Grateful

A soft grey rain has started falling on the Pacific coast this afternoon after Thanksgiving, and I sit in my little beach house with my family and a warm fire, and think about the texture of my life.
Yesterday we feasted on roasted crab - not turkey - and an array of sides that were perfect, including perfect potatoes, and a custom stuffing with leeks and fennel.  We drank champagne, we talked, had pumpkin creme brulee for dessert, and ultimately washed a lot of dishes.  Various chapters of my life were present, including the man (newly married) I lived with for 25 years and who is the father of my beautiful daughters.  We seem to be able to thread ourselves together beautifully, occasionally even talking about the past, laughing often at our unreliable memory! The day was sparkling and sunny with a calm ocean out there in the distance. A small group of us walked on the beach earlier in the day and felt gratitude that we had all this beauty right in front of us.
The conversations ranged from how the perfect scalloped potato dish came out to dealing with the onset of breast cancer in a way that is not invasive.  A granddaughter just home from college showed up in a bright red dress over funky pants, perfectly made up dark eyes, and a bit of a reticence coming from having lived recently in a very different culture.  But it filled our hearts with happiness to have her again in our midst, and soon the edges smoothed out and she eased back into her youthful loving character.  Late that night she and her sister curled up together on a small couch in the living room to sleep the night away together, curved against one another like slim graceful spoons.  This morning I took a picture of the two dead to the world and felt a swelling of gratitude in my heart for my family, even though there are certainly times that I feel on the periphery of their world.  That's what happens when you get older, right?  You must find peace in standing on the fringe.
I want to mention some things I am grateful for:  fresh caught crab, the roaring ocean, the egrets in the creek, my cats, JS Bach and Billie Holliday, my beautiful daughters and grandchildren, Caesar salad, and artichokes and brussels sprouts, my fledgling book project, a warm fireplace, a glass of Pinot Noir, the falling rain, the Buddhas, elephants, and pelicans, and salmon, lavender, olive oil, garlic, and good sour french bread, my friends, a pair of eyes that really sees me, the residents at Zen Hospice, my Buddhist teachers, a great novel like Anna Karenina or  The Goldfinch, my mother's paintings, a brain that is still lively, my writing group, the movie "Casablanca" and "You Can't Take it With You," my Merrell shoes, my curly hair, a good pair of glasses, my two unique little houses, my Mini Cooper, and my open heart.  There :  a small celebration of my good fortune in this fragile life...
I miss my cats, but try not to fret for their happiness.  I simply cannot put into their consciousness the mental complications that live in my own.  They are at my other home alone, but I am sure they are not spending all their hours fretting or missing me.  They move to their very own rhythm, and when you come into view, they might love you, but when you're gone, you're just gone.  Simple as that.  Sometimes I wish my own process was as uncomplicated.  But then, if it were, would I be able to feel this abundance of gratitude and thankfulness for family that I do?  Question for this moment:  do cats feel gratitude?
Never mind - it is enough that I do.  Completely.  I also wish happiness and wellbeing for all creatures far and wide.  It is remarkable this incarnation we find ourselves in, with such wonders as cracked crab, a roaring ocean, and sleeping grandchildren!

Taking What is Given

   I am still filled with that slightly queasy pre-holiday feeling where one moment I'm deeply sad and soft and fragile, and the next I'm pecking energetically away at the keyboard trying to edit my little opus, provisionally titled:  Bowing Camels & Bloody Red Roses; A Witness in the Traveling Life.  When I place my mind on task then the queasiness goes away, I forget that I'm feeling the shortening of days, even of my life, and I simply do the work, staring at words on the page, rearranging ideas, and revisiting the chapters of my life.
   The life of the artist, the creative being, is a wonderful one when he/she works, but in those times when there is a pause, for reflection or just letting ideas settle and percolate, we sometimes find the mind filled with confusing, disturbing notions -- the Monkey Mind returns.  And it says to you when you're making your morning tea, "who are you to dare get a book published?"  or "why would anyone care that you got lost in a lonely childhood?"  I am now learning to acknowledge this overreaching of the mind and say to it, in a way:  "thanks for your opinion ... I see you.... now kindly leave because I have work to do."
   When the old MM says things like:  "You're time is running out, you may die alone, what do you think about that, eh?"  or "You spend too much time alone ... what are you afraid of?"  or "If only you did more good in the world, you'd be happier" ... yes, when those unkind voices come, I don't quite know how to answer them.  Sitting down at my keyboard to whack out some more words on pages doesn't work for this very often, because the deep aloneness inside remains, a sour feeling that sloshes around, as though I'd eaten something I shouldn't have.  So, what to do about this particular conversation?  I guess I could count myself fortunate that I'm not embroiled in a scenario such as I saw in the movie "August : Osage County" where a vastly dysfunctional family spends a lot of their time being deceitful and/or cruel to one another, dumping their own suffering on each other, and I'm not trapped in a dead end relationship with someone who cannot really see or respect me (I have been down that road not once but twice, and I have promised myself:  never again).  No, I have myself fully and completely now.   My choices and dreams and visions are my own and I don't have to justify or explain them.  I am free to take care of those I love when I can, and to take care of myself fully and mindfully.  I am free to give voice to my story which I seem to need to tell the world.  I am surrounded by beauty of all kinds (music, art, cats, the extraordinary city, the beach).  So what's to have angst about?
   We are all going to die, and because I take care of dying people every week I have death on my radar pretty much all the time.  While I think I am more comfortable with the phases of death, and there's no spookiness about it anymore, I am still very resistant to dying.  Am I afraid? Maybe a little.   I don't want to give up this experience of being alive,letting go of all that I cherish, and I know I ultimately have no choice.  And so in this time of the year when everyone hunkers down, looks for a warm fire and a cozy book at the start of night, I feel the sinking inside, and I know the span of my journey is shortening.  And I also feel a tenderness of heart that may be what saves me, saves all of us, during the times of angst.
   I wish I could move toward the Thanksgiving holiday, which I'll spend with part of my lovely family, with a more energetic spirit.  But, this is what I am given now:  feeling the melancholy of wintertime and of everything that will go unfinished.  I have loving wishes for my beautiful young family, my close friends, my cats and my house, and even the beings I meet on Polk Street as I do my afternoon errands, or all those unknown souls I pass as I drive across the Golden Gate Bridge.  We are travelers on the same path, and we all deserve the compassion of our fellow beings.

The Hats I've Worn, or Thoughts on Attachment and Staying True to Oneself

Yesterday I had a chance to revisit a former identity of mine, that of bead merchant.  Yes, I used to peddle beautiful necklaces made from rare beads.  And this morning when I was supposed to be meditating but was in fact reviewing my yesterday, I realized that the life of a merchant did not fulfill me, that I was relieved I had left it behind.  In fact, I never knew how to do it very well.  And so I lost money... and a little confidence.  But no matter, for I wasn't really in the business of owning a gallery in North Beach to make money, was I?  No, that would be silly!
A young merchant came to me to acquire some old treasures, and at the outset I was unsettled by this.  I didn't think I had much to offer, and my worktable piled with every kind of bead imaginable in a scattered array was another testament to my disorganized self, that self I'd rather not own up to.  We pawed through necklaces and beads and he found a stash he wished to buy.  Fine.  Then he fixated on one small agate of really fine quality and his eyes lit up.  He wanted this.  And I didn't want to sell it to him.  Why?  Because all of a sudden I realized I'd make something beautiful from it, or perhaps because he wanted it too much and I was willing to resist him (in other words, play the game of wheeler-dealer).  His energy became heightened, as though he had forgotten about the quite lovely pile he was in fact going to go away with.  And he kept offering, giving concessions, upping the ante.  And I continued to hold back.  I even told him a story of sparring with a customer in my store when she insisted that everything, yes everything was for sale - to which I said, "Absolutely not.  There are limits."
So in my not very meditative state this morning I wondered what this was all about....  First thing that comes to mind is attachment, and the second thing is a fierce reaction to being manipulated.  I have grown pretty independent of late, and every once in a while I actually can appreciate myself for what I have done on my own.  I don't want to lose myself in order to make someone else satisfied, or to calm the waters.    I am also aware of becoming attached to beautiful things.  Beads are just part of this...  I have old beads sitting about in bowls that go back thousands of years, and I love that I can go to the desk and just look at them, touch them, think about where they came from.  I haven't made a necklace in a long time, and am feeling closer to actually sitting down and doing it ... but, you see, I'm also trying to write this book, and that takes a lot of my creative juice.
Most likely I am more "attached" to my book project than almost anything else these days, except maybe a desire to become physically stronger so I can walk 100 miles in Africa next summer.
But, yes, attachment is alive and well in my world.  My cats, my Buddhas, my piano, my colored yarns, a few paintings, my books, good food and very good wine, and the list goes on.  I become attached to people I work with at hospice, and people who are dying right in front of me.  I am attached to my children and of course my grandchildren to whom I play Auntie Mame. I can feel this attachment all the time: the tugging in the heart, that leaning in.
I used to be attached to the idea of being a teacher, but now that is gone.  Like the warm weather, perhaps, or last night's brussels sprouts.  Teaching was another of the "hats" that I wore, a beautiful one, just before I took that plunge into working with my hands to make jewelry.  I figured it was time to switch from exerting the intellect to testing my intuitive creative powers.  It was a lovely detour,  even the three years as a shop keeper (I would have preferred to call myself "gallery owner"), and when the lease was up and I realized that I needed to pull out of doing business because I was no good at it, it was a big relief.  I can still play with my beads, but I don't have to convince anyone to buy them!  The playing was what was important in the first place.  And when I told the young man last night that the money in the end wasn't all that important to me, I had to repeat it several times so he could begin to understand.  I wasn't speaking his language, but that didn't matter; I knew what I had to do.  I wish him well in his dance of bargaining and dealing, and feel thankful that our high energy encounter (they all seem to be with dealers) brought me back to my lovely bead world where I can return to dabble anytime I want.  That is, when I get all my editing done, and am 100% happy with my manuscript!

No .... I will play with beads, and I will play music on my grandmother's piano, because my little hands need to move in this way over the keyboard, and my heart needs to soar with the excitement of creating jewelry or music.  This will soothe my inner critic, I think, and help me keep believing in my book which is a story of my life.

Letting Go of the Birds -- Winter Descends on San Francisco

The fall is descending on San Francisco and there are fewer birds gathering on my roof, certainly fewer hummingbirds.  You see, I once was adamant that I would put up the best hummingbird feeders and they would come  ("build it and they will come" way of thinking!).  So I put up really good ones, and yes, for a while they were zipping and clicking about, pausing to dip their tiny beaks in the nectar, even standing still on the edge of the feeder.  When I saw them jet through the air, I felt a fluttering inside, and a complete, warm happiness.  Hooray, I now have a hummingbird refuge!  But, lately I haven't seen many.  No matter.  It would appear that this darkening time is one where I am going to be asked to let go of a number of things, as the trees shed leaves and the dark pounces on us at five in the afternoon...

I saw two operas this last week:  Tosca and Cinderella.  Enjoyed both, and even surprised that the fluffy fairytale of "Cinderella" entertained and excited me.  I was thinking that I have been going for a long time now to the opera by myself, and for the most part have loved it. I like being with my own mind and not having to measure up to someone else's thoughts and feelings about music or operas or....  BUT, I find myself now sinking into a melancholy place where I long for company, for more love and warmth in my life.  These two women whose stories I watched on the grand stage were driven by love, and one of them died for it.  I have been missing the closeness of friends and family lately, and then I remember to begin letting go of that longing, because the more you long, the sadder you feel, and it doesn't get you anywhere in the end.  But longing also seems to be an expression of the heart which says:  listen to me.  And we must attend to the heart.

I have lived alone for eight years or more, and have built a beautiful life for myself with a cozy house in a quiet alley filled with art, and a beach refuge up north where I can always hear the roar of the Pacific Ocean.  I've had the freedom to travel, to play music, and most recently to sit down and write a book.  Not bad.  But, as I begin to register the frailties in my body -- some of these speaking more clearly to me now than before -- I find I want more companionship.  The companionship of like minds, I suspect.  I experience some of this when I sit at the bedside of terminally ill people in hospice, or on the rare occasion I sink into a long conversation with an old friend.  My friends are few in number but they are deeply attuned people with whom I have history, and they are treasures in my life.  And I'm hungry for more.  Is this greed speaking now (in the Buddhist sense)?  Is it really not possible to be happy now with things the way they are?

Why is this longing bubbling up all about me, I wonder?  Is it because there are fewer birds in my roof garden, and the little maple outside looks naked and sad, and the cat shows his neediness by marching back and forth on my desk as I work, and I falter when trying to speak my needs to others, as though I may have too much to ask??  Is it because there is less light and warmth out there, and I want to draw into myself like the bear entering the cave?

When I write and when I play JS Bach on my piano, I don't feel the emotional wrenching, but when I play Chopin, I see candlelit rooms, and sad beautifully dressed young women standing in windows looking out as the ailing artist plays his beautiful music for them.  And I remember in these moments how familiar melancholy is, how I knew it the very first time I ever played a Nocturne.  When I eat a good meal and drink a great glass of wine, I don't feel the longing, but when I'm finished,  it comes, as I try to remember what the sensual pleasure was all about.

Birds come and go, beauty comes and goes, youthful vigor rises and falls, and in the middle of it all we try our best to feel gratitude for the adventure of being a human being in this confusing, amazing time.  Yes, come back to gratitude, breathe the cold air in, and reach out to the next loved one who crosses your path.  The winter will run its course, and as Pablo Neruda wrote, "you can never stop the Spring."

Impermanence & Possibility

I work once a week as a hospice volunteer in San Francisco.  

Today I sat at the bedside of a beautiful woman in her 60's who is dying of multiple cancers, the worse of which is bone cancer.  I learned that bone cancer is excruciatingly painful, it erodes the bones from within, and courses through the whole body relentlessly.  When I learned that the reason she couldn't stay awake this morning was because her disease was consuming her, I began to feel something inside in my own bones that softened my heart, and brought me into the present.

My god, we humans have so much difficulty to go through in life, AND we're rarely prepared for what lies ahead...

Uncertainty.  And just how we will deal with that uncertainty.

All of us want to know that what we do is going to have an effect, that what we dream will become a tangible reality, that those we love will be with us always.  And, guess what, that is not the case.

I have seen so many things in my life morph into something else.... I was a lonely child, and then not... I was married and then not ... I was a teacher and then not ... I was a jewelry designer and then.....   One of the things I have always been, it seems, is a traveler.  And now I am trying to write a story of my own journey from the time I was about 4 to the present moment.  I am hoping that this fragmented story will both teach me something and find a voice in the world at large.  I want to communicate that all our lives as human beings are ones of change and impermanence.  We all dream, and then we see what happens.

Back from my beach refuge and in my little house on the alley in San Francisco, I reposition myself to work on my book, my piano practice, feeding the wild birds in my roof garden, caring for my two cats, and being grateful that I show up each morning for a new day.

Beach refuge, the Fall, & What to Call My Book

I am coming to the end of my ten day retreat here at the beach where I set out to edit and rewrite the final chapter of my memoir.  Have abandoned my earlier critique that memoir is simply a narcissistic exercise, and have forged ahead because time is running out and I'm the only one who can tell my story.   I followed through with my plan, did the work, and managed to practice the piano, walk on the beach, and daydream while watching the wild birds come to their feeder.  A rarified opporutnity for sure.  This house sits perched over a creek, Salmon Creek, and has a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean, which both inspires and distracts.  I can hear the waves crash and roar on the beach five minutes away and feel comforted that I live in the container of the natural world.  The rhythm is hypnotic at times, and I find myself slowing way down to be in the middle of everything.  The egrets swoop down and root themselves in the creek to dine, the ducks perk along, and the Canadian geese go honking overhead to some unknown destination.  The place has magic.
The air is cooler now, and the darkness descends earlier.  I've noticed how crisp everything looks in the briskness of fall, and inhale deeply to take it in.  I love this season called Fall, that time of letting go and falling away, only to be re-formed in time.
I have struggled with what to call my memoir - this fragmentary journey of the mind through my past and present.  I keep thinking I will find just the right words to capture what lurks in the book.  To that end I decided to write something I called a "preface" - a piece that summed up my thoughts about the experience of crafting this work.  And in doing this, I think I found one beautiful phrase that said something essential.

The Preface:

Pablo Neruda wrote in the beginning of his Memoirs:  "Many of the the things I remember have blurred as I recalled them, they have crumbled to dust like irreparably shattered glass."  These words come close to the sense I have about my collection of narratives -- the various momentss in time when I was a traveler that elicit both philosophical and emotional responses, that pose the questions one might ask when faced with the disturbing facts of foreign-ness, and lead back to the haunting journey that came before all of this, that tortuous path through childhood.  From the beginning I felt as though I was looking through a kaleidoscope, with beautful, seductive colored shapes of glass dancing about separately but rarely forming a solid image.  Memory is like that, I think, offering up very parrticular pictures and sensations that we believe to be real.  There is always a feeling of uncertainty and doubt that any of what I have conjured of the far past is "true."  The moments land on the page because at the time I was contemplating my story, they seemed authentic.  Anyone who has taken on the writing of memoir knows how painfully subjective and unreliable memory is.  But because I agree wholeheartedly with another great writer, Joan Didion, when she says that we write "in order to live," I place these kaleidoscope bits and pieces before you so that you can see that the beauty and chaos of one person's journey is connected to your own, and perhaps recognize yourself in this person who was compelled all her life to travel and disappear and return again to home -- and to herself.


New thought about the title of the work:

    Bowing Camels & Bloody Red Roses
  Travel and Life Seen through Shattered Glass


We do write (create) in order to live, to understand, to be complete, and we travel because in the journey we understand more clearly who we are.  Paul Theroux wrote this:  "On my own, I had a clearer sense of who I was."

Think on this, if you wish, as you pursue your own journey...