As the train turned
To cross the bridge
The city was drenched
In the last golden light
Of a late winter day.
I was watching gulls
Flying above the river
Turned into glimmering
Gems hanging in the
Approaching twilight.
18Jun/090
Late Nights of Geekery
Another late night tonight, haven't been home since 8:30 this morning and am currently on the top floor of the Hilton downtown in the Hacker Lounge for Open Source Bridge. CK brought the snacks from the car, which helped the low blood sugar cranky/coldness I was feeling earlier. Someone from San Francisco handed me a porter a few minutes ago and there's been a great sharing of and talking about tattoos.
Yesterday I gave my session on yoga and was totally delighted and blown away by the number of people who showed up, tried the poses I suggested, dove into the breath work and all laughed a lot. Several people told me how much better they felt afterward. Tonight someone in the lounge asked me if I'd posted up the notes from it on my website yet and another asked me where I teach!
CK and I were chatting last night on the way home and noted how my offering yoga in the midst of a developers conference, as "one of them", makes it seem more accessible, not as imposing as going into a studio filled with flexible, toned bodies in tight yoga clothes. To me it really just confirms for me once again how yoga really is for everyone.
Tonight 32 people showed up for CK's session on meditation for geeks, "Re-factor your brain". She did a great job, I felt very proud and so happy for her. I get such a kick getting to watch her talking about the things she has a passion for. I am feeling so fortunate to have someone in my life to share these things with. We have these areas were we overlap, like meditation and yoga, but there is never this feeling of competition, just a wonderful synergy that continues to fill me with gratitude.
12Jun/092
This Fleeting World
Today afforded me the opportunity to practice with impermanence again. In this fleeting world each day offers us this chance, some days are just more dramatic than others. Today was one of those dramatic days. This afternoon CK and I were with Atari as he passed away.
His health hasn't been good really much in his life, the past four and a half years particularly so. We were now looking at trying to treat diabetes in a cat who couldn't be handled enough for the vet to perform a full exam. He's been uncomfortable, unhappy, and nothing that has been done, or could be done, would give him consistent quality of life. He would have a few, fortunate days strung together between days of tremendous anxiety, pain, fear, and the resulting aggression.
Of equal importance in my mind today was a close college friend having surgery - a total hysterectomy and "debulking" of cancerous tumors. They found that she has ovarian cancer that has caused cervical cancer as well. Given my history of growing up with the fear around Mom's several bouts with cancer, including cervical cancer, and other major illnesses, hearing someone has cancer always brings some echo, no matter how small, of the deep fear I felt for her as a child.
Last night I felt my voice desert me for a moment when I came to her JAD's name on the merit list while I was chanting service after zazen. I felt my words halting and catching, revealing the Love that causes my voice to shake. For a moment after service, during tea & cookies, I felt as though I would start weeping for JAD and Atari, for CK and I, for all the names on the list in my hands and for all the people who have added those names. I was enormously relieved to find a short, but positive update from her husband had been posted when CK and I returned from the vet with our sadly empty pet carrier this afternoon.
Over the past several days I've been considering that although we can come to intimately know the truth of impermanence that knowing does nothing to alleviate the sadness impermanence visits upon us. Regardless of this knowing, this certainty of sorrow, we go into life with an open, loving heart. This is the essence of Love. This is the rich ground where we are able to cultivate the fearless compassion necessary to offer one another as we face changes, illness, and losses together.
We sink down into the inescapable truths of the Five Remembrances and embrace the certainty of our own suffering. This is what it is to be fully engaged and present in our life. In On Love from The Prophet it is written that some choose not to fully live, preferring to avoid how Love is a thorough shaking of our deepest roots. This may feel safe, however, in choosing to avoid the vulnerability of loving fully we are doomed to never laugh all of our laughter nor weep all of our tears.
It is the hard, messy facts of Love that crowd in around us and require us to become fully present to life. CK commented to me tonight that it is easy to be present for the good stuff, but how important it was to her that I am willing to be present for the really awful stuff. All I know is that I feel grateful to be present for the hard stuff, together.
It is only in being open to Love, the the desperate, beautiful impermanence of it that we can really say we are truly present with our own life. When we become fully present we are able, finally, to weep all of our tears and laugh all of our laughter.
The Five Remembrances
I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health.
There is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die.
There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone
I love are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being
Separated from them.
I inherit the results of my actions of body, speech and mind.
My actions are my continuation.
Taken from The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology
28May/090
Forward Momentum
For the first time in days, weeks really, I felt like I was getting going again on some projects at work. I've felt so unfocused these past couple of months that it has been really hard to dig in and get things started, much less finished. I feel like I could just use a little time to not need to be tied to that paycheck to recharge. That life doesn't just stop to let me process everything is a pretty irritating reality!
It hit me today that since high school I've never had a real break. I started working jobs in the summer and during school then and haven't ever stopped really. The couple of times I've been laid off from work the stress and worry about not having an income did not constitute a break. Things just keep moving along and I just try to keep up. I mentioned this to Hogen right before the Loving-Kindness sesshin started, that I'd just gone through an especially rough week. He reminded me that my whole life has been filled with what most people would classify as especially rough weeks. That I know how to do this getting-through-the-hard-stuff already.
Doesn't make it feel anything but really hard. In fact all of the Zen practice means that at times it almost feels harder than ever before. I've taken away the distractions and denials that got me through into my 30s and am left in the authentic space of really feeling the emotions. All the fear, anxiety, grief and anger simmering there, waiting to be acknowledged. Years of it.
GM told me on Wednesday that I was to stop beating myself up. I keep feeling this awful shame that I let things with AM go on for too long, didn't enforce boundaries, didn't stand up for my needs, told him how much his choices hurt me and then didn't say anything besides express my sorrow when he'd make the same ones over again. She said it took as long as it took for me to learn how to be clear about these things and make them stick.
Hogen commented this evening on my brightness again. I noted that there are still some hard things but that I'm just trying to be present for them. He said whatever I was doing looked like it was working well for me since I looked so well, to keep up the good work.
Be present, stop beating myself up, and keep up the good work. Should be easy...
At least making real progress and a couple of great coaching interactions at work help me feel like I'm moving forward again. Overcoming the out-of-focus-inertia feelings that have churned around spitting out shame, anger and guilt for weeks. Momentum helps with being able to keep moving forward when things are really hard. I guess recognizing that is evidence of Hogen reminding me that I know how to do this.
21May/090
The Energy We Bring
I went to the Portland Dharma Center tonight. Two periods of zazen (sitting meditation) separated by kinhin (walking meditation) followed by a Dharma talk. Having been sick with bronchitis for the past two weeks it has felt like forever since I'd been there. I felt good just being there, which struck me as funny at some point this evening.
As a rule I've felt so uncomfortable in groups that I've covered it up with persona and distracted myself. Since I don't do that anymore I spend a lot of time acutely aware of my unease. To have a group I feel comfortable with, many of whom I've been seeing for a few years now, is unique.
Hogen afterwards commented on how bright I seemed, happy. I told him that I was happy to be there. That I missed everyone. It isn't that practicing at home doesn't feel good, yoga or zazen. It feels like my practice and I always am glad I do it, but the energy of practicing with other people cannot be replaced.
Smiling that present, bright smile Hogen called my attention to something I hadn't considered. He said that I was missed too. The particular energy that CK and I each bring to the sangha is noticed, missed when we are away.
It was very touching to me to hear this. In the same way I find it too easy to skip over myself when doing Metta practice I find that I don't consider that people might miss me. Regardless of the fact that I notice when sangha members are not at the Dharma center and I miss them! To interact with people happy to see me, glad to know I am well enough to be with them, and be focused on this by my teacher was a lovely gift.
7May/090
Noise Irritation
Ugh. I am day two into a spring cold and am none to pleased about it. It makes everything feel like a bit too much to take on. In addition to the whole body "ick" sensation I am sneezy, headachy, itchy, cranky, and probably a few other of the Dwarves of Spring Colds.
Tonight the neighbor, who spends the majority of his time meticulously maintaining his yard, used a pressure washer to clean his drive way for nearly 3 hours. The same neighbor yelled at me Sunday for the state of my yard when I suggested we find a compromise on the tiny strip of earth between our properties that didn't involve him spraying toxic herbicides that then run down onto my property.
After the Loving-Kindness sesshin I can feel the way my heart hardens, closes against the neighbor. Generally I feel mostly some compassion for him, tinged with a sadness that I suppose is rooted in judging the circumstances of his life. Today it was challenging to offer him anything resembling a kind thought at all. He's a good candidate for when I choose to work on Loving-Kindness practice for someone who irritates me.
The noise of the pressure washer felt oppressive with the congestion-amplified pain in my head. On top of that our water bill had arrived today. There's the very realistic cost of that water, financially and environmentally. I feel aware of him literally spraying resources into the sewer system.
Dinner managed to get made and the noise was still this heavy weight as we recited our meal chant. We smiled, joked, rolled our eyes, and commented on the neighbor's behavior. Finally I burst out to CK, "That noise is what my chronic pain sounds like!"
Several years ago I started to use noise to help people understand what chronic pain is like. A constant noise, part of every moment of your life, and not even in sleep can it be fully escaped - that's what it is like to have chronic pain. Some days it might only be slightly irritating to have the constant noise vibration; those are the good days. Other days it feels like the noise vibrations are an oppressive and heavy weight that makes it hard, if not impossible, to wade through the day-to-day; those are the bad days.
He's stopped now. I am feeling a lot better since he has. I was thinking about how irritation & aversion are merely low-level anger. Anger all usually comes back to fear. What do I fear in the neighbor's noise?
Maybe I find the noise of his many power, yard tools to be so awful because I already have what feels like some level of constant noise chafing in my life from my pain. Do I fear the additional weight of the noise in my life?
There are small, puffy, rose-hued clouds hanging in the still-blue, twilight sky. The sunset is so lovely from the upstairs of the house. Now, now that there is some quiet I'll go sit zazen for a little and offer Loving-Kindness practice for myself and my neighbor.
30Apr/090
is this thing on?
Uh, yeah, busy.
I've been reminded of my blog silence so here is something paltry to answer that silence.
There are boxes everywhere making what is left of the living room feel particularly cozy.
There is no longer an enormous fridge in the dining room. It has been moved to the garage, soon to appear on a CraigsList near you. I emptied piles of scary "once food" into the compost pile yesterday. This would appear to by "my" job since the site of decaying food makes CK flee the vicinity.
This also means you can once again appreciate the lovely arch between the living and dining rooms. I am very happy about this and ate my dinner on the floor last night in the space the old fridge once took up. Just because I could.
AM still has some loose ends to tie up. A pattern he and I have known in our relationship for a quite a long time. At least by stepping in to make sure I'm address my own anxiety around this alleviates some of those fears and regrets. Just making the effort to keep things moving and rolling up my sleeves (sometimes literally) to get the work done feels something like progress even amidst the chaos. It is an interesting challenge to my practice which makes me think about things much more carefully than I would have before in my life.
I went to sesshin last week. It was very, very hard. At times it was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. It was also beautiful, worthy and rewarding. I actually reached the "glad I went" stage pretty quickly from the "I'm glad I'm done" stage. I've already moved onto looking forward to August's sesshin, 'Grasses, Trees, and the Entire Earth'. There is a lot to process and write about on this, but the moving madness must take priority.
3Apr/090
Checking Out Beer and Blog
Really tried out the Air today. I intentionally left my work laptop, an HP, logged in and locked up on my desk downtown. I spent some time using the option to remotely access my work laptop and ran several things. Worked on the login scripts some more, making some progress. It was great getting to use the laptop this way, it was so much faster.
CK asked me this afternoon if I was getting used to the idea that it was my laptop. I smiled at her and agreed that I was settling into enjoying it. It is really nice to be able to do this for myself. I also have really enjoyed the "oohs" and "ahhs" I get when I take it out of my bag!
Which I had a lot of opportunity to do this evening, finally checking out Beer and Blog at the Green Dragon. I liked hearing about how BnB got started, had a porter, got some buttons and was introduced to a pile of cool people by my friend YW. I'm always grateful to run into him at events since he seems to be able to introduce me to just about everyone. In fact, I only seem to manage to remember a handful of the people each time because there are so many new people!
I spent some time chatting with ML from The Movement Center. We talked briefly about approaches to yoga. It was great hearing someone talk about the importance of keeping yoga accessible! She was very interested in my ideas about workshops around trauma recovery and compassion fatigue. Looking forward to connecting with her more later.
FW also introduced me to a woman who is running a site for people coming out as queer later in life, QueerL.Net. Interesting to read so far, more interesting to know how another person went down such a similar path.
I also got to see MS, who I missed last week now that we're not all gathering at the Bagdad to watch BSG! Fun chatting about cats with her and about programming with her and SB. All very cool people met tonight, I was really glad I went.
After that aw AM's flat this evening. It is cozy and nicely located with a great view of the sun setting over the city. We had dinner at Fujin's. I found everything to be saltier than I imagined, but still really tasty. We ordered a tofu soup to start that I ended up finishing. Soft tofu and veggies in a clear, veggie broth. I added some chili paste and it made the most of my dinner which is probably for the best since the Crispy Eggplant is deep friend, the veggie pot stickers were deep fried, and the tofu in the General Tso's Tofu was also freshly deep fried!
All that and I miss CK. She left this afternoon to attend the Inner Critic workshop at Great Vow. She's let me know she's glad she's there, which I was really happy to receive. She also said she wants to try to find a way for us to attend the Walking Together workshop for couples in May.
Seeing AM getting settled into and happy with his flat was good tonight. I also got to hear how DW is moving forward with grace towards getting a place with her friend. Although I know part of me is working on just taking my hands off of both of those lives it was reassuring to listen to the positive news. On top of that having such good connections tonight, more positive experiences getting involved with new community, was helpful. Once I get talking with people it is easier to be open.
But it was getting CK's messages as I was headed to the flat to take care of Atari that were so special. I cannot help but return to my gratitude in sharing our practices of Zen and yoga together. I miss her a lot tonight, things have been so busy and unsettled for so long I really wish she was here. However, I feel comfortable and good about her being at this workshop. I feel even better knowing that she really wants us to attend the workshop on relationship as spiritual practice. To feel not only that she supports my practices, but that our sharing of them is this powerful synergy is really something I'm profoundly grateful for.
19Mar/090
Spring Frogs
I woke up with a start when the alarm went off and seemed to stay that way all day long. Feeling anxious and drawn in tight. Combined with a day at work that felt both unproductive and frustrating it meant I arrived at the Dharma Center anxious.
I hate sitting zazen when I'm anxious. Near the top of "most uncomfortable meditation periods" list.
Instead I sat down, awaiting the racing of my heart, heard the bell ring 3 times, then silence, and a chorus of frogs reminding me something I love about springtime zazen! My mind settled swiftly and softly, occasional bursts of anxiety creeping in during the first sit, but then the frogs would sing again and I'd feel myself smile inside. By the time the second sit came I felt like I was in my body instead of my anxiety.
Vernal Chorus
Outside the zendo
A choir of frogs is singing,
"Wake up! Wake up now!"
2Mar/090
About my Poetry (and my day too)
My day was filled with meetings with clients in which I tried to figure out what they're doing, what they need, and that I don't actually do "magic", I write code. Then I fixed bugs, caught up and generally went about my Monday.
Checked out a Hatha/Restorative class at Exhale, a new "green" yoga studio in the Alberta Arts District. Great class, enjoyed it a lot. Not as restorative as I was not-so-secretly hoping for, but not too strenuous considering I felt a bit tired and achy. Lovely space with a nice feel and a cork floor (which was kinda chilly to me). Would be a class/studio I'd considering taking more classes at definitely! Gave me little thoughts about having my own studio too!
After class, which got out at 8:30, I foraged around the kitchen and came up with a mostly leftovers dinner + steamed broccoli. Watched Q.I. while I ate dinner and chatted with CK a little. All the time in the back of my mind thinking, "Gotta write a poem for the challenge today..."
I used to write a lot of poetry. Angsty stuff when I was in high school and college. In my 20s I wrote a lot of steamy, sexy stuff of desire. In my 30s I pretty much stopped entirely except for the very occasional haiku that's popped up over the past 4 years.
Now putting thought into poetry, thinking about how some of my favorite poems used language and space, I find myself an even harsh judge than ever before. As though lines written without the fire of infatuation lack spark.
That the 30 poems in 30 days challenge is part of my Zen community... well, my inner critic gets very insistent that I try to write about being in the present moment, shining the light of Dharma... But that feels even more pretentious than anything else I try.
This evening I wrote about Portland. I guess in a way it is writing about the present moment.
Evening Commute
1Mar/091
and Now for Something…
...a little different. I have retitled the blog, clearly.
Why -- This is actually what my blog was titled when I started out on this whole writing practice idea. The title is taken from a snippet of lyric in a Peter Gabriel song entitled, More Than This. The rest of the lyric goes, "Like words together we can make some sense." It fits with how I see my writing practice, my words together making sense of my life.
Sharing about myself, wholly, is challenging. In most of the relationships in my life I've compartmentalized myself - sharing various parts of myself depending upon the audience. Protecting and keeping hidden a lot of myself. Writing is a practice that helps bring all the parts together into the same space. As I was starting to learn how to write about myself and the interactions in my life, I hit a period where I started to chop things into smaller parcels again. Subconsciously I decided I wouldn't fully share the real me that wrote about struggles and healing.
Although my teachers say this is a voice worth hearing, a way to turn bitter past into "potent medicine" to help heal others, it is hard to be open in these spaces most of all. Since one of my struggles is around being open with others, it makes for difficult practice to try and share my voice. Ultimately what I did make public where things that were less revealing of more tender places.
What this means aside from the title change? More posts will show up in the archives as I import things in and bring my pieces back together again. New posts will explore things like my inner critic, dramatic weight loss, and other more personal, deeper topics further.