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Not Rising Above It

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It’s clear that a lot of my addictive nature is the avoidance of feelings. I find I really don’t understand feelings well at all. In fact, I often can’t identify my feelings with precision, at least not without serious reflection.

Turns out, I’m not alone in this. I’ve been using this list of feeling words recently, something suggested to me by a nutritional therapist a few years ago. I’m usually scrolling down for the negative feelings…funny, I don’t seem to need to reflect on the happy ones so much.

Identifying the name of the feeling helps. It’s gives me something to mentally grab onto so I can pivot around and look at the situation from another angle. OK…uncertain, frustrated, vulnerable, discouraged…now named, they are easier to deal with. My judgmental mind likes to have reasons, and “I don’t know…I’m just…ick” doesn’t appease that part of my brain the way “uncertain, frustrated, vulnerable, discouraged“ does. How would I treat a friend who was feeling those things? Naming the feelings takes away some of their power to overwhelm me, and makes compassion possible.

”Uncertain, frustrated, vulnerable, and discouraged” described my feelings earlier this week. Getting the yurt ready for the winter has been on my mind. The windows really need an overhaul, and I want to re-tarp the top. My landlord wasn’t keen on paying for a new tarp…“the one that’s on there is a 5-year tarp and it’s only been on there one year!” But her disagreement came to a swift end when our recent high winds created two large rips in the outer tarp. Now we both agree: I’ll get a new one. I’ve also been looking at the top rafters with some level of fear…how is that wood doing? Are those brackets going to continue to hold? My brother promises to come for a visit in a couple of weeks to go over things and help me make an action plan.

Then there are the pests…not just the “pests of the mind”, but the real live variety, with tails and teeth. The local birding mailing lists talk of rodent populations being high this year, with eager excitement about a possible influx of hawks. But I am less happy about trapping rats in the yurt or finding a pristine gopher tunnel exiting the ground right under a beautiful squash that I was watching daily in anticipation of harvesting it. The squash is now mostly-eaten, looking for all the world like a cute porch over the entrance to the gopher hole.

Clever Rodents

When the gophers and voles aren’t popping out of holes to munch on plants that overgrew the raised beds, I see them simply scampering over the wooden sides of the beds to get their snacks. Poor boundaries; it’s a familiar problem. I’m told that feeling the sudden anger and fear rise up in me is a sign that my boundaries have been crossed, and that is how I feel when I see the gophers making a mockery of the raised beds. Anger at their destruction, but more fear that people will notice this proof of what a terrible gardener I am. (Oh hey, hello there, Pride…)

The irony of all of this is that the very night I returned home from helping with the “Gardening Without Enemies” workshop, I walked in to find a dead vole smack in the middle of my floor, and woke that same night to the sounds of a rat rummaging through my kitchen. Clearly, I am a total sham. (Well, it’s true that I don’t think of them as enemies. But still!)

Sometimes I think I would like to write here about how I’ve really fixed things up, how my garden is producing food that I’m eating and preserving for the winter. I’d like to brag about my neat woodpile, the oranges and greens of beautiful squash, the careful soil preparation I’m doing as I think about the apple trees and other perennials I’ll plant this fall. I’d like to write about how much I’ve healed and grown up through the divorce, and how I’m now emotionally perfect and don’t care to be loved by anyone else in my pristine solitude at the top of this romantic ridge in this picturesque yurt.

The reality is so very different. I’m lazy, ambivalent, prone to flights of fantasy, way too needy, and the custodian (or prisoner?) of some pretty ugly feelings (and absolutely certain that no one would like me if they knew I had those feelings). Reality is messy and uncertain and, yes, sometimes wonderful too. My therapist doesn’t usually tell me anything, but recently told me this: ”If you want to play in this part of the world, you can’t rise above it. And if you have to rise above it, then you don’t get to play in this part of the world.“

And this is gets me to the core. The addictions are attempts to escape this truth. The constant striving to escape this part of the world, because it seems so messy with feelings. To aspire to something more tidy and orderly than this mucky life here on earth, and if I can’t do that, then just check out altogether. The goal setting, the list making, the project planning…all of these are great for getting work done in the ideas part of the world, but they are a poor approach for life itself. Life must be lived, and life will not be compartmentalized nor follow the rules I make up for myself (or from others).

I want to live life. I want to play in this part of the world. With all the other critters.

What does it mean to really have our feelings? What’s the difference between having my feelings and getting attached to them? Intellectually, I think the idea is to accept them, let them arise in my life and then, as easily, let them go. But is that really all there is to it? Is that really enough? What about expressing them? Do I need to express all of my feelings to live in a truly honest way?

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The Hanged Man

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Summer has never been my favorite season. I love spring and fall, with their sense of change and movement in the air. Migration season has started—a new wave of birds appears, passing through as they leave their northern breeding grounds, and I’m back on Hawk Hill every-other Saturday, counting raptors. The sky has new energy, the weather changes rapidly. This morning, I walked out of the yurt at 4am, greeted by moonlit clouds and a new wind that those hawks will be riding today. Tell me again, how do I get so lucky to live on such a beautiful earth? To see this sky, this moon; to feel this wind on my face, at this moment?

The coyote pups must be growing up; their packs howl in the moonlight, with more voices than I’ve ever heard here before. Whales have been feeding off Bodega Head; I go to watch them, reminding myself that I first have to believe the whales are there before their spouts will become visible to me.

Even my friends seem restless. All around me is change and more change. Some is obvious, some just a wispy prescience.

I’m tense with seemingly opposing impulses. Fix up the yurt for winter or not. Plant out the west side of my garden area or let it continue to be fallow. Express myself fully or stay silent for now. Sleep or wake. Eat or not. Walk the path or sit down in life. Find myself or lose my self? Among it all is a sense of waiting, of listening. I have thrashed for so long to find a purpose, to find a life’s work, to find something to give myself to. Am I getting any closer?
The Hanged Man
In particular, things are changing on the ranch. It’s not clear yet how it will all sort out.

We’ll be shutting down the milk line at the end of September, a month early. That’s partly due to the departure of our evening milker, and partly due to an increase in USDA fees. Did you know that the USDA charges dairies for inspection of the milk and the cheese plant? I was shocked to learn this; I thought it would be paid by our tax dollars. But essentially, the inspectors are employed by the farmers and ranchers they inspect. Those fees are going up, and they’re going up by the same amount regardless if you are a 16-goat operation or a 1600-goat operation. It becomes more and more clear how the economics of this business just don’t add up.

I can’t say what this means for me. It might mean the end of work I can do against my rent for a few months. But it might also mean the beginning of other permaculture work I can do on the ranch…we’re still sorting this out. There is a bigger question of how operations here will continue into the next year. And in this uncertainty, there is opportunity that depends on my own initiative. What do I want to do here?

Having coffee with a friend, I told her that lately I wonder if I should just give in and try to find a straight job with a steady paycheck and benefits (if such a thing even exists for me anymore). She gasped. “I think I’d just hang myself!” We laughed; she’s right, but in my indecision about my life, I’m the hanged man either way.

I’ve been searching for a purpose for so long. I spent most of my life thinking that the way to do that was to look at what seemed feasible, set a goal, and then plunge forth with it. Once I decided what that story was, I stuck with it, regardless of how my feelings changed, until I couldn’t stand it any longer. And every time I set out to “find” myself, I got hopelessly lost.

Life is moving in interesting ways around me. For now, I’m trying to sit with the uncertainty, trying to see the possibilities rather than the fears. To see the opportunities to work in service to something other than myself. And to listen. This attitude of surrendering to what happens is new for me. It takes practice.

Perhaps, like the whales, I have to relax into believing it will come. To sit down in my life and put one foot in front of the other. To wait, suspended for a while, and listen for what life wants of me, and to have faith that I will hear.

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Trimming Hooves

Working with the goats has settled into a routine. Milking in the morning usually takes less than two hours. Lately, I’ve been able to learn another skill: trimming hooves.

The hooves of goats grow just like our own toenails. In the wild, the goats would be scampering around rocks, the abrasive surfaces wearing their hooves down naturally. On this ranch, we’re lacking rocks, so we need to trim hooves regularly. The need becomes most apparent if you watch a goat with overgrown hooves try to come up a slippery wet ramp into the barn. The hard smooth outside of the hoof, or “horn”, folds over the bottom of the foot as it grows, leaving the goat with almost no traction on such surfaces.

In this photo, you can see an overgrown hoof, packed with dirt and mud. This one actually isn’t too bad compared to many I’ve seen, but you can see how the horn has started to fold over the bottom of the foot as it grows:

Hooves Close-up

The horn material is pretty tough; our trimmers are something like a cross between pruners and tin snips. The trick is to clean out the dirt, then get some purchase underneath the flap of horn as you trim it away. Here’s a photo of P. trimming…you can see how she gets a nice clean line of white…that’s what you want:

Patty trimming hooves

When I started trying this myself, I despaired of ever being able to do it right. My brain knew what to do, but my hands needed time, experience, and practice to learn. But I stuck with it, sometimes only doing one hoof per morning. The ladies are usually patient with me. It fascinates me, this process of teaching the hands how to do something new. They have their own learning, separate from the head.

Now I can almost always get all four hooves done within a few minutes. Here, I’m working on gentle Oak (my nephew’s favorite goat):

Trimming Oak's Hooves

The bottles there contain a medicine for hoof rot and styptic powder in case any bleeding occurs. I usually err on the side of not trimming enough. I hate to see blood!

I love feeling that I can do something to make the ladies more comfortable and healthy. Every goat on the line has had her hooves trimmed at least once, and now I watch them regularly to maintain a healthy trim. It seems to me that the white Saanen goats and goats with long hair need their pedicures more often.

Learning how to trim hooves has been really satisfying for me. It didn’t come easy and it took practice—two hurdles that I have to consciously work to overcome.

Though the goats sometimes get impatient with this disheveled woman in dirty dungarees futzing with their feet, I can’t help but think they might also be grateful for the trim. Let’s face it, every ranch girl knows that a nice pedicure under the muck boots can sometimes feel like the last bastion of femininity in the barn.
toes

The Past

Fox Medicine

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Not long after my sister was born, when I was two, my parents heard that a mother fox had been killed nearby and there was a litter of fox kits. My mother bundled me up so Dad could take me to see them. Somehow, we came home with one of the kits. It’s easy to imagine a toddler me, babbling with delight over the baby foxes, and somehow also easy to imagine my father giving in to the impulse to bring one home with us. Kippy became a pet.
Kippy.
There was also a puppy, “my” dog, Puff. They tell me that I would shuffle around the house in my footed pajamas, Kippy hanging onto one ankle and Puff the other, growling and tugging furiously as I dragged them over the hardwood floor, laughing.

As Kippy got older, she was put away after each playtime, into a pen on the screened-in porch. One day as Mom was putting her back in the pen, Kippy bit my mom. After that, Kippy had to live in a pen in the garage, and our play times were over. When I was five, we moved to another house. Kippy did not come with us. (You knew it wasn’t going to end well, didn’t you?)

I don’t have a really conscious memory, in the usual sense, of playing with Kippy. But I know that there are feelings I have when I remember that time. Feelings of warmth, of sunlight on wood floor, and a very strong sense of play. I have an unmistakable sense of hearing a sudden noise, and all three of us turning our heads towards it. It was right and good back then to be a sensitive creature. Fox is able to remain unseen in plain view, the protector of the family. As you might suspect, I have great affinity for the fox clan.

I can’t tell you why I need wild nature, quiet places, and connection with the furred and the feathered. I only know that I do, and I need to keep remembering and honoring that, and to reject the guilt I sometimes feel over needing that as the daughter of people who never got such choices in life. I need to remember to pull myself away from the computer, the chores, the endless parade of crap that I get entangled with, my futile worrying and planning and arranging to make everything come out my way, in constant search of instant gratification or ego strokes. To get outside…out out out.

There used to be a me who had no trouble living in the here and now, a me who played with a fox and a dog, a me who was perfectly content in a perfect world.

She’s still there sometimes; I find her maybe watching a family of White-tailed Kites in a tree, or listening to the delicate sound of pelican wings overhead. She is the best part of me.

White Pelicans.

The Past

Disco Inferno

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It was eighth grade CCD class…those were the classes we went to at church on Wednesday nights. We never knew what CCD stood for, but it turns out it’s “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine”, something established in Rome in the sixteenth century. Basically, it’s religious ed for those of us who weren’t attending a Catholic school.
Flowing_Rivers
That year, they split us up into small groups and we met in the basement of the school. I was in a class of about six kids, all of them from another school. Our instructor was the owner of Fast Eddies, a drive-through carryout store, where you didn’t even have to get out of your car to buy your beer and wine.

There was a boy in that class who was acting out a bit; let’s call him Brad. He’d make outrageous comments during class, and would draw elaborate depictions of pills and syringes on his class handouts. The other kids in the class made fun of him and informed me that he liked me. I didn’t really like him, but the idea of any boy liking me was such a novel thing, I went along with it. I drew mustaches and devil horns on pictures of the pope on my own handouts to show solidarity.

They had a retreat for junior high school kids that year, on a day when our schools were all closed for a teacher in-service day. This was 1977, and the folks running the retreat were the same folks who made the hippy banners for the church and struggled to strum their way through guitar mass. 1977 might seem a little late for that, but this was small-town Ohio…we were always behind.
hotelcalifornia
During a break at the retreat, I was swinging on the swings. Brad wandered over to talk to me. As he talked, I pumped my legs harder and harder, flying higher and higher on the swing, full of nervous energy. I don’t remember what he said, but I remember not wanting anyone to see us talking.

Later, during the retreat, they split the boys and girls up, took us to different rooms for a sex ed type of session. It was painful for me; they didn’t really teach us anything, just encouraged us to ask questions. I didn’t know enough to have any questions. I felt humiliated when we were asked who had gotten their periods already; I felt that the girls who raised their hands already knew how much wiser and more sophisticated they were than me. I can’t remember what was actually discussed, but I remember being shocked by some of the candor. I couldn’t imagine not being ashamed to talk about my body so frankly.

A couple weeks later, there was a dance planned at my school. I usually went to the dances with my friends, holding out hope until the very end that a boy would ask me. I figured that this boy from CCD liked me, so I’d ask him to the dance, and somehow I managed to do that. Funny, I can’t remember how. Maybe a note? I was a coward, so probably it was a note. The year before, I’d given the boy of my obsession a note:

Do you like me? Check one and send this note back to me:

No

Yes, as a friend

Yes, as a girlfriend

The first time I put the note in his locker, he ignored it. The second time, he checked the dreaded box #2, and gave it to his friend to give back to me. I saw them talking, then the friend walked down the row in study hall and flipped the note onto my desk, saying something nasty and hateful to me.

I’m sure I was no less elegant with asking Brad to the dance.

I remembered when he did answer, it was after CCD class. He came up to me on the playground while we were going to our car in the dark October night, and I was with my brothers and sisters. I was in a panic that he would talk to me around them. They mustn’t know! I let out some horrible tirade about him being gross and of course I didn’t like him. It was if I couldn’t help myself, like I was watching myself do it from outside. I am still miserably ashamed of myself when I think about it now.
You_Light_Up_My_Life
The next Wednesday, I talked to him again, and explained that I was around my family at the time and was sorry I’d said all that. He didn’t seem to mind…the poor guy was probably used to it, to be honest. But we arranged for him to go to the dance with me.

On the night of the dance, I waited in the lobby of school for him. Word got around and some of the other kids waited around also, to see who would possibly go to the dance with me. When he came in the door, of course, they all laughed. But we made a quick escape into the dark gym, and went to the top of the bleachers to sit.

He held my hand, and we talked. I felt frozen with fear and tension. There was no punch bowl at this dance to alleviate my edginess; those appeared later, in high school. My best friend and her new friend, Cindy, came to talk to us. Cindy never hid her loathing for me. They stood and talked to us for a while, then Cindy suddenly grabbed my hand and shoved it into Brad’s crotch. I was angry, but Brad didn’t seem to mind.

We slow danced during the slow songs and talked during the fast songs. He brought up the retreat and when they split up the boys and the girls and said that he thought it was wrong that they did that. He thought they should have kept us all together and that it would have been much better. I tried to change the subject.

The dance ground down to the bitter end of the evening. Brad tried to grind his erection into me while dancing, and I pretended not to notice and shifted away each time. Right here in the junior high school gym? Ew.
saturdaynightfever
My dad came to pick us up at the end of the dance. We climbed into the back seat and sat next to each other, maybe holding hands. The radio in the car was broken, so we tried to make conversation all the way back to Ayersville. (My mom said later that Dad vowed to get the car radio fixed right away after that.) I can’t remember…when we dropped him off, did he give me a kiss on the cheek? I just remember being horrified by the whole experience, there with my dad. We drove away, and I climbed over the seat to sit in the front on the way home.

I didn’t really talk to Brad much during the rest of the year. Later, I noticed him in church because he became an altar boy and seemed to find religion and got more involved with the church. But we never really had conversations or were even friends after that. And for the rest of junior high and high school, I never did go to a dance with a boy. Eventually, I just didn’t go to them at all.

Despite the feelings of humiliation and shame that I still feel when I remember this story, I laugh at myself more. I’ve become an adult who’s still quite awkward in social situations. Most of all, I’m struck by the sense of isolation I felt and how I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone then about my real feelings. I’d like to time-travel back to the person I was, and to tell her, “Hang in there. You’re going to be fine. It’s going to get better. It’s going to get much, much better.”

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Heathen on the Water

I was happy to get a kayak back in the water on Monday, checking out Estero Americano for the first time, after over a year of no paddling at all. It took a silly amount of will for me to get over my fear and reluctance to make the effort, even knowing it would all be worth it. And it was.

I’m reading The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World by David Abram. It’s been a long hard slog through this book, but I’m in a good section now, and am struck by this passage:

For the Navajo, then, the Air—particularly in its capacity to provide awareness, thought, and speech—has properties that European, alphabetic civilization has traditionally ascribed to an interior, individual human “mind” or “psyche.” Yet by attributing these powers to the Air, and by insisting that the “Winds within us” are thoroughly continuous with the Wind at large—with the invisible medium in which we are immersed—the Navajo elders suggest that that which we call the “mind” is not ours, is not a human possession. Rather, mind as Wind is a property of the encompassing world, in which humans—like all other beings—participate. One’s individual awareness, the sense of a relatively personal self or psyche, is simply that part of the enveloping Air that circulates within, through and around one’s particular body; hence, one’s own intelligences is assumed, from the start, to be entirely participant with the swirling psyche of the land.

On the water, I try to feel that. Can I break through the wall of my own thoughts, into the air around me? I have had those feelings of oneness with nature; usually, animals are involved, perhaps with a hawk with a broken wing or with an elk who shakes his antlers at me. But the feeling is fleeting. I can’t summon it up at will.

I’ve been hearing people talk about how their god or their higher power loves them. And as I paddle along, I think about this. Do I feel loved by my higher power? I dig deep for the feeling, but I find that it’s not there for me, at least not now. I’m not terribly bothered by this, but I do wonder what they are experiencing. I have a kernel of worry that maybe it’s something I need to be able feel so I don’t keep trying to make gods out of men and then seek their love.

My father spends our conversation on father’s day bemoaning my lapsed Catholism; I finally reveal to him that it’s worse than he thought…that I’m not only a non-church goer, but I’m a Buddhist, too. I finally, finally understand that he will never accept who I am. But I am quicker to understand that it is easier for me to feel compassion for a mere mortal than it is for me to have compassion for a god. He asks me to say an “Our Father”, and I don’t have the heart to tell him how often I find myself holding hands in a circle saying that already…or how that “father” part of that grates on me when I do.

The wind picks up, pushes me and the ‘yak forward, and I remember the Navajo concept of a mind as wind. I imagine that I am in my place here on the estero, breathing in and breathing out, breath mingling with the breaths of the doe with two spotted fawns under the tree, or the cries of the raven chasing the eagle who rolls to threaten the raven with its feathered talons. The air envelops me as I move through it and it also moves through me as I breathe; it accepts me and I it. Is this being loved? More questions. Always with the questions.

I put the paddle down, drag my fingers in the water as it passes through the estero and out to the ocean. I breath in and out, and I dangle my fingers, and I really am connected, via air and water, to everything else breathing this air and touching this water. What would it feel like to be loved back by it all? What am I expecting? Is it already here?

My stubborn head always gets in the way. Cut it off and set it down beside me in the water; I should have brought a rope to tow it with, let the fish nibble at it along the way. And turn my mind over to the lovely wind.

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Goat Milking Compared to Bartending

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bar patrons vs goats

Goats Bar Patrons
When trying to move a goat, use inertia…go any direction with the goat, then plant your feet and pivot to your desired direction. When trying to move a drunk, use inertia…go any direction with the drunk, then plant your feet and pivot to your desired direction.
Pushing can work better than pulling. The goat seems to have some delusion of control if you’re less visible in their direction of motion. Pushing can work better than pulling. The drunk seems to have some delusion of control if you’re less visible in their direction of motion.
Frequently make messes that you have to clean up. Frequently make messes that you have to clean up. (But I prefer the goat manure.)
Have their favorite spots at the feed trough in the milk line. Have their favorite spots at the bar.
There will be disputes and feuds that you won’t understand. It’s usually best to stay out of it. There will be disputes and feuds that you won’t understand. It’s usually best to stay out of it.
They don’t like to go out in the rain; during inclement weather, it can be difficult to get them to leave the barn. They don’t like to go out in the rain; during inclement weather, it can be difficult to get them to leave the bar.
There are eccentrics. Birch turns around every time she goes through a doorway or gate. Orchid bucks and kicks for no apparent reason. There are eccentrics. Lucille washes her hands every ten minutes and throws paper towels on the floor. Randy sits in the back booth and argues with god.
They are sensitive to changes in their environment. “Ack! Stop, wait! What’s that new yellow box in the barn?!!” They are sensitive to changes in their environment. “Hey, new coasters. I like the old ones better. What happened to those?”
If you are running late in opening the door, they will be waiting outside impatiently. If you are running late in opening the door, they will be waiting outside impatiently.
Sometimes they don’t want to leave. Food can be a motivator. “Look girls, time to leave. Here, follow me, here’s the grain bucket!” Sometimes they don’t want to leave. Food can be a motivator. “Sorry, our kitchen is closed. Have you tried that new Chinese place down the street?”
Every once in a while, you lose one. It hurts, even though you knew better than to get attached. Every once in a while, you lose one. It hurts, even though you knew better than to get attached.
Eventually, you have to shut the place down and clean. If you’re not insistent, they will wander around the place, getting in your way, making more messes, and generally trying to keep the party going. Eventually, you have to shut the place down and clean. If you’re not insistent, they will wander around the place, getting in your way, making more messes, and generally trying to keep the party going.
You will have your favorites. Rozena gets an extra scoop of grain once in a while. You will have your favorites. John F. gets the employee discount.
To clean the milk lines: connect everything up in a big loop, then pump soapy water through the lines. Follow with a rinse cycle. To clean the beer tap lines: connect everything up in a big loop, then pump soapy water through the lines. Follow with a rinse cycle.
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Moon in the Morning

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My mornings are usually too hectic to write much anymore. For a while, I was trying to get up at 4am to have time to write; now I try for 4:30, and and then there’s the snooze alarm for a few times while I try in vain to remember dreams and contemplate how cold it it’s going to be to walk to the outhouse (even when it’s not cold at all). There’s time to sit zazen, do a few other things for spiritual practice…habits I’m trying, with some success, to start my day with. Then I make coffee, look at email (rarely answering any of it anymore…sorry), and another alarm goes off. That’s the 5:45am alarm that gives me 15 minutes to wake and feed Laika, throw on the Carhartt double-fronts and muck boots, pour coffee into the travel mug and get down to the barn and milk goats.

Really, it’s a pretty good morning.

I’ve been thinking a lot about cravings, and my constant need for more, more. There are times when I am crazy with craving and have no idea what the craving is for. When I do know what the craving is for, I know that the object of my craving won’t fill the void, and yet it’s always been so much easier to give in; to check out, to succumb to the numb, with food, with alcohol, with material possessions, with accomplishments, with love or anything that remotely approximates love.

Every practice that feels right to me…permaculture, zen, Jungian psychology…tells me that I am not separate or apart from anything. That we are all profoundly connected and that it’s those interconnections that are the important thing. And when I have moments of actually feeling that, instead of trying to intellectually conceptualize it, I certainly don’t feel cravings.

The cravings require a hole, and a hole requires a boundary, a demarcation in space of some sort. “Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form.” It makes me wonder if my task is not so much to avoid the impulse to fill the emptiness, but rather to dissolve the sides of the hole. To ignore the red herring of the suffering known as craving, and to instead seek to experience the interconnection.

My understanding of these things is very naive. The other day, I woke up to the fact that I really am like a 14-or16-year old driving around this self-abused 46-year old body…that parts of me must have split off at some point and just quit maturing, and now my task is to grow them up. And really understanding this, I realize how much in danger I am of making stupid mistakes. I always want to think that the rules don’t apply to me. Will I ever learn to shut up and listen to the wisdom that’s right in front of me? I’m trying, but sometimes I think I’m just going to burst into flames. I become a wad of discontent.

One of the things I’ve wanted in my life is to live closer to nature, to really feel those interconnections. Slowly, my life is being steeped in this more and more. Most days, you could ask me what phase the moon is in, and I’ll know…not because I have an app for that, but because I’m outside a lot, and waking up to the sky, the wind, the birds, the earth. The other morning, I looked forward to scanning the sky as I walked to the bathroom…I knew it was the full moon. I could even see the glow from inside the dark yurt.

But when I walked outside and turned to look at my friend the moon, something was wrong. A big lopsided bite had been taken out of her. And I remembered hearing about an eclipse.

I sat zazen with the eclipse that morning, outside with the borage, nasturtiums, and numberless beautiful weeds. The moon drifted above the fog, until slowly it was dragged down into it, as if being eaten by a giant cosmic snake.

I almost didn’t get it. I almost forgot to be grateful, to wake up to this indescribable beauty, to how incredibly fortunate I am and how easy and luxurious my life really is. The life of waking up to nature was right here and now; everything I wanted was already mine. And I almost just ran past it in my life, almost just went ahead with the next obsessive thought about some idea of something new to need.

Reflections

The Dharma Master of Love

Portrait of Ikkyu by BokusaiMy newest zen hero: Ikkyu, originator of the concept of “the red thread of zen”. Philip Toshio Sudo described Ikkyu’s philosophy and influence like this:

To Ikkyu, cutting off relations between men and women so as to attain enlightenment made no sense. In his philosophy of “red thread zen,” sex deepened the experience of enlightenment. No one can enter this world without being born of both a man and woman, he said; we are connected to sex by the “red thread” of blood at birth. Back and back the red thread goes, long and unbroken, to the origin of all being. We’re of sex. That fact should be embraced, not avoided, Ikkyu said.

The poems are fantastic; I look forward to reading more of them. This one is from Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, a collection of translations by John Stevens:

The Dharma Master of Love

My life has been devoted to love play;
I’ve no regret about being tangled in red
thread from head to foot,
Nor am I ashamed to have spent my days as a
Crazy Cloud–
But I sure don’t like this long, long bitter
autumn of no good sex!

For ten straight years I reveled in pleasure
houses.
Now I’m all alone deep in the dark mountain
valley.
Thirty thousand cloud leagues live between
me and the places I love.
The only sound that reaches my ears is the
melancholy wind blowing in the pines.