A Year Without the Internet

Blue Vox

2010-07-02T08:50:00.007-04:00

"The poet doesn't so much disappear into the poem as become the poem. It is a concentration of faculties, of everything you are or hope to be, and at that moment you have a focus not only on your conscious life, but your unconscious world, and it is as much an expression of your whole being as is conceivable."
— S. Kunitz, The Wild Braid, p. 98

Blue Vox

Dwelt in a shed
by a cabin
on a cliff
by that river
pierced with songs of blackbirds
hanging sideways on cattails

She came in a brown cloak
fourteen years old
disguised as an old woman
clothed in brown
homespun
At daybreak
she knocked on the brown
shed door
black iron hinges
wood scratched light in places
sturdy despite years of use
They had come before, these leavers of "babies"
but in two hundred years they had seldom left humans
Brought under cover of darkness,
wrapped in blankets
they had brought
honor, pride, purity, truth
He never asked questions
Always cared for his charges like children
when cities burned
or upended tables and broad red tempers
arms like limbs of oak and
shouting like thunder
threatened to destroy them
They always came at night
edge of dawn or
just past dusk
when in summer the frogs'
throaty longing swelled upon
the river
She brought her voice that night
when Venus hung pure in azure sky
knocked and left
a swaddled parcel crying
The note said:
I don't know when I'll be back. Please care for my child.
She departed into the blackness of the wood
Of course they came for him—her—it—
They came on horseback and at
the sound of them
Blue Vox carried the beloved to the river,
set the child in a basket,
pushed the basket
out from the reeds,
into the current:
You'll be safer out there.

© April 2009

4H on Paper

2010-07-01T08:35:00.003-04:00

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

— Unknown

May, 2009

Recently took a morning training to become a 4H leader. I'm not going to be doing much except having my name show up on a piece of paper and to teach some fiber-related stuff at the kids' school this fall. Living in the city I didn't know I could ever be involved in 4H.

There were about eight or nine of us there. Some were 18 or so who'd spent their youth as 4Hers. Some were parents. Some were teachers.

When I was a kid growing up in an upper-middle-class suburb and riding horses, there was always a sense that 4H was a little below us. This training was such an eye-opener for me. The kids who were there taking the training were capable already of running cattle farms or teaching younger kids to ride. I felt all this shame well up realizing I'd essentially looked down on these people. Crazy ideas that get put in the head when one is young and I don't even know how those ideas got in there. A good thing to recognize and to remedy.

I truly missed out. 4H is so inclusive and so supportive of not only achievement but of the person.

There's a lot of information that gets circulated to 4H leaders about events going on in Maine and New England. I signed up to receive this by snail mail. I already have received huge envelopes of information I don't really need. This is going to cost them something--email is so much cheaper....

Frog Eggs

2010-06-30T07:48:00.005-04:00

What makes the engine go?
Desire, desire, desire.
The longing for the dance
stirs in the buried life.

— Stanley Kunitz, "Touch Me", in The Wild Braid, p. 95

April 2009

Yesterday while riding our bikes we came across a pond with frogs in it. Amidst the reeds were large clutches of frog eggs. We headed home, collected buckets and net, and headed back to the pond to collect some eggs.

For several years I've been wanting to hatch frog eggs or nurture tadpoles for a few weeks and then release into the wild. As a suburban child in the 1970s mid-Atlantic we would search religiously in the clear pools of water that formed in the orange clay after a rainstorm. We were looking for the tiny black tadpoles of toads to keep for a few weeks until they sprouted legs. So much of the wild was regarded as dangerous; the massive river a few miles away was polluted. Having the opportunity to really observe something pure, young, wild, and alive was a cherished experience.

After returning to the pond by car we collected the eggs and ample pondwater to fill the aquarium purchased a few weeks ago at Goodwill. When we got home, we placed the aquarium in a temperature-appropriate spot, poured in the pondwater, and very carefully transferred the eggs. We're raising our kids to respect all living things—no bug-killing, no keeping crabs in a thimbleful of water in the sun at the beach— a fact which prompted the lecture today about not poking the frog eggs with a stick. They are alive.

Last night we had dinner with another homeschooling family. We proudly shared our excitement at finally scoring some frog eggs. Well, it was quickly pointed out that what we did is now illegal in Maine, a point that would have been well-driven-home were I on the internet this year. Apparently, someone else like me posted a basic question to one of the homeschooling email lists about handling frog eggs, unleashing an email firestorm.

No more bragging about the frog eggs.

That Empty Inbox Feeling

2010-06-29T08:41:00.004-04:00

"The poem has to be saturated with impulse and that means getting down to the very tissue of experience."
— Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid, p. 103.

April 2009

Jeff is gone to Florida for an airshow. Left early this AM. He never used to correspond much when away and that always bothered me. But now I don't have that empty inbox feeling. We keep in touch by five word text messages (probably only one a day) and that will be enough.

I remember when I first rented an office on Ballard Avenue in Seattle for my publishing company. The upper floor of a pioneer cabin that had been moved from the Central District. Two identical cabins that had been moved together, relocated to Ballard's historic district, and conjoined. It was an attic, really, with a window on each end; one looked out on the adjacent sloping shingled roof, where rain fell often; the other, down the side street at old buildings and toward the ship canal.

During the first few days I worked there I had no phone & no internet. I had been working out of the house before that, where I had all these things, and a husband, a cat, a garden, and neighbors with whom I was acquainted. Now it was going to be me in a solitary room with its steep narrow stairs. A hermitage, almost.

Part way through the first morning it became overwhelmingly evident there was no loneliness. No one could contact me, I couldn't read my email, so there was never a sense of disappointment, of being forgotten. An email would only take off part of the edge, but the edge would return: that edge of wanting contact with people, of wanting to be known and remembered. Natural human needs partly and often poorly satisfied by technology and therefore never really satisfied.

That experience is part of what drives me this year. Lonely? Go outside. Call someone or go to a café. The depth of satisfaction in seeing a friend in person—or anyone, really—assuages the loneliness so much more completely.

A Night Out with the Local Italian Supermodels

2010-06-27T10:58:00.006-04:00

"Too many gardens I've seen seem to express only one mood or one state of being. There is a dependence, a reliance on the effectiveness, let's say, of a single color, as though it were the only state of being that corresponds with one's concept of the beautiful."

--Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden, p. 75

Last night my neighbor and her singer-songwriter sister took me out to hear Kris Delmhorst at One Longfellow Square. My neighbor bought me a ticket as a way of saying "thanks" for therapeutic massage received in the days before the birth of her son. The work helped her sleep and forget for an hour that she was pregnant and she felt grateful, so she offered me a ticket to hear live music. How cool!

Now, let me point out that my neighbor and her sister both look like supermodels. I'm not kidding. Long, classically gorgeous, Italian-American. And smart. And sweet. And ten years younger than I am. So going out on the town with them makes it really easy to pretend that I, too, look like an Italian supermodel. That the dozens of guys staring at us along the way are actually staring at me, too.

But the best part of going out with these two is that it's incredibly fun. One of them is always doing something or saying something that makes the other one break down in hysterical laughter.

I'd always wanted to set foot in One Longfellow--they get all the good folkies touring the northeast--and the show turned out to be great. Kris Delmhorst is gutsy, bluesy, original, an excellent poet with words and strings. She played by herself, and had forgotten her performance clothes, and so was wearing her "mommy shirt" that had food on it. I felt right at home. She blew our doors right off with that voice coupled with all that presence. Like really there. Totally in the moment.

And we did get stared at, and it was fun.

First Night with the Drop Spindle

2010-06-26T07:00:00.000-04:00

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.

What began as clover
Steam of
breath in barn
during winter gale
Hay between teeth
Quiet lambing
tonight became

barge rope.
Fought its way out of
fiberness into
inconceivable
clumps.
Clods.
Punctuated by
strands so thin
they looked
like hair.

Sheep 410, of
Wiscasset, Maine,
Please forgive me.
I'll try to do better
tomorrow.

[Copyright © 2009]

Putting Off Yoga: A Bizarre Form of Self-Torture?

2010-06-25T06:59:00.010-04:00

Rest quietly in what you know is true. Then act.

April 2009

For the last fifteen years I have been wanting to do yoga every day, and with the exception of a few brief periods have been unable to make this happen. This has been a desire because I know--in my bones and muscles, and from observing older people who have done yoga regularly--that this is a superior way to keep the body and mind flexible and strong as long as possible.

I started learning yoga when I was 15 from a chemistry teacher at my school. She ran a small class in the winter for those of us not involved in other sports. It was a fringe sport, an "alternative" sport, one that merited a room but only a classroom that wasn't in use. Still, we learned a lot that winter. Iyengar yoga. I learned to relax from the immense stress of the long winter in a pressure-cooker private school. I mean, really relax. Like, relax until things really didn't bother me. Relax until the mind was quieter and didn't worry unnecessarily. Relax enough to sleep better so I was more alert when I woke up in the morning. Great life lessons to get early.

Fast-forward fifteen years and there's Carol. Part of of her retirement plan is to take the 6 a.m. hour-and-a-half yoga intensive every morning at the local Iyengar studio. Back then, when I took that class for a month, she had the body, energy and youthful outlook of a healthy 35 year old. She's in her seventies now and can stand on her head.

Despite all this—and despite wanting to—I've been unable to effect a daily practice. Absolutely unable. Every single day I think, "This is what I should be doing. This is what I want to do." Nothing. Not even five minutes. I utterly lack the discipline.

Have you ever wanted something that good for you for that long and put it off indefinitely? I'm beginning to think that living this way is a bizarre form of self-torture.

Hooked on Spinning

2010-06-23T08:30:00.003-04:00

In a boat down a fast-running creek,
it feels like trees on the bank
are rushing by. What seems

to be changing around us
is rather the speed of our craft
leaving this world.

— Rumi, Essential, p. 194

April 2009

I am completely hooked on making yarn from scratch.

Susan, fiber friend and neighbor across the street, said recently she was taking a week off from work to spin out some of the wool she had accumulated. We agreed that would be a good time to have an hour’s visit and some knitting & chat, which she’d been wanting to have me over for since I brought her a meal when she had cancer last winter.

So Tuesday was our day. I packed up my knitting and also brought along some of the wool I’d dyed a week or two ago with turquoise Jacquard dye. At her place she asked if she could card a bit and spin it out on a drop spindle to see what it would look like.

I’ve intentionally postponed learning to spin on a wheel until I’m done with school because I know it will quickly become an obsession. Never thought the drop spindle would be anything I had the patience for.

She took a little brush (a cat brush—she couldn’t find her carders) and carded the wool against her leg, then selected a drop spindle from her collection—a lovely filigree one. She keeps them in an upright basket. She spun it out roughly, then we folded it back on itself—which is what it wants because of the twist—“plying”—and it was lovely: tweedy, turquoise and gray.

She showed me how to do it. The rest is history.

Right after leaving Susan’s I called the Portland Fiber Gallery and yes, they had drop spindles—for $18 (!!). (My carding brushes were $55.) After picking up the boys we stopped by the fiber gallery and bought one—nice simple maple drop spindle. For the next 24 hours (with a few hours for sleep) I played and practiced; the boys helped turn it when the came through the room.

I had previously carded a lot of the medium gray wool from the Coopworth fleece (I’d separated the fleece by color—black/charcoal; medium gray; pale gray with flecks of charcoal) with the hope that another friend would be able to spin it on a trade. But that trade has never happened. So the box of carded wool has remained with me. Within a day and a half of figuring out the drop spindle I spun out 2/3 to ¾ of that carded wool.

Standing in my living room — the green nub of spring pushing up through the dark earth — drop-spindling while C&B play in their PJs and listen to music and stories — I recognized a moment that was utterly impossible while I was still wed to Facebook. There’s no way that I would have had the time, the desire, and the focus to learn this. I never expected to like drop-spindling — expected it to be frustrating — and so thought that a $500 spinning wheel would be the only way I could learn to spin, and that was out of reach.

According to Susan’s colleague, drop spindling is “slower by the hour but faster by the week” since you can take it anywhere. I'm completely, utterly, happily sold.

Planning a Trip to NYC...Sans Google

2010-06-22T07:08:00.011-04:00

"For us, as people sitting here meditating, as people wanting to live a good, full, unrestricted, adventurous, real kind of life, there is concrete instruction that we can follow, which is the one that we have been following all along in meditation: see what is."
—Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 36.

April 2009

How on earth does a non-NYer plan a trip to NYC without the internet??

We're headed there in a few weeks. Normally I'd be all over google trying to figure out the *perfect* two days in Manhattan, hashing through a million details, looking stuff up every five minutes, scouring photos of the places we think we might want to go, coming up with 25 billion possibilities for those two short days, then having to let most of them go. Painfully.

Then, hanging over my head for the entire trip would be the Lost Opportunities. The Things We Might Have Done. This is just how my brain works.

Basically, the internet is a perfectionist's nightmare when it comes to trip planning.

So, relying entirely on the memory of past enjoyment of Manhattan, paying close attention to what might really matter to me, J., and the boys — and remembering the need to pack enough nothing into each day so we can enjoy the moment — we plan our trip.

Empire State Building. Museum of Natural History. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Taking the subway everywhere. A visit possibly with a Buddhist teacher I haven't seen in 17 years. But leaving enough free, open space in each of those days to actually enjoy what where we are.

Even relying entirely on memory there will be two dozen wished-we-could-haves: Maybe we'll miss out on a good Jewish deli pickle. MOMA. Broadway. The Strand. And on and on.

But...in those slightly panicky moments...what about last minute museum-hour look ups riding the train in from LI? Directions? Hm??

Letters

2010-06-21T07:54:00.005-04:00

"We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century, and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture....It is time that villages were universities...."
— Thoreau, Walden (Everyman's Library version, p. 96-97)

Letter from grade school friend yesterday. She called me Pajamas, her old nickname for me. Her handwriting looks astonishingly similar to grades 6/7.

I wrote her back, pulling all the stops: fountain pen, Eaton paper, about 5 stamps of varying values on the envelope: pomegranate, silver coffeepot, teapot, Navajo necklace with turquoise. Feels more like art than using the computer does, for sure.

Back in the old days — which I'm desperately trying to revive in small ways here and there, like letters – this was the way distant friends & I kept touch. Back when I had time. I would put on some music, lay down on the floor or sit at the mechanical typewriter purchased for 3 bucks at a yard sale, and write. Go out to class, or work, or a meal, and come back and write some more. Excerpt a book I liked or was reading at the time. I haven't managed this kind of one-to-one mastery with email yet.

Farewell to a Fine Bookstore...and Place

2010-06-19T07:22:00.008-04:00

"As an artist, you are a representative human being—you have to believe that in order to give your life over to that effort to create something of value. You're not doing it only to satisfy your own impulses or needs; there is social imperative. If you solve your problems and speak of them truly, you are of help to others, that's all. And it becomes a moral obligation."
— Stanley Kunitz, The Wild Braid, p. 103

4/24/09

Went to Books, Etc today on Exchange Street. Closing their shop today after 37 years in that spot. The children’s section was nearly empty, few books but still many good ones.

Picked up a book about growing houseplants from vegetable scraps and seeds in the kitchen, Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, and Last Child in the Woods. Picked up some free demo Putomayo CDs. They had food out on the counters.

There was a bit of a party atmosphere, but the guy behind the counter seemed to be tired of the “we’re going to miss you” comments, which is what I said. Downtown, Longfellow Books is the only retail bookstore still standing that sells new books.

Seeing the bookstore routed does something to my insides that cannot quite be described in normal words. The storehouse emptied. The long-term neglect by the purchasing populace in favor of buying at a discount online 24/7. We can’t replace these places.

Places. We’re always talking about web site addresses. If we were to drive there what would we find?

Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen.

2010-06-17T08:48:00.003-04:00

"The extraordinary qualities of great beings who hide their nature escapes ordinary people like us, despite our best efforts in examining them. On the other hand, even ordinary charlatans are expert at deceiving others by behaving like saints."
— Patrul Rinpoche (q. in Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, p. 133)

still 4/17/09

just had a nice, spectacular fall off the wagon.

Part of my year is only texting with Jeff. Even though it’s not technically the internet, it takes on the feel of instant messaging and is highly addictive and takes me away from wherever I am.

So, I forgot my keys to the office today. S (our office mate) was out to lunch and I didn’t want to leave the office unsecured. I phoned S; didn’t pick up. So I texted him that I was ducking out and would he be back. I didn’t want to lock myself out again.

Error #1: text messaged S.

error #2: misspelled ducking and wrote “dicking”, as in “dicking out to get some lunch”.

later S said he thought it must be a prep-school term, since an old classmate had just stopped by the office earlier that day. At his school they used to get a slip called a dicky if they missed class, so there was a slang term there of dicking class.

Sneaking on the Internet?

2010-06-16T08:28:00.005-04:00

"Don't you notice that there are particular moments when you are naturally moved to introspection? Work with them gently, for these are the moment when you can go through a powerful experience and your whole worldview can change quickly."
— Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, pp. 32-33

[photo: Quartz, Block Island, 2009]

April 15, 2009

C says, in the morning: "Mom, why is there a chair here??? [in front of family computer] Have you been sneaking on the internet when no one’s looking?”

Later, when he wants to find the building instructions that came with his knex, and they’ve disappeared, I suggest we might be able to download them from their web site. He got all excited when he realized that I could tell him how to get there and it wouldn’t be "cheating".

C also said the other night it’s “nicer” without me on the internet. I tried to get him to give me details, and all he would share is that I’m not sitting down at the computer every single day of my life.
*
Stuff that needs to get written about:
— NYT article: “facebook saves lives” about coordinating sandbagging during flooding in N Dakota

Finding Tara & Louise...or Not

2010-06-15T08:31:00.004-04:00

"Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever is floating around in your mind. Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 186

Last time I bumped into Tara was at Javanet on Exchange Street, found out she was going to be teaching at Preble Street Resource Center here in Portland. I had since misplaced the card with her phone number in Yarmouth, which she gave to me the day we bumped into her on the stairs down to Videoport, the first time we’d seen her since we all lived in Oxford.

I want to talk with Tara about applied kinesiology, getting copies of her photo-cards w/ photos from India to use for correspondence/birthday cards for my business, and to tell her about the Arla Patch show at the Vox Gallery. But all I have is the e-mail address on the back of the card she gave me.

SOOO....I 411’d her in Yarmouth (no dice), even phoned her old Virginia number in case it was a cell that she’d brought with her...even though I could still remember the sound of her answering machine down there in the cottage by the water where she used to live. It’s now some business number in Oxford — a polite male voice fielded that call.

So....left her a message at the Preble Street Resource Center and haven’t heard from her that way.

The other day I wrote on the white board: “Jeff: e-mail Tara, Louise.” (The J got erased so this morning it said “eff".)

“Who’s Louise?” he asks. Louise is the cook from last summer at camp. C wants to write to her and ask her to please come cook for family camp this summer because he liked her so much (we all did). I told him I’d call Nathan to get that number / address. But I brought down the card with Tara’s email on it and asked if Jeff could please get her phone number or ask her to call me.

Of course, I don’t have Nathan’s number. I could call 411, or call someone else to ask for it. Of course, I would feel a bit embarrassed as absolutely everyone I can think of calling knows the web site address for that camp. Brad would probably give me a hard time if I called him. I could ask Jeff for it.

There could be a whole chapter in this book on finding people.

Analog Book Shopping

2010-06-14T08:38:00.005-04:00

"Confined in the dark, narrow cage of our own making which we take for the whole universe, very few of us can even begin to imagine another dimension of reality."
— Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, p. 42

April 2009

Stopped at Longfellow Books on the way to the office. Had my birthday card from them worth 25% off a single title. Headed straight for the Buddhism shelf where all the Pema Chodron books are face out, thinking I might pick up another one.

Someone I've never met, in wheel chair facing the other direction, volunteers, “Let me know if you need me to move. I can’t drive and read at the same time.” I said no problem. He immediately offered: “I love to read. I feel sorry for people who can’t read.” He asked me what I like to read. We chatted for a bit. He was cheery and friendly.

What I bought: a Portland architecture book for my mother. The Year of Living Bibically. A children’s book that won the Caldicott. Wild Braid:A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden , by Stanley Kunitz.

Falling off the Wagon

2010-06-13T08:25:00.004-04:00

[Native American Cemetery, Block Island, 2009]

"I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray."

— Stanley Kunitz, from "The Layers", in The Wild Braid (2005)

April 17, 2009

I’m falling off the wagon.

Our kids’ teacher — who is founding a school at her house in the woods — and I have been talking graphic design for her school and her neighbor has created the logo—a beautiful watercolor image with the name of the school around it. There was discussion about how to get the image from her neighbor to me. I suggested she email this to Jeff.

The other day I found myself idly saying, “just have her email it to Jeff.” This just didn’t feel quite kosher for this experiment — the thought of it becoming habitual.

Then, this morning J. had his laptop on the kitchen table. When I sat down with my cocoa, he handed me the little white ipod earphones and said I "should watch this." It was a little video on Avweb that P. and the editor of Kitplanes magazine had made on their trip — part 4 of a vlog. It was funny and he said if I wanted to see more there were several more listed on the page. I said that I couldn't do that but wanted to see them so he navigated about and clicked the links for me.

In terms of the context of this experiment, this was about the equivalent of having someone else hold the cocaine under my nose and taking a nice deep breath — that didn’t mean I snorted it on purpose, did it?

Nice relaxing massage — to the sound of lawnmowers

2010-06-12T08:41:00.006-04:00

[fossilizing porpoise, below clay cliffs, Block Island, photo © 2009 J. Van West]

"That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence."
— Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You, p. 18

April 17, 2009

Jeff ran software updates on my laptop the other day. I can’t do this because it involves using the internet.

The next morning I went to use my computer and it was making this relentless clicking sound and was almost totally unresponsive. I went to restart it but it wouldn’t even do this even though I got to the dialog box. so I did a forced reboot and it was exactly the same situation.

When I went to play music — I had a client coming in and I use my cds copied to itunes for the music system — it took a while for the music to start, then it was having to buffer the song.

So I had no music for that client. Jeff took a crack at fixing it and said if I did a safe reboot that I should be able to use the computer. I did this before my client came in the next day and when I went to use Itunes there was no sound. I could play the songs but the volume wouldn’t work with the safe reboot.

Jeff took another look and said the computer is probably going to require a system reinstallation. Everything was working fine before. Then Software Update brings me up to the bleeding edge of softwareville, thanks to the all-nighters of programmers all over the world, and the computer doesn’t work anymore.

Book Fest

2010-06-11T07:34:00.003-04:00

"Everybody knows the pain of getting what we don't want: saints, sinners, winners, losers. I feel gratitude that someone saw the truth and pointed out that we don't suffer this kind of pain because of our personal inability to get things right."
— Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You, p. 18

April 2009

Went to a local book festival Sunday. A strong reconnection. Saw a friend who'd been laid off from a local bookstore, the one that inhabited the building where we have our office, and from whom we'd subletted office space for a time. Good people. A good book store. But in order to survive they had to let people go. It was great to be around people whose love of books goes beyond the work of it. He was simply volunteering here.
*
Thought about the Northwest Bookfest when it was still down in the giant drafty Seattle pier building in October. Everyone wearing coats even though we were inside. The thick boards and high windows of the walls and roof. Table after table of books from small presses, letter press printers, the booths of booksellers like Elliott Bay, Open Books, Wessel & Lieberman. Sausage, onion, pepper sandwiches off the grill. Heard Studs Terkel interview a 100+ yo woman who still volunteered for the Audubon Society. A vitality of the spoken & written word, of the art of the book, palpable in the conversations, the readers on stage, the mere passing of others touching & reading books.

Poetry and literature in general were huge in Seattle then (no idea what it's like now!). All that tech money and that dramatic landscape feeding a healthy tapestry of writers, poets, artists, craftspeople.
*
The festival here was much smaller but still had that pulse. There was no small press room. Mentioning this to the ED of the sponsoring organization, I heard her polite words, "Are you volunteering?" Of course, that is the issue--not only human will, but the immense effort and money to make something like that happen.

I thought about Bumbershoot Book Festival, also in Seattle, and what that took to run. For several years in the early nineties I tended the table for Copper Canyon Press, selling hurts (slightly damaged books) for $5. The first year I was there for four days straight volunteering, absolutely saturated in the people, books, letterpressed broadsides. That was where I first met Chris & Jules whose exquisite letterpress work captured my imagination; at the CCP table, I sold beautiful books on the cheap to interesting and grateful people, drank lattes to stay awake through those long four days.
*
Pretty much if I volunteer to help foster a small press component of this local book fest, I can say hello to all sorts of marvelous literary and artistic people, and say goodbye to writing poetry. There is only so much time in a day, a week, a life.

Still, I told her I'd call her in a few weeks.

The Aneurysm, Part IV

2010-03-25T07:00:00.002-04:00

[photo by Mia McCullough]

Who sees inside from outside?
Who finds hundreds of mysteries
even where minds are deranged?

See through his eyes what he sees.
Who then is looking out from his eyes?

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 94

This is all a lot of news to take in.

Were I on the internet I would feed my obsession that way. The internet is awesomely fertile ground for fueling obsessions, whether they be well-intentioned or not. Instead I’ve gotten the facts by speaking to live people and have put phone calls out to both Portia and Graham, two people I’ve wanted to be in contact with, because they both worked with E. and me.

In trying to reach Portia, Rob picked up the phone — early morning basketball player, master birder, out in the woods in Western Washington — and I heard his voice. A long lost voice to me yet it only feels like a month since I spoke to him.

I heard his voice, and could picture the white beard, the ever-apologetic look on his face. Could picture him in the tall pines on his land, and in his woodlot.

Haven’t heard back yet from either Portia or Graham but expect I will in the next couple of days.

The Aneurysm, Part III

2010-03-24T07:00:00.001-04:00

Like a fresh idea in an artist's mind,
you fashion things before they come into being.
You sweep the floor like the man
who keeps the doorway.
When you brush
a form clean, it becomes
what it truly is.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 102

E.'s mom gave me the caringbridge.org information where E's husband and dad have been posting updates regularly.

I know about caringbridge. When it got out on Facebook in 2008 that an old schoolmate/acquaintance had nearly lost his triplet toddlers in a house fire, a caringbridge site offered updates and a place to post messages.

I was wondering if this was a moment to make an exception to my experiment, if this was the emergency I said in the beginning would be a reasonable exception, was I being selfish or bad by refusing to get on the internet.

No. There is no substitute for the human voice. I left E's husband a message on his cell phone yesterday, expressing my love and concern and making it perfectly clear I did not expect a call back. He asked Peter to contact me, too, so I wasn’t calling out of the blue.

But how many times have we said, or had said to us, “It’s so good to hear your voice.” There is nothing like hearing the voice, the inflection, of an old friend. It is a small substitute for being in the presence of the actual person. Internet communications cannot be replaced same as a person cannot be replaced. And internet communications cannot make up for the fabric, tenor, laughter, and idiosyncrasies of a human voice of someone who loves you.

The Aneurysm, part II

2010-03-21T07:00:00.002-04:00

[E. & C., 2001]

Let the poor man look deep into generosity.
Let bread see a hungry man.
Let kindling behold a spark from the flint.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 141

Yesterday I was able also to reach Elizabeth’s mom at the ICU after calling Seattle 411 again. I spoke with E.'s mom for about ten minutes and got the facts straight on what is happening with her. Her mom sounded amazingly upbeat considering what has been happening, and didn't seem to mind getting a phone call.

Basically, E. was at a meeting a couple weeks ago and she came down with a bad headache, so bad it felt like a migraine. Her head felt unusually warm and she started vomiting. She told her husband something was wrong. They got her to the ER and eventually got her to Harborview where she was operated on for a deep burst aneurysm and a superficial non-burst one that was found in the brain scan.

Two weeks later she is recovering but does not always know where she is or what year it is. She has thought she was in Spain. She has reported just looking at paperwork and feeling relieved that she’s on my old company's health insurance. I don’t even know if she’s got health insurance right now.

Peter said a few days after the surgery he visited the hospital. A week or more later he visited again and she looked way better but was still confused about where she was. She is on medication to artificially raise her BP to about 180 so that the arteries in her brain will stay open. There are apparently vasospasms, which they are waiting to calm down on their own. Her mom said that her youth and health are working against her here, not having developed the hardening of the arteries that would prevent the spasms from being so severe.

[to be continued]

The Aneurysm, part 1

2010-03-20T07:00:00.004-04:00

I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 134

March 12, 2009. Thursday. Portland. 7:15 a.m. 24*F. Clear.

Tuesday eve Jeff gave me the news that Elizabeth is in the hospital in Seattle having suffered a double brain aneurysm and pursuant 8-hour surgery to repair them.

She worked for me at the publishing company I ran in Seattle for a number of years. She was my right arm there. Gifted writer. She babysat my oldest when he was very small. She is in her late thirties.

I was standing in our bathroom here in Maine when he told me. Shortly thereafter headed out to meet with the coop moms at Whole Foods. Peter Spence had emailed me & Jeff to give us the news — P. got my auto message saying I was off the internet, but had gotten through to Jeff. E’s husband had asked Peter to get in touch with me.

I left a message for Peter Tuesday night and spoke to him yesterday for about a half hour. Peter had been to visit Elizabeth a couple of times. Tuesday night I’d also tried to reach her family at the ICU at Swedish, where I thought she was.

They had no record of her there. When I spoke to Peter Tuesday he corrected it to say she was at Harborview ICU which made more sense.

It was good to talk to Peter — I so vividly remember him, working with him, his golden retrievers lying around the 19th century pioneer cabins that had become our office space on old Ballard Ave in Seattle.

Peter told me about the caringbridge.org site that’s been set up for updates. I didn’t get into saying I can’t read those right now. He said her wit was intact in her lucid moments and it was a relief to hear that she is still in there.

[to be continued]

Electromagnetic overload & the immune system

2010-03-17T07:00:00.001-04:00

The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 134

Electromagnetic overload: what role does this play in stress, and illness?

Over the last year I’ve noticed that the phone I use sometimes even makes my left ear hurt when I use it right next to my head. I had chronic congestion in that ear last summer.

It also makes me think about the mystery of the cancer epidemic. We are constantly bombarded with sublethal doses of many toxic chemicals, in our air, water, food, in plastics, carpets, paint. These may have the effect of undermining the immune system such that other stressors — pathogens, psychological, or physical stressors — can get through. There is evidence that viruses play a role in the development of cancer.

Are we that different from the bees?

I like the term ‘toxic stress’— but it is taking on new meaning tonight. ‘Toxin stress’ is part of the picture, too.

More on stress

2010-03-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

"People can become obsessed with their own theories and miss the point of everything."

— Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, p. 55

March 2009

on stress:

from the MOFGA newspaper, Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener, March-May 2009 issue, p. 38, in a review of a book on Colony Collapse Disorder:

“Jacobsen cites several studies showing that although neonicotinoids may not kill bees outright, so-called sublethal doses cause breakdown of the immune system, making bees vulnerable to disease and other stressors.”

Stressors. Sublethal doses eroding the immune system. The immune system as including that which protects us against toxic levels of stress and its effects.

I had never thought about the immune system as protecting us against stress. That would mean that the mind, the way we think, and in particular our attitudes toward life are part of our immune system.

We all know that stress can lead to illness, that it undermines our immune system. But do I live with the understanding that part of our immune system’s job is to protect us from toxic levels of stress (not the strengthening kind — as in the bushes and trees after the snowstorm)?

Emerging, Solitude

2010-03-15T07:00:00.001-04:00

Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me.
Is someone here? I ask.
The moon. The full moon is inside your house.
...
Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.
— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 13

March 8, 2009
Sunday
Portland, Maine

Both Jeff & I are emerging as writers. I’m totally OK being an emerging writer at 40, nearly 41. At 25, I thought it was lame to get labeled 'emerging writer'. Now, I'm completely fine with it. Fine to be 'emerging' for the next fifty years or so.

Writing poetry requires solitude — a rare commodity these days — but something I actually have right now, for the first time in a long time.
*
Ego: Suit? Or straight jacket?

If truth is truth, then sit in it.

2010-03-13T13:25:00.003-05:00

Jesus said one word, and a dead man sat up,
but creation usually unfolds,
like calm breakers.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 258

March 2009

Wednesday the boys are scheduled to visit a local private school from 8:30 to 12:30. I think sending them there would be a huge mistake.

There is a part of me that really wants to passively sabotage this…as in, not prepare the kids for their visit, not get them to bed on time, not wake them up on time, feed them the wrong kind of breakfast, etc. Then I realized — don’t bend over backward trying to make it perfect, don’t bribe, and don’t passively sabotage.

I could ruin this entirely by bribing or getting punitive about it. Tell them what’s going on, set them up for success and see what comes.

The inclination tonight is instead of fearful silence, to sit down in what I feel is right, like sitting deep in the saddle. Nonviolent protest. Allowing this weight to speak the viewpoint, and that is to be more deeply involved in the other school we're already involved in and to allow the kids to remain there a couple more years.

We can do more structured academic work to help the writing along, to accelerate the math. But to seize them out of this world we've been cultivating and put them in that totally different world: a mistake. At least at present.

Here are a few of the things I want to protect: C’s happiness (hard-won!), B’s endless reverie about airplanes, B’s obsession with drawing — these things speak deeply and resonantly: Do not touch.

We need community. We need to deepen community, to broaden our opportunities as a family to interact with other families.

I need to sit down deeper in what I can feel -- not just know, but feel — to be the truth.

I will prepare my children but not force them. I will let the right answers come, allow my own desires to surface and allow them to filter away and let the answers that are most appropriate for all concerned to come to light.

When I got the image of sitting deeper into the truth, as if on horseback, and I yielded to it, the fear left.

If truth is truth, then sit in it.

No e-mail? I'll just yell out the front door.

2010-03-11T13:21:00.007-05:00

Spring, and everything outside is growing,
even the tall cypress tree.
We must not leave this place.
Around the lip of the cup we share, these words,
My life is not mine.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 41

March 9, 2009

Well, being off the internet is making communications with our Monday homeschooling coop a living hell.

Fortunately, no one has voted me off the island yet, but it is causing difficulties in staying in touch with everyone. While we are together we are coordinating activities, setting up snack, cleaning up snack, assisting with conflict, pasting up the newspaper, etc.

It is difficult to finish a conversation. So we would finish conversations by email. But then I went and got off the internet. This is making communications difficult.

OK, well I guess M. has never been a big e-mailer. We would always have to call her last year. In particular, A. seems stressed — whether this is caused in part or in full by more challenging coop communications, I don’t know. I like to think everything’s about me, anyway.

I’m officially a flaky homeschooler.

The good news: we finally laid out the first issue of The Blue Eagle newspaper together today at coop. C. was super-grumpy and needed to play alone, but the rest of the older kids and I did that.

Technology fails again

2010-03-11T13:17:00.010-05:00

How can anyone say what happens, even if each of us
dips a pen a hundred million times into ink?

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 39

Technology fails again.

I have one client with whom my PDA has melted down repeatedly. Unfortunately she is also someone with whom I’ve had to reschedule repeatedly in the last year, and she is also a gifted practitioner with whom I’ve done a few sessions and to whom I was getting closer.

In December the PDA said I had appointments with her on Sunday afternoons from now until kingdom come. Today, on Entourage, it’s saying I have a polarity appointment with her every Sunday and a massage appointment every Wednesday until hell freezes over.

And day before yesterday, she showed up for a 7:15 pm appointment at the same time as someone else. After thinking it over, I realized that in wiping out the Wednesday “till kingdom come” appointments a few weeks ago, I also wiped out a legitimate appointment. I’m about ready to throw my PDA phone into Casco Bay.

I left her a message apologizing profusely and inviting her along for the PDA farewell ceremony.

The bug is in the Palm software on my phone — a buggy scheduling glitch that reflects a lack of understanding of how people like me might use this kind of software — and it completely sucks that overall it may end up costing me a friend.

Psycho-spiritual distortion

2010-03-11T13:13:00.005-05:00

Light again, and the one who brings light!
Change the way you live!

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks p. 38

psycho-spiritual distortion

spiritual distortion >>> psychological distortion >>> physical distortion

example:
spiritual distortion: I’m in charge of everything
leads to
psychological distortion: therefore I have to take care of and control everything
leads to
physical distortion: sloped, tight shoulders “weight of the world on my shoulders”, possibly leading to digestive problems (lower ribs continually leaning into upper digestive tract)

OR

spiritual distortion: I’m in charge of everything
leads to
psychological distortion: therefore I have to take care of and control everything
leads to
physical distortion: chest out, fists tight, low-back problems

We all suffer from some form of psycho-spiritual distortion; how does the internet feed this, capitalize on this?

More annoying obstacles

2010-02-28T07:00:00.002-05:00

"Whatever arises, just keep being present, keep returning to the breath, even in the midst of all the confusion."

— Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, p. 77

Early March 2009

I’m a bit scared regarding the NCBTMB national certification exam. The best resource I know of is massageprep.com and it’s, well, on the internet.

There is no question I’d pass the test if I used this. What’s the scope of this experiment? If the internet is necessary to study for the national certification exam (and I think in the beginning I said I would be off the internet unless it was absolutely necessary to finish school) — then will I have to do it?

I can finish school and become an LMT without the internet. I just can’t do the national certification exam and given that I went to a non-accredited school and it’s an economic downturn and I haven’t lived in Maine for 40 generations, it feels like the national certification would be really, really smart. I could take it in 2010 but I might be rusty by then, and the rust sets in powerful quick these days.

Obstacles

2010-02-27T07:00:00.005-05:00

"Grasping is the source of all our problems."

— Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, p. 33

Early March 2009

Being off the internet is a huge pain when it comes to homeschooling.

On the internet are practically limitless resources, answers to questions, to use with homeschooling. We use it like an encyclopedia, with me weeding through all the resources to find the answers.

Right now, I'm becoming very adept at saying, "I don't know." When I remember and can find my notebook of questions, I write the question down in hopes I will remember to bring it to the library later.

Sometimes I forget to bring it. Sometimes the pressing question is no longer so pressing by then, and so it never gets answered. Other times, we head to library and dive headlong into whatever is pressing at that moment, old questions forgotten and new ones arising.

This is when I begin to wonder if, in the balance of things, the internet can make us smarter and more educated. Or if there is value in not answering every single question.

The naming habit

2010-02-26T07:00:00.001-05:00

Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 34

March 3, 2009

This morning just before leaving my parents' house — a bird of prey on the far side of the garage eating something in the snow under the hollies.

White chest, brownish red stripey markings on chest, white under tail. Dark grey on back, back of tail; white dots — a few — on backs of wings. Yellow legs, yellow eyes, yellow stripe on top of beak.

Never found it in the bird book. Just took notes. My mother and I were glued to the binocs looking at it.

Amazing to study something so closely and remain just outside the naming of it. Naming is such a habit. To get on the internet and google just about anything is a deeply ingrained habit, too: the specs of the bird in the yard to find out the name and thus move on to more knowledge. Nothing wrong with that.

Instead, poetry: holding firmly to the only thing in hand: bird eating prey in snow, ourselves just beyond knowing.

A little more on stress

2010-02-25T13:54:00.004-05:00

"To these eyes
you have now, what looks like water
burns. What looks like fire
is a great relief to be inside."
— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 97

March 3, 2009
Maryland

More on stress, snow: Two young magnolias planted by the gravel driveway. Planted at the same time.

The one that was shaded / sheltered by a white pine had not grown as tall, but was not burdened by snow. The other, more exposed to light, had grown taller and broader but was therefore also out in the elements and got heavily laden in the drifting snow.

Twins, raised nearby but essentially in different climates, exposed (or not) to different conditions.

On Stress

2010-02-18T07:00:00.001-05:00

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness."
— Tolle, A New Earth, p. 41

Snow
Cherry buds
Broomstick
*
Stress: looking at the trees under 9 inches of snow, deeper in places where the strong gusts had drifted it: thinking about what the tree man said. A certain amount of stress is good for trees: wind, snow.

Shaking off the snow from the ornamental cherry with its fat buds, the hawthorne with its freeze-dried red berries, holly, cypress, laurel: snow on, stress. Snow falls off, release. Vacation. Stress plus vacation or release equals the slow building of strength — physical, character.

Stress plus no release equals deterioration. I saw it all right there clattering on the cherry limb with a broomstick. Also that in order to release the tree it was not necessary to shake off all the snow, only some. There was still some snow on the tree.

Same way as people. It’s not necessary to relieve all the stress in order for health and strength to build. It needs to be brought down to a manageable level for the living thing.

In massage it’s the same way. It’s not about curing the stress. It’s about alleviating some of the stress so that the body can function optimally to reduce stress on its own — through circulation or better sleep, for instance.

When does stress become toxic? When the heavy stress goes on for too long, straining the tree or the body beyond its limits. When the stress cannot resolve itself / heal in a day (a workout), a week (a marathon), or a year (childbirth). When there is not the periodic relief of some of the stress to a more manageable level.
*
Life is work. If you’re lucky, and/or are willing to work hard and make some sacrifices, the work is work you love, in a comfortable environment, with a fair amount of freedom and no toxic stress involved.

2010-02-17T07:00:00.003-05:00

"Now. That's the key. Now, now, now."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 30

Still Feb 28, 2009

Lots of mags in the airport with Barack Obama on the cover. And one with with Mrs. Obama (Vogue). In one shop a big cardboard cutout of President Obama. There was a strong sense of wanting to be more media-connected so as to hear more of his speeches, see more of the coverage of the economy.

Youtube is a great invention — low-res repeats of whatever it is you’re looking for. Kind of like what talking on the phone is becoming — you can access the exact person you want by phone anytime, no waiting, but it’s cell to cell and their voice is all grainy, or they break up from lack of reception, or there’s that weird digital lag that makes the pauses longer and makes you think they might be mad at you, or that you just said something that makes absolutely no sense.

It’s great! But it sucks. All at the same time.
*
It’s hard being away from the NYT. I’m going to have a lot to catch up on.

2010-02-16T08:51:00.004-05:00

"Ritual is about joining vision and practicality, heaven and earth, samsara and nirvana. when things are properly understood, one's whole life is like a ritual or a ceremony."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 77

Monday March 2. Easton. Snow.

We got a hard snow last night. Around midnight it began to blow while still snowing quite heavily. I stood for a while with the front porch light on—the front porch is rarely used here—and watched out the dining room window as the snow blew across the front of the house. Whipping is probably more accurate.

The gusts plus the heavy snow made some howling and screaming sounds. At one point it really sounded ghostly — like a tormented soul. Given that midnight was rolling around I genuinely got creeped out by the howls and screams and whistles and had the distinct fear that if the house was haunted that now would be the time they showed up and I decided to go to bed.

This morning coming downstairs a movie I watched a couple nights ago resonated with me. A couple with her daughter is living in a grand old vacant house in the dead of winter. The house is in the middle of a great plain so when the wind and snow come they drift and form around the house.

The broken windows and roofing has caused most of the interior to become an ice palace — absolutely still, the old furniture coated with ice and snow. Everything had been left in place because the owners had left so suddenly. Upstairs there was a room where nothing was leaking too badly and there was only dust on everything. The family stayed there while they were hiding out in the house.
*
My dad’s been on the internet for the last 45 minutes looking up every detail about the weather here and in Portland, and spent time looking at weather cams from around Maryland. It’s like watching myself. Meanwhile — out the window the snow comes down, the cypresses burdened, hollies in a deep bow.

Letters · Cute Puppy Head

2010-02-16T07:00:00.001-05:00

"Most people, in their restless search for something significant to happen to them, continuously miss the insignificant, which may not be insignificant at all."
— Tolle, A New Earth, p. 235

Still Feb 28, 2009
Maryland

I might take some of tomorrow and write Mia back. She sent a letter to Maine which I’d hoped to reply to this week, but I left that letter in Portland. I have my pen; my mom could probably give me some stationery.

My mom called me over this evening to look at a photo of someone’s brown Labrador puppy, which she couldn’t quite get to scroll correctly. All I saw was the soft-looking, furry top of the puppy’s head. Very cute nonetheless.

I felt a pang when I saw an email next to it from my cousin, apparently with photos of her son.

Then, concurrently, relief.

Re-alignment

2010-02-15T07:00:00.005-05:00

"The atoms that make up your body were once forged inside stars, and the causes of even the smallest event are virtually infinite and connected with the whole in incomprehensible ways."
— Tolle, A New Earth, p. 197

Still February 28
Easton, MD

Looking this week at a beautiful book of Gustave Baumann’s prints.

Looking at photos of him and his studio and his work I feel wistful that I never pursued the printmaker’s life. I abandoned art because it abandoned me, or maybe I just abandoned it because there were too many obstacles and too much discouragement. I’ve never been great with discouragement or obstacles, or jealous people. I get dissuaded far too easily. Or maybe I didn’t really want it. Maybe this longing for art school that bugged me for a long time was just a fantasy and not a real desire.

But looking at Baumann’s art and his studio I also feel grateful that I have abandoned the internet this year in search of a more authentic daily existence in which I used to tread, along with a whole lot of other people.

I could re-align my life with some of my old goals.

Writing this book is certainly tapping the creativity in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time.

Big Snow 2009: Back in Easton

2010-02-14T09:07:00.002-05:00

"To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 3

Late February
Easton, MD

It’s still snowing hard here, with 4-5 inches already on the ground. It’s near freezing, so the snow has clung to everything. It’s about 11:30 p.m. Tonight and tomorrow it’s supposed to blow, gusting to 35 mph. There is a strong feeling of wanting to get online, look at the radar, see the snow on the map, re-read the predictions as I used to do. Use up some of that 18 days a year tonight meshing with the weather.

There is also a feeling of wanting to share this rare experience — heavy snow on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a rare occurrence — with more people, online. But it would so definitely take away from the thisness, the moment. There is a loneliness about snow, and to over-connect would be to rob this experience of some of its authenticity.

Big Snow 2009: Worse than Lent

2010-02-14T08:44:00.001-05:00

"If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 28

On the drive home from the airport -- thoroughly relieved that we'd avoided becoming an overnight-with-two-kids-in-the-airport statistic — we were talking, driving in Grandma’s Volvo through the snow toward the Eastern Shore.

The snow was getting heavier, the temperature right at freezing, and the snow was beginning to stick. We were wondering what had happened to the plane coming in from Atlanta.

“You know, you could hop on the web from your phone and check the flight status!” my dad said, apparently forgetting about my experiment.

“I know,” I said. “I’ll just have to wait till we get back and you can look it up.”

“You know, this is worse than lent,” said my dad.

He suggested if I really wanted to get extreme I could give up voice mail too. I told him I had no interest in doing that.

His 90-year-old golfing buddy doesn’t own a computer. My dad this says it makes it much harder to schedule a game with him.
*
We got home fine, and it was fun to look over Dad’s shoulder at flightaware.com to see all the stats on the planes flying.

The plane got in from Atlanta, and our would-be flight departed at 9:01 pm from Baltimore, and arrived in Portland around 10, having had about a 70-knot tail wind.

Big Snow 2009: We Escape the Airport

2010-02-14T08:42:00.004-05:00

"Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 266

We headed down to the baggage office, talked to Regina (who gave Baxter a red plastic action figure that was on the counter, since they’d found it), who called the baggage boss and within ten minutes we had our bags, and my dad had turned around from Annapolis and met up with us.

We even got them on carousel 11, where no one else was crowded around waiting. (This was also the one that was opened up and being repaired when we’d come in.)

The service was so good that I might have to try just going to the airport and not flying out, just so I can get this service again.

Big Snow 2009: We Bail on Airport, but Where's Grandpa?

2010-02-14T08:40:00.002-05:00

"Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in." — Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 61

After 20 minutes in the bathroom we headed back down to the gate.

An agent was there in the usual uniform. He showed that our plane had returned to the gate in Atlanta, having not left the ground. I let him know we wanted to bail and leave another day, and could he help me with that or should I go to the ticket counter?

Ticket counter.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” He asked with a smile.

“Yes. And I want to get my bags back,” I said politely.

“I don’t know if you can get your bags back….If my supervisor’s there, she can probably make that happen,” he said.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Miss April,” he said.
*
At the ticket counter a young man named Derrick was helping us. “You know there’s going to be a change fee for that?” I said fine, it was cheaper than spending two nights in a Baltimore hotel.

After he punched in our information his eyes got very big.

“What do they want — a thousand dollars to do this?” I asked.

“Almost,” he replied in a little voice.

I looked him right in the eye with the kindest and most direct gaze. “There’s someone here who can make that go away,” I said. “And I know this is not your fault,” I added.

“Just a moment,” he said, and went back to punching in numbers.

“Mom, is it over yet?” said the older son.

“Not yet,” I said.

“I’ll just hide under my coat until this is over,” he said.

I told the guy behind the counter what my son was doing. The ticketing agent really liked this idea. I told him spring was going to come, the planes would come, they would go, like clockwork, and everybody would be happy. He said he was just waiting for that.

“I got it down to $700,” he said, apologetically.

“Whatever happened to the change fee? You know, $75 to change a ticket?” I asked.

“Actually, I just waived the change fee,” he replied.

“So…if I hang around here for three or four more hours with my kids, my flight gets cancelled, I wait in line with a hundred other people, your airline will let me change my tickets for free.”

“Yes….that’s about right,” he said.

Just then Miss April came by and looked at the computer.

“What’s going on with these people?” she asked, looking at the computer and not at me.
Quietly he explained.

“What change fees, honey?” she said to him, typing away on the keyboard. “They’re not leaving because of the weather….” And I couldn’t hear any more.

The next thing I knew I had my boarding passes in my hand, I was on the flight in two days that I asked for and no cost to me.

But my dad was somewhere between Baltimore and the Bay Bridge, and we didn't have our luggage back yet.

Big Snow 2009: Airport Delays Begin

2010-02-12T10:30:00.001-05:00

"What you can do to a person, you can also do to a situation: make it into an enemy."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 63

Got to the airport with both kids, my dad, our luggage, and checked in.

Flight's delayed an hour. My dad and I were a bit suspicious.

It took a while but he worked on sleuthing out where our plane was coming from (Atlanta), whether planes generally were getting out of there, whether further delays would be posted shortly, indicating ongoing delays.

My dad got the word at the ticket counter that the plane had left Atlanta. We consulted and decided it was probably worth it to say goodbye and head through security. When we got down to our gate, I spoke to the guys at the counter.

They were dressed like baggage handlers, with their reflective vests on. Their information did not show the plane having left Atlanta yet.

I found that interesting!

I thanked them and we all headed off to the bathroom where one son needed to spend some time, having ingested almost all of his sugar-free Mentos, even though I told him not to, due to the Maltilol syrup content, the effects of which I’d explained before purchase. I don’t think he’ll make that mistake again.

Big Snow 2009: We Head to the Airport

2010-02-11T07:00:00.001-05:00

"All things are vibrating energy fields in ceaseless motion."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 146

March 1, 2009. Sunday. Easton, MD. Heavy snow.

Still in Easton tonight. Waylaid due to major winter storm coming up the coast.

Spent the morning packing us up while the kids watched the History Channel—some show about loggers. About half of what they were saying was bleeped out. Every time one guy spoke you couldn’t even tell what he was saying because practically every word was censored. Nice! Welcome to Oregon!

I took apart our room meticulously — stripped all the beds, folded blankets, deflated the kids’ beds (with the six-year-old’s help — he helped open the valves on the Coleman beds and pushed and rolled the air out), sorted, organized, scoured all rooms for stragglers, packed, brought the linens downstairs and remade my bed.

Everything was in good order. Brought it all down, with mom’s help packed snacks, fed everyone lunch of leftover spaghetti, and drove to Baltimore.

My dad checked our flight on the internet before we left: on time.

It looked like our plane was going to fly north of the storm. It was coming up from the south, supposed to hit Balto around dark, and we were scheduled to leave a few minutes before 4 pm. Maine wasn’t supposed to get big snow till after midnight. At the time we left for the airport (75 miles away) 6-12" were predicted here, 10-14" in Portland during the day tomorrow.

With confidence, we headed off to the airport.

Golfing with Grandpa, Chi Gong with Geese

2010-02-09T07:00:00.001-05:00

"...Doing is never enough if you neglect Being."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 103

Still February 28, 2009
Easton, MD

Yesterday, a new experience. When we're here and the weather's good, the kids go out with grandpa to the golf course.

They get duded up in their polo shirts and Crocs, haul their downsized golf bags out to the car. At the golf course, they get to whack some fluorescent yellow golf balls on the driving range, and if they're behaving, they get to drive the golf cart. These days, now that they're bigger, I usually stay behind.

All of a sudden, that fear of being alone.

It was warm out, about 60, and windy. I took the moment and went for a walk by myself. Always before, walking alone on the Eastern Shore, the awareness of pain all around has been overwhelming — past pain, current pain, personal pain. Not my own, but that of others. Historic pain. Lots of beauty, but always pain.

For the first time ever yesterday, I feel like I connected with the spiritual aspect of the Eastern Shore. I stopped along the path and did some Chi Gong exercises, there by the corn field, amidst the honking of geese gleaning the field.

The Truth Hurts...Sometimes

2010-02-08T07:00:00.001-05:00

Tell the truth and watch your life change.

February 28, 2009
Easton, MD

Sometimes when this experiment comes up in conversation, people get uncomfortable.

Totally understandable. It's like any other potentially inflammatory topic: politics, homeschooling, quitting drinking. I always try to defuse these conversations since I’m more interested in dialogue than in people being uncomfortable.
*
Talking with my dad just now about the weather, and my calculations about how many days per year I was spending just checking the weather. He loves to rib me. When I was a girl this really bothered me. Now I kind of enjoy it.

“You know, Jenny, there are other options besides spending that much time checking the weather,” he said (or something like that).

“Dad, I don’t self-regulate well. So I took a year. What’s a year anymore?”

“You’ll probably be worse when you go back to it,” he said, “e-mailing people at 3 o’clock in the morning you haven’t seen in twenty-five years.”

Ouch. The truth hurts. Or is that the truth?

Warbirds Up Close....Really Close.

2010-02-07T14:30:00.002-05:00

"How do you let go of attachment to things? Don't even try. It's impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 45

Still February 26
Maryland

My dad arranged for us to go in and see some pristinely restored and flying warbirds. The guys there spent over an hour with my dad, me, and the boys, lifting my sons into every cockpit and allowing them to have the canopies closed and to play with the controls. It was like being at Owl’s Head without the ropes.

We climbed into and explored a Spitfire, P-51 Mustang, P-40 Warhawk, L-39 (Czechoslovakian military jet), T-34 WW2 trainer.

There was also a DeHavilland Tiger Moth that was taken apart. We saw the upside down engine, the wings, the fuselage, the rudder, all take apart.

Addictionphobia

2010-02-07T14:20:00.001-05:00

"Give up defining yourself — to yourself and others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 109

February 26, 2009
Easton, MD

First trip to MD without the internet. It’s interesting. I usually use the internet as some kind of identity lifeline while I’m here but the weird part is that it’s actually easier to stay grounded without it. Since it was an addiction it was a way I used often to escape the effects of something unpleasant, often feelings in myself, which occur all the time. So it is new territory to be here and not be online.
*
Technophobe: I’m not a technophobe. I’m an addictionphobe. If it’s addictive it’s suspect. If it’s addictive it can be used to control. If it’s addictive it’s very likely at some point the addictive substance or thing will take control of the relationship without my knowing it.

Rules, Rules, Rules

2010-02-06T12:00:00.001-05:00

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Still January 30, 2009

RULES of this experiment:
Been coalescing these rules over the last month. They’re basically unchanged since January.

1. No e-mail, IMing, G-chat, Facebook, Google, or anything on the internet.
2. No text-messaging, except with Jeff. If anyone texts me, I call them back.
3. All rules off in case of true emergency, with rules to be resumed as soon thereafter as possible.
4. Exceptions: using the pipe to the office computer to update Quicken. Backing up my computer (which happens to the house computer).
*
There is a bit of a gap for me with not being able to google answers to the kids’ questions right away, but there is something good and solid about writing their questions down to be answered later. When I google answers we all end up on the computer for at least 10 minutes, usually longer.
*
In part I started this experiment to make more time to finish massage therapy school, but it’s amazing the number of ways I can still find to not be doing that work.

Package from Cisco Systems? It's Not a New Router.

2010-02-05T12:02:00.001-05:00

"Working with obstacles is life's journey. The warrior is always coming up against dragons."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 68

Still January 30, 2009

This morning right after the boys left I had an opportunity to visit with a good friend in the neighborhood. She was getting ready to head up to Camp Mechuwana for a winter retreat. We talked for a while.

Walking home I stopped at the Rosemont Market for leek, onion, red bell pepper, domestic feta, tortillas, then headed for home in between the mountains of snow from the plows, shovels, snow blowers. I was feeling a bit frightened and scattered about heading back to an “empty” house.

When I opened the door to the front porch, there was a package for me from Cisco Systems in Seattle. Usually packages from tech companies are for Jeff but this one was clearly addressed to me.

Took me a minute to realize that it was from Julie Wieringa, my former boss at AT&T Wireless, and that she’d probably shipped me a copy of her classical guitar CD.

Indeed. Also included were a lovely letter and two letterpressed books that she made — one a sweet story (illustrated) about a man and his dog, and the other a 6 x 9 letterpressed journal with musical staff pages on the left, lined writing pages on the right. And a letter written by hand in ink — she has a phenomenal fountain pen collection.

If I were in my old life, I would not find the time to write her back, but I’ll probably write her tonight. In my old life I would e-mail her, or Facebook her a reply. Enthusiastically. Lovingly. Instead she’ll get a nice letter, handwritten in ink, on stationery.

Linda, Emmy Lou, Dolly, and the Six-Year-Old Conscience

2010-02-05T12:01:00.001-05:00

"We see how beautiful and wonderful and amazing things are, and we see how caught up we are. It isn't that one is the bad part and one is the good part, but that it's a kind of interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff. When it's all mixed up together, it's us: humanness."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 21

Still Jan 30, 2009

We (the kids and I) have been enjoying an album by Linda Ronstadt, Emmy Lou Harris, and Dolly Parton called Trio 2, that we have on loan from the library. I think it won a Grammy ten years ago. It’s an hour of the most exquisite harmonies imaginable.

When I first put it on a few days ago, Charlie fell out of an irritable mood and into a trance. He lay down in the middle room on the rug, mindfully gazing up at the ceiling. Later, on the track "Blue Train," I came around the corner and he was blissfully moving through the living room. “I’m pretending I’m flying an airplane, Mom.”

Enchanted as well, naturally thoughts progressed in my mind toward how to obtain a copy. itunes would be ideal - $9.99 -- and, while less expensive, is out. I could call Bull Moose Music in the Old Port and order up a copy….but it’ll be costing me $16.

Or…gulp…I could just accidentally on purpose import it onto the family computer. I know this is wrong but the music is so tempting and the $16 seems so out of reach.

I went upstairs to check on the six-year-old — who was on the toilet with the door open so he didn’t miss any of the songs.

“Mom, is this the radio?” he asked. He knows to ask this so that he knows if he can hope to have something put on repeat. (He’s asked many times in the car “Put this on repeat” and it’s turned out to be the radio.) "No, it’s a CD," I told him.

I mention casually that I would like to obtain a copy of this album, or maybe I’ll just copy the songs onto the computer. I am treading on thin ice, looking to see if the six-year-old will notice the problem with this idea.

“Mom,” he whispers while peeking at me around the corner, “I think that’s illegal.”

Isolation & the Yam-Eating Cat

2010-02-05T12:00:00.000-05:00

"In Buddhism we talk about mindfulness and awareness....There's a lot of precision, but also a lot of gentleness. Along with being very precise about our world, there's also always space around us that is called gentleness: we allow ourselves to experience how large and fluid and full of color and energy our world is. This space is our circle."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 27

January 30, 2009. Friday night.

Tonight I really don’t want to be the writer. I want everyone else to be the writers. I’d rather lose myself in the Daedalus Books catalog, or the New York Times. Have I said this before?

The cat is staring longingly toward the yams in the bowl sitting near me on the couch. She just took a nose dive into the bowl and I tossed her off the couch.

Today the boys — all three of them — left for a day in Boston and then a weekend in RI. Talk about internet withdrawal! This afternoon I was seized with the feeling of what I’d be doing if the internet was an option — filling that void with Facebook. Endless hours on e-mail, googling, reading and re-reading the weather and endless news.

No car here either. Between that and the internet it is impossible to shop unless I take the bus downtown. Then I could do all kinds of nonsensical damage at the yarn shop, the bookstore, the going-out-of-business sales at boutiques on Exchange street. Ah, the possibilities.

Cars are supposed to make connecting easier. We “connect” to the internet. But not having e-mail/internet and not having a car makes all kinds of connections happen and it is much harder to spend money unnecessarily.

2.5 Hrs Per Day, 12 Years: Let's Do the Math

2010-02-03T12:00:00.001-05:00

Listen to presences inside poems,
Let them take you where they will.
— Rumi, Essential Rumi,
tr. Coleman Barks, p. 99

Still January 26, 2009

Here’s what Automated Weather Man from Gray, Maine, says tonight:
-12 to -5 tonight
Tues mostly sunny high about 20
Tues night mostly clear, becoming mostly cloudy around 10
Winter storm watch for Wednesday, moderate snow accumulation
Wed night low 10-15

Yay!! Warming up! Nice stuff falling out of sky!

But this is my weather life. What had taken up so much time in detail—and it’s not a bad way to spend time, tinkering with the weather, but still—this was 25 minutes of time a day, reading and re-reading the updated forecasts, looking at radar, reading watches and warnings and advisories. Getting hopes up, getting let down, or fulfilled sometimes. 25 minutes a day, now 5.

Oops, just went to the dashboard to use the calc, and there was the weather widget, showing the current temp at the airport (1 F) and the little snow icon for wed. OOPS! I confess. I was just on the internet for a moment.

OK, found sci calc. 25x365 is over 30 hours a year. More than an entire day and night. Just reading about the weather!

OK, if we’re going to go that far….let’s say I averaged 2.5 hours a day on the internet. This is: sitting down to check email, googling, researching, IMing, checking the weather.

That comes to….whoa. 38 days a year. Roughly 5.5 weeks a year, day and night.

This is a conservative estimate. It was probably more like 3 hours a day. There have been many nights when I could not sleep and I would be on the internet for 2-3 hours researching all kinds of topics in addition to time during the day. That’s 45 ½ days a year, or six-and-a-half weeks a year, day and night.

So, I’ve been on the internet quite a bit for the last 12 years. Just for the sake of estimates, let’s say I’ve been spending 6 solid weeks a year on the internet for 12 years. Are you ready?

72 weeks. 18 months. A year and a half of checking / writing email, researching, buying, reading web sites, googling, IMing, etc.

So in the last 12 years, only 10.5 of those years have been spent in some form of awareness of where I actually was sitting, living, sleeping. And this is only screen time. This doesn’t include the stolen moments anticipating and processing (“A&P”), which I think double or triple the time. Let’s be conservative and only double that time:
Screen time + A&P time:
12 weeks a year / 3 solid months, or 25% of my life
Total over the last 12 years: 3 years, or 25% of my life.

Now, that’s 25% of my LIFE, and it was spent during my waking hours only. Waking hours are 2/3 of my day on average, so what percentage of my WAKING LIFE have I spent on the internet in the last 12 years? I don’t know if I can do math that complicated anymore!
Let’s try.

37.5% of my waking time spent in screen time & A&P time. Over a third of my waking life consumed by the internet.

This is taking into account going to camp and being offline for a week at a time, as well as working as a web professional and working wired constantly for 8-10 hours at a time.

A&P time isn’t the same, but it does represent a significant departure from really being here and now.

So, now comes the big, “So what?” That is exactly what this book is about.

Looking for Frank Ferrel

2010-02-02T11:20:00.001-05:00

"There isn't any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life." — Pema Chodron

I came within inches of meeting Frank Ferrel, the fiddle player, on Sunday as we were leaving the new Portland family dance.

I listened to his playing when I was first beginning to play, as my teacher in Port Townsend Washington had given me a bootleg tape of Frank playing in a closet at Fiddle Tunes. All these years have gone by, and I’ve lost the tape, but never lost my admiration of Frank’s playing, even though I have no recordings of him, and have never heard him play live.

All during the family dance I’d been asking if Frank was there yet, asking anyone who might know, because I knew he’d be coming to play for the later contra dance. He didn’t arrive before we left, and so I left disappointed.

Then out in the frigid air on the sidewalk, all packed up with two totally exhausted kids, up strides Frank Ferrel in his beret and overcoat. I recognized him by his age, and his height (which had been described to me), and the nice fiddle case, and the fact he was headed into the Empire Dine & Dance around 6 p.m.

He was about 15 feet away from me when I said to Jeff, “I think that’s Frank Ferrel.” Jeff replied, “We have to go. I can’t manage this on my own.” Fifteen years of waiting and he was fifteen feet away. I was profoundly disappointed and so angry at Jeff that I thought I might have to divorce him over this (OK, slight exaggeration). I took a deep breath. Within minutes the thought came that over breakfast at Maine Fiddle Camp — should we ever get there — might be a better place to talk to Frank and tell him my story, and the anger passed.
*
Janet Fischer had mentioned yesterday that Frank lives in Bath and teaches. Bath is only a half hour away. Today, while the kiddos are at Sierra’s, I’m playing some music, some songs on the guitar, and some tunes on the fiddle. I had already decided that I wanted to get a lesson with Frank, but today while playing I’m realizing that I’m up against that old foe: doubt. The same doubt that kept me from ever calling Ruthie Dornfeld or Martin Hayes while I lived in Seattle and asking them for lessons.

But I can't google the guy.

So, I call Ed Pearlman, a fiddler, a local dance organizer, Janet’s teacher, and a friend of Frank’s to see if I can get his phone number. Ed doesn’t have it but gives me his email address. Instead of announcing my experiment, since I don’t know Ed very well, I leave it off, say thanks, and proceed to 411 Frank Ferrel. No listing in Bath. What’s a girl to do? I leave a message for Janet, saying that I have a fiddling question for her. I don’t tell her I need her to email Frank Ferrel and get his phone number.

Since she’s not home, I decide to 411 some old contra dance friends in Seattle, one of whom must have Frank Ferrel’s phone number. There are no listings for: Cathie Whitesides, Warren Argo, or Sherry Nevins. I give up. Then slowly I remember Cathie’s husband’s name, Hank…Hank….Hank Bradley.

I 411 Hank Bradley in Seattle and he picks up. Cathie’s out for an hour. I explain—I’m a former student of Cathie’s, and am trying to get Frank Ferrel’s phone number, and thought she might have it, and isn’t it funny that I’m in Maine and can’t seem to get his phone number, but that I’m off the internet so it’s led me to Cathie.

Hank takes down my phone number, commenting that our area codes are one digit but a country apart, and that if we could just fold the country in half we’d be right next to each other. Yes, I say, if we could just collapse the middle of the country we’d be very close by, but then I’d lose my cousins in the midwest. We laugh and I thank him and sign off. Now I need to wait for Cathie to call me back.
*
There isn’t much story in obtaining someone’s email address. It’s a lot quicker but the story gets lost, or, rather, never happens.

I’ll let you know when I finally get in touch with Frank.

All the Names for Snow

2010-01-29T14:40:00.003-05:00

"When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seeminly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form — or a species — will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap."
— Eckhart Tolle

Still January 26, 2009

Coming up the walk just a little while ago, the snow had that Very Cold Squeak. We need more words for snow, in all its permutations. Like the Inuit. “Snow” just doesn’t cut it when you’re in the dead of winter.

We need more exciting ways to describe what’s underfoot….like Really F***ing Cold Snow, Deliriously Mushy Snow, Snowman snow, snowball fight snow, Snow that Has Had Freezing Rain Fall on It and Is Now Strong Enough to Support an Eight Year Old Without Them Falling Through. But these types need poetic names! There are just way more types of snow than just “snow”.

Mia’s been writing me letters. It’s great to get cards. Tonight the novelty of writing letters feels slightly worn off, just the way I didn’t want to sit down and write this.

On Friday, another first. Sitting at home in the front room (right now, the massage room) to study instead of going down to the Old Port….staying at home is much cheaper, and I wasn’t feeling all that great…and it became evident that studying at home used to be punctuated with being on the internet.

It’s funny to think that only a month ago this was such a part of my life and that in less than a month I’ve effectively been set free from it. In any case—there would be a period of studying, after which I’d reward myself with some time on Facebook, or checking email. How much brain power and time were spent anticipating these moments or processing these moments afterwards are what scare me. Much more than the 2-3 hours I spent online, on average. Possibly more.

It's Still....Reallllly Cold Out

2010-01-29T14:40:00.002-05:00

"Usually people are completely unaware of the roles they play. They are those roles."
— Eckhart Tolle

Still January 26, 2009

I’m getting incredibly blasé about the weather, which, considering how house-bound I’ve been feeling, is rather unbelievable.

Tonight Jeff told me over dinner that it’s supposed to be snowing Wednesday. “What? Really!?” I exclaimed. I pressed him for details but he was annoyingly vague. Still it occurred to me that I hadn’t called the weather forecast to find out when our prison sentence of excessively cold weather was coming to an end. Was I somehow enjoying the punishment too much?

I haven’t been mentioning this experiment to as many people the last week or two, but I should continue to mention it rather than not. People get inspired by it and also say some interesting things.

Cat's Turning Cartwheels Cuz It's Cold as He**

2010-01-29T14:40:00.001-05:00

"Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought."
— Eckhart Tolle

Monday, January 26, 2009
Late evening

Just got home from the meeting. I was wanting everyone else to be the writers tonight, so here I am. I would rather be reading the NYT, or Eckhart Tolle, or just about anything or anybody else tonight than writing. So, I’m writing. That’s my call tonight. There are many other activities I would like to engage in: fiddle, guitar, singing, carding wool, knitting, starting a second (or is that third?) knitting project.

There is just such a sense of agitation from the cold weather—it’s been getting down below zero at night, and only in the oughts and teens during the day—that it’s getting hard to be inside my own head.

Fortunately, Jeff was rowdy enough on Sunday, before the temperatures plummeted, to get out with the boys and build on the snow castle that has been evolving on the north edge of the driveway. The walls are now about 4-5 feet tall when you are standing up in it—and to get up in it there are 2 stairways or a short tunnel to crawl through.

If the temp were above 20, I would simply open the windows for a half-hour, or open the big glass kitchen door to the back deck to get a few lungfuls of marvelously oxygen-rich winter air. Not today. Today is the day of the glass box. And a lovely box it is—with stove, tea kettle, woodstove, stereo, and the most beautiful children from whom I need about a two-day vacation, and they me, and probably each other as well—and so it is—a box. A nice box. But a box.

Our twelve-year-old cat has practically been turning cartwheels to unleash the pentup energy, as she has barely been making her winter run out the back door, around the house, and in the front door. Or, when the sun is out and there isn’t too much ice, out onto the back porch in the “warm” sunshine for a few minutes. These things have been off-limits.

Inauguration Day, Part II

2010-01-20T11:30:00.000-05:00

January 20, 2009
Inauguration Day, part II

After watching and celebrating at Brenda’s, we walked back home. Charlie stayed out for a bit with me, Baxter went in. I spent about 45 minutes scraping ice off the back porch. The deep untouched snow in the backyard etched in places where footprints had cut through to the back gate.

I kind of wished I had a radio to bring out to listen to NPR while scraping ice off the deck (the thick kind that forms under the icicles). But then I thought, that’s not possible. This is what’s happening right now: the white snow, the sunshine, the icicles dripping, the ice scraping off, sometimes in sheets, mostly in scraggly bits. The vivid blue sky. A beautiful inauguration day. Here in my adopted home state of Maine. Letting the mind digest the intensity of what we’d been listening to, watching. Not overloading. Not incessantly repeating. Not communicating with people I cannot see or hear using an electronic device.
*
Today would have been a good day for wikipedia. Yesterday too. I think about investing in a real encyclopedia set even though it would need to be updated in 5 minutes. Then I remember world book on the computer. Maybe this is in our future. But I still have missed spending days with the old encyclopedias. Remember the encyclopedia salesmen? Remember enjoying a good book?
*
When the kids have questions we would have googled, I write them down to address later. There’s a mindfulness to that.
*
Today I phoned people when I thought of them instead of facebooking, texting, emailing. I called my cousin Sue when I thought how our grandmother Helena would have LOVED today, and also her mother Katherine. She was totally touched that I called. Later I realized it’s because people don’t do this so often. I phoned my aunt and uncle, and of course mrk in Seattle, who sounds like he might have a new girlfriend because he didn’t really have time to talk (!).
*
I seem to be recovering from my weather prediction addiction. Now I’m content with sun/no sun; general temperature range; precipitation or no; wind or no. I don’t need to obsessively call the weather line the way I would obsessively check the weather online.
*
A possible name for what this journal is (even though it’s on the computer): Anablog. Or the Antiblog. As in, not a Blog.
*
Walking to the Rosemont Market tonight between the piles of snow (there's so much now that it’s hard to find a place to put it). I’m becoming a more concentrated version of myself again. Walking along that evening road, amidst all that snow, not available to anyone by the digital networks except maybe Jeff.

Inauguration Day Part I

2010-01-20T11:25:00.001-05:00

January 20, 2009
Inauguration Day Part I
My mother’s 70th birthday

Woke up, called my mother for her birthday. She sounded very well, healthy, happy. Enjoying her workouts on the treadmill and reports that she feels less creaky, has less aches and pains.

Then — getting everyone ready to go over to Brenda’s to watch the inauguration from 11:00 till 12:30. We listen to NPR prior. I love the radio. They talk, I listen while doing other things. They describe, I get the picture in my head. The voice can carry so much. The kids were very excited. We have talked much about the historical magnitude of electing this man: more amazing than putting a man on the moon. They came to the polls with both Jeff & me. They have shared in the excitement. They have felt some level of ownership in the fact this man was elected. They have both referred to him as “my president.”

Then over to Brenda’s. She ordered pizza; we festooned each other with little mementos (I had some Lisa Bess earrings; she gave the kiddos Barack Obama pencils). We watched for an hour and a half as many dignitaries, senators, judges, former presidents, new cabinet members, came through the capitol building and through the back door toward the mall (which was packed past the Washington monument) and took their seats.

Then — Obama walks out. A prince, as Garrison Keillor recently referred to him.

*
While the overwhelming feeling for me has been pride in my country, and excitement, etc., I do find that I slip into some shame when I look at the Obamas. I look at President Obama and see a man who has held fast to probably just about every good opportunity that came his way. Someone who has created opportunity for himself. I realize how it is a sign of inherited privilege to abandon opportunity — something I've been guilty of at times.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Day

2010-01-19T22:11:00.003-05:00

"There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness."
— Rumi

January 19, 2009 · Monday
MLK Jr. Day

This day has special significance this year given what’s happening tomorrow. For the first time I get a little wistful that I’m not in Washington. Then I remember — the crowds.

Wake up somewhat grieving email. I imagine people all over Facebook plastering themselves with excitement.

I get over this quickly when our homeschool family coop happens, at our house again, with happy kiddos playing all over the piles of snow the plow left behind.

And then we get to work on the newspaper I’m helping them put together, The Blue Eagle. The kids all made badges last week out of watercolor paper and ribbon, and everyone showed up with theirs this week, and their notebooks.

Some had hand-written news stories about grackles stealing fruit or giant icicles; one had compelling photos of fishing and cub scouts on which he declined to comment. They all decorated a letter to go in the name of the paper on the first page.

Talking with Neighbors, Maine Style

2010-01-19T22:08:00.005-05:00

[photo by Mia McCullough]

"One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim, and run a course or two before they make their port."
— Thoreau, "Visitors," Walden

January 18, 2009
Sunday

Snowstorm leaves us with about a foot of snow. Magnificent storm, falling heavily much of the time. Everyone delighted. Had about a 45-minute conversation in the middle of the street with two neighbors up the block — Mike with his homebrew and George in his hat and glasses — talking so long that we accumulated about a half inch of snow on our heads and shoulders.

It occurs to me that I’m approaching a major historical event — the inauguration of Barack Obama — without the internet. There is a feeling of missing something, until I realize that there is NPR, there is the newspaper, and that being glued to the internet for days before, during, after, would cheapen the experience for me. We’re planning to be over at Brenda’s during the inauguration; she’s got cable.

The Marvelous Inefficiency of the Human

2010-01-19T22:00:00.010-05:00

"Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous."
— Thoreau, "Where I Lived," Walden

[photo by Mia McCullough]

Right now I'm navigating the Extra Fifteen Minutes — I was all ready to leave the office and go downstairs to meet up with my ride — got a call from Charlie saying they were just heading down here. Another hurdle!

Up till now I might have taken the opportunity to check Facebook from my phone, come up to the office and get on the internet; instead I'm down here at street level, looking out at Exchange Street, and writing!! So totally amazing!

The creation of SPACE — instead of cramming more in, just allowing the space to be there. It's like clearing the desk and not then automatically cluttering it. WOW. TIME can equal SPACE. SPACE = creativity!

The marvelous inefficiency of the human gives rise to creativity!

The Day I Became Linus Pauling

2010-01-18T14:24:00.005-05:00

[sunset from my studio]

The cook says,
'I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices,
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher.'

— Rumi, "Chickpea to Cook," tr. Coleman Barks

January 14, 2009

Idea for story while half-asleep this morning. This is the sort of stuff that is happening more right now.

The Day I Became Linus Pauling

10 or 11 yo 5th grade girl, intimidated by science, thinks she can’t do it, with unsupportive science teacher, wakes up one morning and she is not in her own bed. She gets up, walks downstairs, and a lady about the age of her grandmother says, Good Morning, Linus, and kisses her on the cheek.

She dresses and goes outside to try and find her way to school and when she walks in the front door, it’s not school. It’s an office. And everyone says, Good morning Dr. Pauling! How are you this morning, Dr. Pauling? Are you ready for your speech tonight? Are you ready for your lecture this morning at M.I.T.?

She goes to teach at MIT and she opens her mouth to say she really isn’t supposed to be here, that she’s a 5th grader who can’t do science very well! But instead, she gives a lecture on Chemistry!

She steps to the board, terrified she will blow her cover…instead all kinds of complex equations go up in chalk on the board! She cannot believe it and receives all kinds of accolades for her teaching! Brilliant college boys come up and want her autograph! That night she gives her speech. Again, she swallows hard, and opens her mouth to say that this is is all a big mistake, but instead a lecture comes out, all about science!

She goes to bed in Dr. Pauling’s bed next to Mrs. Pauling and when she wakes up, she’s in her own room. She wonders if it was all a dream.

But at science class that day, her hand shoots up to answer questions without even trying. At first a wrong answer comes out and she thinks, Oh, No. but then her hand shoots up of its own volition at the next question, and she thinks, Oh no! She is called on. She swallows hard, and prepares to say, I don’t know the answer. Instead, the correct answer comes out of her mouth! She can’t believe it! Maybe it wasn’t a dream after all!

Ol' Lappie

2010-01-18T14:22:00.008-05:00

[view from Kettle Cove]

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it's being boiled.
'Why are you doing this to me?'
The cook knocks him down with the ladle.
'Don't you try to jump out.
You think I'm torturing you.
I'm giving you flavor
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.'

— Rumi, "Chickpea to Cook," from The Essential Rumi tr. Coleman Barks

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

OK, the compulsory 5 minutes of notes.

Nice fireside chat with Lindsey today in our living room. Talked about kids, the Obamas, racism. All very good. Nice to be with her. I don’t know when the last time we had the opportunity to sit in a room for an hour together and talk. We’re going to do it again, in theory, in a couple weeks. Not next Tuesday. Next Tuesday the plan is to be at Brenda’s to watch the inauguration.
*
It’s interesting how much I loathe this computer at times. It has done nothing to me but has unwittingly been a ball and chain at times due to the internet. Even picking up the plug to plug it into the wall (because the battery runs down quickly and I refuse to replace it right now) — the way it feels in my hand, rubbery, somewhat dirty, cumbersome with its heavy square midsection; the heat it radiates into my lap or onto whatever piece of furniture it happens to be sitting on — the fire of the sun of the dinosaurs (fossil fuel to electricity to spinning hard drive to warm computer). I’d much rather be warming in front of the fire only.

Of course…these notes would be much sparser, much less likely were it not for Ol’ Lappie.
*
Letter from Mia today—I don’t know when it came in — it was on the counter in the stack of miscellaneous items that collect there. Dated 1/6. Nice 2 page letter hand -written — fun to see her handwriting again — tucked inside a photograph card showing a frog driving a car.
*
Text message from a friend to which I returned with a phone call. Not sure I will continue to receive or respond in any way to text messages. I’m starting to punch the button on my phone again obsessively. Of course today Jeff headed to Arkansas for 3 days and he was texting me with progress updates and family business. That is different.

Glitches · digital coma

2010-01-17T06:32:00.001-05:00

[kids' room, the "before" picture]

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." — Gandhi

Still January 12

Homeschooling coop: we are finally moving forward with an idea the kids had last year — which was to start a kids' newspaper.

Small, to start. Today we came up with a name (The Blue Eagle Newspaper), a first issue pub date (mid-February) and some general assignments / roles, and we made press badges (we had some of Jeff’s professional ones for them to look at).

Not having e-mail makes the assimilation process very interesting. We could have them e-mail stories and photos to Jeff; I could come up with the template and have kids and parents type in their own stories right onto my computer, they could bring them hard-copy and I could type them in….this is one of those tasks that would be in many ways be made easier by email. Or would it?

Sometimes I feel I’ve done a lot of turning my back on communities and people I’m leaving behind, usually by moving. Or is this non-attachment, a healthy letting go, a natural moving on? Moments in the last two weeks I’ve wondered if I’m doing it again—and if I am, why does it feel so freaking good? Like shedding 20 layers of dead skin all at once? So rejuvenating.

There is a deep desire in me at moments to hop online and find out what’s going on with the weather, with the war in Gaza. Definitely I experience and hold more anxiety than I ever realized, which was alleviated (momentarily) a lot of times by sitting down at the computer. The Dead Zone. The Digital Coma. I wonder what the effect is on my children all this time. How it has been to be partially ignored during those online spots.

It’s hard to say what the long-term ramifications of this experiment will be. In all likelihood it will mean much to me, something to those close by, and little or nothing to the world at large. But we can only change ourselves!

And in this case it is changing just about everything! I’m trying to think of what this hasn’t changed for me thus far…….

Hearing voices

2010-01-17T06:30:00.000-05:00

[photo by Mia McCullough]

Friend, our closeness is this:
anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.
— Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks

Today Dave Cohen, Jeff's BFF who texts like an adolescent, texted and I called him. I told him he can text me but to expect a phone call in return. I knew he would give me holy hell, in a nice way, and he did.

But we had a nice conversation — and it was SO GOOD to hear the voice of my friend. So much better. Because if I can’t hear you — I may misinterpret what you are saying. Recently I heard a statistic that 40% of what is said (or was it 60?) in e-mail is not understood the way it is intended.

Yesterday Mark Canizaro texted me and I wrote him back a short one. Felt like I was taking a drink. I won’t do that again this year. Just receiving texts, which I receive very few of and only from certain people, feels a bit like cheating on this experiement, so I’m owning up. The only one I can text in and out with is Jeff — and only when necessary. Like "Where are you? We're by the T-Rex."

It feels good to take control of communications this way.

Snowflakes on the virtual Appalachian Trail

2010-01-16T14:47:00.000-05:00

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth....
— Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks

This morning: the snow coming down very lightly, big flakes. But it was very cold. They were magnificent, tiny, hexagonal flakes.

We had Monday homeschool coop for the first time in ages. Angie pulled a piece of black velvet out of her pocket and I went into the kitchen to retrieve the two magnifying glasses. We caught some flakes and we looked. Observed. Kids huddled around. What’s falling out of the sky right now? Don’t breathe too close to them or they will melt away to droplets of water!
*
We have in so many instances traded the immediacy of opening a letter, of a poem, of this, whatever this may be, for a false immediacy. Messages are retrieved, little black words on a screen, that for the most part poorly approximate the realness of a person.

But the immediacy, when observed from the outside, is: person interacting with machine. And whatever this is can only be experienced by me, and cannot, most of the time, be a shared experience. Like me and my friends and their children observing the snowflakes this morning as they alighted on a bit of black velvet. Even that person on the other end of the text message is not sharing a real experience with me, except of messaging on our phones!

Nothing I have ever experienced socially via the internet could approximate the experience of sitting in a room full of actual people — the way they look, move, smell, sound, laugh. The way it feels to be touched by one of them. It’s a known fact that many, many of us are living in a state of touch deprivation and computers are partially, if not entirely, to blame.

Even in a platonic, casual conversation, there might be a hug exchanged, or a hand laid upon an arm. These simple gestures can draw an otherwise isolated person back into the collective experience, can provide that much-needed human contact that is lacking. Computers are not warm and loving. They are cold and toxic. People are warm and loving (and, well, I suppose some people are toxic!).

There is not enough of this in this wired world — of people sitting in a room together, enjoying the moment, not having to save it or store it (except perhaps a photograph, a memory, a poem, a journal entry) but mostly to breathe it in and breathe it out. To live it and to let it go.

As I hike away from the internet on my virtual Appalachian Trail there is so little I miss and much that leads me to feel that another year like this might be good.

I've got a crush on that idea

2010-01-16T14:42:00.000-05:00

[photo by Mia McCullough]

Here's the abyss
waiting with its
kiss of shiver
and bliss.

— Gregory Orr, "Here"

Still January 12, 2009

There is something very empowering in limiting the ways in which someone can reach me.

Living in the city this is difficult to do without voluntarily giving up a mode of communication. I had a friend in Port Townsend, Washington, who lived without a telephone for a while and we all thought she was crazy. I imagined her living in a hovel. She couldn’t afford it, for one thing — she was trying to keep her overhead as low as possible. I equated this with being deprived of proper shelter and food and imagined she was living in, essentially, a barn. This was before the internet really caught on as an everyday household occurrence, so her contact with others was in person or by letters.

Now I have a crush on the whole idea.

But...giving up the phone, with kids at home, and with the climate such as it gets here in Maine, would be a highly unnecessary experiment.

Facebook? Run for your life!!!

2010-01-16T14:36:00.002-05:00

[photo by Mia McCullough]

"Life is random as a rolled pair of dice. / What those thrown cubes will show no one can know, / yet everyone thinks he wants paradise." — Gregory Orr, "Paradise", from The Caged Owl

January 12, 2009 Monday

This addiction is very insidious. It’s kind of like food addiction, in that it’s something that for the un-addicted is innocuous, even necessary, but for me it can be poison.

And it’s an addiction to a truly virtual world — a world that is not really there. It’s a binary world that exists on computers. Those people on Facebook — they’re not really there in front of me. They are real people writing into the same servers I am, people I know. But they are not really there on Facebook because Facebook doesn’t really exist.

Is it just a form of collective insanity, a co-created reality, all run by very sophisticated computer programming? Like any other good media, the creativity is in the thinking up of it and the creating and maintaining and marketing of it. But the comsuming of it for purely social reasons? It is a more or less creative void, especially if people fall into the addiction. It’s like a form of sleep. Like a coma.

Saga of the fountain pen · fear of people

2010-01-14T13:27:00.000-05:00

"I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes." — Thoreau, "Economy"

One unintended consequence of this experiment is getting driven into the local….stores, people, weather….to a degree not expected.
Have been wanting to re-fire-up my fountain pen, and have needed cartridges.

Paper patch didn’t have them, recommended last week I try another place that I ultimately couldn’t find. We’d driven all the way to staples on family errand day but all they had was black. Then this morning picked up the book I ordered at Longfellow books (_Not Buying It_) and asked the guy behind the counter where I might be able to get a cartridge for a pen.

He recommended Joe Wigon, a barely-hanging-on office supply on Free Street, just across from the side door of the book shop building. I went out that way, and just up from Wigon’s there was the other stationer the paper patch had recommended.

Going in to the stationer I explained my predicament, although she said they didn’t carry the Waterman cartridges I needed. Then the other worker came over with a #10 envelope full of Waterman cartridges that fit my pen. They’d done inventory the day before and these were some of the miscellaneous things they’d discovered. I made my purchase--$2.60 with tax for 5, which should last me more than a year—NO SHIPPING. And I met and interacted with some more people I’d never seen.
*
What’s remarkable to me is the level to which I’d become afraid of people. The post office, the bank, returning things to a store, these are all experiences I’d become somewhat fearful of, sometimes very fearful. Agoraphobia. Fear of the marketplace.

Moon · Fire · Pizza

2010-01-11T13:35:00.000-05:00

"We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved." Sogyal Rinpoche

Still January 9, 2009

Home now.

Very cold, clear, nearly full moon, stars and planets hovering above as I walked home from the bus to a just-cleaned, empty house, with dinner waiting for me. Like a dream.

But I notice what I’ve been noticing a lot recently: here is another type of moment when I would have indulged online. Nobody home, an hour to “kill”, nobody here to tell me not to. Indulge in whatever is my internet obsession of the month…Perez Hilton, Facebook, nytimes.com.

What I do instead: begin reading Not Buying It by Judith Levine (it’s good, really good, and therefore intimidating, so professionally written). Clean up from the gorgeous dinner Jeff left behind when he took the kids to gymnastics just before I walked into a quiet house. Sit down by the fire with the cat and a few thoughts, an existence that is not then summed up in 20 words or less for the 5th Facebook status update of the day.

National Cathedral School · Mrs. Forbes · Sarah E.

2010-01-11T13:32:00.001-05:00

“I like opening a letter and thinking myself loved.” – Virginia Woolf

Completely awesome. I just checked our p.o. box up the street here and there was an honest-to-god letter from Sarah Edmunds, a close friend from middle school. We reconnected on Facebook and she was willing to correspond off the internet.

I sent a postcard last week. She photocopied a program from a voice recital we were both part of in the eighth grade, led by Mrs. Forbes at NCS. She wrote a quick note on it; what a huge difference receiving something real and unexpected. So….I stopped by the Paper Patch again because stodgy stationary didn’t seem right to write Sarah back (I have that to write to my mother, who likes it).

So I got a box of something fun. How expressive to write a note, in blue-black ink, to my friend. So different from email. Email: I thought of you. Letter: I love you. Enough to take an hour and write you, only you, a letter.

When faxing goes bad

2010-01-11T13:30:00.001-05:00

"I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes a-foot." — Thoreau, Walden

Trying to obtain medical records for the boys so we can get them up to date on immunizations. It’s a b**** without a fax or internet….wouldn’t the internet be so much quicker / easier right now than relying on people and the mail?? I leave a message asking the records handler apologetically if we can make this happen by mail.

Then, trying to get an update to the massage school admin in Utah. I think proudly, I’ll fax her a hand-written letter, written in fountain pen! I write the note, explaining where I am in my studies, so they won’t put me on probation again for non-activity.

I barely keep the letter to one page and realize that the fax might cut off the bottom line since it’s so close to the bottom of the page. I go to fax from our fax scanner at the office but can’t remember how to run the thing. I give up and call and leave a message.

While I’m finishing my message, another call comes through that I need to take. I end up leaving the massage school answering machine on hold, possibly using up all the space there is on their answering machine. Crap. I hope they have voice mail so it doesn’t eat up absolutely all the time on their recorder. Next time I’ll call during business hours or just send a freaking letter.

Hypochondriac central

2010-01-11T13:26:00.000-05:00

"The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes in and reacts to." — Eckhart Tolle

Friday, January 9, 2009

At the office.

Couple days ago, convinced I might need an x-ray at the dentist to screen for bone cancer. This strange, intense soreness had returned to my left interior jawline, underneath my chin, and though I hadn’t felt it in some time it was back. I was straining my mind to assess what muscle attachments lay there, what glands or lymph nodes.

With these worries still lurking, I picked up my fiddle the next morning and put it to my chin…..with the chin rest falling right on the sore spot.

That’s why I have a sore spot.

Now I remember. It’s just been so long since I played regularly. It’s from playing my fiddle again. The fiddle had been another casualty of internet use. I’m glad it’s not bone cancer. Just a “healing crisis” from coming off internet use, that comes in the form of a sore chin caused by getting back into a favorite activity instead of lurking around online.

Option overload

2010-01-11T13:12:00.000-05:00

[Another winter day watching home videos backwards.]

"I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust." — Thoreau, Walden

January 11, 2009

option overload:
— on the internet
— in stores

Options past a certain reasonable point are a burden on the psyche. The onus then is on us to "manually" limit our options. this is a distinct problem in overindustrialized suburbia / consumerism. What effects, long-term, does this have on the brain? Option overload is both addictive and repulsive (imagine walking into any Circuit City). Of course....it is the "dubious luxury" of wealth. I would like to discuss this with a psychologist.

Field of dandelions

2010-01-08T16:33:00.000-05:00

"Our lives seem to live us, to possess their own bizarre momentum, to carry us away; in the end we feel we have no choice or control over them." Sogyal Rinpoche

still January 6, 2009

The last few days it’s been as though I was astrally transported back in time — to high school, particularly, right around 11th grade when I participated in another social experimemt that changed my life — The Mountain School — in 1984 when the program was brand-new. Memories and the feelings that go with them very much with me.

The realness of that experiment is something of what I've been feeling the last few days. The challenges of white-water kayaking in Northern Massachussetts the spring following, the concreteness of a newfound passion in farming, the years-long search for community without knowing exactly what I was trying to rebuild from my Mountain School experience.

The image I had a few years ago, when contemplating homeschooling: That to make that leap would be an abandonment of sorts, but not necessarily a bad one: the image of being left behind by a school bus on a sunny morning in a field of spring dandelions, and after the initial panic of being left behind, the beautiful thereness of the moment, of petals, yellow flower heads, seeds cascading on wind, the cross-disciplinary lessons of the moment that are absolutely homeschooling.

Reading Thoreau’s "Economy" again, the first time since the Mountain School, and though it’s necessary to work around some of his arrogance, there are jewels — very quotable stuff. Right now I’m on a paragraph where he’s assessing what are the basic, most very basic needs of people — and I have been thinking along these very lines for a while—wanting to shift my relationship with stuff to a more needs-based relationship (I truly need it, therefore I’ll seek and let it in) and away from decision-based material acquisition (I’m in Target, I see stuff and start to want it, I have to decide whether or not to get it, or when I’m really tempted, decide not to get it).

Taking off the internet

2010-01-05T12:26:00.001-05:00

[photo by son, age 6]

"Attention is the ability we have to discriminate and to focus only on that which we want to perceive....By using our attention we learned a whole reality, a whole dream." — Don Miquel Ruiz, The Four Agreements

Still January 6, 2009

There has been a sense that I was in touch with the wrong people, people I should not be having contact with — not necessarily because they were unhealthy alliances, although some were perhaps at times. But because they are not the people who are right here, right now, or important enough (family, friends) to warrant the amount of time spent corresponding.
*
Realizing that as far back as my mothering.com days — and what a godsend that was when the boys were very little — that the presence of in many ways the ‘perfect’ online community had the unintended effect of making me less appreciative of the people right there. Back then life right here, right now was at times feeling unbearable.
*
Taking off the internet has been like taking off the wrong glasses. Here I am.

That's-so-cool! syndrome

2010-01-05T12:19:00.000-05:00

"In the long run, men only hit what they aim at." — Thoreau, Walden

Still January 6, 2009

The idea of leading one-month internet retreats—a weekly discussion and people would rely on each other, and check in once a week to see what they were learning, what it was like. Cool idea, don’t think I'd want to lead it. Too much else interesting to do.
*
That’s So Cool syndrome — lots of stuff on the internet is cool — but do I need it, really?

For example:
Snow coming tomorrow. Habitually I would spend 20 minutes on the internet and computer, reading and re-reading the winter weather advisory or storm watch / warning gleaning as much excitement out of those words as possible, look at the radar a few times, look at my dashboard to see the weather widget show the snowflakes coming down (well, tomorrow anyway) that I could see perfectly well from my window. “That’s so cool!” and it is.

But…Tonight: 3 minute forecast over the phone. I actually had to stand up to go and get the phone for that, until sitting here on my butt. And instead of scrutinizing all the available data, I take 3 minutes listening the forecast. Do I personally really need more? Why was I allowing it to take so much time?

Because it’s cool! Because I feel cool looking at radar and having some clue about how to interpret it. There’s nothing wrong with that — and Jeff and I have bonded some over this — but if my time is my life, is this really how I need to spend my life? Could I limit myself someday to 5 minutes a day of obtaining the weather forecast? Just curious.
*
Another victory of the experiment: today I learned to hand-card wool. There’s a lifetime of refinement but at least I can do it and it’s getting easier. It was the first time I’d done this since second grade — Charlie’s age. And I learned because I had the time.

This is the thing: so much time was spent on the internet doing absolutely nothing real. Research, yes; networking, yes; communication, yes; but most of the rest of it, unnecessary. Titillation is the word that comes to mind, and that’s probably the more socially acceptable word for it. There is in places like Facebook the absolutely convincing idea that I was doing something real…and yes, passing notes is real. Harnessing all that power to help elect our new president or raise money for the Nature Conservancy via ad exposure is real.

But…but….but…the here and now of it is breathtakingly simple: more time in front of a computer screen, pointing and clicking, lost inside it and the mind, consciousness of the here and now utterly lost in cyberspace. Or worse, half-lost then and before and after — the anticipation, the processing post-surfing, when my precious children might be asking questions, wanting my full attention but never quite getting it, or getting it rarely. I got pretty good at pretending to be fully present, or so it seemed.

OK, off to my very real bed which already has my very real sleeping husband in it.

Getting Real

2010-01-05T12:08:00.000-05:00

"I think I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a blood-sucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither." — H.D. Thoreau, "Visitors"

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The experiment continues. I find that I’m still wanting to over-crowd my time. The internet use was only a symptom.

Today I felt like one of Timothy Leary’s people: Drop Out, Tune In. I feel like I’ve dropped below the din and there’s a whole reality going on down here.

I feel like I’m becoming more real to myself again and haven’t felt this way in a long time. Been playing my fiddle more, talking to people more, appreciating more the people in front of me, and who are important to me: family, old friends, neighbors.
*
Today I was talking with Janey on the phone, about various things, including wool — and had to sign off to get the boys. She offered to bring her spinning wheel over when we were back.

She did, and let the boys try it, and I got the carding brushes put together, and started to learn to card. Susan, my neighbor across the street who's a fiber enthusiast / spinner / knitter, must have seen us from her upstairs window because she showed up with dishes from a meal I brought her last month when she had surgery, and a batch of delicious Mexican anise cookies. She came in and upon seeing our project asked if I had an extra set of carders. She and Janey hit it off.

I felt a bit overwhelmed, tired as I was from a long first day back taking the boys to Sierra's (their teacher 2x week), ready for some down time. But how could I say no to such needed and wonderful impromptu community. It’s only day 6 and already my dream is coming true. What will the other 359 days of this year bring?
*
Tonight met with Angie, Janet, and Mandy about the fate of our homeschool coop. We are going to do some outdoor activities and I had the kids’ newspaper idea come back up again. We are going to get an issue out with little articles, an ad or two, and lots of artwork.

The fiddle is at my beck and call all of a sudden. I’ve been playing again. Thinking again more clearly. The thought-habit of narrating my actions as if I were posting a Facebook status update has faded into the background and something else is emerging. What is that---uninterrupted, unedited thought?

Wool & fire

2010-01-05T12:00:00.000-05:00

[a huge chunk of ice fell off a roof on Exchange Street and broke the back window of this car. His dog was inside and though traumatized was otherwise unharmed. Welcome to winter in the old port district! photo by my husband]

Monday, January 5, 2009

"No matter how we get trapped, our usual reaction is not to become curious about what's happening....Most of us just blindly reach for something familiar that we associate with relief and then wonder why we stay dissatisfied. The radical approach of bodhicitta practice is to pay attention to what we do. Without judging it we train in kindly acknowledging whatever is going on. Eventually we might decide to stop hurting ourselves in the same old ways." — Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You

Tonight, coming home from the meeting, really wanted to get on Facebook. That had become my default — go from real community to virtual community. It sullied somewhat the clarity I'd felt in the meeting and I'd sit there feeling like I really ought to get off but would be unable.

So, instead — tonight — fixed up the rest of my dinner, and am sitting by the fire., looking at the heaps of newly washed wool drying on folded-up drying racks and towels. The colors are gorgeous and very similar to the color's of Olga's fur and also my own hair: black (the only place I differ), grey (light), charcoal, dark brown, reddish brown.

2010-01-05T11:39:00.000-05:00

"Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are." — Pema Chodron

January 4th, 2009

Needs-based buying vs. decision-based buying:
Needs-based buying — "I need this. We need this. I will go find it."
Decision-based buying — "Oooooo look at that! I think i need that. I think I'll buy it."
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Enjoying reading Walden, a copy of which I picked up at Longfellow Books on Friday. Much of it so far resonates with my thinking on this experiment.
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Watching the ice floes on the Stroudwater River today (while rushing down highway 295 to Staples at the mall in hopes of finding blue cartridges for my good pen...turns out they only had black....).
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Spoke at Portland Friends Meeting today for the first time. Mentioned following through on a leading to depart from the internet for a year — some more good discussions — people quietly congratulating, or resonating, or wishing such a thing were possible for themselves — Sarah L on the internet "sabbath" she and Rob take sometimes; Beth B-N on the inability of some of her students (high school) to really ponder an idea, because they are so well-trained by their cell phones to check their messages every ten minutes—genuine deep concern on her face.
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vis a vis starting a business — is this promotional suicide or a publicity stunt? Functioning more as latter.

Bowling Alone; Soul-Stealing

2010-01-04T13:30:00.000-05:00

[photo by my son, age 5]

Jan 2, 2009 continued

Build a fence, meet your neighbors.

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Immediacy is human craving and tools like Twitter, Facebook, text messaging at their best can give this. But at what cost?

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Native American belief in the nineteenth century that photography steals the soul — what about the internet? Is that effect not magnified countless times?

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Brenda lent me Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam, copyright 2000. Some interesting stuff re internet, though outdated given how fast and far things have come in that realm. The book is very good, though, well-written and engaging (and LONG — 500pp).

Carding Brushes vs. Mass Delusion

2010-01-04T13:09:00.000-05:00

[photos of Newfoundland hat & mittens, showing construction; property of my mother-in-law]
Jan 2, 2009 continued

"Each night, without knowing it, you return to the unmanifested Source of all life when you enter the the stage of deep, dreamless sleep, and then reemerge again in the morning, replenished." — Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Stopped by Portland Fiber Gallery to get carding brushes (finally!) and a little roving for making Newfoundland Mittens, and got a handmade bear for Baxie's birthday. Finally connected witht his fabulously vibrant palce in Portland.

Of course, visa card transaction used the internet. do I have to give credit/debit cards this year? That might solve the problem mentioned on previous page (spending too much money).

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Other inspirations:
— Phil Haskell who campaigned last fall for Maine House of Representatives door-to-door in person.

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A sense of interdependence is vital to world peace. Are we achieving that through the internet? I don't know.

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Mass delusion: that being continually hooked up digitally is vital and necessary. I'm not talking about people who depend on the internet for their livelihoods or for keeping in touch or for any number of other useful reasons. I'm talking about the way we use each other to continually reaffirm this delusion that constant contact with the internet is vital to life.

An obsessive relationship with the internet is perchance a case of mass delusion: You are constantly online sending me messages, so I must be or I might miss something. What are we really missing? Everything. Life is right now. And we are missing this.

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I was dissatisfied with the constant communication with people who weren't really there. Jeff & I independently concluded that this was what some people used to refer to as insanity.

This adrenaline surge brought to you by Crane Stationary

2010-01-03T06:43:00.000-05:00

still Jan 2, 2009

Stopped by Paper Patch, stationary store on Exchange Street. Struggling-along little place. Standing in front of the Crane Stationary section (small, but there) I felt a surge of energy, exhilaration almost flow through me. At the checkout I asked the shopkeeper if she had fountain pen cartridges and she referred me to another shop (which I couldn't ultimately find).

When I explained my project, her eyes lit up like someone had just given her a pony. There was hope in her face.

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Stopped by Longfellow Books and asked after postcard books and the book Brenda mentioned yesterday about the folks who spent a year trying not to buy anything. The booksellers looked it up for me.

I explained this project and the guy who was helping me said, "My job would be impossible without the internet. I just looked this up online for you." He seemed almost insulted. I said, "yes, but I had to talk to you, and I've never talked to you before." That seemed to help. Later I wished I'd said, "Yes, but because of this, I'm buying books from YOU." Of course couldn't leave without a gorgeous library edition of Walden and a half-price copy of The Polar Express.

***Must be careful not to spend too much money while doing this project.***

Today's "internet surfing"

2010-01-03T06:27:00.000-05:00

still Jan 2, 2009

Today's "internet surfing": Going to O'Naturals for lunch, the one in the old bank building on Exchange Street. Reading the bulletin board. Stopp[ing at the biz card and local newspaper table. Picking up whatever looked interesting. Reading that.

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comments from Facebook, Dec. 31:
-- "Way to tailor your mental environment!"
— "You're crazy!"
— "but, what about if you need to know like the world's 10 largest deserts, or the name of that actor from 'Little House on the Prairie'??"
— "You are going to inscribe this book on clay tablets I assume?"
— "I'm hyperventilating just thinking about the prospect of no google, no street maps, no netflix, NPR podcasts, news and whatever else I dream up that I have to have..."
— "Dude, even the Amish have the Internet."

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I'm not living 2009 without the Internet. I'm just not on it. The very fact of the internet makes it possible for my family to live in this beautiful town of Portland, Maine. Without the internet and all it's associated technologies — representing the collective creativity and ingenuity of thousands of people who helped create them — we'd be living in Sarasota, Florida. (no offense intended, Florida - I need snow!)

The power of "doing nothing"

2010-01-03T06:15:00.000-05:00

still January 2, 2009

Yesterday — chatting with Jeff — recognizing that sitting looking at the internet was acceptable for "doing nothing" — a basic human need, perhaps. Sitting checking email is almost on the same privacy / do-not-disturb level as sitting reading on the toilet. It's OK to ignore people and chores, or to practice selective hearing.

It has to be OK now — and this must be articulated, not unspoken — to sit and "do nothing"! To sit for ten minutes and read or write, or knit. DO NOTHING. OK to suddenly meditate for ten minutes with a door closed. Play music. Sit and write. Read poetry. There is nothing wrong with these activities and there is perchance infinitely more value in these things than in "being online."

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It was pretty much constant connection to the internet and cyberspace with no end in sight.

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I saw no other way to create the space and time in my life that I craved. Nothing else could go.

If right now is my life,...

2010-01-03T06:07:00.000-05:00

still Friday, January 2, 2009

"If we look into our lives, we will see clearly how many unimportant tasks, so-called 'responsibilities' accumulate to fill them up. One master compares them to 'housekeeping in a dream'. We tell ourselves we want to spend time on the important things of life, but there never is any time." Sogyal Rinpoche

It is weird to notice the number of times per day the impulse to get online comes. It is dozens. Today the panic is less. Detox! The fear that I'm committing "connection suicide" is lessening, and it's only January 2nd.

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Today — the weather report — a paragraph at the top of the New England edition of the New York Times. Regional, not so specific. "It's winter!...blah blah blah." The phone — dialing up to the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine.

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Today — heading up the street to get some lunch. All the old brick buildings of the old port district and shops in their post-holiday sales. Then later, massage school work — studying polarity and sending out postcards or making phone calls to get some practice sessions rolling again.

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Being on the internet for me is, in part, an attempt to address the fear of "missing something" — an age-old human fear? — but hours a day were lost sometimes in cyberspace, and sometimes more because of being distracted thinking about what I'd read, with whom I'd chatted — and if right now is my life, how much did I miss in an attempt not to miss anything?

Reverend Billy, ice storms

2010-01-03T05:52:00.000-05:00

January 2, 2009

It's Friday at the office--the boys are with Jeff & I'm here down in the old port studying. There's nobody here but me, and no internet. Nothing to feel for the moment but the aloneness! The hum of the computers. There's an overwhelming need to do something, connect with something, someone to feed the need for information. An agitation that is probably always there. The fear that I've torqued someone off by being offline — the fear!

Inspiration for taking on this challenge (in no particular order):

— Eckhart Tolle and reading about what takes us out of the moment; how the moment is the life.

— The ice storm last December and how it brought the neighborhood together. We have a gas stove and a woodstove for heat so were in a position to offer food and warmth to all our neighbors who were without power. People got outside and talked to each other in winter when normally we're squirreled away or the conversation gets drowned out by the snowblower.

— Reading Farmer Boy and Jeff saying how remarkably fast the world has changed since then and I said, yes but our basic human needs haven't changed — and are they still getting met? This is a complex answer because obviously many things have improved drastically. But how about the basic human needs for: connection, friendship, community, being outdoors in the fresh air, being of use?

— Film: What Would Jesus Buy? The Reverend Billy

Henry David Thoreau

2010-01-02T07:42:00.001-05:00

January 2, 2009

"By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it."— Thoreau, "Economy"

Thinking of Thoreau this AM and how he escaped the industrial revolution to go retreat at Walden Pond. This urge of mine is hundreds, thousands of years old — OK, getting grandiose here comparing myself to him. But there are similarities.
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Missing the immediacy of poetry readings. The immediacy of letters.
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TMI Syndrome. Fascination overload.
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Compare: weather from newspaper and phone vs. NEXRAD / online updates.

Detox · Utah Phillips · Fear of the Post Office

2010-01-02T07:03:00.000-05:00

January 1, 2009

"If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength. This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave." — Eckhart Tolle

This morning upon waking, a recurring sense of anxiety, fear, in the pit of my belly — is that always there and I deal with it by getting online? There is the fear of being forgotten, of being inundated, and there is the fear of the post office.

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Utah Phillips on the radio -- did he die? I can't get online so I can't see. Usually I look at the New York Times obit bookmark tab. But the printed NYT doesn't have the full obits. Right now I'm listening to WMPG out of the University of Southern Maine. (They later shared that Utah died in May 2008...he never got to see the coalescence of the Democratic Party that eventually got Obama elected.)

It's 4:25 p.m. and I miss my parents. It's weird.

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This evening, a wave of fear came over me about "what if" / what could happen — war, illness, etc. — normally I would have jumped online.

"Smoker's Friendships," Cocktail Parties, Quiet Desperation

2010-01-02T06:55:00.000-05:00

December 31, 2008

I'm losing my resolve.

Told the first internet correspondent, my cousin, my plans. She was really saddened by it — not at all what I expected. We have really reconnected via Gmail chat.
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What to do about weather? I will really miss NEXRAD.
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The internet is like New York — the best and worst of everything.
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An "internet break" is like a bathroom break: no one will knock on your door for ten minutes (or a year).
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I'm wondering if some of my friends will be like my friends when I smoked — back then we knew each other because we smoked outside together, bummed cigarettes off each other. We always knew we could find someone with matches. When the smoking went away, so did the friends. We needed each other so support our habits, and could tolerate each others' habit of smoking as long as we both maintained our own.
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Talked to Mom; she mentioned cocktail parties, which she no longer enjoys. Great place to meet people but no longer enjoys them now that she sees the same people every time.
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My neighbor Brenda, a writer, was very supportive today. We had a great chat. She mentioned Thoreau's quote: "Most men live lives of quiet desperation."

What's the Big Idea?

2010-01-02T06:48:00.000-05:00

December 30, 2008

Am getting the call to be off the internet for a year. It is scaring me to death as I ask all the questions: What will Jeff say? Will this adversely affect my marriage? What about my kids? How about buying stuff? What will people say? What if I miss something important?

Also have thought about the cell phone — and getting rid of the phone service for a year — but it is a tool Jeff and I use all the time to keep in touch. So considering leaving off text messaging / cell phone usage except for family.

And all this in the middle of starting a business-- what am I, crazy? No internet, no cell phone? How on earth will I compete?

Here's what came to me: You've never been more sane. You're feeling the call of a deeper, more satisfying existence. If you heed the call, you will receive the gift. Listening and heeding the deepest calls, despite all surface messages to the contrary, will lead you to the places you want to go.

Other questions: Will I put myself in a communications blackout? What am I NOT doing by spending so much time on the internet? I'm about to find out.

Taking the Plunge

2010-01-02T06:41:00.000-05:00

Day 0
December 31, 2008
10:21 p.m.

So I’m doing it. I put up on Facebook that I’m not going to be on the internet during 2009.

I’m scared. It doesn’t feel right, partly because my cousin in the midwest seems miffed and my mother doesn’t completely understand what I’m doing. She thought I didn’t want her to contact me at all. My cousin and I have reconnected via Gmail chat and Facebook and it’s been significant for both of us. She was not happy when I broke the news to her last night.

I’ve been working on logistics: weather for instance. I use the internet all the time to check the weather updates. Of all the things I’ll miss this year (GULP…a year?) one of the biggest is NEXRAD with storm tracks. And those winter storm updates from NWS.

Today I looked up the phone number for NWS in Gray. The phone book gave the web address. Crap! I thought. I better hurry! So I hopped online and found the phone number, called it, and got through to a real person who happily gave me the number for phone weather reports. Since, of course, we don’t have a television.

It was cool, though, to talk to a PERSON who seemed happy to help somebody.

Quite a few people have seemed inspired by this move. So may it continue in an outward ripple effect, to propel those people in the direction of something they’ve been wanting to do.

What I think I'll miss: chatting with my cousin, NEXRAD / weather updates / satellite imagery of storms; seeing photos of people’s babies and children; the little bits of news from family.

I just keep wanting more authentic experiences. Face to face, voice to voice, letter to letter. I’m thinking about getting out my fountain pen and trying to find some decent stationery…without using the Internet.

I keep feeling these waves of anxiety flow through my body. It’s completely weird. The internet is not physically wired into me but it is definitely “wired” into my mind.

Tonight Charlie was saying goodbye to 2008 while getting ready to fall asleep. I had that feeling of a year passing too quickly. A year ago I just hoped not to break any bones in 2008. I can’t believe that was an entire year ago. I thought, good, it won’t take too long to get through this. But I felt entirely called for quite a long time to do this. How often can we do something for an entire year? And if not now, when?

Back to knitting.

2010-01-01T12:57:00.001-05:00

January 1, 2009

Ha ha ha! No one commented on my initial post. This is great. Well, I took a lot of notes over the course of the year. There is no question that the year that unfolded was almost completely different from the year that might have been. Over the next year I'll be updating with snapshots from the year offline. Not as exciting as climbing Everest with an IMAX camera, but close!

2009: A Year Without the Internet

2008-12-30T20:02:00.000-05:00

I've been wondering what would happen if I spent an entire year off the internet, and this is the year. I'll be spending 2009 off the internet, starting January 1. This means, to the best of my ability:
--no e-mail in or out
--no internet. (Googling the kids' questions will happen with Dad in the evening.)
--Limited cell phone use

(All bets are off in case of true emergency.)

If you would like to join me, for a day, a week, a month, or the whole year, and would be interested in sharing your experiences doing this, would just like to know what this nutty experiment feels like, or would like to write letters the old-fashioned way, please contact me at:

J. Van West
PO Box 7771
Portland, Maine 04112

I'll be taking notes for a book.

This blog will not be updated :)