Things that Bump You in the Night

I wrote this on my blog a few years ago.. A friend recently asked me to "publish" it, because she thought some people might need to read it. I don't know about publish, but I thought I might share. While this is the season to be merry, it can also be the season that some people feel sad(s).

I have a quote on my refrigerator (actually, my refrigerator contains more wisdom than food, in hopes that I might ingest some, I suppose):

Approach what you find repulsive; help the ones you think you cannot help; and go to places that scare you....  from some Tibetan monk, whose name I do not know.

     I've taken this as a general kind of guide to self improvement and living a life less self-centered. Although I once interpreted it to mean travel by myself to a foreign country where I did not speak the language and to eat foods of unknown content and origin. 

     There are times, however, when this quote takes on a radically different meaning. 

     Did you ever startle awake in the middle of the night for no good reason, gripped by a sweating, heart-pounding feeling of doom - that either this is the Big One or else all the awful mistakes you have made in your entire life have gotten together and decided to perform an intervention while you slept? 

     I have, and it usually signifies that the Fear and Anxiety Twins have come to pay me a visit for as long as, oh well, as long as they care to stay. 

They are old acquaintances of mine, but they are unwelcome.

     The problem is that when the Twins visit, they wrap themselves around your head; clutch at your throat; twist up inside your stomach; suck up your energy, and they won't let go until it thunders. They also like to gossip about your friends and neighbors, and speak unkindly about your own character.

     Your home becomes house-arrest, and the still-pajama-clad creature watching yet another re-run of "What Not to Wear" at 2 p.m. is you -  the repulsive thing you can't approach. The place that scares you is the shower; and you are the one you think you cannot help - beyond force-feeding your way to the bottom of a full bag of empty calories. 

    You could do something about this, but you feel, profoundly, that any non-essential movement would split your entire self into a thousand, un-gatherable pieces, and that would be that.

    You've never felt like this? Hmmm, imagine that.

    After years of hosting the Fear and Anxiety Twins at varying intervals and for varying lengths of time, I've learned one essential coping tip. Remind yourself that it won't last. They will move on. 

     So you spend a day or two posing as a lazy, overweight, unmotivated slug, and then you approach that place that scares you. You take a shower; put on some clean clothes, and take a break. Then you do something else; make coffee, maybe make up the bed.

     Funny, the Twins have an aversion to clean clothes and made beds; they'll begin to get restless and start looking for other accommodations.. 

     Last night, I went to another place that scared me. I rode my bike through the marsh walk, something I had never tried before. I left the Twins back at the house. I enjoyed the ride, and when I returned, they were gone. There was nothing to do but open the windows and clean up the dregs they'd left behind.

   I'm told this is National Mental Health Week (Month?). Depression gets to most of us sooner or later, but it won't last.

JUSTIFIED!!

Ok, I feel justified. Coffee has been irrefutably proven to be good for what ails you. People who drink coffee live longer; keep their brains functioning; and are happy! Yeah, I told you so.

And now for the ultimate told-you-so: Garden soil makes you happy! Current research shows that garden soil contains microbes that affect your body in the same way that Prozac does! Playing in dirt helps alleviate depression. Ever hear of the "Happy Gardener"? Of course!

Ok, now friends, I'm inviting you to come over here. I'll pour you a cup of real coffee, and allow you to walk barefoot in my garden, and I will only charge you the special, introductory price of $60/hr - that's 1/2 off standard therapy charges. Note: there will be surcharge if your case is severe enough to require eating some of my dirt. 

The doctor is in.

Soil Therapy

Worked in the garden for a couple of hours today. The hot summer and my aching back kept me from regular tasks for quite a while, but Autumn is kinder. The weather and my back seem to have reached some kind of compromise, and I can work, if I'm careful. I'm grateful for the beautiful flowers I enjoyed this season, despite the proliferation of weeds that threatened to choke them and me. 

Autumn gardening tasks are mostly cleaning up and moving plants to new locations in hopes of better outcomes. And there is always the ritual of saying good-bye to annuals and the faint hearted who did not last the summer. I feel a special kinship with those.

While I garden I think, philosophize, and pray. I think about writing. You know, of all the thoughts that crowded my head out there, none seem very original now. Gardeners know what I mean, and others have probably read or heard about the Tau of Nature a million times.Beauty fades - yeah, like we don't look in the mirror everyday.

I think I'll just say that Autumn tasks are so reassuring. The tidying up gives the impression of readiness: readiness for winter winds and storm, but also readiness to receive the seeds scattered by the winds, and readiness in the sense of fertility. Rich, dark, secret soil ready to produce.

And thats the most reassuring part for me. The garden is alive with deep, thriving roots; burrowing worms; dormant seeds; sprouting bulbs; tight buds on  dogwoods, and so much more. It's not dead: it's just ready and waiting. That's what I love about the winter that follows. It is the necessary cold that brings all this to proliferation in good old, easy-to-love spring.

Here's a quote, that I like:

     "In a way winter is the real spring, the time when the inner things happen, the resurgence of nature." - Edna O'Brien, Irish Novelist

Well, I can't wait. Inner things are already beginning to happen as I scoot around on my butt in the dirt and look up at the sky. Soon the yellow moon, still impressively large, will rise, and all will be as it should be. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just so grateful.

BTW, word nuts, I capitalize Autumn because it is my favorite season and deserves the recognition.

Yadda, Yadda, Yadda

I notice from my recent postings that I seem to be on a repetitive theme. I apologize. I just need to stop looking at FB; television; and listening to radio. I'm pretty sure I'll be alright then, but I may have to stay indoors as well.

Yeah, What She Said

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it? - Eleanor Roosevelt

   I grow so weary of the angry, dualistic postings on Facebook. They sound so ugly, so lacking in perspective. One side is right, and that makes might, and apparently some of us don't even want to hear about a different point of view. Maybe someone forgot to broadcast the news: "To Listen Does Not Mean That You Have to Agree, but You Might Learn Something."
   I would like to add that the definition of "Enemy" is not "Someone Who Disagrees With You." 
   It isn't just Facebook, we battle it out day after day, spewing out the most awful name-calling and accusations toward the "other side". I have a friend at church, nicest person you would ever want to meet. One day in the Post Office parking lot, she was verbally assaulted, and required the intervention of a bystander to prevent a possible physical assault, because a man disagreed with her liberal bumper stickers. (I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but it is so shocking to me, I'm repeating it.)
    We are all worried about terrorists, that we can agree upon, but a news analysis I heard the other day really made me stop and think. 
     The ideologist extremists who perpetrate these atrocities want us to be angry at each other. They want us to point a finger at "those people"; argue and accuse about what to do; turn us into the kind of people who are able to view suffering people as our enemy, and turn our guns on each other. Oh, and  to conduct a Presidential campaign of ludicrous and dangerous slander and innuendo by candidates who don't know what they are talking about. It's a sound-bite side-show, and we know who is in the lead by the glaring headlines produced by the provocative questions that generate the equally provocative response.
      Meanwhile, back to the terrorists. We Americans are so distracted by arguing and threatening each other, that we are destroying ourselves from within. We so exhaust ourselves fighting with each other, that we would have little left to battle the real enemies when they show up (if we can even agree who they are). The terrorists are laughing at us: they have a calculated plan to use our divineness against us. 

I am worried about our country. We seem to be getting further and further from a concept of "We the People" and moving toward me and mine. I fear that we are also moving further and further from our own cherished definitions of who we are:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

********

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

******

I worry about us. I don't have answers with big scope, but I do think we can begin listening to each other. The person with the different perspective is a worthy human being; an American; and desperately seeking for him/herself and his/her family the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I would like to see us, just once in the coming holiday season (ok, more than once is better) to forgo posting another contentious FB posting and seek out someone we know to think/believe differently from us and listen to what they have to say. It's not even necessary to argue back. Thank them for sharing their views; agree to disagree and walk away as brothers and sisters. Yes, it will be more difficult than sitting in our pajamas firing off something or hitting the "share" button on FB, but we all used to be up to handling difficult tasks.

We could try this at our next family holiday gathering. It might prevent someone from stomping away from the table, vowing never to return.

Think about one of my all-time favorite bumper stickers:

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK!

The Jerk in the Other Car

Sadly, I was involved in a traffic accident last week, which has resulted in my beloved Prius being totaled. I collected the check yesterday and handed over the title. Sigh! Poor little beat-up, abandoned car. You served me well.

Here's what happened. Traffic slowed down for a car turning ahead. The young man in the big Chevy Tahoe didn't slow down soon enough and rear-ended me. He was probably driving about 35 mph. It wasn't much of a bump, no one was hurt, but it was devastating to my little car. Too expensive to repair, they said.

The interesting aspect of this experience to me is what other people have said to me about it. They have called him "jerk in the other car." And when I said he was young, he was immediately assumed to be texting on his phone. Others have expressed how terrible it is the way people like him race up and down Hwy. 24, and other such comments.

I think maybe he was following a little too close and maybe looked away for a moment. Haven't you had that, "oh, shit" moment when you realize that the car in front of you is slowing and you have to really brake hard to avoid hitting it? This young man didn't quite make it.

He got out of the car and immediately apologized. His nice wife and darling little boy got out and talked to me. At one point he offered to drive me home. We talked quietly while waiting for the police officer to make his report. He didn't seem to be a jerk. It was just a stupid accident. He made some kind of mistake. I felt bad that the accident happened, but I could not work myself up into a froth over it.

So does that make him the jerk in the other car? I don't think so. It was just a stupid accident. No one was hurt.

It Isn't a Competition

I returned to Facebook about a year ago, and I'm experiencing both the addictive nature of the beast and increasing dismay. It is, in every way, a battlefield, a pure, unadulterated reflection of life as we know it.

Communication has its origins, I think, in the word "community". It's about us and our relationships with each other. Words are important, they express, more than anything who we are. We think we are talking about other people; but we are really only expressing ourselves. 

Words are used so carelessly these days. Careless people fling out words in sound bites that sound like they mean something, but I think we have little clue. I hear "Hitler", "Democratic", "Republican", "Immigrant", the F-Word; the N-Word; and so on. These words are shocking, or they used to be, but now I hear them flung about as ammunition in the battle for My Side; My View; My Beliefs. If words could kill, there would be a lot of dead people formerly on FB. Oh, wait, that has already happened.

We lament the fact that representatives of our government have lost the ability to work together; to compromise; to negotiate; to get anything done. Why are we surprised by this? We elected them, based on their declared intention to do nothing more than oppose anyone who disagrees with them. They are a reflection of how we conduct ourselves in our own lives. The tone of our rhetoric and conduct is "My way or I'll run over you on the highway!"

We just seem to be against everything and for so little. This is only a little planet, and we are all human beings together here. The problems of our world; the hopes, the joys; the fears are all ours together. It is not a competition. No one is gong to win - not the current argument on Facebook or anything else. There are no winners. There are only angry, fearful, gun-toting people who feel increasingly alienated from each other. I'm afraid too. I'm afraid for our earth; our children; our future. 

We talk about God and love endlessly. They are also words we fling about carelessly. True faith and love is evidenced in our speech and our actions, not in FB postings. By the way, I hope the God I know is not spending time reading Facebook. Until we act with the love and faith we profess, I fear that we are all going down.

After weeks of relentless heat, cool, soaking rain this morning since before light. Sheets of rain blow across the yard. Dark pines dance the background. An elated tree frog croaks .

"Developing wisdom, clarity, basic sanity and compassion in your life expresses the Dharma of realization. This is your daily work: this is how you make your life sacred.

Truth is about getting free, not getting high."  - Lama Surya Das

This is how you make your life sacred. 

In Praise of Truck Therapy

In a nutshell, I've been in physical pain on a daily basis for about two months now. My low back (who isn't, I'm told) and now a mean, nasty, hanger-on of a sinus infection that hammers my head and spins the room around - day after day, yadda, yadda, yadda.

This morning I woke up at 1:20 a.m. - with terrible, sure knowledge that I would not be going back to sleep. This is the latest step in my steadily backward retreating awaking time - earlier and earlier, night by night. I expect to meet and pass my going to bed time tonight, which will put me in what? Some kind of altered universe.

This all sucks. Could be worse, I know, but it sucks. And this morning I just lay in bed, nursing my aching head and cranky back, and refused to get up. I declared to my concerned husband, "I'm giving up. I'm not going to get up or try anything else to feel better. I'm going to lie here until I die, and mercifully that will come soon."

After a bit, he asked me if I wanted to know what he thought. Grudgingly I acquiesced. "Well you need to get up, take a shower, get dressed, and do your back exercises. Then we will see."

I shot back several piquantly petulant and pathetic objections, and then I got up and followed instructions.

My husband is wise and frequently knows what to do. He decided that my condition was definitely in need of truck therapy. This entails driving me around in his pick-up truck, until I calm down from whatever is driving me to the point of lunacy. It's very effective.

I you ever need help - truck therapy is a winner. But if you get to the point of completely giving up and waiting for the big one, then here is - step by step - what you can do.

Get in the truck with your husband and your dog, and go directly to McDonald's for a Diet Coke with ice, and drink it right down as you drive along the beach road in the morning mist while the sun is trying to break through the clouds. Turn in at the Big Oak Drive-In in Salter Path, find out that they don't have a pubic bathroom, then ride up and down the beach frantically searching for the closest one. This has something to do with the Diet Coke and taking Prednisone.

Return to the Big Oak, order and consume a large Oyster Burger with slaw, tartar sauce, and catchup and an order of fries. Sit in the truck in the parking lot and people-watch while you eat ALL of this. It's a prescription. (I'm told that the shrimp burger is also therapeutic, but I can't actually vouch for this.)

Head up to Ft. Macon and walk out to the beach in the mist with dog and man. Spend about an hour slowly walking up and down, breathing deeply, while the dog splashes and runs and the sea breeze makes your messy hair worse. Search for olives, augers and other lucky shells, until the sun finally works its way through the clouds to glory, and look up and all around you. 

Given the opportunity, give some of your shells to a little kid from Syracuse, N.Y., who is crying. He'll feel better too.

Hug the man and the dog. Drive slowly back home on the beach road, looking at the emerald ocean gleaming in the sun. This works. I promise. You'll feel better and maybe not ready to give up.

Here's the kicker. This morning we saw a seagull lying in the shallow water very near the shore. He was seriously in trouble. He tried to keep his head up and attempted to raise his wings, but was unable. Even the little waves were pushing him around. We watched and tried to decide if we could help in anyway.
As is best, we decided to let nature handle herself and at last walked on down the beach. When we returned, half an hour later, he had died. Now the little waves were gradually carrying him out into the ocean.

This was somewhat sobering to watch. We said we were sure that he had been a good bird, with a good life, and he had died peacefully. 

Here's what I'm thinking. I know for a fact that if I lie in bed until I die, no pretty little waves are going to come along and carry me peacefully out to sea. Nope, the visuals on this are not good at all. Sooooo, if for no other reason, I'm going to opt for the truck therapy for the foreseeable future and hope for the best. 

Curtains

Lace curtains puff out across the bedpost to the song of a Mourning Dove perched at the peak of my neighbor's roof. My perfect wake up scene en vivo.