course it is and it isn't. Even more than about race it is about class, but class is the thing we hate talking about more than we hate talking about race. Yet neither of those words is enough to contain the problem, they each represent a narrowing and a labeling, and externalizing, if you will. And externalizing and labeling are both forms of avoidance. Avoidance is key. Increasingly I think the issue is one of the walls we build and the bubbles in which we enfold ourselves, ostensibly in the name of protection. We console ourselves with labels, just as we console ourselves with our complacency, with good intentions, by telling ourselves "it is not me". Like so many of the divides in our country, the obvious divisions are all too real, and yet are also a part of a greater and more complex interleaving of issues that play themselves out in our individual lives and in our society, on issues large and small.

And so it seems I have been spending much of this first week of 2019 thinking about bubbles, how we each live in our own little community bubbles, and whether our bubble is one of hope or one of despair, we are too often trapped within it, unaware that we are even encapsulated. Much as I want to help individuals transcend one kind of bubble, I am also torn and worried about all the other bubbles, the bubbles that keep people separate and in ignorance, the bubbles of complacency that, under the guise of security and protection, actually drive us apart. For as long as our lives are contained in our bubbles, and I live in as much of a bubble as anyone else I know, we are building walls that keep us apart and isolate us, many kinds of walls, and many kinds of isms. As long as we live in bubbles, I fear we cannot honestly live in harmony and humanity. I suppose what I am really wondering is how we stop being bubbles and return to be being water.

I don't know where I am going with any of this. I still need to figure it out, but it is good to start the year thinking of things that need figuring out, good to question my own assumptions and biases, even as I live within those biases: lunching with friends, planting bulbs, going to concerts, caught in the activities of my really pretty privileged life. There was another concert on Wednesday, a fabulous concert that stuck with me more than Sunday's concert, and for which I stayed until the end. A concert that had my head spinning, and thinking about harmony and dissonance, and the ways bubbles can be burst, yielding new harmony. There was an hour spent holding a baby on Friday. There was a christening on Saturday, and another few minutes holding that same baby. There is nothing like a baby to bring you to center of all things, the center of life, the center of potential, the center of what we call can be.

But these were all distractions in a life, and I am not even sure they were the essential elements. Or perhaps they are exactly the essential elements. A baby, seeds and bulbs, new life, music, these are all things that unite us and promise new growth, these are all the stuff of potential and promise, fully present before walls and conditions hem them in.

I was thinking about how young babies are just happy to be held, held by anyone who is warm and loving and willing. It is usually months before walls start to go up, before only parents and known people are wanted, before bubbles start forming. We don't tend to think about the artificially of what we impose and what is absorbed. What we think of as common knowledge is really just our own bubble, a reflection, something we've been taught. What we think of as truth is often also only a reflection of what we see inside our bubble. I am no different. I am a product of my environment, my head filled with assumptions and biases I am not even aware I harbor. I acknowledge that we need bubbles, we need filters and membranes, but there is a danger when those walls stop being permeable and become rigid.

I think we need weaker walls, softer walls, walls that are more fluid. How do we let the walls of our bubbles grow softer? How do we stop harming others by protecting ourselves? How do we let our bubbles live in harmony instead of disharmony? How do we become water?

For some odd reason I have been remembering John Lennon this week, remembering particularly the words to one of my favorite songs: Imagine. Only bits and pieces are here.

"Imagine all the people

Livin' life in peace.

Yoo hoo

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

….

No need for greed or hunger

The brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharin' all the world

…

Welcome to 2019.

Perhaps it is long past time we start to change the world. Perhaps I am still a dreamer. But if it weren't for the dreamers, I think we all would have destroyed each other long ago. Perhaps, as long as we are here, there is always hope.

January 14, 2019
Wandering

My Texas trip came to a close with a visit to San Antonio, always one of my favorite cities. My first day in town was occupied mostly with family visits, but my second day, my last day in Texas that wasn't a travel day, I reserved as a personal day, not that I did much. Actually not doing much was the point. I took a couple of walks along the riverwalk, one of several miles duration, Tikka wandered around the Pearl Farmer's Market and had brunch, I visited a sculpture garden.

I sat on my balcony, overlooking the Riverwalk, and read a book. The photo above was taken in the very early morning however, before there was enough light for reading, but perfectly pleasant enough to sit with coffee and watch the runners go by.

I did take a few pictures here and there. Bits that I found interesting. I have a new phone, with a new camera and it was fun to play with it a little bit, although mostly my focus was not on picture-taking opportunities. More likely I was just enjoying a beautiful day, breezy and cool with temperatures in the 60's. A perfect day for walking and letting one's thoughts meander.

The fall colors were lovely.

But, as per usual, I was also intrigued by human artifacts and influences.

Of course we humans always have an impact on our environment.

I continue to be fascinated by the play of light, structure, vegetation in the view from the river walk of the Tobin Center for the Arts. I believe I took the same, or a very similar, photo on my last visit.

And there is always the question of whether what is good for us is also good for our world. Sometimes we do better than others, sometimes we fail miserably, but hopefully we learn to live together. Family visits are like that as well. We start out with altruistic intentions, to see a loved one and support them, spend time with them. But our wishes and desires often overrule our kinder instincts. We want to see and support and bond with our families and friends, but we also want them to do and be the kind of people we want, do the things we want. Family visits. All that yearning and wanting and the stress of conflicting needs and desires can lead to both moments of stress and moments of kindness and empathy.

I was reading Rebecca Kaufman's The Gunners, which I enjoyed, and which was, in many ways a good book to read over the course of a few days visiting family. The book explores a friendship over many years, and a process of coming together, drifting apart, and reconnecting. But it also discusses secrets, desires, things said and things not said and how they all influence our relationships, often the things not said having a greater influence than the things said as they allow imaginations, always tainted by an isolated solitary perspective, to run wild. And yet…

It is precisely there, in the "and yet" that all the possibilities coalesce, especially the possibility of love.

November 26, 2018
Giving Thanks

It is the time in this country when we take a day to give thanks. And so we do. We go overboard preparing too much food, occasionally eat to excess, watch football and parades, spend time with family and friends. Some of us rise early the next morning and do battle seeking material excess at low prices.

Some of us, those whose hearts are perhaps too big, who take the worries of the world too greatly, secretly fret about whether or not we should really be celebrating excess when there is so much tragedy in the world: people who have lost loved ones, families displaced by fires in California, hurricanes on the gulf coast, towns devastated, people who have lost everything. The tragedies of the world seem unimaginable, our own comfort and security shallow.

But of course it is good to have a ritualized day of Thanks, a reminder that there is always something to be grateful for, although we may not always see it. Perhaps it is human nature to wish for whatever it is we do not have, what we do not see, as if wishing would make it better. But I'm not sure we wish for the right things. Yes, wishing for rain to put out fires may seem good. But what if it rains too much? Mudslides, flooding. The world rarely seems to work in the way we humans would imagine it to be.

I have been remembering a book I loved as a child, Half Magic by Edward Eager. Children find a coin or talisman that grants half a wish. Misadventures ensue. There are parts of the book that are difficult for today's readers, yes, but I am not certain the we should abandon that which is good because of that which makes us uncomfortable. Easy answers often ignore difficult questions, and life, human life, is nothing if not complex and often contradictory. And so it is good to be grateful. It is good to be reminded that the things we wish for often have unintended and unimagined consequences, and that true magic can happen in the most unexpected and unanticipated ways.

Be grateful. Be kind. Do something for someone else, no matter how small. Have a wonderful day, by which I also mean take time to breathe in the wonder. Give thanks. Then, having stored up all that goodness, share it with the world.

(the painting is by Joseph Delaney. I originally posted it, and wrote about it, last August, here.)

November 22, 2018
Do We Stand in Love?

Monday evening I attended a vigil for victims of the Tree of Life Shooting. The lawn outside the Arnstein Jewish Community Center was bright with the light from hundreds of candles.

It was reported that between 700 and 800 people attended, and I believe that. I am happy I went, happy to have gone with my step-daughter and grandson, happy to see so many people there, people from many different faiths, coming together in love. And it was an evening filled with warmth, where one felt that love could indeed prevail.

I don't always attend vigils and marches, and from a purely intellectual perspective I struggle with their effectiveness. But I also know that one of the most important things we can do as humans is simply to show up. Showing up was what was needed, sharing our love with our neighbors in their grief was what was needed.

We are all Jews. First of all, if you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, your faith tradition stems from the same root. But I am not speaking of that. And I am not denying that this is a hate crime, an anti-Semitic act in a country that is becoming increasingly anti-Semitic. I feel sad for my Jewish family and friends. But I also feel sad for all of us.

We are all Jews. Every single one of us is someone else's other. Every single one of us can become a victim in a moment. Yes, I admit to stating this from my position of white protestant privilege. But it doesn't matter if you are white, black, Asian, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Atheist, heterosexual, homosexual, blue-eyed, masculine, feminine, rich or poor. We are all Jews and we all live in fear. Most of the time, however, we are adept at denying that fact, even from ourselves.

All of our lives hang on a thread. We can bind ourselves together in love, or we can let the fabric of our society and our humanity ravel away. Yes the shooting in Pittsburgh was the act of anti-Semite. He may even be a madman. Evil and mental illness will always be with us. Apparently so will denial. When we can label a person, a place, an event, we make it smaller. We put it in a box and store it away on a high shelf in our mental and emotional closet. And another thread in our societal fabric breaks.

An act of violence in a place of worship, a sanctuary, is an act of violence against each and every one of us. A shooting in a school is an attack on every one of our children. Any shooting of innocents, any shooting at all, is an act of violence against each and every one of us. And we all carry the scars whether or not we acknowledge that fact.

We are all Jews. We live in a world increasingly marked by fear and hate. And we are afraid. Because we are afraid we turn our backs, although we tell ourselves other stories, stories meant to deny any thought that we may live in fear. When we close our doors and turn our backs we are building our own ghettos.

How can we claim to be a country that respects religious freedom when we lock our sanctuaries? Not just synagogues and temples, but churches as well. How can we say all are welcome, all are loved when we are so frightened we have to lock our doors? How can we claim to live in freedom when none of us is free? We cross the street to avoid the homeless person, the group of unfamiliar-looking young people. We build walls. We treasure our safe neighborhoods, our schools with gates and alarms on doors. We practice denial daily. We try to blend in. "it is not about me", we say, trying to convince ourselves. Denial is about fear. And denial is a powerful drug. It never is, you know, about me. Until it is. And then it will be too late.

And although I am thrilled that so many came to the vigil Monday night, I also know that there should have been ten or even one hundred times as many, even though there would never have been enough candles. I would like to live in a world where the 700 people standing on a lawn holding candles is not the remarkable thing. I would like to live in a world not marked by hate, but by kindness and acceptance, and yes, even love. I would like to live in a wold that stops and comes together to stand against violence, where coming together to mourn the loss of another innocent is the norm.

Wishful thinking I know. But then perhaps then we really would be "the land of the free and the home of the brave".

October 31, 2018
Four Good Things, And A Minor Upset

I was a little under the weather last week. A close encounter with gluten, a cat bite, achy joints and muscle fog, a course of antibiotics, and the confirmation that I will be in the apartment another six months. Everything piled up on me and I took it a little harder than I would have expected. I was not really surprised by the delay. I knew that the original schedule could not be maintained, was not being maintained, but even then, it was an idea that I acknowledged only partially. And so, although not a shock, actual acknowledgement still felt like a minor upset, perhaps because I was already slightly out of sorts. The extended timeline came smack up with my own sense of what can be tolerated temporarily and what needs to be changed in order for me to be comfortable for the long haul.

Hence the past week also became a week of sorting. Of resettling, but also of reacquaintance with favorite things.

I have been in the apartment long enough to know what is not really working. The "not" was hitting hard last week, and, being an over thinker and an over-organizer, I suppose this is not surprising. I hadn't fully gotten myself settled before life got in the way and I allowed myself to get over-busy. What is over-busy after all, when you are already an over-thinker, and perhaps an over-organizer? Well, for someone like me, who tends toward too-muchness, who is often all in, or all out, they go hand in hand, busyness and organization, and when one is out of whack with the other, I flounder. Last week, already feeling under the weather, I was flopping around a bit, like a fish out of water, gasping for air. I often walk a fine line between my need for creativity and its attendant mess and my need for simplicity and organization. Last week a line broke and needed to be restrung.

There were good things too of course.

1. I've been cooking. I revisited a recipe from last spring, stuffed egg crepes, a kind of omelet filled with savory pork, topped here with some Acar Timun, a Javanese fresh pickle/salad. The pickle was left over from the night before, the first time I'd had people over for dinner. The brightness went well with the savoriness of the omelet, a kind of happy accident, a reminder of conversations and the sometimes surprising intersections of life.

2. I went to the symphony last weekend. I'll write more about that later. I will go to the opera this weekend and I need to thank a friend for egging me on. I love going to opera, the spectacle of it, the combination of staging plus music, but I don't often think to go. I don't think of opera in terms of music, but I do enjoy the experience itself, and perhaps that is something I need to think about more.

3. I read Donal Ryan's novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, and it too, was about empathy (a theme this year in my Booker reading? Are there themes in Booker selections?). In this case the reader is drawn into the thoughts and experiments of three men, three men who are very different from each other, and very different from anything in my experience. The writing is beautifully evocative, and I felt a sense of kindness toward these men, and a beginning of understanding of something that I would once have found off-putting. Ryan brings connects us to the humanity of his characters through what is really a rather subtle, and often not particularly clear exploration. Perhaps because there is but one author, although I think this is actually more intentional, there is a commonality amid the differences in the voices, as if delineating a thread of commonality that exists in all humanity, despite the often radical differences in the ways our lives take shape. In the end the three lives are brought together in an intersection that leaves as many questions as it does answers, and yet it feels complete.

4. I have started taking Tikka back to our neighborhood in the late afternoons. It started as a happy accident, she was out with me for a ride while I picked up mail, and I noted how excited she was, leaping out of the car and dancing around her yard, eager to reacquaint herself with her neighborhood. We started making a habit of it, and now she dances at the door when it becomes time for our afternoon car ride and walk. Once we arrive, she sets the direction and the pace. I simply let her walk as much or as little as she desires. I am finding that I enjoy these afternoon strolls, short or long, as much as I enjoy my own morning walks. There is no agenda, no goal, simply time and place.

These are important things: Friends, family, place, food, music. But although my house, and my neighborhood are home, this place has to be home as well, not just a packing container on the road of life. And so it is time to finish settling in. I remember moving in with George, oh so many decades ago, and asking him why a particular thing was stored a particular way even though it was, to my way of thinking at least, incredibly inconvenient. His answer? "That's where we put it the day we moved in, and so it just stayed there". Nearly 35 years later I remain incredulous. I can happily never rearrange things once they work, but until then it is a process. Or perhaps I just see my relationship with space as just that, a relationship; a relationship to space, to time, and perhaps just to life and where I am in that life in any given moment. It is about not living your life waiting for the next stage but about being in this one.

October 25, 2018