Another birthday gone, along with the fleeting feelings of melancholy and nostalgia, and the always present question: where did THAT year go now? I feasted on good meals with friends, saw some good music -- everything from the great Paula West to the American Bach Soloists performing their magic at the little blue church called St. Marks. A small parade of pleasures which served only to remind me how very transient it all is. I want to be able to recall the exact quality of lunch that I had on my birthday with my dear friend, and just the telling of the details doesn't do it, doesn't capture the feeling of something magic going on in your mouth when you bite into a perfect piece of roasted crab, or some exquisite lettuce that takes you back out into the garden it's so fresh... I do know that Chez Panisse Cafe is a place still at the top of its game, and it makes eating both a leisurely and very normal ritual and also an opportunity to bow to the creators of great food as though they are gods. This was my birthday gift to myself this 22nd of February, along with a visit to a garden store to select two superb orchids in full bloom, to cheer up those now sitting at my kitchen window looking bare and unloved.
Tomorrow I journey to Spirit Rock to sit in silence for four weeks. Just the writing of that makes me feel daunted, as though there looms a great mountain peak ahead that I must scale... I have been waiting to do this for some time, with both eagerness and skepticism. I know it is a gift to retreat from the world and simply explore one's life, and I know too that it is difficult, funny, fearful, confusing, and so on, and so on.... Many around me feel it is courageous (which is true). Just using that word makes it feel immediately more difficult, more of an obstacle than an opportunity to expand in mind and heart. Whatever it is, I appear to be doing it. And there's nothing wrong with owning up to my own courage either, now is there? This time I have no reason to turn away, as I thought I did a year ago. And this year, I will sit and take what I get. And hopefully practice a lot of lovingkindness toward myself, just in case I might cave in to agonizing doubt and judgment. I am taking a lot of clothes with me so I will have just that to distract me (perhaps), and even my journal, which I probably won't write in. I want this familiar stuff with me. Ah, the illusions we carry about what we really need in this life! Pretty soon I will discover that the myriad of clothes I have hauled up there are far from entertaining or reassuring, and even my beautiful down comforter from home is just that -- just a comforter. Not a provider of happiness or ease. I will also take a few small buddhas to "decorate" my space. My stubborn attachment to beauty endures!
In hospice yesterday I talked to a resident about time being like a river that we all floated on, not something that we passed through, or over, or into. We ride it, and there are times when the ride feels wildly swift, and then times when the current slows at bit -- especially when meditating and living mindfully. This man was worried about the swiftness of time's passage, and the shakiness of his own mind. I could have said that we cannot control this mysterious element called time, but that would have sounded didactic, I think. True as it is, there had to be another way to say it. And so I thought of the river's flow. Do I still have watery-ness on my mind? Still the fall-out from walking through all those damp alleys of Venice? It is far more comforting to me to think of riding a current than to accept this truth which tells us we cannot control our forward journey. We do seek happiness and comfort relentlessly...
As I sit in silence, and commune with my mind and body, I will be sending lovingkindness to all beings, because though isolated on retreat I never feel separate from the beings of my life, those close and far. And in sending forth that love, I will also be offering it to myself. "There is no one more deserving of love and compassion than yourself," said the Buddha, and I am going to keep that thought very close in the weeks to come. Because love is the root of everything.
