Dust, dirt, time lurk in the corners of our lives

Neglected corners

Dust, dirt, time lurk in the corners of our lives.

Since spring, I have purposefully and energetically dug into many neglected corners of the house we have lived in for 33 years. That is when we decided to undertake refinishing our wood floors and freshening the paint on our walls. During the months of preparation, my home office, otherwise known as “the back kitchen,” got a pretty thorough purging and re-organizing: but Life instructed me to get deeper into its corners, then turned up some treasures.

I was rehanging a freshly laundered valence when the curtain rod slipped out of its fabric track and fell down behind a heavy wooden file cabinet. I pondered my choices, then reached for a yard-long dowel we keep handy for retrieving wayward spatulas that fall behind the stove. Reached next for a flashlight to see how the curtain rod had landed, and where to apply the dowel to moving it out of this tight and otherwise unreachable space.

 

An odd assortment of objects gone missing

There were other shapes visible, though I couldn’t make out what they were, so like a golfer teeing up one practice shot after another, I kept whacking away until all the items heaped up within reach.

Fallen leaves in various stages of disintegration from a Money Tree that had lived on top of the filing cabinet for years. The Pachira aquatica prospered my creative life until it grew spindly and tall. Repotted and relocated to another room, it no longer thrived.

A Palm Pilot that served as my right hand in the nineties and early aughts: it was my PDA (Personal Data Assistant) after all, with it’s quaint stylus: address book, daily list-maker and calendar. It met its demise not long after the Iphone debuted in 2007.  The sueded protective case is held together with carpet tape, much like my current Iphone case is held together by rubber bands. My Palm Pilot has a sweet heft in the hand, and holds mysteries of folly and wisdom: for several years I used it in place of a paper journal. No longer retrievable, the mysteries remain.

A small framed photograph of the sun rising over Mt. Mandagni (Fire Mountain) that I took during a1991 pilgrimage to Gurudev Siddha Peeth in Ganeshpuri. At that time it was not  unusual for me to be up at sunrise. The first Persian Gulf War began while I was there. On this trip I received the sole personal verbal command from my Guru: “Take rest.” A command I have practiced to great benefit from many angles, from the most literal to the probably fantastical over the years since then.

Three Perelandra Nature Cards carrying the following quite relevant “answers” to current life situations as well as to some long-forgotten questions:

The first, partly encrusted with something brown and unidentifiable, reads: Empathy – Moving forward with care.

The second lightly stained card reads: Balance in Partnership – The focus on the elements of one’s partnership with nature.

The third card, hardly discolored, reads: Woven Oneness – The serenity, softness and inner peace of a parent who is at one with his/her child. Supporter, teacher, nurturer.

The real treasure here is that time has collapsed in this odd collection of forgotten objects, these particulars, and pulled “me” right along with it. And so these objects are not the stuff of nostalgia-only, but speak to and act on the present moment. 

So whether your neglected corners are literal or metaphorical, keep your hands and heart open.

We interrupt you to bring you this PAUSE

Nothing frustrates me more than to be interrupted when I am bent on my objective of the moment: until I can receive it as the pause I need.

In my more fanciful moments death looms like a vacation with a checklist directed towards tidiness and completion. The plants are watered, the bills are paid and there is enough in the checking account to cover the next month. The garden is weeded, mulched, and blooming in season. Deadlines have all been met, duties acquitted, birthdays and friendships acknowledged, questions big and little answered, sorries made good, forgivenesses extended.

No room for dust, accumulated mail, the list of Things that Must Be Finished  that multiplies by twos and threes for every task checked off: plane reservations, checking in on a sick grandson, grasping some essential key to a writing blind-spot that Gregory Orr’s essay must hold, emptying the overfull rain gauge so I can keep track of the bounty of this week’s generous skies.

And especially no tolerance for interruption and the disproportionate heat of irritation that comes with yielding my priority, my timing, my drive towards completion. 

In my more fanciful and unawakened moments – and they are plentiful, I actually try to live this way, in spite of the fact my doing so has led not to the sought-after continuity or satisfaction, but to exhaustion and dissatisfaction.

I have entirely missed living in those moments of interruption, defending against them as against a mortal assault.

So here is what I have learned to do in those moments: pause.

When I can just pause and let things come to rest where they are, let myself come to rest where I am – there is a fulfillment that is greater, I could say more real, than completing any task itself. The pause may call for me to turn away from my task and face the person, or cat, who wants my attention. I may cap my pen and place it in the red ceramic cup I use as a holder. Or I may put my laptop in sleep mode. Taking such a physical action lets things come to rest where they are.

It  takes naming where I am to let myself come to rest.

A string of namings helps to to let the irritation and heat dissipate. I am pissed. I am holding my breath. Oh, I am breathing. I am cooling down.

These two – a physical action and a string of namings – turn interruption into an ally who invites me to PAUSE, to stay in contact with the living moment.

Tasks lose their frantic edge and any claim at shoring up my security, identity, or attitude of good-will towards myself, and become one absorbing shift of relationship after another.

The heat of my irritation at countless daily interruptions dissipates.

The pause: this is life making itself useful, like my mother’s pen knife.

This practice confers an actual, not a false continuity, one that holds both the completed and the unfinished, the resolved and the unresolved, perhaps eases the difficulties of that most final of interruptions: death, attended by untidinesses of all kinds – loss, solemnity, awe, and mystery. Perhaps even my own death, inevitably to be attended by the untidy, and by the great unknown.

Psst…It’s Winter!

Winter is the time to turn inward, to slow down, to go fallow.

We know this. And we likely know that our culture of busy-ness makes tuning-in to the winter season’s call challenging, but this isn’t another post to admonish you out of busy-ness.

Just a nudge here-if you haven’t stored up some winter moments, the rising energies of spring may leave you lethargic, fatigued, slow to sprout, and even later to fruit and harvest come summer.

This time around, for me, the problem isn’t too much to do.

The problem is the UN-seasonal weather. I’m wondering if you’ve noticed that it IS winter.

you make the fire and I’ll show you something wonderful: a big ball of snow! Basho
you make the fire
and I’ll show you something wonderful:
a big ball of snow!
Basho

Until well into January, when Baltimore’s winter temperatures finally plummeted, we’d been treated to balmy days, migrating birds and spring-blooming quince.

Without the cold and grey, even shortened days were not enough to draw me often enough to curl up under an afghan with a good book and allow myself to go somewhat dormant.

Sometimes the cues, the markers, the signals change, and we unknowingly fall out of sync.

The cold and grey, have always reminded me what to do. This Friday in the north east, we’ll see twenty-four minutes more of daylight than just three weeks ago.

I know this: Only by allowing myself to arrive fully in winter (however it shows up) do I gift my body, mind and spirit the grace and gift of an interlude.

So, I’ve pared down my day-time commitments, jettisoned more than a few attractive outings – theatre, community sings, dance classes. And I’ve built more protection around my hours after nightfall for staring idly into the dark. All to let myself go more fallow.

Depending on where you live, you may have many more or fewer weeks of winter than here in the Mid-Atlantic.

Either way, to help you set aside and protect the moments you need to take your rest, so you can spring forward with the coming season, I invite you to pause with intention and

reach for…

nourishment (try a pot of my favorite immune-supporting miso soup, friendship, conversation

soothing and cheering herbal tea (recipe below)

candle and firelight

or open up to…

bare branches and long views through the trees

night-time hours resonant with stillness

grieving your losses

pared-down-to-the-bone clarity

TURN WITHIN, EXALE, SHIFT YOUR ENERGY DOWN A NOTCH OR TWO –

even while sitting at a red light, waiting in line, waiting for the water to boil

listen…

to the still small voice within

fall into the spaciousness of the HEART, that seasonal field

where we can meet, in Rumi’s words,

“out beyond right and wrong.”

 

An ALOP RecipeYoung and Restless Tea

Young and Restless Tea

One rounded teaspoon each of dried Chamomile, Linden Flower, and Elderflower, and one 1/4 teaspoon of dried Peppermint.

Pour 8 oz boiling water over the herbs.

Cover and steep for 10-15 minutes.

Strain, sip, inhale, enjoy to calm restlessness, help you (and a finicky digestion) rest, help you “manage.”

A plus for late winter sinuses and lungs: this tea is also a mild respiratory decongestant.

 

Summer Morning Arrythmia

The texture, color and mood of our lives is often set below the level of daily awareness.

A succession of grey days, cold and damp. Or sunny, hot and humid.  Weather that invites us outside or draws us indoors for a warming drink and fuzzy slippers, invites longer hours of activity or of rest.

And we each respond to these shifts of temperature, light, moisture, the movement of air, in our unique ways.

Gusty winds of late winter and early fall challenge me. An hour of weeding on a sunny mild day can nourish me for a week.

Still, in the midst of summer, activity can also increase my restlessness, upset my rhythm, and lead me to seek out a winter moment. All the more so if I have not had my fill of quiet and rest during the cold months.

Summer morning arrhythmia

by Sara Eisenberg

a persistent garden fly nips at my bare legs.

i have more sympathy for him than usual,

i cannot seem to land, swat myself from one

temporary landing to the next,

come and go amidst summer clamor,

a fruit out of season,

pining for the winter spruce

of lower-case

calm.