On Living

Today I opened a storage room that hadn't opened for a long time and found some boxes.  I opened the boxes, that had not been opened for an even longer time and found some tapes an journals.  I opened the journals, which might not have been opened since they were written in--and find I was much the same person twenty years ago as I am now--though perhaps better read than I recall being.
On October 22, in probably 1989 (I dated without years--I guess back then a year felt like a thing so big you would remember it) I copied this section of a poem I don't remember reading, called "On Living" by Nazim Hikmet.

III
This earth will grow cold
a star among stars
and one of the smallest--
a gilded mote on the blue velvet, I mean
I mean this,  our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a heap of ice
or a dead cloud even,
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch black space...
you must grieve for this right now,
you have to feel this sorrow now,
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say, "I lived."

Siblings Day

Oh, Sibling Day. This was the first year that, through the power of Facebook, I discovered  it existed, and it still passed before I knew when it was. It was yesterday. Do card companies make cards for this holiday? Answer unknown. According to the ever-helpful Wikipedia it is about 15 years old, and though not a federal holiday like Mother's Day, has been embraced by 39 states.  Go marketing!
Though I'm not a great observer of nouveau holidays (I barely manage the traditional ones), I do really appreciate my siblings.  My full siblings (I also have two half siblings) are my connection to my parents, my childhood and my memories of where I'm from.  And because I won't ever have biological children of my own, my sister's children are the closest thing to my genetic legacy.
I feel particularly lucky that, at this juncture, we all live in the same city, even though that city is Los Angeles where it's easy to let two to six months  go by without someone in person.  My sister tries to combat this with a standing dinner invite to her family's house twice a month. Even with typical conflicts we usually manage to gather other once a month, hang out, see how much taller her kids have gotten.
About a month ago I also had a really special experience hanging out with my brother (and believe me, I would not use "special" in this way if it weren't the most accurate term I could think of).  I hit him up to help me record some stuff I'd written.  I was going to read it myself, but after I tried it, it seemed better if the voice was male, so he did the reading as well as composing background music and producing the audio.
I seldom get to work my brother in the studio, but I love to, because it is the best time to see him deeply focused and, I think, happy.  I believe that being a musician and storyteller is his truest nature. (When he was only two or three, he used  to sing himself to sleep at night with long narrative songs about characters from TV shows he watched. I can remember listening, and even at the age of seven or eight noticing how music just poured from him.)
Though our training is really different, and our personalities are different,   my brother--my sibling--is the closest thing I could have to a male mirror of myself.  We have a similar sense of humor, which became clear as we edited the piece.  We also have a similar cadence and rhythm to our speech, so hearing him read my work felt oddly familiar.
I had brought in two poems and one piece of prose. At the end of our session, I felt like only one of the pieces worked--but I was really happy with that one piece.  I would post it here, but we submitted it for a contest, so I'll wait until they announce the winners first (even though I'm pretty sure it would be safe to do so.  I'm fond of it, but it's a pretty beginner-level poem, so I don't think we are in big danger of winning). The whole experience made me think of how I'd like to collaborate with him more in the future.
In honor of that fact, his website is the first to be added to my "links I like."  Soon to be followed by many more, but for tonight, because it's late--just my sibling's.  Happy Siblings Day!

Gratitude Post

“You thank God for the good things that come to you, but you don’t thank him for the things that seem to you bad; that is where you go wrong.” --Ramana Marharshi

This was my Facebook status for Thanksgiving Day, because that’s one of the things that has been on my mind lately, kind of flopping around in there like a fish,

along with this other flopping fish-- something Soygal Rinpoche said at a lecture I attended. He said that that after Tibetan monks were held captive and tortured by the Chinese, the monks said they were grateful to their captors, because they provided the suffering that accelerated their journeys to enlightenment.

I think both of the quote and the example are about the importance of working to make our experiences meaningful, even if things don’t happen the way they were supposed to, or the way we wanted them to happen.

So here’s a randomly ordered list of just a few things I’m grateful for—randomly ordered, that is, except for the fact that every other item is something that I have to “work” to be grateful for—maybe, for clarity, I’ll go with “good” and “bad.”

1) (GOOD) I am grateful for my job and my new, part time work hours! Starting in the new year sometime, I will work from 10-3 each day, instead of 8:30-5. I’m hoping this will be very good for my morale and my writing productivity. I’m grateful to still have a job that offers a sense of security, and benefits.

2) (BAD) I am grateful for genteel poverty. This helps me feel greater compassion for everyone who lives close to the edge everyday, and makes me want to reach out into the world and help, where and when I can. It makes me aware of the other kinds of support I have from family and friends, and it keeps us working to find success in our fields, when it might otherwise be easy to give up.

3) (GOOD) I am thankful for my family. My sister and brother-in-law open their home to my brother and Paul and myself every Sunday night, and their efforts have kept my siblings and their kids part of our lives, when life makes it so easy to let time pass and grow apart. And now my mom is visiting for two months, and I am thankful for that.

4) (BAD) I’m thankful for my cancer. I think this is a little loaded, and I can’t be thanks for anyone else's cancer, for radiation and chemo and suffering in general—but I have to be grateful to MY cancer. It taught me about myself, made me more open, strengthened my relationships with family and friends and was the conduit to other relationships. Because of cancer, I gained tools and knowledge that I think will help me for the rest of my life.

5) (GOOD) I’m grateful for Paul. Ten years into our marriage, he can still surprise me, delight me, infuriates me, and of course, make me laugh.

6) (BAD) I’m thankful for extra weight. I’ve lived my life lucky in this arena—but I think a day job at a desk and a night job at a desk have conspire with my changing metabolism, and now I have an extra ten pounds that feel extraneous—and I gotta say, the gratitude’s not exactly there yet. Perhaps I should be grateful because they helped force my decisions when I was cleaning out my closets…when things don’t fit, it is easier to let them go. Perhaps I can claim more compassion for others who have this struggle—although, in truth, I have lived my life with many people who have struggled with weight in different ways, and I have never doubted it is a difficult task. It could be that this outward manifestation of my new metabolism will encourage me, in the coming months and years, to work with the ideas of aging, to work more with the pain and rewards of self-discipline, with want versus need and struggle versus acceptance. Time will tell.

And I wonder if that is part of things too—I’m grateful because I have “reasons” to be grateful. Maybe part of it is learning to being grateful without any reasons—either through faith that reasons are forthcoming…or maybe not even that. Maybe it’s just exercising our capacity to embrace whatever experience comes to us. Maybe, like the monks say, the things we struggle with most provide us with a path to enlightenment.

Happy

I'm sitting at my desk at work, and I'm just thinking about how happy and grateful I am. I'm doing this insanely long expense report, and for days I've been entering £1.50 bus tickets and converting them to US dollars based on the conversion of the specific date, and now I'm entering a large stack of papers into a spreadsheet...

I know, it doesn't sound that happy making, but there's more. The other day I took a screwdriver and removed the drawer under my desk so I could quit banging my knees into it, and sit cross-legged if I want to, which I am doing now.

And I brought headphones to plug into my computer, and I have Pandora playing a bunch of old Sarah McLachlan and Loreena McKennit and similar that I haven't heard forever.

And the sky is still that morning gray we get in L.A. that reminds me of days in Indiana when it might rain (even though it's very unlikely it will rain here).

And it's just so peaceful, and the music is beautiful, and I'm in good health, which is such a luxury-- and when I didn't have good health I swore I would never forget that, but some days I do.

Sometimes I think, what if everything I write never finds a home, and just stays in a (metaphorical) drawer until I die, and then gets thrown away; what will my life have been about? And will people who knew me think of all those hours spent to produce nothing that they or anyone really wanted, and pity me for unfulfilled aspirations and talk about how I was "talented, but..." (which is what happened to my dad.)

But then I have moments like this, when I know with certainty that this life is a gift, and the way to truly receive a gift is to be aware of it, and grateful for it. And maybe it's a result of this job and being isolated from certain aspects of the "industry," or maybe it's something else, like reading more books and so having more periods of transition from the book world in which I become so immersed, and the "real" world, but I've been having (or noticing?) these moments more frequently as of late: Walking down the street to my bus stop when there is warm sun and a cool breeze, accepting an invitation to stay up way too late and watch a Harry Potter double feature on opening day, getting emails from friends telling me about their lives, even if their news is sad--moments that seem full somehow.

And I am grateful, and wanted to write this so I could remember this moment.