I went to a party last night and told several people that I was seeing Precious today. All agreed that it was amazing, but warned me not to expect a happy ending. But, oh my god, there was the kind of happy ending that is always happening in our lives if we can just see it. The friend I saw it with said it was the growth of a soul — and that’s huge, momentous, earth shaking. But we are so used to Hollywood happy endings–the pot of gold, the glass slipper, the inheritance, the bad guys locked up — that it’s sometimes impossible to recognize the little happy endings and beginnings that are occurring all around and inside of us. I’m guilty of it myself. I want a shooting star to be a sign that I’m on the right track. I want a full-on spotlight on myself and my achievements and when that doesn’t happen, I’m dissatisfied and angry with who I am. I want to be what I’m not, which I always assume is better than what I am. Why can’t I do more, be more, make more? If only I’d had a better education, loving parents, constant encouragement — I’d be famous by now, wouldn’t I? I want to love what I do instead of doing things in order to be loved. My ego needs to feed on a spotlight, but I think my soul needs anonymity in order to grow.
Archive for ‘Enlightenment’
When You Wish to be a Star
December 6th, 2009Rain, Rain, Come Again
November 15th, 2009
Our weather recently has been a combination of fierce showers, drifting smoky clouds, a promise of peach sunsets and glimpses of Tiffany-box blue sky in between — all in the space of a day. Living in a place that doesn’t have dramatic seasonal changes, I love this kind of meteorological drama. Wild weather shakes me out of my predictable routine, my comfortable rut. I like dashing through downpours, carrying my orange umbrella or wearing my silver raincoat that makes me look like a Space Woman. It reminds me of being a kid and playing outside in the rain, of not having completed that alienation between self and nature that takes makes us as grownups impatient with traffic jams during snowstorms, power outages caused by lightning, the inconvenience of getting our hair wet. Watching the rain clean the streets and sidewalks, gush out of gutters, drip from the eaves, bless the bamboo trees in my backyard makes me feel like I’ve had an old-fashioned baptism of immersion. One that washes away the accumulated grime and grit of dailiness and adultiness, that makes me feel like a green girl again.
You Are Here
October 26th, 2009
I love the big maps in airports and shopping centers that have a star with a caption reading YOU ARE HERE. There are so few times in my life when I am absolutely sure I’m where I should be, but when I stand in front of one of those signs, I can stop holding my breath, working my worry, fighting existential confusion. Because someone has given me a solid message I can hang onto for a change. Not a sappy affirmation, a mantra I’ll forget or an ego stroke from the Universe. For a brief moment, I am grounded. Like the pilots who overshot their destination due to “a loss of situational awareness” (otherwise known as fucking up), I am often adrift in space and time. I go the grocery and forget what I came to buy. I carry on a phone conversation while my mind is still on the novel I’m reading about 18th century time travelers. I wander into the kitchen and wonder what I went there to get, and when I can’t remember, I settle for ice cream. There are so few times when I am solidly HERE: listening deeply to the person talking to me; not listening to TV while I’m working on the computer; enjoying the required time-out of a red light. Instead I am usually sending my anxiety ahead to the office while I’m still in the process of driving there or hopping from one experience to another in a split screen world. Like everyone I know, I’ve spent a lot of time being lost in my own life, but there are moments when I wish I could pull up a mental map and realize I AM HERE and it’s wonderful.
New Improved Me!
October 19th, 2009
Can you keep a secret? I just had a facelift! I took some self-portraits with my new Canon Powershot SX10, and the result looked like a mug shot taken of Phil Spector on a really bad crazy psycho-killer day. My neck and jaw wrinkles are quickly morphing into crevices, attesting to my disregard of sunscreen and moisturizer back when I was young and immortal and sure I’d never start looking like my mother. Hahaha, silly me. So I simply blurred those neck wrinkles with the Enhance tool in iPhoto. Instead of 66, I think I easily look 63 now. And it entailed no side effects of blood, swelling, bruising or possible death that surgery might include. I’m so shallow that I always feel pissed when I look at all the bloggers who post wonderful pix of their gorgeous selves. (Are they secretly Enhancing, too?!) But I want to look at myself full on and not wish I were a younger, hipper, thinner version of myself who lives in Brooklyn. I want to Enhance my oddities instead of smoothing them out, Enhance the attention I pay to every passing day, Enhance my ability to love, Enhance my commitment to taking a spiritual journey on this planet. If only there were a Mac tool for all that.
Shaking Up My Chrakras
October 10th, 2009
I’ve been sporadically reading A Sacred Primer, a book about sacred time and prayer, because I don’t really have enough of either in my life. I have lots of amulets and charms and relics, beautiful statues of Buddha and Kuan Yin and various boddhisattvas that I love, but I lack spiritual discipline. Not that I will go back to spending Sunday mornings in church I no longer believe in, but I know I’m missing some component that would give me courage or calm or depth. In my case, I don’t think that will come from thinking happy thoughts or reading Eat, Pray, Love or getting an email a day from Daily Om. All of that might help put me in a receptive state of mind, but too often it seems a substitute, allowing me to skate along the surface of a deeper spiritual pool. Getting my feet wet but never going under. I know what I need–daily meditation, silence and a willingness to be sad or scared or lost. But I avoid the hard work. Am I the only person who has a lazy third eye? What helps you cultivate a meaningful soul-full practice without it becoming the spiritual equivalent of counting points in Weight Watchers?
Hello, Sunday
September 13th, 2009
“Someday, any day, now, if we are faithful to attend, something will reach out to us, a figure in a painting, sunlight on a door, a place in a dream, and it will woo us toward change, offering us, as well, the energy to make the change. These are transforming and energizing symbols, graceful fugitives coming to us from the Center of Everything!”
(from ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE, Marv & Nancy Hiles)
I stumbled across Sacred Life Sunday on a couple of blogs, but I’m too lazy/disorganized to join the list. I’m trying, though, to dedicate Sundays to being a pause, a stop-time before Monday time commences, and to make a conscious attempt to carve a spot of sacred space out of the day, even if it’s just reading something that makes a sound like church bells in my mind, like the passage above.
True Believers
September 1st, 2009
I used to love watching my grandmother take down her long hair and prepare for bed by putting it into a braid. And then she knelt by the bed and said her prayers. I think my grandfather, a sceptical reprobate, knelt along with her, but I mostly remember my grandmother’s devotions. She was a staunch Methodist who taught Sunday School and rarely missed a service. My grandfather would get dressed in a clean white shirt and put on his hat and drive us to church, but he stayed outside with some of the other men during the service, talking, spitting, jutting their jaws. I wish I had my grandmother’s faith, but even I never got truly inoculated. During puberty, I loved getting saved, or the idea of being saved, but I could never maintain that state of grace for long. Last night, I was reading poetry before bed, and I realized that it has become part of my ritual of faith, just as the Bible was for my grandmother. Poetry is what I go to for reassurance and transcendence and comfort, but my grandmother had Jesus and the promise of a better life after death, and I suspect that provided more absolute security than Milosz, Kabir or Mary Oliver does for me. With poetry, I usually get more question marks and exclamation marks than full-stop periods, and sometimes I envy my grandmother for having a certainty of an everlasting afterlife. But when I read a piece like Some Kiss We Want by Rumi or Postscript by Seamus Heaney I feel a shiver of eternity, a slight glimpse of a larger mystery, and it’s enough.
The Spirit of the Place
February 13th, 2009
My guardian Buddha has lost his nose as the result of being knocked over by winds or maybe the neighbor’s cat. I like him better this way–as if his spirit had been tested and tried. As if he had ended up in this raggedy, weedy garden bed and was making the best of it. As if he’d been around the block and had a hundred stories he could tell about what he’d seen. This is no pretty boy Buddha but one that has withstood a few freezing nights and too many unbearable southern August noons. A Buddha for someone who has been broke but not broken, someone’s who’s often lonely but not giving up on love, someone who has a hundred stories about what she’s seen.
Eyes of the Soul
January 15th, 2009
The gate to my backyard used to have this round opening cut in it before I had to replace the whole fence and the contractor decided it was a mistake to be rectified. When I looked through to other side, it was like a magical viewfinder, framing a slice of my prosaic property in a brand new way. I wish I could remember to use that framing device more often during the course of a day. The “eye” was there when I bought the house, and I loved it because it reminded me of a Chinese moongate, which was conceived as the opening to a spiritual garden. My backyard is far from spiritual unless my fight against fire ants and sandspurs is a metaphor for my ongoing battle with my worst character flaws. But when I first moved into my house, I began planting bamboo, a plant that symbolizes strength and resilience–qualities I long to have. From small plants, they have quickly grown into luxurious trees. My dream is eventually to have a living wall of bamboo around the perimeter of my property, swaying and rustling in the wind, casting shadows of poetry under the full moon. One small spiritual step at a time.
My Word for 2009
December 27th, 2008
Because I’m a Libra, I’ll probably regret choosing “Journey” as my theme for 2009. Damn, I’ll think, I should have picked “courage” or “dream” or some esoteric word like “kaizen.” After all, as soon as I place my order in a restaurant, I wish I’d chosen what my friend was having or the dish the stranger at the table next to me is raving about. But there are so many journeys I want to take this year–a spiritual journey, a creative journey, a journey outside my self. I want to become healthier and fitter–a hard uphill trek for me because I hate to exercise and I love cheese and red wine. I’ll never be someone who wants to summit Everest or climb Kilimanjaro or train for the Great Wall of China marathon. Just leaving the house to walk for an hour is a major ordeal, so if I follow through on this one, I will be elated. I want to start a tumblr list to record things that inspire me every day and that might inspire others–books, movies, web sites, insights. I want to do it to keep me en pointe, and if anyone else likes it that will only be gravy on my forbidden mashed potatoes. I want to become an explorer of inner space, which means becoming more serious about meditation, keeping my heart open for a guru, going back to yoga. I can’t tell you how much I want a guru. My Episcopal friend would say this means I need church, but I think it means I need a teacher or a mentor. This year I shut down some departments in my life and narrowed my world for a lot of reasons. Maybe it was a necessary hibernation, but I think it’s time to wake up. Selecting a theme for your year and announcing it is like telling everyone you’re going to Weight Watchers (also on my horizon)–I’m not sure it’s a good idea, because I’m prone to spiritual sloth, physical laziness and mental ennui. On the other hand, I respond well to homework assignments–I’ll just have to remember there are no Fs in this class of one, only efforts. Here’s hoping I’m worthy of joining other Barefoot Pilgrims.
