On Choices and Temptations

So…I feel that it’s time for a metaphor.

I was going to make this a broccoli vs. chocolate metaphor, but I usually reserve that for a different comparison. Instead, may I present you with this showdown:

PEACHES	vs.		ICE CREAM
·     local ·     ripe ·     juicy ·     healthy ·     delicious		·     addictive ·     delectable ·     SO bad for someone who is “lactase enzyme-challenged” AND needs no more empty calories in her life

Let’s say that for the past…five years or so, I’ve been striving – with moderate success – to cut out of my life  “empty calories” in all the forms that concept can take. Por ejemplo: things that take up time and distract me, but aren’t soul-nourishing. Activities/behaviors that take care of other people but at my own expense. Things that give a great rush but have poor effects afterwards (oh, coffee, coffee: how I miss thee). People who maybe are [were] fun [especially when you add alcohol] but who are not, in fact, GOOD for me. So now I live kind of like a nun. Life feels very calm, and very safe, but kind of…convent-like. [It should be noted here that there are also many, many people I don’t get to spend much time with anymore – NOT because they are bad for me, but because in my five years of doing prereqs/grad school, I got out of the habit of staying in touch. This is something I would like to change in the other direction, but it’s a different issue than the one requiring my metaphors. So if you’re reading this, and I haven’t called you in a year, it’s NOT because you give me cavities. Really.]

ANYWAY. So say that I KNOW that peaches are really good for me. And let me tell you, I have realized in the past week that peaches – in season, local – are my absolute favorite fruit of all. And I love many kinds of fruit, so that’s saying a lot. So let’s say that I have been – and here we begin to stretch the metaphor – saving myself ALL year for some really good, healthy, local peaches. That will nourish my body and palate. But before I can find the good peaches…here comes the pint of ice cream. It knocks at my door. It takes off its own lid. It hovers right around my mouth. It hands me a spoon. Hoo boy.

With all my effort, I summon my knowledge of what I want in my life, and for my nourishment. I want peaches. I love peaches. I truly believe that there is at least one peach waiting for me – The Right Peach. A peach who – for example – has a sense of humor, loves animals and wants children (little apricots!), is smart and thoughtful and loving and gentle and loves to romp in nature and read books endlessly and sing rounds and harmonies, and is, also, a nice-looking peach. But I’m not actively looking for the peach; I’m taking the “universe shall deliver” approach. (I also happen to be rather stupidly but hopelessly fond of an amazingly divine peach that already belongs to someone else’s tree. That’s a different posting. Ooh, but it’s probably pertinent.) There are a couple of potential (unattached?) peaches, but one is soon to be shipped to a far away country, and another one appears to spend its entire fruithood in various Pursuits Of The Mind, if it even had ever noticed me walking past the fruit aisle and eyeing it. Yet another one is awfully cute, but not even remotely ripe enough. So here I am, waiting for a peach to drop in my lap, but in the meantime: I’M GETTING HUNGRY.

Oh, look! – here comes Ben & Jerry’s “Phish Food.” Wearing a black leather jacket. Riding a motorcycle. With a whole bunch of freakin’ TATTOOS on its…container. REALLY bad for me. I don’t think they could cram more sugar in there if they used a shovel. (Did I mention the lactose intolerance?) But that pint of ice cream wants me to eat it. It is completely available. It is ready to romp. Even though many different people have dipped their spoons into that pint, so one wonders about its sanitary status. Especially when one is mildly germaphobic and extremely disease-phobic. But those creamy marshmallow swirls. And those fudgy fish pieces.

And I am in a somewhat vulnerable place, given a) how long I’ve been waiting and b) the unfortunate reality that part of me wonders if a peach would really ever want to come sit in my messy, imperfect fruit bowl. As it were.

And I think my point is that at times it seems like an obvious, easy choice, and I’m able to go without the ice cream while looking forward to the peach I’ll have in the morning. But at other times…Sister Mary Kate leaps out the window and gets replaced by…an ice cream-eating humpback whale. Or T-rex. Something ravenous with big teeth, a large stomach, and not so much brain.

And there are some dear folks who love me, and want me to be happy, and think that I spend too much time with the guilt and repression, and they think I should just eat the ice cream, for God’s sake, because life is short. Even just a spoonful. But – I always go whole hog. And there are always – ALWAYS – unpleasant consequences. No matter how many fistfuls of Lactaid are involved.

Gosh, yes, joining a group of some sort might be a good idea. And – per my bestest friend – finding a way to release my energy does work (**partner acrobatics** – or anything using my body, if I could force myself to go running or swimming or to yoga again). And it’s not that one couldn’t somehow have a combination. Let’s say, a delicious peach sorbet – dairy-free, with peaches from my dear friend Kira’s tree, fruit juice-sweetened, and eaten slowly. But there’s something about full-on ICE CREAM that gives one a buzz and also obliterates. In a good/bad way.

So here I sit.

Trying very hard – on a daily basis – not to buy the ice cream. Both literally and metaphorically.

Sigh…

Moving, Part Two (The Bright Side)

Caramel, my future pet goat

While all the confusion and lostness of this move remains true and real, I will say that I am extremely grateful to have a few friends here – people that I have known since I was 12, 14, 18 – and they have welcomed me, invited me to their homes, housed me when I needed a place to stay before I moved here, and fed me wonderful meals. Their kids entertain me and help me keep a lid on my [by now] screaming maternal instinct. One friend, Kira, is as close to a Pioneer Woman as one can get – she works one and a half full-time jobs in addition to raising a family, being involved in her community, working a vegetable garden, and keeping many animals. (She worries that she is not doing enough. Oy.) She has had me over for several amazing, home-cooked, locally-grown, healthy and delicious meals (the woman grinds her own flour and makes her own yogurt!!!).

And best of all, she has allowed me to come snuggle their new baby Nigerian Dwarf goats whenever I want.

This is a picture of the one I fell in love with, because she let me snuggle her and she gave me little tiny kisses all over my cheeks and chin.

Kira doesn’t realize how much power snuggling a baby goat has to chase away sadness and loneliness.  

(It's dark, but the baby goat is there...)

Moving, Part 1 (Feeling A Bit Sorry For Myself)

This coming Saturday – if all goes well – I will move into my fourth home in four months.  I am finding all the moving – and the many other unknowns in my life – a bit stressful. There are some really great things about living here in the “Happy Valley,” as some call the Pioneer Valley. I am much calmer, for one – by my own assessment, and by that of other people who talk to and see me. There are bunnies on the library lawn in the evening. People are friendly and courteous, make eye contact, and smile (which – it must be said – delighted me for the first three weeks or so, but which I am now finding a bit overwhelming; I’m longing for the personal space that New Yorkers claim and are given automatically). Here the pedestrian rules the world, rather than being a target for angry drivers. I can almost always sleep through the night, uninterrupted by street fights, sirens, or domestic abuse taking place on my street corner. I can take a walk without getting hooted at or having to always look behind me (although I still do). I can drive 15 minutes and go swim in a lake whenever I want, rather than having to make a whole day of it and spend $50 to take public transportation to a beach. My kitty gets to spend her days watching lots of squirrels and birds out the window, rather than just the occasional pigeon. These things are lovely.

On the downside, it’s white, white, white, and very homogenous. I desperately miss the cultural diversity of NYC, and the wonderful Babel tower of languages that always surrounded me there. Also – I miss my friends. So, so much. And the way I always run into people I know on the street. And I miss all the things and places I know. After 14+ years of NYC living, I know where to go to get almost anything there. Here, I don’t even know where the best/closest places are to get lightbulbs (Walmart? Really?), key copies, photocopies, massage, or shave ice. Further, anyone who knows me knows that I am TERRIBLE at dealing with change. Intellectually, I know it’s good, and necessary, and inevitable; emotionally, I completely freak out, no matter how big or small the change is. So this was a big one.

When I moved, I tried so hard to purge as many of my possessions as possible. I failed miserably, being a hopeless pack rat, but one thing I did at the time that I was so proud of was get rid of my mismatching dishes. I was kindly given a beautiful set of matching dishes by Jeff and Megan, and I thought – oh, these are grownup dishes. In my new home, I can have people over for a meal, and I’ll lay out a beautiful grownup tablecloth, and I’ll cook (!), and I’ll serve the food on my beautiful grownup matching dishes. It was a good plan. After much anguish, I parted with my dishes, which were partly randomly inherited, but were partly my grandparents’ dishes. (Don’t worry; nothing valuable. Monetarily, at least.) They were yellow stoneware, not particularly pretty, and not even close to a full set.

(This is not one of the dishes. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name, so can't find an image. Stoneware...yellow...?)

But now…I would pay so much money to have those ugly yellow dishes back. The same exact ones that were my grandparents’, then mine – not a new, full set of the same kind. I felt like they were home, they made me me, they helped me know where and who I was. Those dishes have been with me the whole 14 years I’ve been living on my own. I don’t know who I am with these new dishes. Maybe they match someone I would like to be (matching, pretty, “grownup”) but not the person I still feel like I am (messy, mismatching, imperfect). I know it’s silly to long for dishes – especially when there were only 2-3 of each kind left, and they weren’t pretty – but out of all the things I gave away, I miss those the most.

There is a poem that has been circling through my head since I moved to this apartment; I read it in The Sun Magazine, and miraculously found that I had made a copy of it and put it in my files:

After a Move

Patrick Donnelly

These are not my keys,

this is not my door.

I’m so tired, I could sleep anyplace,

but this is not my bed.

This is not my street,

not my face,

not my dirt

where someone’s hand

touched the wall again and again

to help themselves down the stairs.

These are not my eyes,

not my leaves, not my light,

nothing like the view I knew.

These words are not mine,

none of this food is mine,

And when I asked for the kind of sandwich I liked

the man behind the counter said simply:

No.

Careful What You Wish For

On the one hand, I am completely skeptical of the idea that our puny little minds have the power to “manifest” something that we wish for, as in creative visualization, whether it be the job of our dreams, the honeypie of our dreams, or a massive wad of cash. On the other hand, there is something to be said for aligning your own goals and practices around those things which you want most in life, and I’ve seen – in both my own life and my friends’ lives – that this can definitely help bring about your desires. If I had a third hand, however, I would say that sometimes, really eerie things happen to me, and while I would like to explain them away by “coincidence,” given my very clinical, scientific, evidence-based schooling, I don’t know that I can always do so with confidence. (And – as my pal Rodrigo used to say – sometimes it’s just more fun to think about magic than about science and coincidence. Although this used to annoy the heck out of me. And it still does, sometimes.)

These Weird Things are not always good. I might cite all the violent things that seem to happen in my vicinity (and apparently, not in my friends’ vicinities) as an example. Also, there have been several occasions where I’ve been thinking a lot about someone I haven’t seen or spoken to in several years, and then – within a week – they’ll either contact me or I’ll run into them. (A skeptical scientist such as myself would ask me to write down all the times I’ve thought a lot about someone and haven’t run into them, but that’s not as much fun. So we won’t ask any scientists to weigh in here.) The most bizarre incident occurred a few months ago, and it has made me a bit more of a believer than I was previously. In what, I don’t know, but I am trying to be a bit more careful about my thoughts. (Why not? It’s a good Buddhist practice, anyway.)

Leah, Olivia, and Rebecca had just had the first evening of their clown show, Pretty ‘n’ Papi [http://www.nytheatre.com/showpage.aspx?s=pret12133]. It was Feb. 24, approximately 7:40 p.m. Leah was in town for the weekend to do the show, and would be again the following weekend. I was planning to possibly move out of NYC in a month. Leah, Olivia, and I were walking from the theatre, desperately trying to find something to eat. We walked in front of the theatre where “Stomp” plays, and where it has been playing almost the entire time I’ve lived in NYC; people were lining up to go in for that evening’s show. As we walked by it, I said to Leah something like, “I have never seen “Stomp,” and I’ve wanted to for years. Could we figure out a way that sometime in the next month we could go see it?” She said, “Sure,” and then behind us, half a block away, on the corner, we heard a scream.

Normally I am quick on the draw when there is street drama (as people who’ve seen me intervene in a fight will attest), but Leah is 100 times faster. While I was still standing in place trying to figure out what was going on, Leah was already there at the drama, with Olivia on her heels. A little girl was lying on the sidewalk, apparently unconscious, and her family members around her were trying to pull her upright. As I got there, Olivia rightly told them to let her be, not to pull her up. Leah was already several feet away, on her phone calling 911, and shouting at me to do CPR. {Preliminary weirdness here: I had just been thinking about renewing my CPR training, and realizing that I couldn’t remember my skills – how many breaths to how many chest compressions – and JUST THAT MORNING I had gone online to look up classes to register for.}

I will try to condense the drama here – the little girl did not need CPR (thank god), and I did not abide by the CPR rules anyway, which left my brain completely (i.e. introduce yourself, explain your training, ask if it’s okay for you to help (if it’s a minor, you must get permission from the parent before you do a thing), ask what happened…all these things are crucial, yes, but they take too much time, and I forgot about them anyway. I redid my CPR training shortly after, and I will do those things next time.). So I was trying to find out what happened from her parents, while trying to figure out what was wrong with her and what I should do, if anything. (Passersby attempted to be mildly helpful; they weren’t.) I was holding the girl’s hands, and trying to figure out if she had had a seizure, or was bleeding from the back of her head where she had hit it on the sidewalk. Leah and I were yelling back and forth so she could communicate with the 911 folks. The little girl started to regain consciousness, and I told her to stay where she was – except we learned that she didn’t speak much English – she spoke two European languages I have NO skills in (I think it was Swedish and Flemish – what?!?), so I just continued to speak to her in English, and occasionally remembered to ask her parents to translate. She did seem to understand English fairly well, and when Leah told 911 how old she thought the girl was (“about eight”) the girl corrected her (“nine”), which made me feel much better about the situation. I told her she was going to be okay, and asked if she had pain – was trying to figure out how badly she had hit her head when she fell (Leah had somehow turned around before the scream – talk about psychic, especially since it really was immediately after she said “sure” to me – and saw the girl fall straight backwards like a plank).

It sounded like what happened is that the little girl had been really sick for a few days, and hadn’t eaten much, and was possibly dehydrated as well, so had fainted due to either low blood sugar or dehydration. Fairly soon, the ambulance came, and at that point the European grandmother had tired of allowing her granddaughter to remain lying on a NYC sidewalk, and had hauled the poor kid up. But she seemed okay. I still kept my hands on her in case she went down again, and we encouraged them to go to the hospital just to see what was wrong, which they did.

At some point towards the end of this, it came out that the family was visiting the dad from overseas, and they were all on their way to see….(drum roll)…”Stomp.” Although the girl had been sick, she had been feeling better that day, and had insisted on going to the show. As the folks were tending to the girl in the ambulance, the dad very sweetly thanked Leah, Olivia, and me, and hugged us.

Then he gave us his “Stomp” tickets.

We sort of stammered a lot, but he said he knew he wouldn’t be able to get his money back, and he wanted someone to enjoy the show. Five “Stomp” tickets. Orchestra seats. $50 each, for a total of $250. Then he got in the ambulance.

We stared at the tickets because we were deeply in shock (okay, I speak for myself here). Then Leah had the foresight to go to the ambulance and ask the dad (Mike) for his contact info. She said we would try to sell the tickets and give him his money back. He said he didn’t want any money, but they traded contact info, and then we went back to staring at the tickets. At that point, the show was starting in about seven minutes. We concluded we would be unlikely to be able to sell all the tickets, and tried to decide if we should go.

Olivia didn’t want to go, and Leah and I did (but felt weird about it). Leah called Rebecca, who wanted to go, but had to run from across town. We then did some sneaky wrangling and managed to sell the remaining two tickets at half price to two ladies who were most grateful (but did not want to pay any more).

Then we watched the show, which I’m sure was wonderful, except I spent most of the time a) trying to stop shaking, b) thinking about what had happened, and c) trying to work out in my mind if we could each give Mike SOME money towards our tickets, although this inspired much debate among our team for several days.

(The short-version coda to that is that over the course of several weeks, I basically had to force Mike to take the money the two women had given us; he completely refused to take any additional money, as he said he was so grateful for our help and our kindness, and he was so glad we had gotten to see and enjoy the show.)

But truly, it has made me a bit nervous about what I put out to the ol’ Universe. Perhaps I should be sure to be VERY specific in the future; “I want ____, but not at the expense of anyone’s health or wellbeing. I appreciate your efforts, Universe, but let’s not get too dramatic here.”

And WHY have I not – since – spent massive amounts of time visualizing the things I want even more than “Stomp” tickets??? (I also think it’s easier to visualize “a pint of Ben & Jerry’s” or even “a pet monkey” than to visualize “a job that satisfies me; a nice, mold-free apartment; a wonderful partner; a family once I can afford one…”) Perhaps my visualizer needs some rewiring.

P.S. I am clearly a few months/posts behind. I have already moved from NYC to Western MA, although I’m not sure I have fully decided to do so, yet. So perhaps I should write a little something about that.

Dear New York: I Love You/Hate You/Love You/Hate You (Part 1?)

(my only NYC tourist-y photo - recently taken on my cell phone; poor Ms. Liberty)

Now that I have finally made up my mind to definitely move out of New York City to the beautiful Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, I am having all kinds of second thoughts. And of course, I am not even allowing myself to experience the emotional reality of leaving behind my beloved friends, and my baby “nephew,” because then I’ll never go. I recently visited my friends in Astoria, and thought (again) what a completely wonderful neighborhood that is. I love the diversity. And then I thought – how can I give up the amazing cultural diversity of NYC?! It’s my favorite thing! I love my neighborhood during the daytime, and the wonderful clash of cultures here, such as the Chinese man in his sixties who runs the nearby Laundromat and speaks excellent conversational Spanish with his customers, including me (whenever he lacks the English word, he just throws in the Spanish one, and I try my best). There is a Korean store owner who smiles and says, “As-salaam alaikum” to his Arabic-speaking fellow store owners when he greets them. I love that. But at night, this place gets taken over by testosterone-fueled rage, and there is a lot of drama and sometimes violence. I am exhausted from intervening, from springing out of bed at 4 a.m. to either call the cops, throw on my shoes and run outside and break up some fight, or just stand at the window and wait something out to see which way it’s going to go.

I recently made a list of all the times I could remember that I have been the first, primary, or only person to intervene in a violent incident in NYC in the past decade or so. I’ve come up with 11 times, and five of them have been in my neighborhood (the other six were in Manhattan). This doesn’t include tens of phone calls to police where I did not physically intervene myself. It is probably not a coincidence that my number of migraines has increased ridiculously in the years that I have lived in NYC. I can’t attribute it solely to living here (since it’s impossible to figure out what causes what, and what’s due to the natural progression of a really evil condition), but I know that I am calmer outside of NYC. I will still, inevitably, be on high alert, always on the lookout for anything and anyone that might need my help (caterpillar in distress!), but I think that living in a less constantly stimulating and intense atmosphere may allow me to relax…eventually.

Here is my current working list. I will probably edit it, but this is it for now.

REASONS TO STAY

REASONS TO GO

·     Beloved friends ·     My best friend ·     Dess and Kevin’s baby ·     Cultural diversity ·     New York City has everything, all the time, in multiples ·     My acro partner (if she comes back to NYC) ·     I have 4-5 wonderful people here I trust to help me heal my body – it’s taken me so long to find them… ·     Circus community ·     Circus shows ·     Theatre (not that I go see anything, but if I wanted to – there’s NYTW, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, P.S. 122…) ·     I have too much stuff to move it anywhere (I am starting to purge it, but STILL, oh my god…) ·     Magnolia Bakery ·     Jackson Heights ·     Fire Island ·     Australian pie shops, which also serve Australian-style coffee, which is the only coffee worth drinking in all of NYC ·     The various ethnic neighborhoods and stores of Manhattan ·     The ease of public transportation ·     All the wonderful ethnic restaurants ·     Ayurveda Café         >sob< ·     Easier to get a job

·     Too many people, all the time, all smushed up in each other’s business, and really irritable about it ·     Violence ·     Drama ·     Constant barrage of foul language in public, in front of kids and everyone, merely as part of conversation (recent example between two sober, adult men: “Yeah, I’d f---k that p—y” “I’d do that b---h”) while I grind my teeth and debate whether to say something, let it go, laugh it off, or begin loudly singing a song about cadaver scrotums or something ·     Too dirty and smelly here ·     I miss the air, trees, stars, animals, people who smile ·     Independent stores ·     Always have to be on the lookout for people who are potentially dangerous (maybe it’s just me, but this is how I do things) ·     Too expensive ·     The misery of public transportation (riding with too many people/unstable people/dangerous people/obnoxious people/loud people/extraordinarily smelly people and trains that simply don’t go anywhere on weekends) ·     Too many migraines (current working theory is that – despite there being many triggers – they MAY decrease in a more rural, calm environment) ·     I want to be in a community of people who care passionately about the environment, social justice, eco-consciousness, and peace, and who like to roast parsnips and sing rounds together ·     I want to raise my future children in the country, not the city (although I wish they could have some of what the city offers) ·     I will be closer to my mom ·     I can swim in a lake in the summer, instead of in a polluted ocean with 60,000 New Yorkers ·     I can finally get a dog

Dear New York….

Sigh.

Love,

Kate

And after six days of Tibetan Buddhism...

...I am still not practicing lovingkindness NEARLY enough.

I was so lucky to have had the gift of unemployment (no, really) during the week that the American Museum of Natural History was hosting my Tibetan Buddhist teacher as part of its Brain exhibit (specifically on Brain and the Tibetan Creative Mind).
http://www.amnh.org/calendar/event/Living-in-America:-Brain-and-the-Tibetan-Creative-Mind/
I was able to attend three out of the four meditations that my teacher led, and to generally be among Tibetan monks and Buddhist practitioners, and to think deeply about Buddhist practices. It definitely changed a lot of things for me, and has made me approach a few people and challenges differently. But guess what? IT'S STILL HARD. It is still so hard to be a human being interacting with other human beings. All of us imperfect and cranky and tired and hungry and sometimes with sore feet and sometimes being elbowed out of the way... One evening, Khen Rinpoche was leading this amazing meditation - in the Hayden Planetarium, thank you very much - and a woman was sitting on the floor and all of these folks kept coming in late (so, so late) and they had to push past/climb over her to get to the few remaining empty seats, and finally she got so angry she really stomped up the aisle and sat down in a chair and you could see it took her quite a while to shake it off. She was literally shaking her head in anger every few seconds. I kept thinking how ironic it was that she had so much anger during this meditation session, and that she couldn't recognize that none of the people had meant her any harm with their actions; they were just late and anxious and clumsy. On the other hand, I was so distracted, and was watching her, and judging her, and judging the late people, etc. etc. and missing out on these beautiful esoteric instructions for imagining the Buddha on four thrones sitting on eight lions. So: I still have to practice.

Big time.

There were many other experiences, both enlightening and disheartening, but this is just the description in brief. And all week, it made me think about alternate names for the blog and for myself...Muttering Buddhist, Cranky Buddhist, Bitchy Buddhist, Completely Unsuccessful Buddhist, Not There Yet, Buddhist With An Uzi (this only happens when I ride the subway, honest)...

The goal, however, is to really, truly, begin a regular meditation practice. I was happy to learn one new meditation practice, and in addition, to get instruction on tonglen, which I've been drawn to before but feel that I've done incorrectly. Perhaps having written it down on this here blog - even though no one yet knows it exists - will make me a bit more accountable to the universe, and will help me get started.

(The image is from http://www.freewebs.com/dharmabeads/initiations.htm)

The Raging Buddhist begins

So...after four years or so of ruminating about starting a blog, I finally got as far as the title. That really seems to sum it all up. As for content - that may take another four years. But I am proud to have finally found a title, and I almost think that on most days, I wouldn't even really need to articulate much more than that. I just toggle back and forth between loving and raging, between Avalokiteshvara and Shiva the Destroyer, between wanting to embrace and nurture all of humanity and wanting to smack it upside the head. (Is that so wrong?)

I have had thoughts of writing about circus-theatre, a big obsession of mine, and also about the kids I work with (because they can be very funny), and sometimes about the experiences I have or things I observe (the idea being, of course, that it could help give one insight and possibly make one less cranky). But we shall see. At least there is a title.