My generous cousin sent me a couple of ancestral jigsaw puzzles for my birthday. I love these puzzles for several reasons. This is the fourth I’ve gotten to do: The Market Square. I love the evocation of simpler times, the craft of being cut with an actual jigsaw by an individual, the way they don’t completely lock together like modern puzzles but segments slide apart at the slightest touch. They require a most delicate approach. I love that there’s no picture, just the title, so the image grows from mystery to completion. I love my great grandmother’s handwriting on the lid, and the note that one piece is missing. I love that at nearly 100 years old the pieces remain mostly in great shape.
I love that they’re small enough to do on just part of my desk so I can do a few pieces at a time on a short work break without rearranging my workspace for days at a time. I love the muted colors, the cuts that delineate color blocks adding difficulty, the illusion of bringing order to my mind as I fit the pieces. I love giving myself this little gift a few times a day as a way of surrendering to who I am: imperfect, aspiring, basically a good person despite the habitual afflictive thoughts and emotions that arise continually, despite the practice.
This is the second puzzle I’ve done this season knowing a piece is missing and not knowing which piece. It requires a looser approach and more comfort with uncertainty. It’s a good analogy for my own growth. Something’s missing, I don’t quite know what, I just trust the process and keep putting pieces together to eventually get a pretty complete picture.
I’m grateful today for the kindness of two people in this little community, one who helped soothe my struggling body and one who helped comfort my challenged mind; both provided the spaciousness to let go of a little suffering. May we all do the same for one another.
I saw the first mini irises popped up in the dry dirt on January 21, the earliest everI think.
I want to be a helper. I am certainly grateful these days for the reminder to look for the helpers, when the wounds are so heavy. The contrast between the monks walking for peace across the south and the ICE thugs besieging Minneapolis is staggering.
Bird Buddy caught this lovely northern flicker Friday morning, just as the lightest snow began to fall.
The helpers, the good people with big hearts, are showing up in many thousands along the trail of the Walk for Peace monks; and the helpers generating compassion in action are showing up in the many thousands in the Twin Cities. It’s helpful to keep these many thousands of good-hearted Americans in mind.
By bedtime when I went to shut off the generator the snow was deep and heavy, weighing down birch limbs and wild rose stems almost to the ground.
My heart breaks for the VA nurse murdered yesterday and the mother murdered two weeks ago, and the two-year-old girl and the five-year-old boy and the fourth-grader and and and… I mean just imagine it for a second and it can’t help but break your heart (if you have one): a tiny child with no sense of what’s happening or why suddenly ripped away by strangers from all they know, and shipped to who knows where.
This morning the sun came out.
The sun coming out helped my heart yesterday. I remember the wisdom of the teachers that when I get mired in sadness because of anyone’s suffering I’m helping no one. I only help if I let that sadness morph into compassion and take action to alleviate the suffering of others. You can do it too. Call your congresspeople every day, show up in the streets if you’re able, write letters to editors, talk with friends and family, share reliable news sources with them if they’re blinded by propaganda from the regime. Do something to support the resistance: action is the antidote to anxiety. The stakes have never been higher.
Also, or if it’s all you can manage, do some random act of kindness for a neighbor, or a friend, or a stranger. And also: take care of your own nervous system. Everyone has their own unique capacities in each moment, each day. I took the weekend off, mostly, from screen time, from news, and still it was hard to relax. There’s this dreadful undercurrent, against which happiness, joy, and gratefulness become acts of resistance. So I spent the weekend in the kitchen, mostly, baking for friends and neighbors in gratefulness for their kindness.
Watching as much GBBO as I do, I got to feeling that there are too many great cakes and not enough birthdays. It’s time to step up my cake game, and anything you want to get good at requires practice. So I decided that I’d try to bake a birthday cake for everyone in my found family here this year. Clearly I can’t ship them to Portland, Florida, Santa Cruz, Virginia, Alabama, etc., but if I can drive it I aspire to bake it.
Today was devoted to a Bake Off worthy birthday cake for Neighbor Mary. The challenge I set myself was creative fillings, so I made white chocolate ganache and piped it around the bottom layer because that’s what the bakers on the show do. I don’t know why. I covered the first layer with ginger jam and a thin layer of the ganache.
Atop the second layer I smoothed the last of the raspberry and hibiscus jam, sorry there wasn’t more of it but committed to it once I started. I didn’t want to mix it with any other jam and get judged for sloppy flavors. (Does Paul Hollywood say sloppy flavors? I don’t think so.) I didn’t have a time limit and two kitchen icons waiting to judge me, but I can’t say that it wasn’t a bit stressful. But the fun kind of stress, where you’re stretching your capacities in your growth zone, like on the show.
I did have a deadline and some important distractions throughout the day. I was glad I had paced the elements, baking in the morning so it could cool completely, making the ganache before lunch so it had time to cool enough to whip, and starting assembly immediately after my family zoom so I could deliver before dark.
I covered the whole cake with chocolate cream cheese buttercream. Please recall that piping was not the challenge. Piping does challenge me, and I easily loaded the piping bag with a trick I saw on Instagram from Blue Cottage Bakery, so I gave myself a pat on the back for that step in the right direction. I scribbled the remaining ganache on top, plunked the cake in a Chewy delivery box, ripped the snow cover off the windshield dislodging six inches of frozen snow, and drove around the block just after sunset.
Neighbor Mary was thrilled. Her delight and joy was the icing on the cake for me. I begged her to wait for her birthday tomorrow to cut it, but she wanted to send me home with my tithe tonight so she cut a sliver for herself as well. (That’s my tithe above, and her sliver below. Obviously, I need to taste test all the birthday cakes so I can judge for myself.)
As she tasted and swooned over the various components, I told her what they were. I waited til the end to tell her what kind of cake it was. I wanted to capture her reaction for all time. “It’s a chocolate mayonnaise cake,” I said, camera ready.
“Yay mayonnaise!!!” If you were wondering about the first cake picture, in the mixing bowl, now you know: white sugar, brown sugar, and lots of mayonnaise.
Obligatory Wren picture to share the joy: So often when I get up from the couch during TV time, to fuel the fire or refill my water glass or feed the cat, a line from ‘Cecelia’ sings to mind: “…when I come back to bed someone’s taken my place.”
And just to give Topaz equal time: it’s a little blurry because she’s always looking around, but for one remarkably rare moment yesterday she sat on my lap.
It’s felt both lovely and freaky to sit down at the pond for awhile almost every day this birthday week. Meditating, reading, sipping tea, pondering the implications of this dry, warm January. It doesn’t bode well for summer, but it does encourage savoring the present moment.
The future of the planet feels urgently precarious these days, more than ever before, with its fate literally in the hands of a tragically mad tyrant. How is it possible that no one seems able or willing to stop him?
From Instagram
Much love and many fun things came on my birthday, including stickers both whimsical and political.
I got the best laugh when I brought down the mail on my birthday, and in the first package I opened found this adorable card—and there was another one in the next envelope! What are the odds? I felt seen and known.
There have always been mad tyrants, but it’s the exponential scale of the chaos he’s sowing that’s existentially terrifying. Quotidian delights feel both less relevant and more precious. It takes sustained effort to hold awareness of national and global events, participate in resistance, and still experience inner peace and stability. I guess the good lord never gives you more than you can handle, or at least that’s what they say. Maybe that’s why I’ve been obsessed with personal discomfort, it’s easier than focusing on international calamity.
Celebrating various angles on this spectacular orchid as the sun lights it through the day.
I confess to feeling a little disappointed. I had pinned my hopes for some relief on an appointment with a new dentist tomorrow, which got canceled this afternoon. I’ve been waiting six weeks for this. The incremental improvement that has crept along for six months more or less plateaued around the holidays, and I’m left with several areas of constant and distracting discomfort, plus occasional pain and some anxiety about longterm tooth health.
The house sparrows continue to roost in the wild rose, challenging Wren’s equanimity or delighting her, not sure which.
Teeth are hitting and clacking that aren’t supposed to. Chewing, especially soft foods, is the sensory equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. The lower jaw remains stiff and forward of where it should be, with tension along the lower right jaw; at rest my mouth won’t close without effort. My tongue feels too big for my mouth, and a hundred times a day I consciously release it from twisting and pressing into the upper right front teeth; internal pressure in that jaw fans up into my cheek and eye bones, into a low-grade headache most of the time. And some other stuff.
The tame roses that came for my birthday continue to delight me with their vibrant colors.
I just wanted to tell all this to someone who might be able to explain and help. For six weeks I’ve been documenting symptoms and rehearsing/trying not to rehearse what I would say to the new dentist. Maybe writing it down here will help me quit rehashing the narrative in my head, and free me to simply live each moment without the burden of story.
Pickled red onion has become one of my favorite condiments. For so long it was a hasty afterthought, but this week I planned it and made a whole pint so I could use it generously in sandwiches and salads.
The original dentist who did the crowns left the practice, and her partner did a couple of follow ups but then quit. She told me in December that whatever is going on with me now has nothing to do with her partner’s work, “it’s been too long.” None of these symptoms is new: they have all been ongoing since July, and have fortunately decreased with time. I have resisted paying the balance on work that I believe was badly done. We are at a mutually resentful impasse.
But my disappointment at the cancellation was tempered in the same instant as learning of it. “The doctor has a medical emergency she needs to take care of,” the message said, “and she’ll be out of the office for a few weeks.” I called back to offer well wishes and reschedule. “We’ve got a lot of calls to make,” she said. “We don’t even know the extent of it yet.” My heart sank for the dentist, for her staff, for her family. Was it herself? A child, a parent? It could be anything. Compassion rose immediately, eclipsing disappointment and curiosity. And I’m grateful for that.
Little Wren warming by the pond this morning.
There was a time when disappointment about my personal situation or fear about global unrest would have been the defining emotion of my day, but mindfulness practice has transformed my perspective. The two boundless qualities of equanimity and compassion have truly found a foothold in my heart, balancing the more afflictive emotions that still reside there.
From Instagram: Venerable Samma Maggo has left the Walk for Peace to return to his dwelling place in France. He walked bent over his hiking poles, keeping pace with his brothers, with deep concentration. At rest stops, he radiated peace with the most beatific expression. May I emulate his courage and commitment.
…and counting! I’m grateful for patience and trust from friends this morning, and of course for the cheese sandwich. Today’s included leftover Brie, gifted sliced chicken breast, sriracha mayo and regular mayo, romaine, and pickled red onion on fresh sourdough. But mostly I’m grateful I’ve lived another day. There was meant to be more to this post but the internets balked and it’s bedtime. May tomorrow be your peaceful day.
Monks of the Drepung Loseling monastery visit our valley occasionally. Here is the opening ceremony of a sand mandala ritual from many years ago.
Aloka the Peace Dog, recovering well from surgery to repair an old injury from when he was a stray in India, was able to join his pack today for awhile before returning to rehab. I was grateful to see video of this joyful, tail-wagging, tearful reunion this morning, and also grateful to see that the Walk for Peace is finally showing up here and there on national newscasts.
The sand mandala begins with a string line…
Speaking of monks, let me tell you the story of the “awful little monks.” This happened about twenty-six and a half years ago. There’s a wealthy man here who sponsors semi-regular visits by a group of Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling monastery. Every few years since I moved here they come to the valley and offer teachings, home blessings, the occasional butter sculpture demonstration, or a sand mandala ritual for the wellbeing of the community.
Each year there are different monks in the touring group, who travel the country as cultural and spiritual ambassadors, similar to the Walk for Peace monks though not on foot. In each town they are fed and housed by community members and offer teachings and blessings. So the monks in this series of photographs are not the “awful little monks,” a judgy nickname I gave a different group, and maybe you’ll forgive me after you hear the story.
The sand mandala ritual takes days or even weeks to complete. I’ve had the good fortune to attend a few over the years, and dug up some photos today from one ritual where I attended the opening ceremony and initial laying out of the table, then came again a few days later, and also made it to the closing ceremony.
On the year in question the monks did something a little different. They offered personal consultations with either a Tibetan medicine group, or a Tibetan astrology group. Ever since my early twenties I’ve longed for the opportunity to consult with a Tibetan medical practitioner, after a friend told his tale of the little yellow pills that saved his life. Right before leaving Nepal he felt ill, and a Tibetan doctor gave him a packet of little yellow pills. Take one three times a day and you will be fine. He was pretty sure he could make it home and see a real doctor, so he tucked them in a pocket and didn’t take any. By the time he arrived in London he was delirious, was taken off the plane to hospital, and diagnosed with yellow fever. He heard them say it was touch and go. Somehow he managed to find the yellow pills in his clothes and he started taking them. He improved immediately. “You’ve made a miracle recovery,” the doctors said.
I wanted some medical magic like that. But on an impulse I regret to this day, I chose to meet the astrology group. I don’t recall exactly what means they used, but after getting my birth date and perhaps location, and consulting something somehow, they placidly announced in broken English, “Lifespan twenty-seven.”
“WHAT?!” I screeched. “Twenty-seven years to live?!”
“Present lifestyle,” they calmly replied. I instantly wished I could leave the table and go upstairs where the Tibetan medicine group was, but I was too polite, or too shocked, to move. After that they told me a bunch of other things, including that Tuesday was my auspicious day for spiritual practice, but I didn’t retain much more.
As I walked to my car I met Liz who was glowing from her reading. I just couldn’t. “They told me I have twenty-seven years left to live!” I whined. “Oh they told me that too!” she said cheerfully. “Yeah, but you’re already, what, sixty-four?” I was forty. Liz celebrated her ninetieth birthday last year. I’ll be watching her…
So today I celebrated sixty-seven. It’s true that I’ve turned my lifestyle around about a hundred and eighty degrees, and that a Ute shaman had told me years before the monks’ prognostication that I will live to be eighty-eight, so I’m not terribly worried. But for the past twenty-seven years the words of those awful little monks have wormed their way into my psyche like a brain-eating parasite.
A few years ago, I finally mentioned this nagging anxiety to someone involved in facilitating that visit. She was tremendously reassuring. “Oh they said that to everyone!” she laughed. “A lot of people have complained about that.”
So what was their point? Were they just messing with us for fun? Or were they trying to scare us into a healthy transformation? Or… did they tell everyone that because this is the year that the End Times truly come, through divine intervention, collective karma, or the tantrums of a madman, and we’ll all be dead by January 15, 2027? That’s feeling more and more possible. Any which way, I don’t like it, I don’t feel it was appropriate, and it’s haunted me for nearly a third of my life. Yes, I am highly sensitive and tragically susceptible. Oh well. I share this story with you so that if I survive until my sixty-eighth birthday you’ll better understand my glee, and if I do not live through this year you may rethink your world view and your lifestyle.
The sand mandala is an exquisite and ephemeral art form. The images vary according to the particular intention of the blessing or lesson it invokes, but the process is always this meditative creation of a potent symbol from vibrantly colored sand, meticulously laid down a few grains at a time. The act of its creation is sacred. The necessary concentration and cooperation cultivate a meditative focus. It is absolutely mesmerizing to watch. Its overarching lesson is Impermanence.
On the Buddhist path, we are invited to learn something from everything that happens in our life. (Yes, Marion, everything always IS a lesson.) Because everything contains the opportunity to learn, we are encouraged to be grateful for everything that happens, so that we may grow in understanding and progress in our journey to awakening. I’ve learned the lesson of Impermanence over and over and over again, and no matter how many times I learn it in lessons big and small, it can still catch me off guard. It’s possible that I’m just now comprehending the gift those awful little monks gave me with their shocking pronouncement, just this minute finding gratitude for their influence in turning my life around, just this second letting go of that regret.
On the final day of the ceremony, the sand mandala is reverently swept to the center of the circle. Some of the sand is gathered in tiny plastic envelopes and given to anyone there who wants one. The rest of the sand is returned to the earth. At this particular ceremony, the sand was carried in a small urn by the monks, followed in procession by many of us from the Creamery Arts Center several blocks through town to the bank of the North Fork River, where it was gently poured into the river.
All things arise, exist for a time, and cease to exist. This is the truth of Impermanence. Death is certain, time of death uncertain. If I should cease to exist in this my sixty-eighth turn around the sun, I will pass on with a grateful heart for all the gifts and all the lessons that filled this life, as light and vibrant as colored sand slipping back into the flow.
Amy and I planned a cheesy-potatoey bake for our zoom cooking last weekend because I wanted to use up the sprouting purple potatoes in something I could freeze in portions for later.
I was dismayed when I dug into the box on Sunday to find that all the potatoes had sprouted, not just those in the top two layers. So much for a big dish and lots of leftovers. I repacked most of the potatoes in brown paper in a new box to save for planting, and knocked the sprouts off of just over a pound so I could make dinner.
Amy made half the recipe by choice, I by necessity. For that amount of potatoes, we mixed together ⅔ cup of heavy cream, a couple tablespoons butter, and a garlic clove minced, and poured it over the potatoes one layer at a time, with a little salt and pepper on each potato layer. It might look like a lot, but the potatoes were tiny, and the dish is only about four inches wide. We baked at 375 degrees F for about 50 minutes.
Then the piéce de résistance, half a small wheel of Brie with an olive oil drizzle, and another 15 minutes in the oven. So simple, so delicious! Rich enough that I got three meals out of it. I might just dig into that potato box again before planting time.
The Walk for Peace monks are finally getting the coverage they deserve, at least in local media. Their stop in Columbia, SC drew thousands of supporters along the route and around the State House, where Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara spoke at length about the motivations and aspirations for their journey, then offered a blessing. The event was covered live by local TV station WLTX, and I was grateful to get to hear their message in greater detail. (Photos from Instagram)
Tomorrow they cross into North Carolina as they continue their arduous pace to DC, with the White House their apparent destination. God bless their everlovin hearts. With each day and each thousand people they reach with their message of peace, loving kindness, cooperation, and compassion, my curiosity grows around their reception in Our Nation’s Capitol.
And Puzzle Season continues to keep me grounded with a bounty of options flowing around the community…
A friend loaned me her Maui puzzle over New Year’s. It’s extra large, gloriously vibrant, and layered with whimsy and meaning.
There’s often a natural starting place with these Liberty puzzles that calls to me, in this case the octopus.
After the first few obvious segments were assembled the puzzle revealed its unique strategy which was to complete the sea first, the sky and volcano next, and then fill in the town in between. It took almost a week to do, and provided joy through some otherwise bleak days.
The little swimmers in the top left revealed themselves only when that section came together. The whale grew in one part of the sea based on similar colors, but found her home on the opposite side of the puzzle.
The several sea turtles brought back mixed memories of my one trip to Hawaii decades ago. The highlight for me was swimming close to a sea turtle on our last day.
Throughout the puzzle were moments of pure delight like this one.
It was like three puzzles within a puzzle.
A little part of me died hearing about the murder of Renee Nicole Good. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, encountering the wrong person, a scared and angry veteran ICE agent. Before we knew as much as we know now, Dan Rather’s account summed up the horror clearly the next day. Since then we’ve all seen variations on the truth of who she was and what occurred, and perhaps just as many variations on the lies the regime concocted instantly to obfuscate guilt: their own, and the murderer’s. We can cleave to the truth, amplify it, hold her and her beloveds in compassion in our hearts. A GoFundMe for her family has raised more than 1.5 million dollars and appears to have paused donations. There are many other ways we can support them and honor her memory, and the memory of Keith Porter killed by ICE on New Year’s Eve, the two Portland victims of an ICE attack on January 8, and the many more lives lost and disappeared by the bully regime’s illegal enforcement arm.
It pleased me to recognize the Hawaii state bird, the néné, once critically endangered but brought back from a low of 30 birds in the 1950s to several thousand now. This goose has the smallest range of any goose species. We did not see néné on that trip.
Though we didn’t visit Maui, it was poignant to recognize as it emerged in the puzzle the Lahaina banyan tree that famously survived the historic wildfire that decimated the town two years ago. What a shock that was! Who ever thought that could happen there?
Part of our species’ problem is the “can’t-happen-here” delusion. I’ve never understood how people can say, in this day and age, “I never thought it could happen here.” School shooting? “I never thought it could happen here!” Vehicle assault on a parade? Domestic terror attack at CDC? Vengeance assassination at a newspaper office? Even a natural disaster out of place or out of season due to climate collapse, like Hurricane Helene’s devastation in the Appalachians; or the freak wildfires that demolished Lahaina and other towns on Maui. Anything can happen at any time, and more worse things can happen in more unlikely communities now than ever before, due to human cultural conditions and climate influences.
Then there was the moment of mythical recognition when I realized that all the weird swirly pieces near the top created the portrait of the volcano goddess Pele. And of course there was a lei or a floral crown around the peak.
There was a suspected (and unlikely) fatal mountain lion attack in northern Colorado last week. Honey Badger asked if I knew the chances of being killed by a mountain lion (which is minute) and our conversation flowed from there naturally to the chances of being killed by an ICE agent. This is currently relatively small but growing. As many people have been shot dead by ICE in the past eleven days in the US as have been fatally attacked by a mountain lion in Colorado in the past 26 years. I’m grateful that I live where my chances of being assaulted by a mountain lion may be slightly higher than my chances of being attacked by an ICE agent. I feared for my city friends this weekend who took to the streets in masses in Indivisible’s ICE Out for Good protests. I honor their courage to assert their First Amendment rights!
The scrumptious colors throughout the puzzle carried a batik vibe.
Little parts of me die daily, beyond the cells and neurons. Little parts of my soul. I think this happens with most people who feel empathy deeply, or who care about the natural world, or who trust in our government; and in people who are ill or care for ill or dying beloveds; or who suffer the atrocities of war torn areas they cannot leave, climate catastrophes that force them to flee, and so many of the tragedies that over population, power concentration, resource extraction, and other horrors born of human greed, hatred and delusion just keep on ramping up.
Working the middle section from the beach upward and the tree downward, the giant Maui puzzle came together. Another delightful surprise was finally fitting the first of four odd pointed pieces into place to reveal that the two beach walking figures were holding surfboards. Duh!
But little parts of me are reborn each day also. The beauty, kindness, and courage I see in people around the world every day flickers to life the same qualities in me. The awe of nature that surrounds me renews my spirit and freshens my cells. The wisdom of teachers and elders stabilizes my perspective. While working on a new puzzle this weekend, I listened to a podcast from the Plum Village monk Brother Phap Huu, The Way Out Is In. In the current episode ‘Calm in the Storm,’ he says that the practice of generating joy every day is foundational work. He goes on to discuss skillful introspection, and the infinite variety of ways that we can cultivate joy, from our own hobbies to appreciating the joy of others.
For me, it’s Liberty puzzles while listening to dharma talks, or starting a bake with a clean kitchen, or teaching, or and always taking pictures… And more than ever, being present for friends and students who want or need to talk, and listening deeply, genuinely caring about the lives of others. And this caring brings with it the weight of their unique sufferings, and the cycle continues. Hold what I can hold, generate joy through the practice of gratefulness, do what I can do in any given moment with the wisdom available at the time. Let me remember to be grateful every living moment of every day.
After a mindless moment last night at a zoom meeting and my subsequent apology, the friend I had interrupted kindly forgave me, and said about current events, “What if it all turns out ok?” Bless his heart. My fingers are crossed but I’m not holding my breath. This is a common perspective in a certain branch of Buddhism, pointing out that, due to Impermanence, we never know how things will turn out. We really don’t. A common example is the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the 1950s which forced the young Dalai Lama to flee to India; which was the direct cause of His Holiness’s benevolent influence spreading around the world for the next sixty-five years. So sometimes awful things do have a silver lining.
It’s been awhile since I baked a loaf. I tried to score a rose on this one; the stem just opened wide, but the blossom turned out okay for a first effort.
It’s my fear, however, that even if it does eventually turn out ok, whatever that looks like, there will have been total American Carnage in the meantime. Carnage that the USA will have wrought upon innocent beings of all species worldwide, and carnage that will have been wrought upon many millions, in fact most, Americans, by this despotic imposter government. At least from some angles, this is the end times that those apocalyptic idiots on the evangelical right, who have infiltrated then severed the three branches of government, have been working toward all along. But contrary to their beliefs, there will be no messiah coming to save or rapture anyone. And even if there were, it would certainly not be those agents of planetary destruction that she would be coming to save.
If anyone were to be saved by divine intervention, if there were such a thing, it would be the innocents, the thin orange thread of Buddhist monks weaving through the southern US, the millions of American children this regime has robbed of nourishment and healthcare, the cowering brave citizens of Venezuela and Ukraine, and all the future countries conquered by the new Axis of Evil the US just joined. It would be the untold billions of living beings who would be raptured, from ancient juniper trees and giant redwoods to the tiny, iridescent orchard bees to the zooplankton and the giant whales they nourish, all already sustaining lifetaking assaults by the oligarchy gathering at the top of world society like a giant pus-filled zit. Sorry. Please forgive me.
On a lighter note, I made a fabulous cheese sandwich for lunch today: havarti on mayo with Penzeys sandwich sprinkle, jam, lettuce, and a drizzle of honey mustard dressing. So simple, so delicious.
I had a rough night last night, was still nursing a black eye and bloody nose this morning from a bout with my Inner Critic. Maybe that’s colored my view today. My jaw and bite are still not right from that dental work seven months ago and that has certainly affected my tolerance for the taste of bullshit. Welcome to my rare but inevitable occasional rant on the state of the union, on this laden anniversary. It’s Insurrection Day. The regime wants you to forget it ever happened, and the Criminal in Chief is doing his ignorant best to divert our attention through waging war and threatening more. We, the majority of Americans, are not being properly represented; our tax dollars are soon to be requisitioned for global expansionism by the oligarchs who could well afford to wage any war they wish to by dipping their bloodied hands into their personal petty cash vaults. It’s time for a tax strike.
I’m grateful that due to Impermanence, my mood had improved dramatically by lunchtime and I was able to enjoy my little lunch ritual.
I’m grateful that wise friends offered perspective and insight last night when I was beating myself up, that my friend understood and forgave, grateful that the skills of apology and of forgiving myself come much more quickly to me than they used to, and grateful for the wisdom of the Buddhist perspective. Life is both suffering and joy, both beauty and horrors. Equanimity is holding awareness of both/and. The monks’ message in one of their posts today was Peace in Gratitude. In part, “This is not about ignoring difficulty or pretending that everything is perfect. It is about training our hearts to recognize the countless ways we are supported, nourished, held by life itself–even in the midst of challenges.”
I was grateful this morning to see this flock of evening grosbeaks in the birch tree. A friend was distressed the other day because there aren’t as many birds as usual at her feeders. She thought maybe it was because of the sharp-shinned hawk that she’s seen hanging around. “I doubt it,” I told her, “I haven’t had as many birds the past couple of weeks either. I think maybe they’ve just moved on for winter, finally.” Despite the fact that this weather barely qualifies as winter, I thought. But then yesterday morning when Wren burst outside first thing, I saw a sharp-shinned hawk fly off the rose bush where the sparrows roost. And this afternoon, I saw it again… So maybe this is a good year for sharp-shinneds, and maybe not so great for songbirds.
Whatever. Inside, in my own little world, wildlife abounds in the Liberty puzzles this season. This ‘Cutout of Animals’ was more fun and harder than I thought it would be, and great for mindfulness practice. As usual these days I don’t use the box top for help: I look at it once and set it aside. There was a lot of detail in this that I missed in my glance, and my assumptions were challenged every which way. At first I put all the whimsey pieces right side up as I assembled them, and put most of them facing each other.
I had made a point to note the general order of the species stack but no more detail than that. The more pieces I fitted into place, the wider apart the camels got until they ended up in the corners facing opposite of how I’d set them. For the elephants, it was another twist: as I assembled them I failed to notice until they were all together that the images were upside down.
I noticed immediately that the entire puzzle was an imperfect mirror image in both the artwork and the whimsey pieces, and shortly afterward that there were two of every piece except for a stack that would tie down the middle, and a few surrounding the one-each human male and female whimsies.
So this puzzle invited itself to be built from the center outward, from the bottom upward, and from the corners inward.
The anchor at the bottom center was, logically, man’s best friend. (Though the image reminded me of an awful AI interpretation when I asked it a few years ago to make a picture of a dog licking a girl’s face) It made perfect sense to me that dogs would hold up the whole world, and delighted me that the artist had tucked the squirrels in between them.
An added layer of whimsy was revealed with the surprising discovery that the squirrel pieces fit into the dogs’ bodies; just one of the many layers of whimsical delights in this puzzle. Strategy also included matching speckles all around.
And one final twist was that I knew in advance that a piece was missing. A second piece in the bottom edge had been damaged beyond use prior to the puzzle’s arrival from the Florida branch of our puzzle club lending library, so I ceremoniously threw that one in the woodstove. But the missing piece… I had no idea which one that was. This actually loosened my attachment to finding and placing specific pieces, and kept me working on multiple sections and moving on more quickly rather than hunting, hunting, for the next piece in any one segment. So, you know, more like most people do puzzles. It was kind of liberating, but nothing I’m likely to get used to.
Doing this animal puzzle over Christmas was fun and relaxing. The wheels of justice were slowly grinding nationally in a hopeful direction with the Epstein files revelations and the unconstitutional National Guard mobilizations decision, when I started the New Years puzzle. My health seemed to be gradually improving. Despite the freaky climate signs, I was feeling pretty calm. I called my representatives on Friday to give them another piece of my mind about the illegal assaults on Venezuelan boats and the dock attack. Action is the antidote to anxiety.
But then I woke up yesterday. Not only to news of an unconstitutional war on Venezuela, exactly the concern I had expressed to congressman Un-Hurd and my beleaguered senators the day before. But to find a frog wide awake sitting on top of the pond. Which is unheard of in deep winter here. Absolutely apocalyptic.
With the (one, long ago) snow completely melted in the garden I ventured in to see more shocking evidence: carrot tops emerging, snapdragons that never died back, a bed of tiny lettuces, and a cluster of blooming violas. This is April weather.
So, just what we need. Another oil war. War does nobody any good except for the oil barons. Think of all the profits they make on the fuel for the machines of war alone! And now, they’ll get even greater profits as they steal all the oil from under Venezuela. Not only will many humans in Venezuela and in the US suffer from this illegal war, any war exerts devastating effects on the natural world, on all living beings in its path. And any further extraction and use of fossil fuels violates every law of climate science and common sense. With the evidence of staggering climate collapse all around us, the charlatans who run this government exemplify the three poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion in their pursuit of reckless, lawless distraction from the noose of dawning sanity slowly closing in on them.
I’m grateful to have sane, compassionate, smart, and wise people in my life to tether me to the basic goodness supposed to exist at the core of each of us. (That exploration is ongoing.) One of those is Ted Leach, who posts a short daily insight which always includes interesting source links, like the interview with Venezuelan journalist Quico Toro I link to above about charlatans; and these two articles by Toro offering an inside perspective, one from December 12 in which he essentially predicts this attack but misses the motivation, and another from yesterday in which he evaluates the likely outcome. Thanks, Ted!
Oh well. One silver lining to climate chaos is that it revealed my missing garden knife before it totally disintegrated under the snow. And you see, that all about me perspective is why we’re in this shitstorm in the first place. There’s not much I can do about other people’s poisons, but I can dedicate myself to the practice of trying to root out my own greed, hatred and delusion, gradually replacing them with loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom, so that the ripples my life makes in this big pond are more beneficial than harmful to all beings.
It’s Puzzle Season in a big way. Stay tuned for two puzzle posts coming soon.
I believe that to have one or two people in your life who burst into heartfelt laughter at you on a regular basis is a fortunate gift. To have more than a couple such friends, as I do, is to be blessed and highly favored indeed. I’m so grateful for those people in my life, and recalled tonight the very first time I recognized this gift. My high school best friend and I were riding the after-school bus home. I don’t remember the situation, but I do remember I was upset and venting, possibly crying, and I said something that made her laugh out loud. That made me laugh, and the upset was over. I just sent that friend a hostage note proclaiming that I would die if I didn’t receive a certain recipe by noon tomorrow. As I hit send I imagined her reading it, and I could hear and even feel her unique, musical laughter erupt as she read it. And so I thought to mention my gratitude for her, and for those several other friends who frequently laugh at my way of expressing myself. You know who you are. Thank you for your laughter: I treasure it and I love you.
