When Did You Know?

For several years I'd been behaving monogamously and these conversations didn't come up very much.  Now that I'm behaving polyamorously again, the conversations are happening.  As I regale my friends with my adventures in dating. I often get asked, "When did you know you were poly?"  The same happens with my dates, actually.

I've settled on a simple answer.  I didn't have these words then, but when I was 17 or 18 I knew I didn't want to get married; I knew I didn't want to be tied down to one man.  In truth, though, the answer isn't so simple.

I had some very specific reasons I didn't want to get married.  I wanted to date, and I wanted to experience sex with more than one person.  That sure sounds like a polyamorous mind.  I also didn't want to marry because the example I had was my mom's marriage to my stepfather.  She cooked his meals (or us kids did) and waited on him, bringing him everything he needed while he stood at the bar or sat on the couch.  He never seemed to do something for her, and he was abusive towards us kids, me especially.  My mom was a good mom, but this man had her blinded.  I was never going to put myself in that position.

Now as an adult, and having witnessed some of the dynamics of dominant/ submissive relationships, and having experienced some submissive tendencies in my own self, I can understand the appeal this relationship had for my mom.  It actually gives her more culpability in the abuse than I used to assign to her in the past. As enticing as those dom/sub dynamics might be, I can also see how there can be a dangerously fuzzy line between abuse and sexual preference.  Just as an example, I witnessed a conversation on facebook in which a friend had been defriended because a dom told the sub to do so.  From my crisis line days, I know limiting contact with friends is a yellow flag indicating possible abuse. To the dom/ sub people, this is something doms might do.

I wanted to avoid the unequal dynamic of marriage, but life intervened.  My college boyfriend became my boyfriend because that's how things happened.  Theoretically an open relationship, people still saw us as boyfriend and girlfriend, and most weren't inclined to come between at my small college. Our default understanding of relationship was also monogamous, and while I had a few other encounters then, the longer we were together, the more this became the expected thing.  When it came closer to a time to part, his graduation, I tried to find ways to end it, poorly, as can be expected I suppose of the early twenties.

Habit, fear, and some bit of love kept us together and we got married, moved to Portland. Theoretically still open, I behaved monogamously, and encouraged him to seek sex with others. He did, a little, but felt guilt-ridden after, even though I had no qualms about it, even found it intriguing. He was the monogamous-minded one.

Those were the years of intensive spiritual practice for me.  I've always been adventurous sexually, but I wasn't as interested in it as often as he was.  I thought it was because my spiritual energy was taking front seat.  I even got that notion from a book by Thich Nhat Hanh.  Now I have to wonder at taking advice from a celibate on sexual matters.  Perhaps it should at least be balanced out by advice from a sex therapist.

Bonus

It turned out because of that spiritual practice I opened to the possibility of my being bisexual. I was 27 by this time.  For my husband, the possibility of my having a female lover was acceptable. (Anyone surprised by that?)  Cultivating this notion, I opened up to looking at women in a new way.  Who was I attracted to?  That opened the gates, and I didn't just start noticing the women, I started noticing the men.  In hindsight, I now know it wasn't that spiritual energy was my focus, it was that I had shut down a good portion of my sexual energy subconsciously to protect the monogamous relationship.

What a blessing it was when I met my sweetie and we confessed we both wanted to try an open relationship.  We still didn't know much.  We discovered it might be best to behave monogamously for a while, while still in the throes of new love.  Later we, or I, rather, gained confidence when we met others who were making a go of this (new word) polyamory. I learned that while my original 18 year old impulse not to be monogamous was about not being tied down, that in my thirties I could really love more than one person, and it would not harm my love, only expand it.

It seems as though I uncovered a natural predilection.  Once I love, I will always love, even when other loves come along. On the other hand, I have become the person I am through my experiences, and through a steadfast life of reflection and mindfulness. I have found I shape who I am through my choices.  Dan Savage says non-monogamy is not a sexual orientation. Many poly folks say it is.   (Found via the facebook feed of Modern Poly.)

I think I say it is both-and.  I may push some buttons, but I'm going to say it, even the usual notions sexual orientation may be both something we're born with and a choice.  For some people, it is clearly something they're born to.  I myself, if I had never left Wisconsin, might still be totally straight.  My experiences in Santa Fe and in Portland allowed me to turn on the switch so now I am consciously bisexual. I now am consciously polyamorous. Even while behaving monogamously these past few years, I still identified as polyamorous, and I know I could never revert.  I have too many loves in my heart, whether active or inactive, that if I were to revert, would be killed.  I am still more straight than gay, but I know if I cultivated more female lovers, I would find more women attractive and I would slide over on the spectrum closer to gay.  Thoughts and behaviors change the mind.

I have friends who, while single, have been very friendly to the notion of polyamory, even considered themselves polyamorous.  Then they meet someone, fall in love, and choose the monogamous route.  They shrug, and are happy to love the one they're with.  Dan Savage is right, this is something we can choose.  Franklin Veaux is also right, that some of us could never be content with a monogamous life, could never be who we feel we are meant to be.  Internally I shake my head at these friends.  New love settles, and then, if you are normally inclined to be not-monogamous, you might find yourself unhappy and not knowing why.  On the other hand, you might be wise enough in the ways of self to steer yourself always toward happiness with this one, or perhaps you really are more of a monogamous bent.

So when did I know?  When I had the words and the notion that it was possible, which was really only about a dozen or fifteen years ago.  But also when I had the predilection, which was perhaps as soon as I became sexually aware.

Psyche and Eros Part 1: Extended Journey

Fifteen years ago, I was side-swiped by love. Looking back to see whether I'd written about this before, I found my little series from five years ago: This Space of Love.  I was a bit surprised at myself...I wrote that?!  There's some pretty good stuff there. Not long after finding myself on this weepy roller-coaster of unrequited love at the age of thirty, I came across a book while shelving as a page at the library. This ranks right up there with the top five cases of serendipity in my life.  Incidentally, that weepy unrequited love sent me into a depression, and it was some casual sex that pulled me out of it, thus my current strategy of seeking closer encounters now.

That book, She: Understanding Feminine Psychology, has been a presence in my life ever since.  At that time, it sure helped to learn that there was no avoiding the heartbreak, even if I had ended up with that person. There must be a period of individuation, where I find myself and I busy myself with tasks of the hands that occupy my mind a little, but aren't too complex.  I spent a lot of time that year folding origami.  In the time following, I recognized that I wouldn't have fallen in love if I hadn't been ready for that.  The author informed me not everyone experiences this transformative love, that a grandmother could still be 'virginal' in her psychological love framework.

Consequent to my experiences, I have said many times it is my hypothesis that love isn't about soul mates, but about people coming together at the right time, sometimes the wrong people, but one or both is ripe for falling in love. And then when one does, there's a good likelihood one will go through the mythical archetype of Eros and Psyche.  I'm glad to see Robert A Johnson's books on He and She are both available on Kindle. I'd like to read the one, and revisit the other, but not yet.

First, I'd like to explore the myth to find my own understanding, and find the telling of the myth in my own life. There's a pair of poems brewing, too.  Then, maybe I'll get to those very short books, and do some more exploration. Philip Pullman said in the introduction of his new book:

The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put a robin redbreast in a cage.  ...You are at perfect liberty to invent other details...you're not only at liberty to do so: you have a positive duty to make the story your own. A fairy tale is not a text.

The same, I'm sure, applies to myths.  I found several versions of these gods' story, linking to one in my last post.  I like this person's version, as it has the most details that I remember from my first encounter. Here are parts one, two, three, and four. She also has some great analysis, but again, I want to find my own way first. (Let me tell you, the new Send to Kindle toolbar button is my new best friend for extended web reading.)

Found here

At the age of thirty, once I was on that mythic journey of Eros and Psyche, my psyche wasn't going to be finished until I found that love. I think. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't found a beloved.  Happily, I found it in my third love, my life-long sweetie I live with today. Funny thing, Important Conclusions happen in threes in those archetypal fairy tales as well. He was the Eros that did not run away.

First I'd like to capture the story in a few plot lines.  Then I may examine those plot lines more deeply, but I may be impatient and get to work on the pair of poems.  I may have mentioned in the past I am only occasionally a poet.  I don't really try to make poems happen, but sometimes poems insist they happen and I become a poet.  This is a case where I foresee a lot of groundwork happening before I can even write the poems, and may well be the most complex poems I will have written.

The Story of Eros and Psyche

1. Psyche is so beautiful that people compare her to Aphrodite and neglect the temples of the Goddess of Love.  The Goddess of Love is pissed.
2. Aphrodite seeks vengeance, and solicits the help of her son, Eros.
3. Meanwhile, Psyche's parents seek the advice of the oracle of Apollo (God of Music, Light, and Reason) and learn Psyche is destined to marry no mortal.
4. Psyche is sent to a mountain as a bride to her unknown, scary bridegroom
5. Eros is taken by her beauty, and (oops, how'd that happen?) pricks himself with his own arrow.  He has a God of Wind carry her to his palace.
6. Psyche finds incredible riches in her new palatial home, and voices that inform her that they will meet her every need.
7. Her new husband visits her only at night, a very pleasurable recurring event. 
8. But during the day she becomes lonely and bored. She pleas with her husband to have her sisters brought to visit. She has become pregnant and wants to share her joy. Eros warns her that no good would come from such a visit.
9. Her sisters are somewhat jealous of Psyche's wealth. They raise concerns about the unseen husband, that he could be a monster, and the neighbors say he is a monstrous serpent. (ha!) Psyche protests he is good and kind, but  she also has doubts. The sisters convince her to take a lamp and a knife to her marriage bed, and if he is a monster, she should cut off his head.
10. Psyche lifts her lamp, and sees the divine. 
11. Psyche pricks herself on one of his arrows, and falls in love with Love.
12. Lamp oil burns Eros, and he sees betrayal and mistrust. He leaves her. She is disconsolate.
13. Psyche wanders in search of her husband. She comes upon a magnificent temple and hopes to find her love. It is a temple to Demeter (Goddess of Fertility, Grain, and Agriculture). Psyche sorts and arranges the food offerings. Demeter cannot help her, but advises Psyche make amends with Aphrodite.
14. Aphrodite sends Psyche on four impossible tasks, and with each task, Psyche weeps, and receives help: ants help with sorting grain; the reeds advise her on gathering golden fleece; the eagle of Zeus fetches her water from the river of life; and a voice from the tower she climbs to throw herself off advises her on the trip to the underworld to fetch a drop of Persephone's beauty. Another version has Eros secretly helping these along. 
15. Returning from the underworld, Psyche realizes she looks bedraggled and fatigued with pregnancy. She opens the box for a bit of that beauty and a mist envelopes her, putting her to sleep.
16. Eros finally comes along, and gathers up the mist and returns it to the box, and revives Psyche.
17. Eros takes her to Olympus and Zeus makes her immortal as a wedding gift. Aphrodite is fine with that, as Psyche will no longer be on earth seducing mortals away from her.

Found here

Next I want to revisit the neuro-chemicals of love, and see how that fits with the story.

Fat Karma: Recovery from the Diet Paradigm

My home altar, Prajnaparamita, Peace, and me

This would be as good a time as any to resurrect my Fat Karma series. This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival.  To see if I have covered this topic before, I skimmed over those posts and others with a related label, and found this phrase of mine, "recovery from the diet paradigm."  I think it's my own phrase...maybe I picked it up somewhere.  It's certainly how I've been thinking about this for many years.

I have said before that I had a consciousness of diet by the age of six. I would not be surprised if this is the norm, that a child is likely to be aware of good and bad foods, calories, the need not to be fat, and the word 'diet'.  The child unhindered by this consciousness is most likely the exception.  The histrionics of this eating disordered society has become even worse in the decades since my own childhood.

I grew to be a teen who could not believe she was beautiful, sexy, pretty, because she'd always received the message that she weighed too much to be any of these things.  This affected my sex life in college.  Even if given messages that I was sexy, I couldn't quite believe it.  Even though I'd never thought I'd be the marrying type, I settled with one guy and did marry him, because though I wasn't quite conscious of the reason, deep down I was afraid no one else would have me, so I loved the one I was with.

I didn't know it at the time, but the day I started practicing meditation was the day I would begin to love my body.  It would take a few years before I could get a glimpse of this, and several more years before I could believe, and even more before I could consistently act from a place of loving myself, my whole self, including my body, and my big belly.

A defining moment: post-college, in my twenties, with my first husband here in Portland.  I sat down with a plate-full of rice and beans (I'd been a vegetarian since twenty-one).  My husband worried that I would keep getting fatter.  I don't remember precisely what he said, what he started yelling, but I remember the certainty in my response.  I told him that what I was doing, my Buddhist practice, was the right thing for me, and would help me with this issue.  That being fat or overeating was not the problem, it was the symptom.  I knew that meditation gave me access to myself, and that my friends at the Zen Center, who were my mirrors, and my teacher, would continue to help me access myself, and get to the root of the problem.

I still spoke with the language of the diet paradigm, but this was a first step to recovery.  I knew something had happened with meditation: I could no longer diet.  I trusted this practice, though, as from the very beginning it gave me access to something I hadn't had before...my own inner voice.

Now I realize I could no longer diet because what you must do in order to diet is ignore the signals coming from your body.  You mustn't eat when you're hungry, but you must eat only certain things, certain amounts, and at certain times.  You mustn't eat for pleasure, for good taste, but for minimum sustenance and lowest calories, no matter what your insides, your mouth, your eyes, your nose tells you.  To do this, you must separate from the pain, from the hunger, from the body.  Meditation put me back in my body; ignoring my body's voice was no longer an option.  I now know this is a central message of Health at Every Size, that if we listen to our body's signals, eat what satisfies our true hunger, we will be unlikely to be subject to the cycle of deprivation and binging that results from dieting and food restriction.  No food is good or bad.  No food is forbidden (unless you're allergic).  Food that is appreciated is food that satisfies.  In my experience, I then need less of it.

Included with my meditation practice during these years was a recurring vow to Pay Attention.  As part of this, I noticed that even though I worked on my feet eight hours a day, walked to and from work for a total of more than an hour, was a vegetarian, I did not lose weight.  I noticed during meditation retreats when we shared meals, it did not matter the size of people, but some people ate more than me, and some people ate less than me.  While we are to set aside comparing mind during a retreat, in this mode of paying attention I began to get the message that I actually ate normally.

Also during this time I took a temporary vow not to eat chips or chocolate.  This three month period taught me the ways I could squirm around a limit (I ate non-chocolate candy), but the larger lesson was learned after the vow was over. I am so grateful for this tradition at my temple, the temporary vow to intensify one's practice.  I might have benefited from a Catholic upbringing.  When it was over, I made the return to chocolate and chips a special occasion.  While I'd mindfully abstained, after, I mindfully ate, and I found an incredible gift.  I truly enjoyed that chocolate, those chips, and I realized before this vow, I'd never truly eaten them.  Previously, while I ate, I also ate the guilt, and the shame, and the belief that I shouldn't really be eating them. I realized this not-eating happened with all food I ate.  I would never not-eat when I ate again.

When I could be grateful, and love the food I put in my body, I could truly begin to make choices that nourished my whole self.  I could truly begin to choose foods out of love for my body, including my body's health and my body's pleasure.

A very similar thing went on with my view of my body.  I couldn't just look at my body.  I could only see parts of it at a time.  I couldn't like certain parts of my body.  I couldn't include these as parts of me.  Again, with this recurring vow of Pay Attention, I heard it when my inner voice said, "I could be bisexual."  I began to notice, and cultivate an awareness of those aspects of a woman I found attractive.  I noticed that I could like a generously curved woman, appreciate the parts much like the parts of myself I couldn't look at, and I would realize, if she shared parts just like mine, and I liked how she looked, why couldn't I like how I looked?  I learned to lose the warped vision that comes from an eating-disordered society.

Through this process, I finally reached a point where I could believe it when a man, or a woman, told me I looked sexy.  When I am truly in my body, enjoying the ways it can feel, it can move, I am loving my body, and that is sexy.

Once I gave up this language about myself, this hateful self-talk that is the diet paradigm, and I made every effort to notice it, root it out, and change the habit of self-degradation, I noticed how many people disparage themselves with it, no matter what size they are.  It's insidious, how much it is part of our culture.

Zen Beginnings

Someone asked on my alumni email list why we changed religions, specifically naming me among others.  Why, and at what point in our life, we came to Buddhism, etc.


First, I said,  Such a big question! So much to say...I guess I'll do the zen thing and boil it down to the essence....


St. John's is directly responsible.

Then, I sent another post:

that is to say...
When I came to St. John's it slowly dawned on me that I had difficulty interacting with the books and in seminar because I did not know myself. A momentous realization occurred during, or I should say after, the Symposium seminar, when quite a few of us piled into cars and the back of a pickup and went to Spike Venable's house to continue the party. (All Spike had left in the house was some sherry, which we eagerly drank because it was booze of some kind.)

Certain moments at that party blend together as the moment when I realized. Mr. Cornell saying "Ms. Hoog... is drunk! Ms. Hoog... is drunk!" and me thinking 'yeah so are you!' and me responding to something somebody asked by saying, "I don't know what I believe!" realizing that at that moment I could no longer call myself a Christian and two friends of Spike's, not Johnnies, who insisted it was possible to be Buddhist *and* Christian. I had no idea what Buddhism was, and if they explained, I was too drunk to retain it.

But I was beginning to uncover myself. I was busy imbibing Great Books, often reading them twice but still not knowing what to say.

Along about the time we were reading the Bible, my boss in the library, Jon Schaefer, [son of Jack Schaefer] would talk with much enthusiasm about his Buddhist beliefs and about his experiences meditating with Some Great American Convert I don't remember who, who so steadfastly meditated in the snow, etc. I was intrigued, but didn't know what about, really. Some unremembered amount of time later, I was in the bookstore buying up some needed Great Books, when I paused at the Eastern Philosophies/Religions bookshelf, vaguely remembering Jon's enthusiasms.

George Wen... noticed my pause and asked if I was wondering what to start with. I supposed I was. So on his recommendation I bought Zen Mind Beginner's Mind and Three Pillars of Zen. The first I began to read and was hooked. Yes! Yes! Yes! It felt like coming home. The second I used for the illustrations and instructions on how to meditate, but didn't much read because I didn't want to read about answers before I had a chance to experience, having got the message from ZMBM that this was very much an experiential religion.

I tried meditating, but it felt weird, so I gave it up. Long about the time I was able to choose my first preceptorial, and got into "Ancient Chinese Philosophy" with Ralph Swentzell, I thought it might be a good time to try meditating again, and Jon was starting up a pre-seminar meditation period. Never mind that this was pre-Buddhist Chinese philosophy, I knew nothing about that.

So I started meditating, and this time it felt right. That first time, I felt like I was swirling down into a vortex. This time I felt like a Weight Lifted, and I felt ebullient. I have long felt fortunate for that early experience, as it kept me on the path. Buddhist faith asks that you give it a try, and you will eventually experience why it was worth giving a try. This early experience became a beacon when I might have drifted for the sameness of the meditation experience.

It seems to have been a blessing of my life... Blessing? Serendipity? Coincidence? That I chose to walk a path for perhaps the silliest of reasons, and the path I chose turned out to be so important. It's significant to me now that I didn't start meditating until I was ready. The St. John's way was working to help me make the unconscious conscious to the point where I could be ready for the more powerful uncovering of meditation. Being away from my dysfunctional home was helping me shed fear that was instrumental in creating the wall that kept me from knowing myself.

Later on I came to see the religion of my childhood was a pasted-on belief. Since I was a child when it was offered, and at times forced on me, it wasn't something I really had a choice about. I didn't really have much choice about knowing myself, either, as for my survival in a dysfunctional house it was best not to fully face the unfairness of it. Come to think of it, having come to a safe place during a time of exploration, it was probably inevitable that I would lose my religion, among other things.

That's the beginning.

Kuchen

I dug out my family recipe for kuchen.  There's no great family secret about this recipe...you could do a Google search for a kuchen recipe and find dozens that are similar.  As I look at it, I am reminded of the form of the recipes my family shared.   These days recipes take the form of listing the ingredients and numbering the steps to bake.  The way we shared, I realize now, was designed to fit all on a 3X5 card.  It was assumed the recipient cooked and baked, and didn't need step by step instructions with full sentences.  It doesn't say so, but I'm sure this recipe came from Great Grandma Spradau.  I copied it from her daughter's recipe card,  Grandma Knowles.  That's Grandma Spradau in front, with her birthday corsage, one of her daughters in the back (Aunt Vera?).

I got this out because I'm going to bake a kuchen for my co-workers.  Somebody started a cake-of-the-month club, and way back when I signed up for November.  I don't do so much baking now.  It's years since I baked this...but you don't forget, do you? 

A month or so ago somebody also proposed we create a zine with all our recipes, and each of us who brought a cake could design a page of the zine, or at least hand our recipes over to the zine editors.  I started to think in terms of story as well as cake.  I'd really hoped the recipe would be in my grandma's handwriting, then I would scan and put the recipe in the zine as-is.  Sadly, it is in my crappy mistake-ridden handwriting. Perhaps I will still include it that way.


I thought briefly about making the Poppy Seed Cake, written out by my grandma, all for the story.  There's Grandma Knowles' handwriting, and Grandma Spradau's name, and there's the form our recipes took: brackets pointing from the ingredients to the actions, ever more cramped at the bottom of the card.

I don't think I've ever made this cake though.  I loved it when my grandma made it.  It doesn't even say, but I"m pretty sure when done she would wrap it in tin foil, and the cooked vanilla pudding would soak into the cake, unless that was a different recipe.  However, another reason I love it is that there is NO LEMON.  Why does everything sweet poppy seed also have to have lemon these days?

But there is story  to the Fruit Kuchen recipe as well.  I had to do a Google search myself, seeing that no fruit amount was listed.  Some recipes listed about 4 cups.  Then I remembered that you put enough fruit to cover the batter, and of course, in this old school way of sharing, the women would just know how much they would need.




Grandma, my mom, and my aunt most often made this in the spring and early summer.  First when the rhubarb was ready, later, when the raspberries were ripe. 

There's my mom, my grandpa, my grandma, and my aunt at my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary celebration.  I wasn't able to attend because I was away at college.

I know my great grandpa came from Germany.  I'm not sure about his wife...I'll have to ask my mom.  Either she did too, or her parents did. As a family, we certainly had a lot of German eating habits, like kuchen, and vinegar on vegetables. (And we would say we would "go by so-and-so's house" rather than "visit" or "go to"  ...it's a German thing.)

I suppose I could find some rhubarb in the frozen food section, but I decided I would find something fresh and local, so I put pears and apples on my grocery delivery list.  I'm not sure which one yet...maybe both.  I still want to plant rhubarb in my front yard as a part of the edible landscaping. I want to make rhubarb custard pie, rhubarb kuchen, and take a raw stalk and suck on it, making my mouth pucker so I can remember that childhood feeling of wondering why I was doing that if it was so tart.  And, with rhubarb in my yard, I can feel connected just a little bit to my family's traditions.  Everybody had a rhubarb patch.

Catching up, again

I always said to myself I would not be one of those bloggers that wasted time and blogspace with apologies over not posting, but after such a long absence I guess it would be weird not to acknowledge it.  Where did the time go?  Little things kept me from sitting at the desktop...back trouble, then a foot injury, then just the absence of habit and the new habit of Facebook.  I need to steer my habits back to this spot.  I need to push the reset button in part anyway.  I'd like to get back to the original intent, to explore the multiplicities in my life.  For a while toward the end I was heavy into the book blogging.  While I enjoy doing the slow reads and the reviews, they take up a lot of time, and I don't want those to be all this blog is about.

Interestingly, in the seven years since I began writing here, my Whitman quote seems to have spread as a meme.  Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.  More people I encounter online use it as their tagline.  The idea of multiplicity has spread, and is a natural descriptive word for the online world.  There is nothing but multiplicity here.

During this lucky seven years, books have regained a larger piece of my identity.  When I was a kid, that was the majority of my entertainment.  Now, book groups have changed my reading from mere imbibing to reflection, review, and inquiry.  Those qualities certainly have been part of my reading experience considering my college experience, but recent years have brought a resurgence of the joy along with a consciousness of what I have to offer others from my experience of books.  While I have been a decent facilitator of my library's book group, this past year I have noticed more responses from participants that show my skills have bumped up a notch or three. I'm sure revisiting my college experience and participating in the Read the Classics series has helped my ability to get to the heart of a book, and steer the conversation in that direction.  Half a dozen of us Classics readers were just not ready to take a break for the summer, so we read three books: Absalom, Absalom, Heart of Darkness, and The Sun Also Rises.  We rocked, figuring out these books.

This summer I had a booth for the Portland Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship at the Division/Clinton Street Fair for the first time.  I don't know why I haven't done this before...money I guess.  I really appreciated that their theme was about community, while the Hawthorne and the Belmont Street Fairs seem to be about Spend Money at Our Businesses.  I liked it so much I thought I'd do those as well, but it didn't work out with my schedule.

I created on-the-spot enso pictures for people.  Kids were the best.  They gave me new ideas for animals in which to incorporate an enso. The kids totally got it when I explained an enso represented that clear, open mind we get from sitting in quiet meditation. I came up with the idea of a comic strip called ensoland.  Every creature would have an enso as part of their being, and they would go about solving conundrums of the spirit.

          

My homi read her poetry at the library this summer.  Two loves in one spot.

One of my pumpkin plants has taken over the front yard landscaping.  I believe it is the jack-o-lantern plant.  It overwhelmed the Howden pumpkin plant.  The Howden originally had the first small pumpkins, but they fell off.  My yard guy said that was because they weren't pollinated.  The big plant kept wrapping its tendrils around my blueberry bushes, tomato plants, and herb plants.  Naughty pumpkin...I scolded it as I rescued my other plants.  Next year I plan to supplant it with a rhubarb plant. Maybe somebody I know will be ready to divide their root mass this fall.  All my tomatoes are still green.







See more photos here, including this wacky guerrilla sign.  Can you tell me what it says?

Facebook Wayback

Last week the meme spread to change our Facebook profile photo to one from wayback. I chose one I used here from my 2 year birthday. However, when it comes to status and links, it seems "wayback" is more like a month or two ago. Here are some things I want to remember from wayback...this summer.

I often went to this farm stand, which was in the parking lot of the restaurant right behind the library, right after I got off work on Thursdays.


We trust no kittehs were harmed in the making of this video.

Via Choten: One year walk/beard video

Found when looking for ways people told the story of Buddha's Enlightenment: a Mary Oliver poem.

My allergies have been worse for longer periods of time, and I've heard from others. Just as I suspected, climate change is doing this.

Further proof that "evolutionary psychology" is a poorly disguised pseudo-scientific vehicle for the dissemination of bigotry

Inspired by Felicia's hurricane, I wondered if there was a Hurricane Heidi. Indeedy, 1967, I was 5 months old. There was also a Tropical Storm Heidi in September 1971. I just remembered, my family moved to the house I grew up in when I was 5 months old.

This work and video done by co-worker's daughter.

Fun stop-motion video made from innards of old cameras.

Sherman Alexie short story: War Dances.

Not Always Right: the rain in Portland.

The health care reform debate was raging this summer. Now it is sadly another corporate entitlement. Then, I said:

The money that could be spent on health care to cover everybody is hardly anything compared to the money that has been spent on war for the past 8 years. If we can spend that kind of money on destruction, we can spend that kind of money on health, and what we get back will not be rubble and blood, but able human beings who can participate positively in our communities and our economy.

I still haven't seen the movie. Sure, I will eventually. But meanwhile I hope to get around to reading the blog that inspired Julie/Julia.

Snow leopard!

Another FB List: 15 books, 15 minutes

I don't know who John Wilmot is, but I included his note because the books I list also may not necessarily be favorites. I am going to stick with 15 in 15 though. But no tagging...consider yourself tagged if you want to be. Ready, begin...

Copied from Choten: >>>Yay. Another list. Here's the concept:

"Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me. If you don't want to play, no sweat."

And, copied from John Wilmot: "I just wrote as many books as I could think of in fifteen minutes that were enjoyable, memorable, or influential for me. (And of course, I've thought of several more already that would have been better additions to the list.) They're not all favorites, and they're certainly not all great, but they've stuck with me for some reason. In the unlikely event that you wonder why, we could discuss it over a drink some time."<<<

1. The Bible (The B - I - B - L - E ....yes that's the book for me. I stand all along on the word of god, the B - I - B - L - E...)
   
2. Heidi (duh)
3. Folk and Fairy Tales (part of a set in our attic when I was a kid, don't remember what that set was called, but there were two or three volumes I read over and over when I was out of other books to read. Another was Myths and Legends, another about famous explorers, etc. and that may not be the exact title, sorry)
4. Zen Mind Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
5. Being Peace
   by Thich Nhat Hanh
6. The Odyssey
7. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
8. The Golden Compass (the whole Dark Materials series, actually)
9. The Scarlet Letter
10. A Midsummer Night's Dream
11. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
12. Moby Dick
13. Huckleberry Finn
14. Zen Roots by Kyogen Carlson
    
15. Their Eyes Were Watching God
    
    

Yes or No Share (one of those FB things)

yes or no Share

You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages or comments you and asks. -- and believe me, the temptation to explain some of these will be overwhelming nothing is exactly as it seems. [I cheated though...by ADDING a yes or no or two that I thought SHOULD be there.]

Now, here's what you're supposed to do. . . Copy and paste this into your notes, delete my answers, type in your answers and tag as many of your friends as you'd like to.

------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
Kissed any one of your Facebook friends?--- yes
Been arrested? --- no
Kissed someone you didn't like? --- no
Slept in until 5 PM? --- no
Fallen asleep at work/school? --- yes
Been awake longer than 24 hrs? --- yes
Held a snake? --- yes
Ran a red light? --- yes
Been suspended from school? --- no
Experienced love at first sight? --- yes
Totaled your car in an accident? --- no
Been fired from a job? --- yes
Fired somebody? --- no
Sang karaoke? --- no
Pointed a gun at someone? --- no
Had a gun pointed at you? --- yes
Done something you told yourself you wouldn't? --- yes
Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? --- no
Caught a snowflake on your tongue? --- yes
Kissed in the rain? --- no
Had a close brush with death (your own)? --- yes
Seen someone die? --- yes
Played spin-the-bottle? --- yes
Sung in the shower? --- yes
Smoked a cigar? --- yes
Sat on a rooftop? --- yes
Smuggled something into another country? --- no
Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes? --- no
Broken a bone? --- no
Skipped school? --- yes
Eaten a bug? --- no
Sleepwalked? --- no
Walked a moonlit beach? --- yes
Rode a motorcycle? --- yes
Dumped someone? --- yes
Forgotten your anniversary? --- yes
Lied to avoid a ticket? --- no
Ridden on a helicopter? ---no
Shaved your head? --- no
Blacked out from drinking? --- yes
Played a prank on someone? --- yes
Hit a home run? -- no
Felt like killing someone? --- no
Cross-dressed? --- no
Been falling-down drunk? --- yes
Made your girlfriend/boyfriend cry? --- yes
Eaten snake? --- no
Marched/Protested? --- yes
Had Mexican jumping beans for pets? --- no
Puked on amusement ride? --- no
Seriously & intentionally boycotted something? --- yes
Been in a band? --- no
Knitted? --- no
Crocheted? --- yes
Been on TV? ---yes
Shot a gun? --- yes
Skinny-dipped? --- yes
Given someone stitches? --- no
Eaten a whole habanero pepper? --- no
Ridden a surfboard? --- no
Drank straight from a liquor bottle? --- yes
Had surgery? --- no
Streaked? --- no
Been naked in front of strangers? --- yes
Taken by ambulance to hospital? --- no
Passed out when drinking? --- no
Peed on a bush? --- no
Peed in the bush? --- yes
Donated Blood? --- yes
Grabbed electric fence? --- no
Eaten alligator meat? --- no
Eaten cheesecake? --- yes
Eaten your kids' Halloween candy? --- no
Been on a meditation retreat? --- yes
Killed an animal when not hunting? --- no
Peed your pants in public? --- no
Snuck into a movie without paying? --- no
Written graffiti? --- yes
Think about the future? --- yes
Been in handcuffs? --- no
Believe in love? --- yes
Jumped off a bridge? --- yes

Month in Review

• I went to see The Importance of Being Earnest with my homie. Theater is so much better than the movie, once you're used to the theater. Come to think of it, I am thinking of seeing Frost/Nixon. All that fits in my schedule is this Thursday or next Thursday...anybody interested in joining me? Even more so, I want to see Crazy Enough. Do I really want to see the first? If I don't, several people could join me for the second.
  
• I've started following a website in blog format called Neuroanthropology....absolutely completely my kinda thing. I've found there such gems as Buddha's Brain.
• March 20 my status said: I just said over the fence, "Hey neighbor. You need to get a handle on your anger. Let it be." He was yelling at his wife/partner. He stopped yelling. Five friends liked it. What I liked was the way my friends' responses were such a perfect reflection of what they know of me, and who they are. What I couldn't say, because Facebook didn't allow that many words, was that I hovered there for a bit, wondering if I should say anything. A woman walking her dog had also paused, noticed me, and came up the driveway to confer. That decided me. I didn't think it merited a 911 call, but he was worrying people. Within a few days, first one, and then the other, moved out, and I think it may be that a new owner simply had given them notice. The overheard yelling did have something to do with moving.
• <-- A sample from a set of photos I uploaded to flickr. See the rest here.
• March 22, talked to friends about my secret facebook project. I completed it at 3 am, April 22. If you want to take my Which Bodhisattva are you? quiz, you gotta get on FB. Or wait the month it'll probably take me to get it online at some other quiz place. I figure it took me about 15 hours to review information, take notes, create a grid of categories the questions would address, create the questions, and then the answers. At some point, I may upload the grid of questions and answers.
  
• This is good to know if you ever have to go to the hospital.
• March 27: I did my first storytime. I hadn't yet been evaluated, but my library branch needed me. I did my storytime for evaluation on April 6, which went as well as I have the ability to do. I think I passed, but I don't know for sure. As far as I know, nobody from the classes knows their final outcome.
• My Zen center experienced a very important moment in its history: a beloved Lay Teacher receiving dispensation to have students. The next week, her first two students were given lay disciple ordination. This is a first for us. I'm still not so sure how I feel about the "separate but equal" lines...monk/priest and lay lineages. Here's a hint.
• Of course, yay Iowa and Vermont!
• I watched a heart-opening documentary on Ansel Adams from the PBS series American Experience. There is dharma there. I'm saving it to watch again. Quote below.
• Facebook's monthly electricity bill is over $1,000,000, but then there are over 200,000,000 unique users.
• Here's something to respond with anytime someone attempts to derail a witnessing or naming of oppressive phenomena.
• New things so bad they're good: Keebler's Chocolate Malt Chunk Chips Deluxe cookies
• Tigger and friends!
• April 18: a poem:
  

  Extra smiles.
  Long gazes.
  It feels like all are flirting with me.
  Oh! We're tripping on that spring
  sunshine rush that feels like a
  glimpse of love.
  I shouldn't take it personally.
  ...Damn!

• New light rail getting put through its paces (photo) yay, Trimet! This will be the 4th light rail line.
  
• Great interview on Alternet with the author of the first book on Polyamory that I read, The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures Probably not-so-great comments. I haven't read them yet.

For the first time, I know what love is, what friends are, and what art should be. Love is a seeking for a way of life, the way that cannot be followed alone, the resonance of all spiritual and physical things. Friendship is another form of love, more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting, and acceptances of things, like thunderclouds, and grass, and the clean granite of reality. Art is both love and friendship and understanding, the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things; it is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit, it is a re-... Read Morecreation on another plane of the realities of the world, the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these. ~Ansel Adams

Making the Rounds: My 3 or 4 things

As I mentioned, this 3 or 4 things thing has been making the rounds.

If I tagged you I hope you find this amusing; My rule is, I don't like to tag. So, if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged; please come play if you want to. Make up your own rules if you do play -I did.
Create a new note, copy and paste this message, delete my answers and type in your answers. Then tag a few good friends and family including the person who tagged you.

FOUR NAMES I GO BY
1. Heidi
2. Enji
3. Hoogie
4. *this one's between me and my sweetie and maybe a few vips*

THREE JOBS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE
1. convenience store clerk
2. cashier for an apple orchard for their concession trailer that went to fairs and festivals
3. home care companion

THREE PLACES I HAVE LIVED
1. Laughlin, Nevada
2. Lake Burton, Georgia
3. Plymouth, Wisconsin
4. Santa Fe, New Mexico
5. Portland, Oregon

FOUR MOVIES I LIKED
1. Bagdad Cafe
2. Raising Arizona
3. Nightmare Before Christmas
4. Across the Universe

FOUR PLACES I HAVE BEEN
1. Avenue of the Giants
2. Neahkanie Beach
3. The Met
4. Grand Canyon

THREE PLACES I WANT TO GO
1. Sequoia National Park to see General Sherman
2. Canada
3. Ellis Island
4. Yellowstone National Park

THREE OF MY FAVORITE FOODS
1. dark chocolate from semi-sweet to bitter, but not something like Hersheys
2. blueberries...but not with chocolate
3. romanesco

THREE THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO
1. my bi-weekly massage by Leah
2. world peace
3. meeting someone new to me

THREE PETS THAT I HAVE OWNED HAVE OWNED ME
1. Schroeder the cat
2. Jig the cat
3. Godzilla the turtle
(the bunny owned Jimmy)

THREE THINGS I'M SCARED OF
1. shunning
2. uncontrolled rage in my presence
3. death before I'm done

THREE THINGS I'M NOT SCARED OF
1. nakedness
2. conflict
3. making mistakes

THREE FAVORITE SONGS/SINGERS/BANDS
1. The Mandala Song by Kakumyo Lowe, piggybacked on Weezer's Sweater Song
2. Sit Up Straight by Kakumyo Lowe, piggybacked on Lean on Me
3. You Are My Sunshine (sung by me and my Mom when I was a little girl)

FOUR FAVORITE VEHICLES
1. Mayahana (borrowed from Lisa Mann, but I like to think I would have thought of it on my own)
2. the written word
3. public transit bus
4. train

THREE FAVORITE DRINKS
1. sugar free A&W root beer
2. water
3. good coffee and half-and-half

THREE FAVORITE OPERAS/MUSICALS/THEATER
1. One: The Musical (local, deserves Broadway)
2. Wicked
3. Ragtime
4. Hairspray

THREE THINGS I DON"T WANT TO DO AGAIN
1. work full-time
2. live in Wisconsin
3. monogamy

FOUR THINGS I WANT TO DO WITH YOU
1. just sit
2. share a meal and conversation
3. go to a museum or some other cultural thing
4. hugs and maybe kisses too

Making the Rounds: 25 Things

Those tagging things are making the rounds of Facebook...the kinds of things that have been on blogs for years. Like the 25 things...it made the New York Times. But wasn't it a coupla years back that bloggers were listing 100 things? So not only are people recycling memes, they're downsizing them? I think it's telling that more and more the old school media is looking to the new media for news, even NYT. I have no problem with recycling. I am just a little bothered that it's treated as if it were new. Now I'm so behind. I haven't done my 25 things...that is so 2 months ago...and now there's the lists of 3 or 4 things in response to certain questions...and that's already so 2 weeks ago. Good thing I don't try to follow trends.

This is why I don't usually blog about current events. By the time I get to that stuff, the topic is dead, cremated, and buried.

So, here I go. I'm cheating...writing from my blog, which ends up being a note in Facebook. I did begin the 25 things in Facebook when I was only 2 weeks behind, but a quirky computer thing happened and bumped me off the web page, and all was lost. You know, that magic invisible button on the laptop that closes your browser when you rest your palm there? I'm now using my desktop, and blogger automatically saves, so this won't happen again. I went to bed, and never got back to it. Hopefully it won't take me another 2 months to get to the 3 or 4 things lists.

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you. [I'm not going to tag anybody new...they've probably already been tagged, and I don't like to tag people.]

1. This list was rattling around in my head for weeks. I had at least 50 witty one-liners about me. They're all gone now. The only one I remember is my sincere worry that this isn't really random, but some FB Rorschach test that will reveal things even I don't know about myself.
2. I carry my camera everywhere. It's small enough to fit in my small purse.
3. I was about to say my first pet's name, but then I remembered hackers mine blogs for this kind of info. Maybe I shouldn't do these 25 things. Arrgh, the Rorschach thing again.
4. I like Badtz Maru. Choco Cat will do, because Bad Penguin is hard to find sometimes.
5. I refer to my husband as my sweetie out of respect for his other sweetie, and because there are people who are not allowed to marry. Plus it's just a better word, and better than SO or Significant Other, or partner, or boyfriend.
6. We briefly considered not getting married, but the equivalent legal paperwork involved in getting the same sort of rights was too daunting.
7. Damn. That wasn't random. You see how 5 followed 6. Among my plans for the 25 things was the thought that I could create them in Word or Excel, then randomize them somehow.
8. We got married in a favorite restaurant. No ceremony, just the signing of the paper, friends to witness, and a friend to officiate. Of course there was cake and champagne. It was perfect.
9. I was the first person in my family to go to college.
10. I will often tell people I Escaped Wisconsin. This is a joke that hardly anyone will get because I'm referring to a Wisconsin ad campaign from the 80s, or was it the 70s, "Escape to Wisconsin". So I often will also tell them why I said that.
11. The longest chosen relationship in my life is with my Zen teacher.
12. Buddhism has been my salvation. You probably already knew that, but I had to say it anyway.
13. In high school, I did a research paper on werewolves, not in an exploring the myths kind of way, but in an effort to find evidence kind of way. How embarrassing.
14. My sweetie is often frustrated by my inability at times to answer a question directly. I respond with the reason why the answer is yes, or no, and I think I am responding directly to the question. I also often don't finish sentences. I think this is a Wisconsin thing, as I noticed it among my relatives when I visited last. Some things you can't change.
    
15. I learned to swim in Lake Ellen, near Cascade, Wisconsin when I was 4 or 5 years old.
16. I almost drowned soon after I learned to float. This happened in my neighbor's pond, where us kids congregated, and it happened because I floated further than I thought I would. My older brother saved me. As I was jumping from the bottom, trying to reach the surface, I had a vision of the crayfish snapping at my toes, and this scared me. The neighbor whose pond it was said he thought he had frogs in his pond, and it was me! I thought he was joking and was miffed that he could joke about my almost drowning.
    
17. Years ago at Sunday lunch I would fantasize with my friends about having a planned community. If I won the lottery, I would buy a whole apartment building, convert some apartments to shared space, and people could share meals together, and building chores. My sweeties have always been more private than communal living allows for.
18. I still have Sunday lunch with my homies. At least 15 years now.
    
19. I truly fell in love the first time when I was 30. Before that, I had loved, but not with this kind of surrender. Before that, I wasn't capable of it.
20. I didn't call my mom on her birthday in January. I still haven't called her. I feel bad about that.
21. I have only been able to lose weight twice in my life. The first time, starvation diet of 200-800 calories a day and aerobics. The second time, I wasn't trying to lose weight, but I just kind of didn't feel like eating, so again it was probably 200-800 calories a day, and a lot of walking. Years of calorie counting did not help me lose weight.
    
22. I have used a buckwheat husk-filled pillow for almost 20 years. There is no better pillow.
    
23. Even if I were poor again, I would still have to make sure I bought good shoes. Cheap shoes would cripple me, and in my experience would wear out so often they would end up being just as expensive as the Eccos that I wear.
24. Once upon a time I meditated pretty much every day. Now I meditate sometimes. I haven't lost touch with that samadhi though.
25. When I was young, I was mystified at the thought of living in the city. I thought I would always live in the country. I love living in Portland, and now I can't imagine living in the country.
    

Catching Up

Those who are not on Facebook but read me here wouldn't know why the silence, but may have guessed. Yes, my cat Jig died. I didn't feel ready to write about it at first, then I felt like that was the first thing I should write about, and then not writing became a habit. That's often been a pattern of procrastination for me....because I don't feel like doing the thing I think I should do first, I don't do any of it.

The first night after the first visit to the vet, I had a dream. I kept it to myself for a long time. There was a creature after Jig, and I was trying to save her from it. It was spiky-faced and black with a big wide mouth and sharp fangs. I was only somewhat succeeding in keeping it at bay when I woke up. I didn't know if it got to her or not. I tried to do that waking thing where I complete the story of the dream the way I want it to be, but that doesn't work. I knew this wasn't good. Throughout my life, I have rarely dreamt about those who are closest to me. It is only when they have died, or have left me, or about to die or leave me, that I dream about those that are as much a part of me as my own blood. I guess those I've shared oxytocin with. I didn't want to give the dream any more power than it already had in my head.

A few days after that dream, I realized that creature was like an animal version of Lord Yama. This is, believe it or not, another reason I kept it to myself. I didn't want to spark conversations on the cosmology of Buddhism, and how I feel about it, which is 'I don't know.' or 'both-and.' Or quite likely, 'it's all in our heads, but what does that mean if we are all interconnected?' It was kind of like this graffiti dragon that showed up a week or so later. At the very least, I knew my subconscious was telling me how serious this was with Jig.

On February 15th, Jig didn't come out all day. When I went to find her to feed her, she was hiding deep under a piece of furniture. She was gasping for breath. She didn't want to come out. I knew she was trying to die, and trying to do this alone. Again this was a Sunday evening, and again we took her to the emergency pet hospital. The doc thought she was likely experiencing heart failure, that when muscles waste away from weight loss, this sometimes damages the heart too. Jig seemed to be desperately asking us to make the pain stop, to let her be so she could stop. She seemed to be all bone, skin, fur, and pointy tips. While the doc gave us the option of more tests, etc, we decided to let her go. Steve said, "You're a good cat, Jig," which made me cry all the more.

I realized she looked a bit like the creature from my dream. In some way I couldn't shake the feeling that Jig had shared my dream, that she had made this decision over a month before, and we'd only been delaying something that had already occurred. After she was gone, I noticed a change in myself. My legs worked better. Sometimes I felt like my circulation was poor, and I had difficulty standing. Now my legs felt fine. While I was grieving, I felt less depressed and more able to do things. These past few years, Jig and I have had quite an empathetic connection, and it occurred to me perhaps I'd been experiencing a physiological empathetic reaction to her weakness and her sadness. It wouldn't be the first time I've done something like that. Now that she's gone, I'm learning just how much she defined me. I still have the thought when I come home, "Soon I'll see Jig." Sometimes it's that verbal, sometimes it's an image or a feeling of her about to be on my lap. I still have the habit of peeking behind the bathroom door before I go in there to make sure I don't startle her if she's in the litter box.

Now that she's absent, I've realized just how much less of a barrier it is between my identity and an animal friend's, than it is between me and another human. We can be more physically close, lap-sitting for hours. I can pet her whole body in one motion. Most of our language is non-verbal. There is less of a sense of separateness, whereas with a human, even a lover, there's almost always an awareness that our thoughts are separate, that we are separate selves. So while I grieve for a lost love, I also grieve for a lost piece of myself. The part of me that was me-and-Jig can no longer be what she was.

How did I get to be 41 and not experience this, you ask? Jig was the first animal that lived this long with me. As a child, many of our cats didn't live very long, being outdoor animals in a rural area. Our dogs, too, were outdoor animals, and while there was some of that intimacy of snuggling together on the floor, I didn't get so close as I did with Jig. And, well, I've learned to love more deeply in the decade I've known Jig. Indeed I believe she taught me I could love an animal with all my heart. She taught me to see the Buddha in her.

You're a good cat, Jig. I miss you.

Thanks On Thursday: Blog Anniversary

Five years ago today I began writing this blog. My intention was to keep focused on the interesting bits of my life, and not get bogged down with petty details of life that are of no interest to others. I wanted to use it as a platform to explain myself, to show how it is not contradictory to be a Buddhist and a moral person, and to be non-monogamous.

I've loosened up my expectations of myself, using it for these things, but also as a way to remember myself, and to remember what I've done, what I've read, what I've imbibed in entertainment. In that way it has become closer to a journal I suppose, but I still write hoping to keep it interesting to someone else. This technology has even introduced me to a different way to read a book, slowly while blogging with others, so that even the reading voice in my head has changed.

This week I highlight my gratitude for this technology. Email, web, and social networking platforms have allowed me to express myself and to discover some people find my thoughts valuable and wise. This technology has also allowed me and others to make connections to organize in easy streamlined ways. I couldn't take care of a local chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship so easily, nor have taken the lead on 5 years of putting together a local Buddhist Festival without this technology. All this would have moved along much more slowly, and perhaps would have fizzled. I couldn't even have rented the other side of our duplex so easily without this technology.

In the 5 years since I began, I have seen polyamory become more known to the mainstream. I think it was able to coalesce as a movement more quickly than similar ones in the past because of this technology. The wisdom of the masses could filtrate more quickly thanks to the ease of connection. The recognition of similar experiences also rose to the surface more quickly thanks to the ease of communication. Because we are not limited by geography, when we are radically different from the public face we aren't so lonely because we find others like us through this technology.

In this five years I've also learned that this blogging thing isn't just a platform to spew myself out there for others to find. It is an expansion of community, and works well when I as a writer recognize it as a dialog, not a monolog. It works well when I recognize the currency of this sphere is that of gifts. Not only do I give intimate pieces of myself for the view of others, if I give my attention to other bloggers with links and comments, they are more likely to give back to me. That is another thing about this technology that I am grateful for: the rediscovery of the currency of gifts.

The Big Read IV: Shirley Jackson's "Like Mother Used to Make" and "Trial by Combat"

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson




Like Mother Used to Make

"How much is butter?" David asked cautiously.
"Eighty-nine," the clerk said easily.
"Eighty-nine?" David frowned.
"That's what it is," the clerk said. He looked past David at the next customer.
"Quarter of a pound, please," David said. "And a half-dozen rolls."
Carrying his package home he thought, I really ought not to trade there any more; you'd think they'd know me well enough to be more courteous.

I don't think I'm going to like this guy at this point. As someone who provides customer service, I have no sympathy for someone who expects to be singled out of the crowd at a busy counter.

He proceeds to make dinner, lingering over his self-designed apartment, his painstakingly collected silverware. His neighbor Marcia is invited to dinner. He has her key, but she does not have his, and he likes it that way. Curious.

He leaves a note in her apartment to remind her. Her place is more like mine, with papers scattered, furniture that doesn't quite fit, dirty laundry, randomness. He would not like me.

Yet he does appear to like Marcia. He takes great care to make dinner for her. She breezes in and her liveliness spreads about in the room. He avoids her sprawled feet, but is pleased over her compliments of his food, and of his space. She is slightly abashed over the state of her own apartment, but easily moves on.

Mr. Harris arrives from her workplace, and she offers him coffee and pie, smoothly letting Mr. Harris believe it is her apartment, and her pie.

David's desire to be rid of Mr. Harris had slid imperceptibly into an urgency to be rid of them both; his clean house, his nice silver, were not meant as vehicles for the kind of fatuous banter Marcia and Mr. Harris were playing at together; almost roughly he took the coffee cup away from the arm Marcia stretched across the table, took it out to the kitchenette and came back and put his hand on Mr. Harris' cup.

Marcia pretends she'll do the dishes. Of course David couldn't abide her housekeeping methods: he washes them and put them in their places. The date and the usurper settled in. David backs away from telling him to live, backs away from claiming his home, prepares to leave.

"Lots of work to do," David said, much more genially than he intended, and Marcia smiled at him again as though they were conspirators and went over to the desk and said, "Don't forget your key."

He settles into Marcia's apartment, which makes him miserable, and because it is his nature, begins to clean it up.

Now I feel sorry for him, and now I have to wonder about those folks that create passive aggressive power plays with mere clerks. I wonder how long this pattern with Marcia has been going on. I think poor David missed his chance to claim his birthright.

Trial by Combat

When Emily Johnson came home one evening to her furnished room and found three of her best handkerchiefs missing from the dresser drawer, she was sure who had taken them and what to do.

I am immediately reminded of my first months at college. My roommate was the daughter of a doctor and from California. LA? We seemed to get along alright. She began the year with a fresh-faced purity, but she soon became more worldly and more fully a social butterfly. We both dabbled with smoking of both kinds. One of our first decisions together was to buy some cheap weed. It was harsh cheap stuff. (That's probably the only time in my life I personally bought some.) To support my dabbling, and indulge my pack rat attraction for shiny things, I bought a pack of 5 or 6 lighters. After a week or so, several of them were missing. At that time, I still wore makeup, sometimes. I could only wear hypoallergenic foundation, not all that expensive, but expensive to my wallet. That too disappeared.

I discovered the missing makeup as my ever more absent roommate happened to return home, and I loudly accused her of taking my things. She denied it. Who else could it have been? She insisted I had to be mistaken. No mistake. I was too poor not to know exactly what and how much I owned. Maybe as the daughter of a doctor she couldn't know that. She moved in with someone else. If I remember correctly, I heard of more incidents, that she ran up a tab on someone else's credit card. More emotional problems surfaced. She didn't last the year.

I didn't reflect on what to do. I found a problem, and I immediately addressed it. It took me years to find out such direct confrontation is just not allowed in certain cultures.

Emily Johnson thought carefully about how to deal with her petty thief. It would never occur to me to pretend to seek advice from the very person suspected. Now, years later, I've received the same kind of advice: for example, raise a work issue as though I don't know the answer, but just question, "How could that happen?"

She establishes a friendly connection, chatting about her neighbor's husband, her flowers. She learns to keep cut flowers fresh with aspirin. Now that, I did know. My grandma taught me that. She gets to the real reason for her visit.

... "It's so slight, she said, "but someone has been coming into my room."
Mrs. Allen looked up.
"I've been missing things," Emily went on, "like handkerchiefs and little inexpensive jewelry. Nothing important." ...
"I'm sorry to hear it," Mrs. Allen said.
"You see, I don't like to make trouble," Emily said.

Mrs. Allen informs her all the keys open all the doors in the house. How brazen. So was my roommate. It confused me that she seemed to think I could be mollified by a denial. More items are missing. How funny: cigarettes. You know, my memory is faulty after all these years, but a pack of cigarettes may also have been missing in my room too. Emily decides to fight fire with fire.

She was thinking, I just want to pretend it's my own room, so that if anyone comes I can say I was mistaken about the floor. ...Emily...pulled up the shade. Now that the room was light, she looked around. She had a sudden sense of unbearable intimacy with Mrs. Allen, and thought, This is the way she must feel in my room.

Emily finds her handkerchiefs. She is interrupted by Mrs. Allen. "She felt herself blushing and her hands were trembling." This is interesting. Intimacy. Violation. Blushing. Like David in the previous story, she is about to confront, but backs down. She pretends a headache, and that she was looking for aspirin.

"I'm so sorry," Mrs. Allen said. "But I'm glad you felt you knew me well enough."

Leila says Mrs. Allen wins. I'm not quite sure about that. Does someone win? Is there more like an uneasy understanding? A mutual recognition of intimacy through surreptitious occupation of each other's space? Now there's a thought...in these stories, the home is a reflection or extension of the person living there. Lacking other intimacies, these people gain some closeness to other humans through invasion of their space. When Emily glimpses the sexiness of that invasion, in a way she really has come to know Mrs. Allen well enough. It's hard to say. The story is deliberately short. We don't know where it goes from there. Could they develop a pattern like Marcia and Davie? Jackson seems to be hinting at the intimacy that comes from living close to others that is not spoken of. Is it then as sad as it seems to be, with David ousted from his apartment, Emily losing her unimportant things?