Tag Archive | Topaz

Death is Certain

Aug23

Today’s post is a little different. It’s the transcript, essentially, of my final podcast, “Suffer Less with Mindfulness,” which aired last week. You can listen to all episodes for a few more weeks wherever you get your podcasts or on my website, before I cancel my subscription to the Captivate platform at which point it disappears forever from everywhere, except possibly Apple Podcasts, and maybe Insight Timer.

What’s your understanding of equanimity? Mine includes the idea that we can find balance under any conditions, and we aren’t constantly being jerked by our emotions or external circumstances or our own thoughts or other people’s actions from one extreme of joy and excitement and positivity to the other extreme of despair or rage or negativity; maintaining an even keel. It includes the idea of seeing all humans as having equal value, not judging people until we know them, and then using discernment, not snap judging. It includes the idea of not labeling, of being open to seeing, to understanding that each person is who they are, and they bring to each encounter all the causes and conditions of their life up to that moment, just like we do. It’s embodied in the idea that I’ve mentioned before, and we’ll swap out mindfulness for equanimity: “Equanimity is not about feeling better, it’s about getting better at not making things worse.” And it’s so much more than all these things.

One rich ground for equanimity practice is the fact that Death is certain, time of death uncertain. In some ways my whole life, my whole mindfulness practice since I began it 20 years ago, has been about learning to die. I’ve been afraid of death, afraid of dying, since I was a child and first learned of death. For the past year, I’ve been preparing to die. This last month, as part of that, I’ve been doing a life review, reading my old journals starting from the first one in high school. Partly so that I can burn them or send them to the dump so that they’re out of my house when I die; and partly to shift my perspective. I’m getting some resolution, some equanimity with who I was in the past. Who I am right now is not who I was even yesterday. I’m making peace with the process of growing and changing, and remembering that every moment I’m choosing ‘how do I wanna be?’ Equanimity can really help us make those choices with wisdom and compassion.

I’ve dipped into some of these journals through the years. Occasionally I’ve looked back at a certain event or a certain timeframe, and I’ve read it and been disgusted with myself, judging harshly: Same old patterns, same old complaints, same old, same old. This time I’m looking back on my life systematically with a different lens: the lens of compassion, which I’ve never used before.

‘How was it for younger Rita?’ Can I offer her kindness instead of judgment? Can I bring curiosity to reading these journals, to see what she might have been going through, get a healthier perspective on the conditions around her, and bring a sense of acceptance, equanimity, even gratitude, to the life I’ve lived so far? 

I’ve found some tragically silly little love poems. I’ve read of my aspiration to be loving and kind repeatedly, yet also how I remained in vicious and constant judgement of others. I’ve recognized my tendencies of projection, labeling, exaggeration, and many more afflictions that mindfulness practice diminishes with awareness. I’ve seen myself back then from morning to night, bouncing from absolute giddiness to utter despair, from feeling really good about myself because some boy thought I was cute, to feeling worthless, to feeling high as a kite because of some fun party I went to or ice skating or a kiss, to feeling total confusion and contempt. External influences, mostly boys, swung me from one extreme to another emotionally with zero equanimity, though there were occasional insightful moments of awareness. I now recognize this as the condition of adolescence, puberty, being a hormone-addled teenager; I see my past self with tenderness instead of scorn, and see all teenagers now with compassion.

I’ve come across a few striking instances that illustrate the malleable nature of memory. I was stunned to read that I got the part of the pregnant girl in the local TV station PSA in sophomore year. All I’ve remembered for as long as I can remember was the humiliation of the audition. I sat in an empty classroom with my head on my arms pretending to cry. The scout team wanted actual tears. I went to great lengths to generate tears, pinching myself, recalling my cat’s death, even asking for a slice of raw onion from the cafeteria and breaking that up under my face. I didn’t get the part. Shame. Yet in my journal, I read that I got the part! I got my current crush to play my boyfriend, kids in the halls called me ‘movie star’ for weeks afterward, and I felt respected by the cool kids for awhile. Why did I take away, or reconstruct, a memory of failure?

I’ve been surprised also that through those years I found three instances where I describe almost verbatim a terrible pit in my stomach, a gnawing emptiness, a burning hole in my gut, clearly physical. What was that about? 

One thing that helps us cultivate equanimity and also feeds equanimity is this idea of perspective, and the more we can exercise a flexible open mind, the more we gain a broader, more open-hearted perspective. Now, as I’m learning about the influences of being raised by immature parents, of growing up in a home with constant bickering, a father who was power hungry and a broken-hearted mother, and nervous system development, I have a lot more perspective. I’ve already found some closure, some resolution, some equanimity and compassion with who I was then. I just wanted to be seen and loved. 

There are those whose opinions differ, but it seems painfully clear that the human species over the past 400 years or perhaps our entire evolution has set in motion the collapse of our planetary systems. Climate collapse is a no-brainer. I live in the US west where for the past decade average temperatures have been rising in all seasons, and concurrently wildfire season has grown from a few months in late summer to encompass more than half the year. There is really no time of year, where I live, that a random lightning strike couldn’t provoke a cataclysmic fire, except a few months in deep winter if there is adequate snow cover, which is no longer guaranteed.

The Gold Mountain fire 60 miles south of here that burned 38,000 acres, now they’re having flash floods as a result of the monsoon storms coming through and washing down the burnt bare hillsides, carrying rocks and mud and wiping away houses at the bottom that survived the fire. The Elk fire just a few miles east of that continues to grow, making it unhealthy or impossible to spend time outside. Spokane, Canada, Oregon, France, Spain, whoever is next… The planet is burning.

The planet is burning because of people’s choices. It’s largely been the choices of people in power in corporations and in certain countries. It’s systemic. We can’t solve this individually. They led us to believe that recycling would fix it, that solar panels would fix it. None of those things ever worked because they were intentionally deluding us all along, and we were letting ourselves be deluded. Meanwhile, they can’t quit blowing shit up.

Seeing reality clearly, can we acknowledge that this is a really hard time? The planet is burning. Cultural collapse seems imminent as evidenced in the decline in reading, the inability of younger generations to write in cursive, and measurably shorter attention spans in students. Loss of human contact is prevalent in the ascendance of AI, in the proliferation of self-checkout, in the tacit permission to be cruel in online trolling, in person now, and in our institutions. Loneliness is pandemic. Societal collapse is underway and all you need do to see it is look around you. These days I experience more and more moments where I feel compassion for the tragedy of the human condition rather than anger and resistance to the way we are as a species. What a seething mass of parasites we are on this planet, and the sad part is — we simply couldn’t help it.

Yes, it’s true that at other times in human history, in other parts of the world, there have been civilization collapses and ecological collapses, and it’s also true that there are many good people around the globe working hard in many ways to stem the tide, to improve conditions in very many ways. But this current poly-crisis planetary collapse is different in scale and in momentum.

How do we live in such a world? How do we bring equanimity, compassion, and kindness out into the world? It doesn’t hurt to start with a healthy comparison of myself with those suffering worse than I, like climate refugees, brutalized immigrants, all manner of oppressed people from BIPOC to trans and queer people to people living in poverty or without homes. This leads to a healthy appreciation of the current conditions of my life, despite its challenges. Next, remember to be kind. “It’s so easy to be nice,” said my friend Kathleen as we discussed this the other day. Why expend the energy to be hateful?

It is hard to have equanimity in this time that we find ourselves. It takes conscious effort. It takes intention, and it takes choosing where we place our attention. And this is why these four heart qualities, the Four Boundless Attitudes of Equanimity, Compassion, Kindness, and Appreciative Joy, are so important: because life on earth is just gonna get harder. The more we can find peace, equanimity, compassion, and wisdom in ourselves, the more we can be islands of strength and resilience in our lives and for the people around us. And then we can turn our strengths into actions in our groups and our communities, and make our voices heard, and vote right. 

We can do all those things and more; but can we also practice equanimity in this very dicey time? Well, what are our options? We can suffer and be miserable and be scared, and every emotion is contagious. So if we are going around angry and scared, we’re gonna make other people angry and scared. If we can have even moments of peace in any situation, we can share that peace. We can calm and soothe others. 

We find this capacity in ourselves through our mindfulness practice, and in whatever spiritual grounding we each have. We find equanimity not only internally, but also in the groups of people where we can share in this ‘seeing reality clearly,’ share our broken hearts, share the anger and fear, and share the commitment and the intention to keep practicing. Keep practicing. 

I don’t expect to die any time soon, but … death is certain, time of death uncertain. In the past year I’ve experienced an unusual number of health challenges, some of which can be managed with medications or lifestyle adjustments, and the rest I can adapt to. These actually started piling on after I set the intention to prepare to die, and for awhile they eclipsed that aspiration. Now as I’ve tamed some of them, they serve as motivation to accelerate my preparation.

There are so many things I’ve left undone in my life, and it’s winding down. At best I’ll have another twenty or so productive years. At worst, I could go tomorrow. If I only get a few good years before my lungs are too compromised to remain at this elevation, I’d like to at least finish some of the domestic projects here at Mirador, like the series of five quilted, tropical-themed warm-window drapes begun twenty years ago to keep the sunroom warmer in winter, and now more essential to keep it cooler in climate-intensified summer heat. 

That’s just one of dozens of undone creative projects. Not to mention PG&D: personal growth and development. I’m finally acknowledging that being raised by parents with narrow, rigid minds, functional alcoholics who were exemplary products of the military-industrial colonization culture, wasn’t just a mismatch for my sensitive temperament, it was a constant low-grade trauma to my nervous system. As a result, there’s a lot of healing to do before I die, so that I can live more fully in alignment with my values, bring more meaning to this fleeting existence, in the time left to me. I’m on the right track. In some ways I’ve always been on the right track. Because it’s always been the path that has opened before me, each remarkable step of the way. Now, navigating that path involves withdrawing some of my externally-oriented energies and turning inward even more deeply. 

So, this is the last episode of this podcast for the foreseeable future. Mirador Eco-retreat is essentially a single-person business without much capital, and I can no longer afford to produce a podcast. The cost isn’t sustainable either financially or energetically. Thank you for listening, and I hope that you have derived some benefit from the lessons and meditations I’ve shared over the past four years. You can support my ongoing mindfulness work or join the Suffer Less with Mindfulness virtual sangha at this membership page: miradorecoretreat.org.

No-Self

May5

I’m grateful for meditations at the pond, with the frog chorus building to a crescendo and then resting, the blackbirds calling, mountain bluebirds and nuthatches coming to the edge to drink, spring winds rising and falling, sun or shade as needed on one side or the other depending on the time of day.

I’m grateful for getting onion sets planted before a couple of good rains; red, yellow, and white onions from Afton’s, and a round container of shallots.

I’m grateful for golden mashed potatoes with buttermilk and chrysanthemum salt; and more potatoes the next day sautéed with oyster mushrooms and onions, half hot the first night with a soft-boiled egg, and half cold in a salad the next day.

I’m grateful for signs of life on the poor apricot tree. Though the leaves are dessicated and brown, there are tiny tender green shoots beginning below them. Fingers crossed they survive tomorrow night’s hard freeze.

I’m grateful for the simplest sandwich I’d never thought of before: peanut butter and jelly with mayo and potato chips. So delicious! I grew up on PB&J and learned young to stuff my chips inside for a fun crunch; and later the Colonel persuaded me to try peanut butter and mayo on a cracker. After my initial aversion to the idea of it, I found it delicious. But somehow I’d never tried them all together.

I’m grateful today for an opportunity to explore the Buddhist concept of no-self, which in its simplest interpretation means recognizing the influence of ego and releasing it. A miscommunication in the morning left me with hurt feelings, but once I’d expressed that in a reasonably mature way I was able to let the emotions move through pretty quickly. Instead of ruminating over it all day, I used the incident to practice letting go.

I quickly let go of attachment to outcome, and I eventually let go of the story. Emotions don’t last more than a couple of minutes, but like many I tend to repeat the story over and over thus regenerating the emotions again and again. I’m finally learning to say “Oh well!” and really mean it. It’s no big deal. I still felt the upheaval of disappointment like an echo in the background of the rest of my day, but I didn’t participate in it. Instead, I dug deeper into the dharma and nurtured my better qualities.

This is the actual Big Deal. I was able to find gratitude for the opportunity to learn and grow from an unpleasant event. I was able to use an emotional challenge to deepen my understanding of liberation through no-self; to see clearly how suffering is generated by an unruly mind; and to recognize and release some of my habitual thought patterns more quickly than ever before. I’m grateful for the teachings, the teachers, and my own dedication to the practice.

I’m grateful, too, for the cheese sandwich with chicken salad flavored with Penzeys Wauwatosa Village seasoning.

Still Grieving After All These Years

Apr23
We’ve several times walked past the juniper where the squirrel was hiding the other day without sight nor sound of it, but I did want to show the context. I held the camera over the hollow where the dead snag comes forward out of the twisted trunk. Amazingly, this tree, hundreds of years old, is still alive.

I’m assured by the Worms that the apricot will probably survive the freeze. It never occurred to me that it would suffer in last weekend’s cold snap, because it was thoroughly leafed out. I called in to As the Worm Turns this evening, and learned that apricot trees all over the valley suffered the same fate. All the leaves are dead. Above, I noticed they were drooping the second day AF (after freeze); below, yesterday, beyond drooping they are drying up, along with the embryonic fruits. Lance and Lulu have never seen this before either. We all moved here roughly thirty years ago plus or minus. An orchardist called in right after I did, and reported that they lost everything, peaches, grapes, you name it. Everyone is optimistic, though, that the trees themselves will survive, and we’ll know more later if they’ll leaf out again this year.

It was time to strain the lilac blossoms from the sugar on Sunday, but they did not want to sieve. They must have been too damp when I mixed them in, and they weren’t pretty so I didn’t want to keep them in with the sugar, so… I brought my science mind in and dumped the whole jar into a pot with half as much water. The blossoms floated to the top, I skimmed them off, and boiled until…

Voila! Lilac syrup! It’s as thick as honey, I could have taken it off sooner, and it is just as sweet as honey, too.

My dear friend and teacher Cindy would have turned my age tomorrow had she not died almost two years ago. She left behind one bereft daughter, some precious friends, and many grateful and grieving students. As I usually do I sublimated my grief about her illness and death until it started to surface late last year. I find myself thinking of her more often, her insights, lessons, and example informing my work and life more consciously than I acknowledged at first. Everyone has their own way of grieving, and even my own is unique to each loss, but in general I tend to close down around it for awhile and then it seeps out over time. I do a lot better with it now than I did twenty years ago during my Decade of Loss during which my mother died.

It’s been 22 years since she lived her last spring. Really, time flies whether you’re having fun or not. Even before she was sick, I cherished this picture of her. It’s an old print that suffered water damage, which I scanned and optimized. She was younger then than I am now. She and her sister and their old high school friend Lucy (with husbands tagging along) had met for a long weekend reunion at some woodsy resort in West Virginia. Here she’s reclining on the bank of a creek with her cocktail, looking as happy and relaxed as I’ve ever seen her. I thought of her as I grieved Cindy this week, and felt compassion for her daughter who was so much younger than I when she lost her mother. All these feelings swirled up as I was reading this article that came in The Atlantic email yesterday, “On Losing a Daughter,” which brought to mind a dear friend whose daughter died just over a year ago, leaving three young children. I can’t imagine a worse grief for a parent, except I can and it’s one reason I chose not to have children. Just in case. Reading of this woman’s singular grief, thinking of my friend who lost her daughter, imagining Cindy’s daughter’s emotions as her mom’s birthday approaches, my own grief for my mother surged. All the grief of mothers and daughters swelled and swirled together in me. And the recognition that this little whirlpool of these particular mothers and daughters is a drop in the bucket of global grief, mothers and daughters just one current in the vast, bottomless ocean of human griefs.

Michael and me as Carmen y Miguel, c. 2000

Anniversaries can be hard, especially birthdays and death days. The grief cascade actually started last week when John’s birthday came around and I thought about him a lot, missing him, missing Boyz Lunch, and feeling for his surviving partner. And then the anniversary of Todd’s death just a year ago came a few days later, and my heart was with his surviving partner. And then out of nowhere came a wave of grief for Michael, who died that same horrible summer of 2020 when Raven, Ojo, Diane, and Auntie also died, and everyone’s world changed with the massive Covid casualties, especially those whose loved ones died of it.

And the grief this week just keeps coming. A dear friend had to euthanize her dear old big dog last week. He had lived a good long life but that is cold comfort in the moment when the utter absence shocks and wracks and keeps on shocking for days, weeks, months. In my awareness of and compassion for her grief, the loss of Stellar the Stardog rocked me again, in gentle waves, much calmer than the tempest that accompanied his passing.

Griefs can’t be compared. But they can crack our hearts open to empathy, compassion, and more love, with time. And they have no timeline other than their own mysterious meandering path, with steep hills of struggle, long lulling valleys, and all terrains in between. I still mourn the sweetest black cat Ojo, and have come to a revised demise: as Paul suggested last fall, it’s far more likely that he was killed by a great horned owl than by a mountain lion. I was reluctant to accept that hypothesis, but given all attendant conditions it does make more sense. It doesn’t help the grief quotient, though.

I worried this morning that I might have lost his sister Topaz. We’d started out the gate for a walk and she was right behind us. I didn’t look back for awhile but it’s not unusual for her to take a shortcut and catch up so I kept walking. Then I heard a shrieking screeching that stopped abruptly. Wren took off in a beeline back toward the house, and I followed with quick steps. She was nowhere to be seen. There was no evidence of foul play, but no sign of her. I stood by the gate and called in all directions, walked back toward the woods and called, nothing. If she were out there she’d have come. It was late in the morning for an owl but not necessarily too late; and there’s that little fox that’s been passing through frequently. The sound could have been a magpie screaming at a cat, a cat screaming at a magpie, a cat screaming at a fox, or a fox simply screaming. Or any number of other options. I was gonna be late for an appointment, so I had to keep moving. Maybe something had scared her and she’d run back to the house. I checked the front door, then the back. Whew! She was lying by the back door as if I were late for her. Whatever happened, it’s one of those rare circumstances where we actually won’t know more later.

There are some animals that trigger grief in me any time I see images of them: polar bears, penguins, elephants, and gorillas among them. This is Fatou, 69, the world’s oldest gorilla in captivity, in the Berlin Zoo, who showed up in The Atlantic’s photos of the week. I can only imagine what kind of grief she must experience. Probably solastalgia.

But really I think the grief train started while I was reading Against the Machine. It came up in conversation with a dear friend last night who was responding to my post about it. Paul Kingsnorth broke my world view, I told her. That book shattered the last of my illusions, pulled the scales from my eyes, as it were. I’ve been grieving the world I grew up in, and thought we could still maybe save. I’ve been swimming in the grief of solastalgia for weeks, months, years. Earth Day is a great occasion to mention it. Solastalgia is “the experience of chronic trauma, longing, or hopelessness due to negative or distressing changes to the home or ecosystem you are still in due to the impacts of climate change, weather events, fire, or other environmental factors…. With solastalgia, the home you are longing for can’t be returned to—it is there but not the same.” I’m grateful there’s a word for it, and grateful that this feeling is being addressed in Tricycle’s annual online Buddhism and Ecology Summit, which I’ve been participating in this week.

And, in the midst of awareness from within this sea of grief, I am bouyed by profound, uplifting gratitude for the number of people I can call my dear friends. And each day I’m noticing and savoring beauty, moments of joy and laughter, and the company of animals both wild and tame. The ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows: Can I be grateful for all of them? Next post, a story about a black bird…

Preparing to Freeze

Apr17

I baked a sourdough focaccia yesterday thinking I would freeze some portions for later. It was delicious even though I forgot to spread it in the pan before going to bed so it overflowed the bowl overnight. I worried that it wouldn’t rise enough in the pan to be soft. It wasn’t perfect but it was perfectly fine.

After today’s cheese sandwich I’ve got enough for three more lunches. I didn’t need to worry about freezing any.

We took a short slow walk yesterday afternoon to check out the early flowers, knowing they might freeze back in the next couple of nights. Did I mention that I thought I heard the first hummingbird a few days ago? I quick went inside to start nectar water on the stove, pulled out the box of feeders and cleaned one with dilute bleach and let it dry while the nectar cooled, and put it out a couple hours later. This morning I saw the first male black-chinned hummingbird at the feeder. Time to get the other feeders ready to go out Saturday morning. I did bring in the one feeder for tonight with the freeze forecast.

Wren checked out the numerous Townsendia scattered along the sides of the trail. I played with Hipsta Impressionist again to see what I could get with its random filter. I especially like the second one, how it smeared a petal like impasto. But I prefer the original unfiltered photo below over all the variations.

Wren had run ahead of me and Topaz and I heard the sharp alarm call of a critter, but I couldn’t find it. She was running back and forth near this tree, and it sounded like the cry came from the canopy. I listened from all angles, as Wren was doing; it sounded high, it sounded low, it sounded even as though it came from another tree. Then there was a buzz to it. We finally narrowed it down to a hollow in the base of the trunk, and Wren seemed determined to tear it apart. I barked at her to leave it, and aimed the camera in but couldn’t tell much, so set it to 5x zoom with flash. Right as I snapped the picture Topaz shot out of nowhere hissing at Wren and startling me. Thankfully Wren cowered instead of attacking. But then they were both obsessed with the trunk and I discerned it was best to hurry us off. Only after I got them both well away from the trunk did I check my hasty image:

Today’s adventure took a different turn. There’s a freeze warning for tonight, and a hard freeze warning for tomorrow night. The garden is so far along I worry I’ll lose a lot. The cherry tree! I’m grateful that I caught some of As the Worm Turns on my drive home from my annual checkup yesterday.

The gardeners were discussing ways to protect fruit trees from freezing. The valley orchards will be at high risk tomorrow night, and I feel for the fruit growers. I wish for all their orchard-warming techniques to succeed. One way they mentioned is to spray foliage with kelp spray, which strengthens cell walls among other things. I didn’t catch the details, but did drive up to the Hitchin’ Post this afternoon to pick up a bottle of FoxFarm Kelp Me Kelp You seaweed plant food. I mixed the kelp with water in my pump sprayer and saturated the cherry tree foliage and pretty much everything else I’m concerned about. If it doesn’t help protect them from the freeze at least they’ll be well fed when they come back.

I spent the entire work day preparing to freeze. It started when I decided to make lilac scones. The second round of lilacs were only half open and I expect to lost most of them tomorrow night. I brought in some more blooms for the vases, and harvested a basketful to make lilac sugar. I couldn’t find the recipe I used some years ago, when I just plucked the flowers off the stems and incorporated them into the dough, so I looked up recipes again. That’s where I learned about lilac sugar and lilac syrup. I’m not sure whose recipe I’ll use for the scones whenever I get around to baking them, but making sugar and syrup I’ll have lilacs preserved for months to come and many uses.

I decided to make the syrup first, but after rinsing, drying, and plucking petals for an hour I didn’t think I had enough for syrup, so I opted for the sugar. It calls for 1 cup lightly packed petals to 1 cup sugar. By the time my packed petals met an equal volume of sugar I realized I had packed them too tightly and probably could have pulled off the two cups for syrup, but by then it was too late. They were all shook up.

I had to add more sugar to achieve an equal ratio. Now the petals steep in the sugar for three days, and I’m supposed to sift them out, but I think I’ll just make a batch of scones including petals first. Then we’ll see what happens with the rest of it. So, the lilacs are prepared to freeze, I’ve done all I can to preserve them.

Then I set about recycling the distilled water bottles from the mechanical room, which I save for just this purpose as I fill the solar batteries through the year. I cut the bottoms off them, and in late afternoon as it clouded up and the temperature dropped, I set them over all the new perennials I’ve planted in the south border and in patio pots.

Then I fluffed old hay over all the garden beds filled with tender pea shoots, strawberry plants, nascent rhubarb, delicate carrot tops, baby kale, flower sprouts, and garlic leaves. I also covered a few areas with an old blanket and black plastic. As I moved through the day I clipped any remaining tulips, jonquils, and the flowers from the new perennials since they’ll freeze Friday night anyway, and gathered them all in a couple of vases. I am now finished preparing to freeze.

Making the Best …

Mar31
Despite a trunk full of holes from a small beetle, the crabapple is loaded with buds just starting to open…
Caged tulips and jonquils, to protect them from marauding deer…
Townsendia blooming a week earlier than last year…
Pussytoes surviving …
Maybe it’s because it’s got southern exposure instead of shade, but this Indian paintbrush is blooming almost a month early. Usually a reliable indicator of when the hummingbirds will arrive, paintbrush has historically bloomed here around April 25th.

… of a bad situation. Thich Nhat Hahn said, “The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.”

After a loving, grieving walk through the dry warm woods, it was time to rest under the apricot tree again. A few buds are left, about a dozen flowers open, and the rest are all moving toward fruiting as tender new leaves emerge. I’m grateful every day that I wake up alive. Grateful for the wild world, for the little pets, for the garden that’s been growing here for thirty years; grateful that water still flows through the hoses to water trees and tulips. Grateful, and grieving, contemplating as I walked through the woods how I’ll one day die, and what will become of this land I love? Peace with Impermanence is the fundamental paradox at the heart of human aspiration. “Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.”

More Treetops

Mar20

The little mustard I noticed the other day was identified by a friend as Boechera gunnisoniana, a vulnerable, rare rockcress endemic to Colorado with most specimens known from Gunnison County just east of here. I’m sure I’ve seen it before, but it didn’t catch my attention until it surprised me blooming so early. I found several more on our walk yesterday.

Neighbor Fred came yesterday to prune our apricot tree. In just the couple of days since the first buds opened, many more had popped. I’m so grateful to and for this wonderful neighbor with so much experience in entomology and in growing fruit trees.

Above, even more buds had bloomed after he pruned. Today (below) virtually every blossom had opened and honeybees were buzzing.

Yesterday, above; and today, below.

And the forsythia surprised me again, glowing golden through the mudroom window late yesterday. It had been a couple of days since I’d been on that side of the house and I swear they weren’t blooming then. This sudden warming brought out everyone.

I managed to save some of the red tulips with a cage in the nick of time, though the smaller patch to the right had already been nibbled by deer before I covered them. The roller coaster is picking up speed early this year.

I gave a friend some maple cream for her birthday, and she said the first thing she did was pour some over vanilla ice cream. So I tried that after lunch today. Yum!

Biko stayed out in his round pen overnight for the first time this year, and it got so warm that he begged to be released, so he had the run of the yard for most of the day. So much tasty green grass! Wren can’t get enough of it either. He tucked in by a tree trunk right after we found him about 5:30, but when we came inside an hour later he had moved somewhere else. We didn’t even bother looking, knowing it will be plenty warm overnight and he’ll wake up happy wherever he chooses to sleep.

Treetops

Mar18

I’ve been reading the amazing new book from Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, and I’m grateful for his historical and philosophical synthesis of the times we find ourselves in. It’s grueling, but he articulates so thoroughly what I have believed in my bones to be true since I was a child. But enough about humanity’s ineluctable drive toward mechanization at the cost of Nature, we see it in every facet of our lives, including this blog that I’m writing and you are reading on machines that embody so much more than the simple convenience of a keyboard, a digital camera, and the internet. We needn’t dwell on it in this moment.

I’m grateful for the gift of calamondin jam that surprised me in the mail the other day, out of the blue, from an old school friend and reader of Morning Rounds. It represents the good in this world: homegrown fruit cooked and canned, and one person thinking of another with generosity. She read about my quest to bake birthday cakes, and thought I might like to include something a little different in one. Of course I had to taste it, and it was Florida sunshine on toast. Next cake, here it comes! And the next cake is coming soon.

In contrast to The Machine that grinds up nature and humanity in its conquest of the world through concentration of power and worship of wealth, treetops have captured my attention this week. Pinyon jays have been spinning the Bird Buddy feeder around on its pole with their enthusiastic feeding, and I caught a group of them in a treetop the other day on our walk. One seems to have fluff in its bill, hopefully an indication of nest building.

Between working, walking, and baking cakes, I tried out this recipe for big fat chewy chocolate chip cookies, and they are fantastic.

Joanna Macy said “Hope is a verb,” and so I continue to hope to do all that I can to contribute to the remaking of the world as Western Civilization collapses. Some of those things include vigilant introspection to see myself clearly and live in alignment with my values, which by the way are not the values of The Machine; sharing in various ways the mindfulness skills that I rely on to ground me in a meaningful life and bolster resilience; and supporting the wild world through the ways I protect and tend the land in my care. I’m so grateful to have brought the birds back to my yarden after a decade, now that I’ve minimized the domestic cat threat. Evening grosbeaks are back at the feeder, and filling the aspen tree.

In cheese sandwich news, there continue to be many delicious options. Last week I pickled red onions and am putting them on everything including this simple cheddar, lettuce, and mayo sandwich.
Despite a few freezing cold days and nights, the weather was warm enough last week to enjoy time at the pond, including polishing off the last of the ice cream.

But the weather is too nice. This morning I discovered that the apricot blossoms are already opening. I spent a few hours in the yarden, installing a couple of bluebird nest boxes to give them options, and watering. I gave the apricot her first water of the season, and took some time to sit beneath her boughs and appreciate her. Those buds are really swelling, I thought and then I looked more closely. First I saw a few white tips on some buds, and then saw a few just breaking open. Earliest ever, I think.

Today’s cheese sandwich included tuna salad with parsley and celery, pickled red onions, and havarti. So simple, so delicious.

After lunch and a few hours desk work, I took the little animals on a leisurely ramble through the woods, remembering to look up. We rambled northwest from the house, a spontaneous and unusual direction, and then back toward the forest center. We saw treetops reaching for the clouds, and a surprising number of treetops toppled over.

Coming up a slope from an unfamiliar direction I spied an oddly glowing trunk, and when we got close I was mystified to see this young pinyon pine stripped bare, all its bark in chips at the base, its top recently deceased. Curious. And then we found ourselves near the Triangle Tree, where I paused to lean back into its curved embrace and look out toward the mountains for awhile, resting, calmly abiding, breathing.

From there we rambled back to a familiar bench, where we rested again, and noticed these tiny wildflowers in bloom, I’m thinking weeks or even months early… But then, I found flowers even in midwinter in some parts of the woods.

Back home it was happy hour time, so I took a mocktail and a bowl of poison fish down to sit in the golden light and read some more about the cyclical history of the Machine. What a juxtaposition. This week in telesangha we’re exploring paradoxes; in particular, a paradox that has come up synchronistically a couple of times in recent days: navigating the wisdom of accepting conditions exactly as they are, allowing oneself to be just as one is, and at the same time aspiring to refine or grow oneself and improve conditions in the world. Chewing on this book at the same time will add an interesting influence in this exploration.

As the sun goldly lowered I glanced up to see a pair of bluebirds atop the aspen tree. More synchronicity. I hope they find a nest site they like for this summer, in one of the boxes I put up this morning, or back in the hole in the side of my house.

I’m grateful that Topaz has learned in recent years not to hunt birds.
Wren jumped right into her job of finding Biko as soon as I started putting him out in his round pen. Tonight just before sunset she raced right to his gate and loudly announced his location. Life’s simple pleasures.

Motivations

Mar3
Finally finished my hat! heehee… and had leftover yarn so have knitted a few red hat resistance badges for friends who live in warmer climes.

Many days the one thing that motivates me to get out of bed in the morning is the thought that I get to drink a homemade latté. The latté is a fairly recent twist but ever since 9/11 the promise of coffee has been the prime mover in getting me up, and some days it’s the only inspiration I can muster to face the day. I don’t think I’m alone in this; I do think it’s a symptom of a huge societal problem.

On 9/11 I was visiting my parents who lived near the Pentagon. I could die here, I thought when the Pentagon was struck, without my dogs, away from home, away from all that I love…This is the beginning of World War III. I wasn’t wrong about that, it’s just been a slow burn, a ‘forever war.’

Wren and I spent some time in the garden the past few days spring cleaning, and found her a treasure.

War news has been the backdrop to my whole life. To your whole life. I grew up in the sixties watching the Vietnam War on TV during dinner. It ended. Then there was another war. And then more wars, though eventually the government learned to censor photos and video of US casualties and coffins returning home, since those unsettled Americans.

We planted a bunch of old seeds to see what comes up and what might survive whatever weather comes our way in the next six weeks before true planting season begins.

And here we are again. It makes me sick; and, it reinforces the message of the Walk for Peace: Peace begins inside each one of us. Pema Chodron says that War also begins inside each one of us, in a book she wrote twenty years ago:

“War and peace begin in the hearts of individuals,” declares Pema Chödrön at the opening of her inspiring and accessible new book. In Practicing Peace in Times of War she draws on Buddhist teachings to explore the origins of aggression and war, explaining that they lie nowhere but within our own hearts and minds. She goes on to explain that, remarkably, the way in which we as individuals respond to challenges in our everyday lives can mean the difference between perpetuating a culture of violence or creating a new culture of compassion.

With war and violence flaring all over the world, from Iraq to Darfur to London, most of us are left feeling utterly helpless. In this audiobook Pema Chödrön insists that our world will begin to change when each of us, one by one, begins to work for peace at the level of our own behavior, our own habits of thought and action. It’s never too late, she tells us, to look within and discover a new way of living.

From Shambala Publications description of Practicing Peace in Times of War.

We started unfurling hoses and laying out some soakers like this one around the little cherry tree. Wren investigates the bug bath.

It’s ingenuous to ask why it doesn’t change, why is there always war, when will we ever learn? I practice and meditate and inquire and investigate all day long every day, and I still experience anger or despair frequently.

I’m also simultaneously grateful for living off the grid and far from the madding crowd. On our walk the other day we spied some good tracks in the mud. I can’t tell if they are from a coyote or a domestic dog. They’re smaller and rounder than the usual culprits’ tracks, the big white dogs up the road who roam freely. Getting outside more again on these warming days, walking among trees, getting my hands in the dirt, grounds me in what is good and true. I find peace in Nature.

But it’s been a constant struggle to cultivate inner peace when for months I couldn’t separate who I am from the nonstop pain and festering resentment of the dentastrophe. Only in the past month has the constancy abated enough to allow moments of awareness free of mouth pain. Then I got a second opinion last week. My perceptions that the bite is wrong were validated, which lifted a burden; but, a weightier burden was added: Mercury toxicity. The US lags behind the global understanding that dental mercury amalgam is a cumulative neurotoxin implicated in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, MS and various other systemic ailments. Last summer, because I didn’t know any better, I allowed two large mercury blobs to be ground to toxic dust inside my mouth with absolutely no precautions. How does one find peace when one feels wronged? I’m seeking it through meditation and polite insistence that the offending dentist drop the remaining balance on my account.

But others choose differently. We know how the President seeks relief from feeling cornered: by escalating aggressive distractions, from domestic ICE assaults to now an illegal war in the Middle East.

“Every leader facing accountability has understood what a war provides. It is the oldest move in the history of power: when the walls close in, find an enemy abroad. A shooting war restructures the entire political landscape. Opposition becomes unpatriotic. Criticism becomes dangerous. Emergency powers that were already being stretched past recognition suddenly have the one justification that has historically silenced opposition in every democracy that ever fell: wartime necessity. And the emergency never ends, because ending it means facing consequences.

A wartime administration that was already stripping Clean Water Act protections from millions of acres of wetlands, already opening 40 million acres of national forest to logging and drilling, already letting coal plants dump toxic ash into groundwater, already withdrawing limits on forever chemicals in drinking water now does all of it behind a wall of smoke and patriotic obligation. “Support the troops” becomes the shield behind which everything else gets done. They are generating attacks on the constitutional order faster than any existing institution is processing them, and they know it. And the ten months between now and the midterms just became ten months of a wartime presidency operating without constraints, with a proven willingness to ignore the judiciary, and with every incentive to keep the emergency going as long as possible.”

Christopher Armitage, “The Regime Just Entered its Most Dangerous Phase“

(Read further in the essay and you’ll find inspiration and encouragement. We can stop this. We have to.)

Tonight’s supper snack was a mushroom paté made with baby bellas, onion, garlic, fresh sage all sautéed in of course butter, puréed with some cream cheese, with more melted butter poured on top, then chilled. I added a sprig of sage blossom. So simple, so delicious!

Trump is what’s called in Buddhism a hungry ghost. He dwells in a special Hell realm, as do his henchmen and women, and many of his billionaire cronies. They are so empty inside that they will never have enough of anything, and live in a state of constant grasping. Call your representatives. Demand impeachments and unredacted Epstein files. Show up for protests. Channel your anger into action.

Please be one of these people.

Red Hat Day

Feb26

I posted on Feb. 1 that I could hardly wait for the red yarn to arrive. It did shortly thereafter, and I’m grateful that I got two hats knitted and delivered in time for Red Hat Day. I’m curious to know if either hat went out in the world on those dear heads today. I stayed home and worked, meditated for inner and outer peace, and gardened. Tonight I continued to knit on the third red hat, the one I’ll get to keep.

Red Hat Day marks the day in 1942 that the Nazis outlawed red hats in Norway. Joyce Vance quotes their proclamation in her Substack yesterday, The Other Red Hat. I started the first hat on an old plastic circular needle that I found in my mother’s trove of knitting supplies. I haven’t had to buy needles or notions in twenty years. But I don’t like the feel of plastic needles or how the yarn moves over them, so I indulged in the purchase of a new circular needle with metal tips which make a satisfying click as I knit. The top of the hat, though, decreases to the point that I have to switch to DPN, double pointed needles, to finish it, and the last inch or so gets tricky.

The current Red Hat resistance was born in a yarn store in Minneapolis last month after Renee Good’s murder by ICE agent Johnathan Ross, who has yet to face any consequences. By the time we started our red hats a few weeks later our first yarn choice was sold out and wouldn’t be in stock again til April, and red yarn was flying off shelves virtual and actual so fast that there was a nationwide shortage. Despite regime claims that ICE has downsized in Minneapolis, it’s not by much and atrocities have continued unabated. Both immigrants and citizens continue to be arrested, and detainees are released at all hours with nothing but what they’re wearing. Haven Watch has volunteers meeting detainees with phones, food, blankets and other support as they walk out of the Whipple Building. Reports indicate horrific conditions inside.

I found this Norwegian perspective on both the original and the current Red Hat Resistance at the Red Hat Factory, which includes a link to the Needle & Skein pattern that has raised well over $600,000 to protect and support victims of ICE in Minneapolis. It’s beautiful to see the resurrection of a Nazi resistance tactic from Norway taking root in the US eight decades later, and to see the world embrace it again in solidarity with us.

Cousin Melinda verifies receipt of the first hat.

I may be finding a new direction in Craftivism, which seems to suit my introverted nature better at the moment than taking to the streets weekly at our local Honk ‘n Wave. I’ll still participate in the next No Kings Day on March 28, and hope millions of others will as well.

Amy models the second hat she received yesterday.

The two skeins Amy bought came with “free ball winding,” and I didn’t quite realize what that was til they arrived. I was grateful for it! A yarn skein often comes as a large, loose loop that’s been twisted tightly into a handy size for selling. But a twisted skein is not handy for knitting from; in fact, it’s impossible. So you have to wind the yarn into a ball before you can use it. The third skein from a different seller arrived in a twist.

I’ve rarely had to roll a skein into a ball, and the few long-ago times I did there was always someone to hold the loop around their wrists, elbows bent, arms outstretched with just enough tension to hold the loop on, as I pulled one strand after another off it, rolling a messy round ball that I unraveled from the outside in as I knitted. But there’s another way to wind a ball, center-pull, and YouTube provided instruction. I untwisted the skein and draped the loop around my knees, careful to keep it out of Wren’s hair. It was fun and meditative to wind the ball this way, leaving a tail in the center and winding neatly around my thumb until the ball was so big I had to pull it off and hold it. I’ve been gratefully and neatly pulling the yarn from the center of the ball as I’m knitting my hat on my pleasing new metal needles.

A couple inches of snow, warm days, a drizzle, nourishing the spring bulbs. What a joy it is to see them bloom! How my heart aches for the exquisite beauty of this planet, how I weep for the wild world plundered and sundered by human greed. How grateful I am for daily engagement with a tiny slice of it.

Finally I was quick enough with the camera to catch Topaz upside down in her basket almost before she rolled over. I keep trying and thought she must have some sixth sense, as despite my stealth she always mrrrrps and rolls suddenly just as I get the camera in place. But no, she simply sleeps with one eye open.

Caketastrophe!

Feb19
Their time in DC was amazing. The number of people they gathered along their route to the Lincoln Memorial lifted my spirits, and the crowd that stood and listened to the closing ceremony was impressive.

I’m still following the Walk for Peace on Instagram, and reading articles about it as people including the monks reflect on what it meant for them, what it means for us. I enjoyed this article in Mindful.org, ‘An Invitation to Reimagine Where Peace Begins.’

“…the longer we resist offering our attention to these unhealed places, the more we will keep living through the reverberating echoes of those same wounds over and over and over again. Different possible futures are only made possible by first giving our loving awareness to what’s happening right now—even (maybe especially) when it surfaces sorrow, hopelessness, or anger that we’re not sure we can handle in the moment.”

It’s a good thing I’m practicing inner peace every day. In my Quest to bake birthday cakes, today’s has been rough! I started last night baking the cake and the cookies with which to decorate it. I got excited because the beaten egg yolks looked so perfectly aerated that I forgot to whip in the sugar before adding flour, so I had to add sugar last. I think it resulted in a slightly heavier batter that didn’t rise as much, but overall the cake itself was okay and the orange shortbreads were perfect.

The first attempt at white chocolate mascarpone frosting went horribly awry. I thought at first it was because I beat the butter and cheese at too high a speed: the recipe said the only thing you can do wrong is overmix it, and to beat it on medium til light and fluffy. Or maybe because the butter and cheese were different temperatures. But in retrospect I think it failed because I used the whisk attachment in addition to high speed. Anyway, I set that mess aside, grateful that I had another cup of mascarpone and another stick of butter. But that started to split too! Though the finished white frosting tasted delicious it looked rather like cottage cheese if you’d blended it just enough to make the curds really tiny. I was afraid to beat it longer to try to thicken it, in case that just made it split even worse! Piping was pointless, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try, and gooped up the silicone piping bag for no reason. There’s not much more challenging baking tool to wash than a piping bag; I see why people use disposables but can’t bring myself to waste plastic like that.

The lemon curd for the filling between layers turned out beautifully, though. And to salvage the split white frosting I whipped up a quick chocolate ganache, grateful that I had not used all the cream and that I had dark chocolate on hand. However, that also started to split! What? I think I know what happened there too: I added the chocolate to the hot cream in the hot pan, instead of adding hot cream to chocolate in a cold bowl, and the heat caused the chocolate to seize. I was able to salvage it, though, by tossing in a tablespoon of soft butter and whipping it, but that made it too thick to pour a thin layer over top. So the cake ended up with too much frosting of two kinds of chocolate that wouldn’t hold on the sides, and I was grateful I had the shortbreads which I’d planned to stick on there anyway. I took my tithe portion before frosting the cake and filled that missing space with shortbread also. I’d have been sent home from Bake Off with that cake, but instead of feeling I’d failed I chalked it up to practice. And isn’t that what this Birthday Cake Quest is all about, learning new skills? I learned a lot, and the Head Bitch at the Bad Dog Ranch was delighted with all the “many fun layers of yummies!” which is all that really matters.

After the cake was picked up, I dumped the split mascarpone/butter mix back into the Kitchenaid, and used the beater attachment to try to salvage that. It worked, sort of smoothing it, which is how I figured out that while the whisk might work for creaming butter and sugar, it doesn’t work for creaming butter and mascarpone. I was grateful that I have a flourishing herb garden in pots in the sunroom, where I harvested a handful of rosemary, oregano, parsley, sage, chives, and a little tarragon, which I minced and mixed into the butter blend with salt and pepper. All those fresh herbs left only a hint of vanilla from when it was destined to be frosting, and it turned into an adequate spread for toast for lunch, and topping for a baked potato for dinner. A busy and educational day in the kitchen!

I’m grateful, too, that we got a little snow the past few days, with more up in the mountains, but Colorado (the state and the river) are in dire drought this year regardless. That’s the real ‘tastrophe, as explained in this article from The Atlantic. Just before the snow fell I caught the first crocus blooms, and enjoyed a few sessions counting birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count. Never mind that there were hardly any birds over the weekend, at least it got me and Wren outside. So just a few more things I’ve been grateful for this week: