Not Spring

I know it’s not Spring.  But I have stuff popping up in my garden and I saw some blue sky yesterday and  am finally getting over whatever I had that put me in bed for a week.  I am thinking of Easter and pussy willows and the sweet green of new leaves.  Oh I long for it.

Do you remember Rapunzel  about the woman who begs her husband to go pick her  rampion?  He did and she ate it and she got pregnant and the wicked enchantress got the baby.  So happy I’m past my childbearing years.  And I don’t need ramps, arugala will do fine.

And so it is Spring…in my heart.  Robin says to me “take it easy…I know what you’re going to do.  You’re going to push it and get sick again” the implication being, of course, that it will be all my fault if I get sick again and it was probably my fault that I got sick in the first place.

Say it ain’t so.  Anyhoo—I have a manic desire to redecorate, clean, polish, make new pillows, make old pillows shine again and just generally pretend that it is not still winter.

Winter here means grey, sodden, muddy yech.  The Living written by Annie Dillard about the Pacific Northwest sums up what it’s like around here.

I can’t find the passage I want  but trust me it is dark, damp, and deadly.  Moss flourishes, green things flourish; pink skin goes white and clammy and lungs wheeze and then you die.  I don’t know if you die from hopelessness or rot, but you die.  It sucks.

However, when it’s sunny, oh boy, watch out.   And when I am just thinking about when it’s going to be sunny, I rejoice and get busy.

So, my friends, get busy.  Polish and shine, and get out your gardening books.  Sew, and repair and take the rugs in for cleaning.

The sun will come out eventually and we will feel fine again.

If you are young and fertile, do not sent your husband out for rampion.

 

The Bitter Nut

My friend describes bitterness, that gradually tightening of the soul around some indigestible disappointment, insult or affront, as a bitter nut.  Bitterness, it seems to me, is a disappointment in our lot in life reinforced over time.  Bitterness is a shrinking of our sense of agency in our own lives.

We either accept our lot or we tangle with our lot.  We either confront what’s happening in a way that salvages our self worth or we participate in our own undoing.  Inaction breeds bitterness.  We are disappointed in the other but most deeply in ourselves.

Our lives put us to the test.  My mom used to say that difficulties are put in our way to teach us, as if there is a divine being (a teacher) who guides us towards enlightenment.

Well, I disagree with the divine being bit but I totally agree that we will continue to bounce up against the issues that we haven’t put to bed.  We are constantly tested by our own inadequacies.  It’s the nature of the beast.  Grow or dwindle.  Step into the fray or efface yourself.

I have certainly been there.  This is something that one cannot do for another person.  It means picking up your skirts (or pants) jumping out of your comfort zone and getting dirty.  Put yourself out there.  You don’t know who you are until you do.

What will be the result?  Can’t tell you that.  Life will go on for sure.  It probably won’t be as comfortable on the surface.  Feathers may fly.  It may be ugly and painful.  But to carry the pain inside you is painful too.   Too painful.  It will become a bitter nut.

 

 

Who’s your daddy?

I’m sitting on the computer this morning and I hear an argument, raised voices, coming from the bathroom.  Thinking Robin is being assaulted in the shower, I rush in.

Robin is arguing with a Daddy Long legs who he is trying to rescue.  One daddy to another.  This spider is not cooperating.  He keeps slipping down the shower wall and Rob doesn’t want to kill him because I have told him that they are good eggs.

I don’t know why I think Daddy long legs are good eggs.  I just kind of like them.  I don’t think they bite or cause flesh eating disease or are particularly ugly.  They are just long legged dudes who hang in our bathroom.

Rob is trying to be nice to them because I like them and I don’t like to kill them.  I think that’s pretty awesome.  I love him.  He sometimes listens to what I say.  He’s a darling man.

We rescued the spider and Rob resumed his shower.  I wish I could draw a picture of nude man in shower with spider.  I don’t think that’s ever been done.

Here is a Daddy long legs with his dog.  He’s a gent.  A gentleman and a scholar, like my husband.

 

Murmuration

I have been thinking about the difference between tolerating one’s neighbors or the other folk who live on the planet and truly loving them as we are encouraged to by our various religions.

I had thought that toleration is not enough.  We need to go full bore, I thought.  Well, I’m changing my mind.  Maybe its too much to ask for us to embrace the world.  Maybe if we could just embrace our neighbors, that would be enough.

And then I came across this wonderful video and explanation of the video that sealed the deal for me.

A murmuration.  An enormous flock of birds arcing across the sky, bending and blending and pirouetting.  Like clouds with a mind.  What an amazing sight.  There is an explanation of how they do this:

“…focusing on the birds’ ability to manage uncertainty while also maintaining consensus, they discovered that birds accomplish this (with the least effort) when each bird attends to seven neighbors.

In following this role of seven, then, the birds are part of a dynamic system in which the parts combine to make a whole with emergent properties — and a murmuration results.”

How great—they manage uncertainty while maintaining consensus by working in smaller units.  Neighbors.

Some folks may call this faith, that is, faith that everyone in the larger unit will cooperate while those in the smaller unit keeps the cadence.

And they call them birdbrains.

 

Through a glass darkly

I am in Portland with my daughter and husband celebrating my belated birthday.  Tessa just had a friend commit suicide.  It comes in waves, Mom, she says, trying to describe her grief, it comes in waves.

The waves are regret, despair, guilt, the whole muddled mess of hurt and disbelief.  If only, why didn’t I return his call, why didn’t I know he’d become despondent.  Why, why, why?

It seems to me that we are often a mystery to those around us and we to them.  We don’t necessarily deceive.  That’s the wrong word.  We are not transparent beings, our stuff readily available to those around us.  Rather, we are complex layered beings; our conceits, our frailties, our doubts, our crooked ways invisible sometimes even to ourselves.

Not until inclination or despair turns into action do we see the whole picture.

Yes, we can know someone, yes, we can love someone, but unless we swallow them whole will we experience them as they experience themselves.  We are always outsiders.

And so, yes, we grieve, we torture ourselves with what we missed, or our insensitivity.  But, it is the nature of the beast and so be kind to yourself, those who are in grief.  Be kind to yourself.  You didn’t know.

 

 

Hello Blessings

This was a wonderful article;  the last paragraph tells you why..

“…the basement harbors a resource even scarcer in this city for men like him, he said: kindness. More than a roof, more than food, Mr. Arroyo said, at night, huddled in the dripping dark, he and his bedfellows crave just one thing. “Someone who will say, ‘Hello, blessings. How are you?’”

I thought of the kids we worked with at Madrona.  They grow up, you know.  They grow up and some become the dirty disheveled, and crazy adults we see on the streets.

Do we ever lose the need to be seen, to be treated with kindness, to be called blessings?  No we do not.

It is mostly easy to love children, much harder to show kindness to adults.

 

Dullard to divine

So, I’m asking myself “why write?”  I am asking myself that question now because I am losing the thread.  “What thread?” says you.  The thread of my life.  I am not on a high horse, I do not feel I have the “Answer” and if I write one more blog about gratitude I’m going to puke.

Not that I’m not grateful.  I am.  .

So what I’m left with now are some real rough edges—I’m antsy, I’m low grade pissed off.  If I’m not ranting what am I?  Is that what’s going on in our country now?  We’re all angry.  We didn’t get what we thought we would, life is not what it’s cracked up to be, it’s not fair, blah blah blah blah blah.  Bladdy blah.

We never figure it out, do we?  We wait for the revelation or the resolution and when we get it, it’s too late.

We are looking for answers outside of ourselves but you know, answers from outside do you no good.  Go in, young people, go in.  Find that knarly little beet you call your “self” and open it up.  Layer by layer, open it up and find what drives you, find what gives you meaning and pursue it.

New Year’s resolution—go in and open up.

Here’s a knarly little beet–isn’t this awesome?  I love how the beet has rings like the trees, I love how the universe has rings like the beets.  I love how when you move way far out how the material world reiterates, replicates itself in all forms animal, vegetable and mineral.  Intelligent design indeed.

How wonderful.  So now I’ve led myself from dullard to divine.  To breathe is to be delighted.

 

Barking dogs (From 12/18/17)

I’m sitting in the Starbucks listening to cheesy Christmas music and waiting for Rob to come out of surgery to see if they can open up a small artery (getting smaller) in his leg.  Apparently it’s not a particularly difficult surgery and not too traumatic for him.  Let’s hope it works.

Before we left this morning, Rob wanted to talk about how vulnerable he feels right now.  “Lots of thoughts about mortality”, he said.

“Gee”, I said, (being a sarcastic asshole) “I couldn’t tell.”  He drives me fucking nuts when he’s anxious.  He can’t do anything.  He is paralyzed.  He sits in a dark living room and watches soccer or football or the news.  He asks me about lunch.  He forgets to pick up supplies so that I can bandage his toes.  He is just unable to function.  He is a child again.

In fairness to him, he is not supposed to walk much, he’s supposed to elevate his foot, he can’t exercise, but sheesh can he eat.

I should know about anxiety.  I get anxious, but not like this.  It is debilitating.  It is debilitating for him and it is totally maddening to me.  I hear an actual agitated thrum coming from him like an electical storm.  He buzzes.  I don’t know how to escape him or help him.

So I yell.  And we yell at each other.  Driving up to the Hospital  I asked him “Why do we do this to each other?”  He said “because we’re the Dickerson’s”.

That’s one explanation but the one I think of is this:  supplies are limited.  In a marriage you only have so much capacity to absorb or assuage stress.  Any more than that and the parties fight over who gets their needs met and who doesn’t.

As we get older, our stresses are going to increase.  We need better skills and I don’t know if you can teach old dogs new tricks.  And so we’ll just bark at each other and then go in the corner and lick our wounds.

 

 

 

Empty houses

Woke up this morning with my head full of nothing.  Literally, my brain was an empty house with the windows open and wind careening off the walls through the rooms, up the stairs and down again;  dust, bits of crumpled paper, muddy footprints.  I didn’t open the cellar door.

I wanted to write about a recent suicide, an old suicide, grief and confusion all around and I was stuck in an empty house.

Perhaps that’s apropos.

 

Caring for the stranger

I was checking out Krista Tippett last night and read a bit about the difference between tolerance and caring for the stranger.  Tolerance means getting used to something, putting up with someone.  Caring for someone means allowing their reality to enter your life, your heart.

We can disassociate from our pain, we can distance ourselves from people.  Both these maneuvers allow us to tolerate situations and people which we would not be able to tolerate otherwise.

Caring for the stranger means connection.  It has nothing to do with protection which is what tolerating is all about.  Tolerating is holding your nose while in proximity to the stranger.

And so on this New Year’s Day, I am thinking about strangers.  I am thinking about strangers who live across my little road and strangers who live across the world in refugee camps.  I am thinking about strangers who believe in the rapture, in life after death, in a personal God or no god at all.  That’s interesting that I go to religious beliefs to describe the “other”.  It could be anything—color of skin, disability, short people, people with wavy hair, young people, rich people.  People who are not me.

You can’t just let in the good stuff.  It’s not like shopping—I’ll take this, but not that.  Angels won’t sing hallelujah, you may not be carried aloft by the admiration of thousands.  It’s work, caring for others.  Its’s work and a commitment and god bless those who can do it.   It’s hard because to take in other people’s pain, hurts.  But you also get to listen to the joy, the triumph, and the growth.

I’m whining because to care for strangers sounds great in the Bible but to put it into practice is damn hard.  How many of us are up to this challenge?  I don’t know if I am.  I will try.

Tomorrow.