Hello, it's me

It came as something of a shock to have it pointed out to me that much of what runs my life is a matter of choices I have made (and am making) rather than these being circumstances dictated by others. I can't blame them if they are not the ones making those choices. Damn. It reminds me of the old Buddhist story of the monk who set his bag down in dog shit and then wandered the world looking for a place that didn't smell so bad. If it is me that is causing my life to stink, it is also only me that can clean it up.

It also came as a shock that this realization came as a shock. I know this stuff, intellectually I understand all of it. Of course I am responsible for my own choices. I am a grown-up. I am a mature man. I am a healthcare professional. I am well into middle age. I have successfully raised a son and sent him out into the world.

Yeah, good luck with all that.

Here is another shock: it came as an enormous relief when I finally understood at a profound level that I am the only one I can "blame" for most of my suffering, because if it's my stuff then there is something I can do about it. If it's my boss's stuff, if it's my mother's, if it's yours, I can't do a damn thing about it except bitch. I can blame you and resent you and wish you were dead, but none of that is real action.

I still somehow believe that the more I do, the better person I am. I have no evidence for this assumption, but there it is. I live my life inside a to-do list and the more I check off, the more worthwhile my existence. Once again, I don't believe this in my head, but in my heart it's quite clear that I do. It is a belief inculcated in me in childhood. Because it is impossible to complete everything, I will never be perfect. And only perfection will make me a good boy, worthy of love. Pathetic, eh? As much as I would love to make fun of those feelings, the fact is that I have been running around for 57 years (or so; I have to assume it didn't start until I was 5 or something) acting on them.

Owl in the tree

So, what in the world does one do about all this? Well, I think what the counselor is counseling is that I stop. I mean, just cut it out. Live within choices, not compulsions. I do, you know, I really do. My life often feels like I am going from one obligation to another to another. Even the right amount of sleep and the books I read are dictated to some degree by that feeling. How screwed up is that?

Well, you know, fuck it. I'm not going to do that anymore. I know, I know, it's not that easy; I would feel unmoored without any kind of list to guide me, but I need to get out and have some fun, for God sakes. When did the round of my life become so grimly centered on duty?

So, I'm working on it. I still don't know what to do about my job; it has just changed so much that it's ceased being fun. But I can't blame anyone else if I stay there, either. I have options and it is merely fear that holds me back. The fear is that this is actually also about me, which means that, since I will still be there, my new job might just suck, too. But there might be only one way to figure that out.

Ah, well. There is no need for drastic changes. For one thing, there have been enough drastic changes in my life for the moment: my son and his wife left this morning to move across the country and my friend Debbi (who has been dying for some time) is on the downhill slope. But I will take responsibility for my happiness. I thought I had been, but I was wrong. The future begins today.

Wotan

August 14, 2013

Let me make a recommendation: until you have seen it for yourself, don't let anyone tell you what Wagner's Ring Cycle is about. We think we know something about Wagner (he was a bit of an asshole, the Nazi's loved him) and about the Ring (looooooong, weird story, women on flying horses, they played that cool song from the helicopters in "Apocalypse Now"), but for years I have been told that the Ring packed an emotional punch that could not be appreciated without first-hand experience. Now I am beginning to understand what was meant. So, you might still not want to sit through it, but don't let anyone tell you it's boring or overbearing or dark. It's none of these.

I am in the middle of the four-opera cycle. I took the whole week off work to make this feasible. On Tuesday I saw "Die Walküre" (that's the one with the flying women--well, goddesses, technically) and, hoo boy, it was not what I expected at all. I even read the story and the entire libretto before plunging into the operas. This did not help much. It is (as I probably should have known) the music that communicates with the soul and sends the deep currents of feeling into the heart. What I think most of us have not appreciated about Wagner is that the overriding theme of all his work is the redeeming power of love. And, as Wagner well knew, while love is often delightful, it can sometimes be very, very painful.

Wotan

"Die Walküre" is, above all, about the love of a father for his children. Who knew? Wotan is a god and made up all the rules to please himself but, as he sings at one point, "I am caught in my own trap". It turns out that if one has any integrity at all (and he has plenty), the rules must apply to all beings, including the god who made them. Even when it means abandoning his two most beloved children to the fates they have chosen.

Every now and then someone will ask me what it's like having a child and I am fond of replying, "Oh, don't worry about it, it's just like having meat hooks in your heart. Every time your child has the slightest misfortune--tug!--it feels as if your heart is being pulled from your chest. And if you are the cause of that misfortune in any way--tug! tug! tug!--you feel as if you will never heal again." (You do, though). So, I understand, to a certain extent, what Wotan feels when he must consign one of his children to death and the other to exile.

In another very important way I can empathize with Wotan. Which of us has not wanted to put a ring of fire around our children? How else can we protect them from the harms and tragedies of everyday life? (Speaking of which, there was an excellent article in the New York Times of August 4 about the trauma of being alive). But unless you are a god (you're not, trust me on this), the ring of fire will not work. It will, in fact, most likely be seen by your children as the problem rather than protection. And even if you are a god, the outcome may not be what you hope for, in fact, most likely will not be. Wouldn't, after all, Brünnhilde have been better off with a common mortal for a husband rather than a hero? But I can tell you from personal experience that the urge to shield our children from all harm is something that never leaves us.

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August 17, 2013

Tonight is the last of the four operas, "Götterdämmerung", which is about as long as it's name. (In fact, some wag was wearing a shirt the other day which transformed the title into "Göttdamnitslong". Funny). This last opera in the series is also the longest, a whopping 5-1/2 hours (including two 30 minute intermissions). What amazes me most, I think, is that 2900 people (the hall's capacity) fill the place. Seattle Opera does three full cycles, meaning that 8700 people voluntarily sit through 17-1/2 hours of Wagner (which calculates out to 152,250 total Wagner hours, in case you were wondering. You weren't? Oh, well). This is an event, and many people do it every four years, or more often if they go elsewhere to see a Ring. This is astonishing to me. And, of course, that's only the numbers for the Seattle production. In other places, most notably Beyreuth, it is performed nearly every year for much larger audiences (about 58,000 per season), and there are dozens of places around the world where it is staged.

I have enjoyed opera for four or five years. I have been told that The Ring is the ultimate opera-going experience and one cannot call oneself a true opera buff until it is checked off the list. Before going, I might have said, "until it is endured", but I kept an open mind about it.

And now, of course, I understand what was meant. Wagner treats every theme of grand drama and nearly every aspect of a human life in these operas. A bold statement, I know, but it appears to be true, or nearly so. And I have to believe that I have only scratched the surface. There is more scholarly (and not so scholarly) writing on this cycle of operas than (I would bet) all other operas combined.

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August 18, 2013

Well, it didn't feel 5-1/2 hours long.

So, now I have experienced the whole thing. Is it all that? Actually, yes, it is. I have concluded over many years of considering works of art that, for the most part, they concern redemption or the lack of it. Think of "Romeo and Juliet"; the world of Verona is entirely out of balance and only through the sacrifice of the title characters is order restored to the world. Redemption is achieved. Of course, Shakespeare followed the story arcs that were considered classically mandated (though he played fast and loose with many other conventions), so all of his plays follow this basic formula. In the tragedies the redemption takes the form of death, whereas in the comedies it is usually reunion and the clearing up of misunderstandings. In the romances the form redemption takes is generally the restoration of balance through a shift in power or the contravention of authority. (If you want to get into a rousing discussion of all this, raise with a Shakespearean scholar the lack of redemption, which is to say, complete resolution, at the end of "The Merchant of Venice" and what that might mean). 

In the Ring cycle, Wagner has given us redemption writ large. Yes, yes, it's all about Norse gods and outsized heroes, but that's just the story. What it's really about is the fact that life is full of opportunities to make good and bad choices and all of us fall on the latter side at least as often as we do on the former. And what do we do about that? Wagner would argue, I think, that there is a universal right and a universal wrong and to restore the world to order, one must atone in direct proportion to the deviation from the Good. For you and me, that usually doesn't mean much: say you're sorry, pay back the money, change your behavior. But if you are a god and have entirely disrupted the balance of nature, utter destruction of all you love is the only course. Harsh toke.

I won't go further, at least not now. I don't want to risk being overbearing with my own passions. But if someone asks you if you want to spend 17-1/2 hours at the opera some day, maybe you will consider the possibility. It might just change your life.

MIA

I am acutely aware of how long it has been since I posted to my blog. Life got amazingly busy in the interim and I have been scrabbling just to get the day-to-day things done. I know there isn't anyone out there who hangs on my every word and goes into deep depression if I do not post, but I feel a certain obligation—if only an internally sourced obligation—to post here often, if not weekly, and of late I have not been able to do that. I've been feeling the lack.

What does this blog thing do for me, anyway? I understand the contempt sometimes expressed in popular culture toward the fact that everybody and his hamster has a blog these days. A quick Google search tells me there are over 60 million blogs in the world. We must be finding something worth writing about and, one would hope, worth reading about. But the question is, why do I do it?

This began as a blog about weight loss from a Buddhist perspective or, more accurately, how my relationship to food is warped and addictive and the Dharma helps me come to terms with that without guilt or remorse, but with understanding and love. Which, I hoped, would also lead to weight loss. Which it has. But the blog has transformed over the years into something much more generic but at the same time truer to my heart. Yes, I needed (and need) to lose weight, but that is only a meager slice of who I am, and it began to feel as if I was shortchanging both you and (I flatter myself) those who read this blog to give only that small part of me. And, truthfully, there is only so much one can say about the subject, right? "The Buddha says to accept myself as I am but to recognize where I am stuck and work, gently, to move beyond my stuckness. Part of that is my relationship to food. I am working on it." That's pretty much the gist of it.

So I moved on to being more general and writing more generally about me, who I am, what drives me, my joys and dreams and goals and sadnesses and challenges and terrors. But why should you care? Am I only being egotistical to think that I am important enough (or articulate or clever enough) to make it worthwhile?

Truthfully, I don't think that's the point at all. I believe with all my heart that we crave connection to one another. In our modern era we find less and less opportunity for connection. Though I distrust the kneejerk reaction to modern technology that decries every new gadget as inherently bad for interpersonal relations, I do recognize that most of us spend an inordinate amount of time inwardly focused, which includes whatever device we might be peering into during most of our waking hours. I laugh every time I go to the lunch room at work and, though a crowd is gathered, each of us is in the world of an iPhone or a tablet, ignoring everyone else in the room. Of course, part of this is that our employer does not allow us to use our devices during the work day, so lunch is the only time we have to check our texts and emails. Still, it wasn't that many years ago that our friends and family would just have to wait until evening or even a day or two to hear from us. Instead, the opportunity for connection with our co-workers is lost. Even when we do engage in conversation, if the Android calls, we feel we must check to see what it wants.

So this blog is, for me, a way of reaching out and being in touch with others. I realize this is somewhat antithetical, since it is almost entirely a one-way communication and comes to you electronically. Still, I hope it is clear that what I write here comes from my heart, that my soul is in it, that I am sharing with you as deeply as I can, always. I promise to do better about writing weekly, or nearly so. If not for you, then for me. Thank you for continuing to read.

P.S. Part of what has been keeping me so busy is a photography class. This won't become a photog blog, I swear, but I did want to point out that all of the pics in this post are mine (just so you know I haven't been out there wasting my time!). I feel more confident with my camera now and also intimidated by what I do not know and that of which I am not yet capable. I will continue to post photos from time to time but will try not to be obnoxious about it.