Struggles

I hadn't realized it has been so long since I last posted here. My father has died since then. I will turn 60 in a bit over a week. I'm having a hard time right now, though I'm not quite sure what the first two statements have to do with the last.

Sometimes it feels like a loss of faith. Not faith in any particular thing, because I did not start out with faith in a god or a system or a plan. I have been an optimist, but no Pollyanna. I am not at all sure that everything will turn out just fine, and I am damn sure things don't happen for a reason. And if you tell me about god's plan one more time....

No, it's more like a loss of faith in the point of it all. I know that sounds very depressed (and depressing), but that's not how I mean it, believe it or not. There is in me the sense of the foundation somehow having been shaken. I know that the political climate in the U.S. and in the world has something to do with it. I have a deep belief in the efficacy of kindness and reasoned thought, but neither of these are much in evidence in the world these days. It's almost as if the majority of people see this as the end times and feel that unless they give their maximal energy to anger and vindictiveness right now, disaster cannot be averted. What they do not seem to realize is that it is the anger that is the cause of the destruction rather than its cure. And I see this from every direction in America's political divide, a nastiness that subsumes and consumes everything in its path.

I also had an experience recently which shook my faith in my marriage. It was a minor tremor, really, but it caused me to realize just how much of my well-being is tied up in the health of that connection. I'm not so sure this is healthy. Because it will end, of course. That is the central lesson of the Dharma, that all things end. Love is a guarantee of loss, because either the relationship will end or one or the other of you will die. Ha! That sounds awfully grim, I know, but is the simple reality of such things. And to have a little off-handed, casual comment cause such tremors in me is pretty frightening. On the other hand, if this is a wake-up call to nurture and heal what we have, then so much the better.

And I know it seems petty in comparison, but some of my perturbation is that most of my technology is rebelling against me. My internet goes down periodically for no reason whatsoever (who knew that going from copper wire slow internet to fiber optic fast internet would be a problem?) and my brand new laptop has a malfunction so bad that it must be returned to the manufacturer for replacement or repair. Crazy-making.

I miss my father. He was a sweet and wonderful man. He taught me a great deal. He was a man of deep faith, and I respected that more and more the older I got, even if I did not share his belief. He died April 7.

But, what the heck! On June 11 I will be 60. I will be in Portland that day, enjoying the city and going to Sweeney Todd with my much beloved wife. We will visit gardens, hiking trails, book stores, restaurants, parks, and coffee shops. All will be well. I love my life and am very fortunate to be living it. So be it.

Being dissed

It is sometimes difficult for me not to think apocalyptically. The environment, government ineptitude, SARS, MERS, Ebola, intractable internecine and international wars, the rise of radical factions of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and even Buddhism; all of these threaten my equanimity and sense of peace. Not to mention the normal day-to-day ravages of aging, illness, and impending death; family struggles, traffic woes, dueling egos, and overwrought colleagues.

I have become disenchanted.

Hmm...quite a lovely word, disenchanted. What we take it to mean is that once upon a time (in a country far, far away, perhaps), things were wonderful, or meant to be wonderful, and now they are no longer so, and this is sad, sad, sad. But it seems to me that this word is much more informative than we give it credit for. What it truly means is that I was once living in a fantasy world, I was enchanted, as if by a sorcerer or a fairy queen, and now I am disenchanted, no longer blinded by fairy dust.

I have become disillusioned.

The Buddha was very clear that the cause of our suffering is our illusions, the resistance we exhibit in response to the normal vicissitudes of our lives. It is not bad or wrong that there are wars or disease, old age or death, struggles and hatreds, shame and remorse. This is the way of things—perhaps not as we would wish them to be (and there are tools we can and ought to use to change what it is possible to change)—but as they are, nonetheless. I have stepped out of my illusions into the light of reality. I have ceased (to the best of my ability) feeling resentment, hatred, and fear in response to things being other than as I want them to be.

I am disappointed.

I am no longer the self-appointed judge of what you do and who you are. I have experienced a profound realization (ah, if only I could always remember this) of the nature of things as they are, of people as they are. We are all the result of conditions which have accumulated over centuries, millenia even, to result in this one unique being. Our DNA is packed with instincts and understandings arising from the experiences of our forbears (and which are the mirror image of those who did not survive to pass their inheritance on). Our psyches are stuffed with the emotional and physical experiences not only of our lives, but of the lives of thousands upon thousands who came before us. What you bring to the table across from me is the sum total of all this, and our paths have been different, so how is it possible that I should believe you are just like me, will react and think as I do, will see the world as I do?

I no longer have this disability, this disadvantage, am no longer disaffected or disagreeable. These have disappeared, been disarmed (well, I wish). Things may be in disarray, but this no longer disobliges me. I can discontinue the behaviors that lead to distress. I need not be the source of discord, in me or in the world around me; I need not be disgruntled. There is less and less a discrepancy between my beliefs and my actions. I can discriminate between the true and the false.

I am disencumbered.

Here I am!

Well, I certainly had no intention of taking the summer off from blogging, but I guess I did. It's been a very busy summer, and I suppose that explains it. Funny, though, it didn't seem all that busy, really. Still, the fact remains that it's been about nine weeks since I last wrote here. Much to my surprise. Miss me?

One of the main things I did was go on vacation with Kathy. We traveled to the Midwest (Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin). The weather was surprisingly mild; in fact, it was hotter and more humid when we came back to Seattle than it had been in the Midwest. (The photos below are all by me, by the way).

My son and his wife (and their cats) live in Ann Arbor.

We visited the beautiful arboretum attached to the university.





We also all love cemeteries, and there's one right near the arboretum.

And celebrated Mitchell's birthday. (Hey, it's not every kid that gets the gift of British duct tape!)

We spent a day at the Detroit Institute of Art and their astonishing collection.

Detail of Diego Rivera mural at the Detroit Institute of Art

Chagal window at the Art Institute

We visited friends in Evanston and spent a day in Chicago, mostly at the Art Institute.

Carl the Wonder Dog

Chicago reflected in "The Bean"

We also went to the gorgeous Chicago Botanic Gardens.

Botanic Gardens

And visited the campus of the University of Wisconsin.

We did much else and visited with many, many friends and family members. We visited two cemeteries, three college campuses, five museums, two natural preserves, one state capital, and Mars Cheese Castle (twice). On one day we drove through four states. We had a lovely time. Thanks for asking.

Tidal Wave

My, hasn't life gotten interesting, though?

I have been very busy the past month, which is why I haven't been blogging as much. My job is becoming more intricate and demanding by the day. I still visit my California family every other month (I went last weekend) and of course there are all of the other demands life places on one. I used to have every Friday off (never knew how good I had it!) but don't any longer. Not that I'm complaining; this is all good stuff. The job is demanding, yes, but it is a new challenge and one I am enjoying. I love my family and feel comfortable and loved when I see them. Life is grand, really. Just busy.

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I try to follow the news of the world fairly closely while taking care not to become too involved in the emotional content of it. This is, as most of us understand, a very difficult balancing act. I don't want to hide my head in the sand, but also believe that engaging my emotions in every tragedy that comes along (and there are so many, aren't there?) is the road to burnout and ineffectiveness.

One thing I have begun to notice, though, is the capacity we as humans have to compartmentalize and in some cases wholly reject what have been adroitly called "inconvenient truths". I am amazed at our ability to keep calm and carry on no matter what the horrifying reality around us. One of the reasons I so enjoy dystopian fiction and film is the vision the artists behind these works have of humans moving forward to the best of their ability, surviving even in the starkest emotional and physical landscape. Books such as Riddley Walker, The Postman, and The Road, to name but a few, have impressed me with their portrayal of our species as both survivors and the perpetrators of horrors, including those horrors that brought about the apocalypse to begin with. We are both the wisest and most foolish of animals.

When reading the news, what stands out with great clarity for me is that the environmental situation could not be worse. It is hard to believe that my grandchildren's grandchildren will even have a world in which to live. I am very hesitant to even bring this up. I know this is not a topic most people want to consider, which is, of course, my every point. I have no desire to use this blog to grind any political axes. Rather, I am fascinated with what makes it possible for us to keep going in the face of such imminent catastrophe.

If there were a tidal wave coming, most of us would turn and run. This might well be a futile act, considering the speed and power of such phenomena, but we would make the attempt. The effects of environmental degradation are no less certain or powerful, they just move more slowly. Yet we continue to care deeply about things. We do not panic. Are we merely deferring consideration of the facts, or is there something deeper at work?

I read the New York Times every day. I scan the headlines and dip into any article that interests me. In this way I can stay abreast of what's going on without becoming overwhelmed. And with an eye to how much of an emergency our environmental situation is, every day I am amazed by how much we can continue to care about things, about cars and food and sports and books and plays and films and politics and family and friends and bikes and running and fun and each other. We do not despair. Many of us become depressed, of course, but it seems to me we are a species of optimists. We are not built for giving up or giving in.

I find great hope in this. True, much of our doggedness might in fact be denial. We may be assuming that human ingenuity will once again come to our rescue. Or we may have the fatalistic perspective of "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die". But it seems to me much more likely that we are beings who have hardwired into us the need to get on with the business of living our day-to-day lives, love those close to us, eat good food, continue to learn and to grow, have a bit of fun, have a good night's sleep, then get up and do it all over again.

We don't seem to have the power, for the most part, to think in grand terms, to consider the larger context for any appreciable length of time. After all, there are dishes to be done, clothes to wash, sons and daughters to love, lovers to embrace, gardens to sow. How the great world spins is the purview of the philosopher and the saint. What energy I have I will devote to those things in my immediate world over which I have some control or to which I am devoted. Of course, I will reduce my car trips and recycle my newspapers. I will vote for those who have the best interest of the planet at heart. But then I need a nap.

Far from any of this causing me despair, I find in it the seeds of hope. We love, we live, we move forward, we laugh and carry on. Perhaps the end is near. Perhaps not. We will hold our loved ones near and hope for the best. Really, what else can we do?

We think we know

My wife almost stepped out in front of a speeding car this week.

 
We think we know what will happen, that from day to day we will continue, that those around us will too, that life as we know it will carry on. But we don't know. Accidents, divorces, finding out something that entirely changes your way of thinking of someone you thought you knew--any of these can seem to explode the world we know.

Telling me about this near miss, Kathy said, "The whole day would have looked entirely different." Yes, for so many people. For the driver of the car, for his family, for me, for Mitchell, for her sisters, niece, nephews, my parents, all of their children and their children's children, concentric circles of relationships with people we have never met and will never know. Our lives would have changed forever because of one moment of negligence on the part of a driver, one second of inattention on Kathy's.

We try to make everything that happens fit into a predetermined frame of reference. I think perhaps this is what people are doing when they say that a tragic event is "God's will". There has to be, so the logic goes, a frame of reference in which all of this can be encompassed. What is beyond bearing is bearable if there is a box big enough to hold it in, and that box can be God. (Though if God wills some of what is going on in this world, I frankly want nothing to do with the guy). Life is more like "The Matrix" than we care to admit. Not that literal kind of explanation for what goes on behind the scenes, but something much more mundane. Life is an uncertain and constantly shifting kaleidoscope. Our impression of a solid reality must be vigorously maintained; this requires a great deal of energy, and if we let our concentration on this task waver for even a moment, it can feel like we are insane, that the whole world is falling apart.

One night I was sitting alone in our house and felt what I assumed was someone coming up the back stairs. The house vibrates just a little when someone comes up those stairs, so that's what I thought I was feeling. Then the vibration became a little more intense, and I thought, "Huh, that's a bit much for anyone I know". Then, as it became yet more vigorous, rather than move on to other possibilities, rather than admitting the possibility that it was an earthquake (which it was), I thought, "Man, that must be some enormous guy coming up those steps". It's not that I was in denial or afraid (I rather like earthquakes). It's just that I had a reality I was not going to let go of easily, no matter what the evidence.

Language is part of the problem. It delineates, measures, defines, limits. We think we agree on what it is being said, but even that is an illusion. What you envision when I say "Buddha" is not what I envision, nor what the next ten people you meet would. We project on to that being whatever we need for him to be. Even with a word less fraught, say the word "apple", there is no agreement. There is a story of a young boy in an elementary school class who, when asked what color apples were replied, "white". At which (so the story goes) his teacher scoffed (though one would hope she would be more skillful than to actually do this). But the little boy insisted. When asked to explain, he asked the teacher to cut the apple open. An apple is, after all, far more white than it is anything else, but that is not what most of us see when we speak of one.

So, every word I put down here has a panoply of meanings, some of which are easy to agree upon ("upon" is not very controversial), others of which might cause us no end of problems (what if I were to bring up "faith", for instance?). And each step away from impression to idea to concept to picture to description obscures rather than clarifies what it is we mean.

As a species, we also have a tendency to recognize only what is present. Our ability to project with any accuracy into the future is extremely limited. This is not just denial (though that certainly is part of it); it is a practical way of dealing with the world. We see what is in front of us, for the most part, and that is plenty for us to deal with. Take global climate change, for instance. We know that humans are largely responsible for this phenomenon, at least the preventable part, and we know further that limiting our use of fossil fuels will go some way toward ameliorating the problem. We are also aware that the urgency of the situation is, as one scientist put it, much as if a meteor was hurtling toward the earth on a collision course. Yet in the day-to-day of our lives, we need to drive to the store. We want electricity when we flip the switch. We want the grocery shelves to be stocked with goods that can only get there with the expenditure of enormous amounts of fossil fuel to process and deliver it, to keep it cold or hot or warm. We want to visit our distant families, no matter the cost in airplane fuel. This is not a criticism of us, but a recognition of our limited ability to do something different today that will have an effect in decades or centuries. We are mammals in survival mode and, to our reptilian brains, tomorrow only matters if we survive today. Thinking into the future, as an integral part of our reality, is not a skill with which we are well-supplied.

Believe it or not, this is all good news.

Noting the intricacies of the web of what truly makes up our lives is the end of suffering. Suffering is trying to close the curtain that shields us from that reality. Not that we can afford to check out of the real world; we do have to shop and drive and cross the street, make love and die and grieve and persist. But there is a substantial difference between living in the world and believing that this is all there is. You have only to begin with yourself. What of you is you? What piece of you makes you who you are? How much could be cut away and have the remainder still contain your essential "youness"? Could a brain, kept alive and thinking in a jar, ever be you? The heart alone? Your finger? Your foot? And even if you could identify what makes you uniquely you, what would happen in the following moment, when that had changed, no matter how minutely? Then who would you be?

What if Kathy had stepped in front of that car?

One of the reasons that films like "The Matrix" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Abre Los Ojos" hold such appeal for us is that we know somewhere deep in our souls that this is the truth of things, that no matter how substantial we believe our day-to-day lives to be, we still from time to time feel as if we are living a fraud, that the other shoe will drop anytime now.

The Buddha holds the other shoe (though many spiritual traditions speak to these truths). And the great news is that all we have to do is stop trying so damn hard to do the impossible.

Making a list and checking it twice

I got back last Saturday from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I went there to visit my son and his wife over Christmas (she is in graduate school at the U of M). Yes, it was cold, though not nearly as cold as it is there today. And it snowed a bit, but not nearly as much as the Midwest got the past few days. Glad to be back in gray, wet, and (relatively) warm Seattle.

It was fun there, though, and not just for family reasons. I lived in Chicago for seven years and, though the

cold and slush and ice and snow could get old, I didn't stay long enough to become entirely jaded about the whole thing. Growing up in California, weather just wasn't much of a challenge (although I could do without temperatures over 100). Living in a climate that can kill you if underdressed is fascinating to a California boy, at least for a while.

And Ann Arbor is a nice, little college town. I have never really lived in one of those—Evanston (near Chicago) and Seattle, the towns where I went to school, have a great deal going on that is not about their universities. My perception of Ann Arbor is that it more or less revolves around the University of Michigan. It makes for a different feel, but very pleasant. An abundance of book stores, coffee shops, and restaurants. Quite lovely, actually. Of course, we were there when most of the students weren't, so we hardly got a feel for what it is like when all those 42,000 people are around. A truly nice place, though.

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I have been reflecting quite a bit recently on what makes me real. I know that sounds odd, but we all struggle with this fundamental idea, that we are a solid reality living within this body, controlled by this mind, stumbling around doing stuff until we collapse into sleep and then wake to do it over again. The question that arises is, when in all of that Doing are we Being?

I am a list maker. My wife likes to say, "Check! Check! Check!" when she sees me marking things off, I suspect because I take such great pleasure in doing so. Of course, there are many reasons I do this. It is practical, for one thing, for me to know what it is I need to get done. And being organized about it is not a bad thing. But there is an inkling in the process that a part of me doesn't quite believe I exist if I am not Doing Things in the world.

Heather Martin, whom I consider to be my primary teacher (I have no idea what she thinks), likes to quote in her dharma talks from a book of tombstone inscriptions. One of her favorites is, "Got Everything Done. Died Anyway". This could easily be my epitaph if I died today. There is in my obsession with lists and getting things done a sneaking idea that if I keep busy death cannot catch up to me, that as long as I am acting in and on the world that my absence would be inimical to survival of the world.

Now, of course, on a conscious level I am not nearly this egotistical. Nor this obsessed. But when I stop to think about how important all this is to me, I realize that there is an element of the fantastical in my thinking. Even when it does not have to do with death, there is the foolish idea that I could actually someday get enough done that I will have some free time to do what I really want to do. And of course this never happens.

If we live our lives as if at some point in the near future we will finally be able to truly live, that we will at last be able to just sit and study French or write our novel or master our camera or read "War and Peace", we will reach the end having done none of these. It is an act of will to get out from under the internal and external pressure to be a Human Doing instead of a Human Being, to be a walking list of things to do. One reliable indicator for me is the frequency with which I meditate. Now, I'm not necessarily advocating meditation, and for God's sake don't go putting it on your to-do list ("Must learn to meditate!") But for me it is a fairly certain barometer of a loss of perspective. It is somewhat akin to cooking but never eating—I am carrying out the deed but missing the point of the exercise, living a life but not being in it. When I think I am too busy to meditate it's a pretty sure sign that I have climbed back onto the exercise wheel in my cage, the one that goes round and round and winds up nowhere.

I have been given more responsibility at work, so I have a whole new source of anxiety about getting things done. If I am not careful, this could take over my life. I will be working more hours, taking on more projects, supervising people, serving on committees (argh!). I hope that having this forum to write out what is going on will keep my honest about my obsessiveness and the degree to which I am able to keep living a life that is not consumed with getting the next thing done. You will be the first to know.

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.

Pain

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions."

--Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Life has been difficult lately and this morning I hit my head. Hard. On a kitchen counter. Wham! Ouch.

The past week I have had back pain, the like of which I have never experienced. I know how bad back pain can be and that many people suffer from it chronically. My pain is not as bad as that (though pain is very subjective, so who's to say?) and it's only been a week, so it feels a bit silly, selfish even, to complain. But it hurts, man. I don't like it.

There's troubles at work, too. Much of that is of my own making. The job is changing and I don't like the way it's changing. The management has changed and I don't like the way it changed. Personnel have changed, the whole atmosphere in health care is changing and uncertain, the economy is causing administrators to squeeze and to justify every dollar spent, which increases the pressure on us to justify our existence. Then there is my acting out in response to stress, which has had consequences, which adds to my stress.

And I'm too damn busy. And there is too much suffering in those I love. And the world is a mess.

Nice, huh?

Then there's the kitchen counter. My physical therapist wants me to do chair push-ups to strengthen my shoulder (which, as long as I'm doing the pain recital, has been bothering me for over a year)  and I did the push-ups with a wooden chair. Bad idea. Chair (which was pushed against counter) collapsed and I broke the fall with my head. No loss of consciousness, but significant loss of dignity. And a big old knot on my forehead for a long-term reminder. Kathy decided to stay home from work to monitor me to make sure I act no stranger than usual so if I do she can rush me into an emergency CT or something.

I'm the luckiest man in the world. Think I'm kidding? I'm not. I have a loving wife who cares if I have a head injury and insists on being here for me. I have something to do about my pain. I can laugh and pick up the pieces of the chair ("cheap piece of shit") and lug them downstairs. I can afford to buy a new one. I have access to a CT scanner if I need one. I have a physical therapist who is helping my shoulder heal. I am 57 years old and up until now I have not  paid much of a price for my age and the fact that I did many foolish things as a kid that should have had more serious consequences than this. I have a job and it's not in jeopardy, and if I dislike it enough, I can probably find another one. All the things I am "too damn busy" with are wonderful things I have chosen.

And then there's this: one of the things the dharma has taught me is that, as the saying goes, pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. When I am able to focus on the pain and not on my resistance to the pain, when I can meditatively consider it, really look at it, not with fear but with curiosity and interest, it is transformed. Not that it no longer hurts, but the nature of the pain is changed from one of a problem to just another opportunity to practice awareness. And in awareness is freedom. And in this freedom, taken to its logical extreme, is nirvana. It's all grist for the mill. It is only in my small, controlling, whining mind that this is not so. All is well.

Family

I don't write  much here about my extended family because I don't want to violate their privacy. I'm certainly not going to start now. But I went to California last weekend to help celebrate my brother's 60th birthday and want to write about how that was.

My brother and I have not always been close, at least not in a conventional sense. We have, more so than my other siblings perhaps, been enmeshed with each other's feelings and reactions, but throughout our childhood and into early adulthood this was not a good thing. Our acute sensibility of one another mostly took the form of anger, hostility, and confusion. This all started to change about 15 or 20 years ago and  our relationship has progressively improved to the point where he is now one of my favorite people in the world. This was hard work on his part  and on mine. To be able to go to his celebration felt as much like the culmination of a glorious progression as it did like a birthday party.

rb photo © 2013

We have a beautiful family. No, really, we do. We're pretty darn white (though some progress is being made in that regard), but for all that we are amazingly diverse. And for a bunch of middle class (mostly) white people, we do pretty well at  being joyful in each other's company, cutting each other enough slack to make this family thing  work. We love each other and it shows. We accept each other for what and who we are and, hey, no reason to sugarcoat it, there has been a lot to accept over the years. I wish this made us just the average family, but that's not what I see. It seems to me there is a great deal of grudge-bearing and vindictiveness in the families I know and experience through others.

Through all of the time that some of us were being obnoxious twits (I'm talking about myself here, though if anyone else feels the shoe fits them, feel free to put it on), our hearts have always been in the right place, or so it seems to me. Am I  being a bit of a Pollyanna here? I suspect some of my family would say so. But that's my observation. Where push came to shove, we have always had each other's backs. Even now it  is not all sweetness and light by any means—my sister couldn't come to our celebration because of a crisis with a grandchild. But we persevere.

rb photo © 2013

Our celebration was on the Northern California coast, about 40 miles south of San Francisco. It is a beautiful place, full of wildness, wind, and weather. It was cloudy, sunny, rainy, warm, freezing, foggy, and perfect, all in the  space of three days. We ate together, sat around fires, roasted marshmallows, went to the beach, and even visited the Boardwalk at Santa Cruz.

rb photo © 2013

I fulfilled my Bad Uncle role by encouraging children to play with sticks they lit on fire. I mean, what could possible go wrong, am I right? I am proud to report that (to the best of my knowledge) no one was permanently scarred and I'm fairly certain my nieces are still talking to me. I also had an 11-year-old tell me she wasn't sure I counted as an adult. A proud moment.

But the real  pleasure was being in each other's company. I know this sounds like any family anywhere, but I feel the miracle of us coming together every time we meet. Frank Bruni, in his New York Times column of May 26 (published while I was in my little tent cabin on the coast, a sweet coincidence) notes that family "aren't people [we] would have likely made an effort to know or spend time with if [we]'d met them at school, say, or at work.... They're less tailored fits than friends are. But in a family that's succeeded at closeness, they're more natural, better harbors." A safe harbor, that's exactly what it feels like when I am with my family. And, I must say, I don't really feel that way anywhere else in the world. The way our world is currently constructed does not consistently create communities in which we can feel accepted and at home. To have that, I must go find these people, wherever they may be.

Our parents moved around a lot, not from one community to the next, but to new homes within the Sacramento area. Which is to say, we have no edifice to go home to, no family manse, a physical structure to give solidity to our "familiness". I for one don't miss it, though. It is these people who make the safe place for me to come to rest. I will just keep going where they are. It's a good place to be.