The naming habit

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.

On Stress

"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.

Big Snow 2009: Back in Easton

"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

"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 Bail on Airport, but Where's Grandpa?

"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: We Head to the Airport

"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.

All the Names for Snow

"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.

Inauguration Day, Part II

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

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.

Talking with Neighbors, Maine Style

[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.

Snowflakes on the virtual Appalachian Trail

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.