Good things can be easy?… at Whiskey Creek it seems possible

“In real life, good things are allowed to be easy.”

–from today’s Modern Love essay in the NYT, by Coco Mellors.

The statement sounds false. Too simple. Too nicey-nice. But what if it were true?

The past four days at Whiskey Creek on the north side of the Olympic Peninsula, living in a small cabin located right above a rocky beach overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca, makes me think maybe that it could be true. In the media-saturated daily bad-news barrage that usually assaults us, we may neglect to realize that good things exist, and that the tides, waves, and currents which look so scary from shore, are doing nothing but rise and fall and wash along as they should. They pose no threat to us. That seaweed knows exactly what to do: it looks relaxed as its arms lazily stream this way then that… just floating, not flailing, just being not doing anything in particular.

And life moves along as it will. The kelp beds whose arms bob along the water’s surface are doing just fine. The driftwood bobs along fine too, until it bumps into the sand, rolls ashore, and becomes a hiding place for chipmunks and shore birds, sand fleas and other tiny creatures. Or rolls back into the surf with a big wave’s impact.

Nor do the herons suffer from the water’s ever-changing movements. They merely tiptoe their way on top of the kelp, like elegant green-footed ballerinas.

Life doesn’t have to be scary and stressful and alarming all the time.

Listen to the wind, the sky, and the voices of all those creatures who are with us here, day in day out. Hang out with them for a while, even if you have to concentrate to grasp their tunes, above the sirens, leaf-blowers, or TVs of our fellow humans muddling along in misery. They don’t own us.

Just ride the tides for a while. Good things do exist. And they are allowed to be easy.

Thank you Coco Mellors, and Whiskey Creek, for the reminder.

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day 60, listening to the sea, not the usual

Today’s morning walk took me back down the mountain to the sea. More precisely, from the tip of West Seattle to the point where Puget Sound enters Elliott Bay, at Duwamish Head. Walking along Alki Beach, I realized I had forgotten how much I love that place and how wonderful it smells, sounds, and feels. (If you wonder why we don’t go there every day, check out this view of the hill from down below, on the way back up.)

While walking by the water, I was swept up in a deep feeling of peace, the waves’ calm rhythm reminding me of some long ago lullaby. We can’t spend all our time gazing at the sea, but we can listen to it more than we do.  For now, I’m listening to this ad-free ocean soundtrack, instead of the usual stuff. Or maybe I’ll turn it off too and listen to “nothing.” (Which is never really nothing; there is always birdsong, car noises, people talking now and then, far-off trains and sirens.)

Let’s give our ears a break, and our minds a rest. All that bad stuff will still be there when we tune back in.

See you on the other side of tonight,

 

Fyi: yesterday’s face mask production:

 

if you want to live a life you’ve never lived…

“if you want to live a life you’ve never lived, you have to do things you’ve never done,” say the wise in every tradition. Whether it’s applied to education, or business, or moving to a new place, change is all around us.

Change is us.

The sooner we realize that, the sooner we will get out and do stuff. And dare to laugh and allow our imperfections and just-beginning steps to be seen, because life is not so serious after all!

I am happy to say that I did something new today: I attended a free workshop on marketing, sponsored by the Seattle Small Business Development Center. The drive was very cool: first, instead of going up and over the West Seattle bridge to I-5, you go under the West Seattle Bridge and bump over a bunch of railroad tracks, vying for position with massive trucks hauling containers newly unloaded from the ships that arrive in Pier 5, of the Port of Seattle. The landscape reminds me of an Ayn Rand novel, such as the opening scene in Atlas Shrugged, which rolls into Philadelphia on a freight train. With the old steel mill on one side, and the huge salt-water port on the other, it’s a bustling, massive hive of people at work, operating machinery, building, and shipping.

“The thing that came next did not look like a building, but like a shell of checkered glass enclosing girders, cranes and trusses in a solid, blinding, orange spread of flame.

The passengers could not grasp the complexity of what seemed to be a city stretched for miles, active without sign of human presence. They saw towers like contorted skyscrapers, bridges hanging in mid-air, and sudden wounds spurting fire from out of solid walls. They saw a line of glowing cylinders moving through the night; the cylinders were red-hot metal.” (Atlas Shrugged, 27)

I find this part of town fascinating. To the east and south of here, is the place where railroads and airports converge to move goods from the West Coast to “east of the mountains,” which around here could mean Moses Lake or NYC! Costco and Starbucks have headquarters just to the north. People might find its grey cement pillars and its towering metal containers to be dreary and drab, or the atmosphere intimidating, but I find the whole scene very exciting. There’s so much action!

Anyway, you go through all that industrial area along the Duwamish River to the south, and eventually (if you stay to the left instead of following 1st Ave S. to the right, like I did on my first try) you end up on Route 509 going to Tukwila.  It is a pleasant corporate campus, the Seattle Small Business Development Center. Even though I got a little off track, I still arrived on time and my heart did not start beating too hard, nor did I swear, hate myself, or start sweating.

I only got the slightest bit alarmed. Breathe in, breathe out. (The same thing I’ve done in other stressful situations lately, such as going to funeral mass for my mother-in-law, watching someone get mad, and waiting for the plane in a crowded airport).

Anyway, once I got there I feared the worst, especially when I saw that we’d all been given little booklets courtesy of Facebook. (I am not on Facebook. It seems to bother everybody, for which I always seem to feel the need to apologize. Sorry!)

The happy news to report, however, is that the free workshop on marketing was excellent and I learned a lot. The teacher was engaging and fun, hats off to Jenefeness Tucker, MBA! The people were interesting to meet, bright, enthusiastic, and engaged: we all wanted to be there and we all had something we were trying to figure out. We shared thoughts from our lives, which vary widely. Among the group was a designer of  hijabs, kimonos and other modest fashions; a creator of wedding floral arrangements; two real estate agents; two people who work with realtors by staging homes for sale; an artist who has an original board game; and a business consultant. I was there representing Honey Girl Books and Gifts, as creator of “heirlooms that soothe the spirit”: children’s books, pillows, and quilts.

Which I now realize targets a clientele of educated people, likely women, parents or relatives of children age 8 to 25. She is a little worried about being saturated by cellphones (and likes the cellphone pockets in the pillow backs). She appreciates authentic craftsmanship. She wants to live in a stylish, hand-designed home and create her own family history and traditions. This I offer through quirky quilts and pillows that tell stories or pass along literary and philosophical allusions in color, prints, and varied textures.

The children’s books appeal to people who want their children to discover little-known discoveries from award-winning scholars, illustrated with original artwork. Just good parents, basically, but open to non-Hollywood stories that are produced by real people, not ghost writers and starlets. We are scholar-writers working with young artist-illustrators. (Although if somebody in Hollywood wanted to option The Frankenstein of the Apple Crate, I think illustrator Karen Neis and I’d be open to that!)

Thinking over this workshop and the other things I’ve done since arriving here July 2, I realize that the anxiety dogging my steps over the past couple months is quite reasonable. I’m doing things I’ve never done before, with different kinds of people in new places, trying to create a new business from scratch. At the same time as I’m embracing capitalism and selling stuff, attending events sponsored by the chamber of commerce, for example, and becoming curious about salesmanship, my spiritual and philosophical studies have been focused on Zen, the art of abandoning material achievement: the letting-go of ego and attachment that go with T’ai chi. These lessons are constant and make my mind feel at home, thanks to the time I spend daily on meditation, weekly Qigong class, and the arduous, three-times weekly, 90-minute classes of T’ai chi at the Seattle Kung Fu Club.

No wonder I stress out sometimes. These activities are attached to philosophies that actively oppose each other (competition versus acceptance and action versus stillness). It’s confusing! But doing Tai chi in Chinatown, sewing new things in my studio, and creating a storybook with the kids at the library: those things are simple and clear, just joy.

I remain convinced that one can start and run a small business successfully without joining Facebook, exploiting people, or thinking about money all the time. I am convinced that you can make artworks that speak to people and spread good feelings and curiosity through color, cloth and paper.

It’s a ton of work but it is way more fun than academia because of the speed, and because of the freedom to express your imagination as you wish. In academia, you sit around and talk and have ideas and meet with other people and write reports and then, gradually ever so slowly after months and oftentimes years of deliberation, a change is made. In business, you can have an idea, go get the materials to make it, create it, market it, and sell it in one week or less! And your audience is virtually infinite, you just have to figure out who they are and connect.

So that’s making my life fun. I hope you are taking steps to embrace change and make your life fun too!

And let go of ego at the same time, realizing that it is all fiction.

Just breathe.

Are you confused yet?

Good! Then we’re all beginning together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels.com

Photo by Lum3n.com on Pexels.com

 

The incredible lightness of inefficiency!

The Happiness of the Fish by Chiang Yee

While emptying an attic closet yesterday—the same one where we found our dead cat Iris back in March—I discovered another box of books on Chinese philosophy, culture, and art that my husband acquired over the years. He has drifted away from the study, but I now find such stuff mesmerizing! It helps explain the pull, influence, and joy I’ve discovered in T’ai chi and good health.

Now that there are only 26 more days until we leave, life seems very peaceful. You may think we are working round the clock to get ready. Wrong! We do whatever we want.

My morning routine is sacred, of course, then I spend a few hours packing, then a few hours sewing, an hour with Honey Girl in our evening walk, a couple hours watching a  favorite series (right now it’s Babylon Berlin, after we watched all of the wonderful How to Get Away with Murder).  Later at night, I enjoy reading the poetry of Yuan Chi, philosophy by Gaston Bachelard and Joseph Campbell, Gish Jen’s Girl at the Baggage Claim, and Subhadramati’s Not About Being Good, among other books. Piles of books line the rooms. That does not bother us a bit. They’re like friends, ready to offer an encouraging thought or insight, as we navigate this time of change.

Late at night, sometimes I just sit in the sunroom with a window ajar, listening to the night and gazing upon the tree-fringed dark sky. Terribly inefficient! Or terribly wise?

Yesterday was June first! So exciting to turn the page on our last month before the move! Yet instead of launching into a frenzy of work or anxiety about moving, I spent hours poring over Chinese Calligraphy by Chiang Yee (1938) and Change by Hellmut Wilhelm (1960). I love how Chinese philosophy makes no sense, at first, until it does…

Try this mental exercise. First consider the concepts of liveliness, constancy and change, in the quotes below (and the gorgeous image above). Then read the description of how energy manifests itself in T’ai chi practice at the bottom. If you are able to resist the urge to do T’ai chi after all that, I’d be surprised!  Is not T’ai chi an incredible gift to humankind?

 On Liveliness

In Chinese calligraphy, says Mr. Chiang, the main principle of composition is in every case a balance and poise similar to that of a figure standing, walking, dancing, or executing some other lively movement. [Lively movement as seen in The Happiness of the Fish, above, Plate XXI of Chinese Calligraphy.]

‘The beauty of Chinese calligraphy is essentially the beauty of plastic movement, not of designed and motionless shape.’

How such ‘lively movement’ is conveyed by a written character, or by a painting or a piece of sculpture or pottery, is a mystery that we cannot analyse—it is an instinctive coordination of the artist’s mental image and the muscular stroke with which he ‘expresses’ or ‘projects’ that image. It is, at any rate, a very personal faculty, achieved by continuous practice and meditation, by a discipline that is spiritual rather than physical.

-“Foreword” by Sir Herbert Read, in Chiang Yee, Chinese Calligraphy, viii.

On Constancy and Change

Change: that is the unchangeable.

The opposite of change is regression, not cessation of movement.  Change, then, is not simply movement as such, for its opposite is also movement. Change is natural movement rather, development that can only reverse itself by going against nature.

To recognize that man moves and acts, that he grows and develops, this is not deep insight, but to know that this movement and development … are governed by the law of change, from which there is no escape, this has fostered in early Chinese philosophy its gratifying integrity and lucidity.

Change is at work in the great as well as in the small … it can be read in cosmic happenings as well as in the hearts of men. The individual who is conscious of responsibility is on a par with the cosmic forces of heaven and earth.

Since every seed attains development in change, it must also be possible to introduce into its flow a seed planted by man. And since knowledge of the laws of change teaches the right way of planting such a seed, a highly effective influence becomes possible. … the closer to the time of planting, the stronger the influence. To recognize the moment of its germination is to become the master of the fate of the seed.

The Creative knows through the easy.

The Receptive can do things through the simple.

The stability of change is the counterpart of the human virtue of reliability. One can grasp it, hold on to it, count upon it.

To become aware of what is constant in the flux of nature and life is the first step in abstract thinking.  … Similarly the conception of constancy in change provides the first guarantee of meaningful action.

-Hellmut Wilhelm, Change, 17-23.

On T’ai chi, our daily way to feel calm in the face of death and change

Internal energy is much more powerful than muscle power. Muscle tension impedes the flow of internal energy. While a certain minimum of tension must be used in movement and in holding up the body, any further tension interferes with the greater power of chi.

When faced with a conflict, you know not to meet it head on. Never interfere with your partner’s momentum (whether physical or emotional); let it flow by you or rechannel it. The world you perceive is a reflection of your inner state.

The T’ai chi student begins to understand the role of cycles in nature. The biological feelings of your connection to the environment become stronger than your feeling of isolation. … By identifying with biological life, you become immortal.  … Death is no longer a threat; its force has been neutralized. As part of life, you will never die—only change.

-Bob Klein, Movements of Magic, 53-56.

Day Ten: the brewing storm

29 days to go and the skies are churning. A storm is coming to South Bend this afternoon, they say, and I am looking forward to it. A storm breaks the tension, gives us a common enemy, and may even accelerate other life-giving events. 27 years ago in July, some thunderbolts gathered over Tempe, AZ, and may have hastened the birth of my son. Or so they told me at the hospital, when I  arrived…

The storm at home is as prickly as the heat today. Why? No big reason but several small ones. My partner is manifesting some old habits of passive-aggressive hostility, now that he’s being forced into concrete action and decision-making after many years of retirement. Honey Girl pounced and killed a small ground hog yesterday on our walk. I have felt and voiced unkind thoughts toward a number of people, mostly elected officials but still…

What to do?

What is there ever to do?

Practice the Morning Routine. Refrain from harmful speech. Bury the little grey critter, if it is still there.

Rejoice in the rain when it arrives!

***

 

Storm image courtesy of http://blog.gpcom.com/tag/severe-weather/

On health (and pharmaceuticals), calm, and joy’s return (no matter what he says)

Hi,

Well, this has been another tiring week, with much grading of papers and intensive course preparation as we begin the final stretch to the end of spring semester. (Three more weeks of ND and 76 days til SEA!) More showings of the house and cleaning loom on the horizon. An annual check-up I was looking forward to, since I’m feeling so good these days, became a startling event when an unexpected symptom was brought to my attention. Inspired by the recent New York Times article on anti-depressants by Benedict Carey and Robert Gebeloff, and my own desire to “get back to normal,” I had already convinced my doctor to slash my prescriptions so that instead of taking three pills a night (two typical “women’s pills” and one anti-depressant), I take one-half of one anti-depressant. Now I’m on a strict diet also and who knows how “withdrawal” from those medications will go? Grading and prepping took all my time, so that I did not even do the morning routine yesterday. Friends I’ve spoken to have revealed more scary health events—kidney, back, and eye problems. (Old people problems! Yikes what does that mean?) And my right hip has been hurting for the past two days, plus my sinuses were acting up. I was feeling old, apprehensive, and blah.

Those were my thoughts before the morning routine.

As I settled in, I picked up a book I love and read a passage about “Being Calm—The Presence of Being.” I’ve pasted it below for you.

Gazing out the window of the sunroom, with my heels touching and feet at 90 degree angles, my back straight and spine crackling nicely back into place, I let go of all that busy thinking and just looked. The sky was blue with puffy white clouds. A few cars drove by; no radios were blasting and there were no train whistles or sirens in the air. But there was so much bird activity! I saw cardinals, robins, sparrows, and a crow.

A bright red male cardinal made my heart soar with his beautiful song, but when I tried to take his picture, he hopped higher and higher up in the tree. See him way up on that dead branch?

Later, a female cardinal showed up in a bush nearby. Last thing I saw of them, they were flying rapidly around the neighbors’ yards, him behind her.  They were pretty to watch, fluttering up and down in currents of who knows what emotion or feelings. Whatever it was, it looked exciting and fun!  (or maybe not. Maybe he was over-aggressive or creepy, and she was trying to get away. Now I see him way up in that tree again, alone.)

Suddenly, a sparrow flew up and I realized that other forms of life were right at hand: they built a nest right outside the window!

When the 30 minutes were up, my hip still hurt a little (T’ai chi should fix that). As for my mind, it feels all better.

P.S.  On what happened next.  Inspired by the happy feelings, I decided to give away one of my  “Spring Yellow Plaid” Honey Girl pillows to a young man who does carpentry work for us—who was just in the hospital for a serious operation. Since Rich works most closely with the workmen here, I went downstairs to see him and tell him my idea.

He immediately looked down, shook his head, and said, “I don’t think so. He’s not the kind of guy… blablabla negative negative negative.” I smiled and said, “But Rich, have you seen the way he looks at Honey Girl? How he talks to her?  He calls her Woofie Girl. He made a cement plaque for her in the backyard…”

But he just shook his head, looked down, and went shuffling off to do the crossword puzzle. That is a typical exchange between us. It used to bug me a lot and could even drive me to despair and great loneliness. But as you can see on the “Happy Clients” page of my fledgling business, I have learned to take his advice with a grain of salt (or not at all)! Typically, when he tells me not to do something kind and generous, I do it anyway.

And so I just turned away, saying in a pleasant, non-angry voice, “Well that’s ok. You don’t have to be involved. It makes me happy, so I’m going to do it.”

And now I am smiling again, looking forward to another good day. As Rousseau once wrote, “You must be happy.”  And as a long-lost fortune cookie added: “Don’t stop now!”

 

The text from Peter Ralston, Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power pp. 5-6:

BEING CALM—THE PRESENCE OF BEING

Sometimes we experience what we call “being calm.” It is thought of as a state of mind in which all the activity of mind is clear, at ease, and undisturbed. How this comes about is usually unknown to us; however, it is conventionally attributed to “self-control” and so we take credit for it. When I speak of calming the activity that we call “mind,” it is not to support the manifold assumptions that exist as mind, but to point to a principle that appears in the presence of what we’re calling “calm.” Being calm appears when our internal activity is aligned with the principle for which this is so. This principle seems tied to the presence of being, in which the mere presence of being is allowed to be, regardless of how it appears. In this, being is experienced without preference or aversion, no matter the form. What is the principle in which this is the case?

When the activity that occurs as mind is distorted into a form in which that activity appears to be disturbed or unsettled, it is often rejected and held as something wrong, something to be avoided. This relationship to what is apparently already occurring immediately severs us from the activity itself, putting us in the position of “fixer” rather than one of simply being. This occurs the moment we first ascertain that we are not calm. From this position we are not in the best place to correct this malady, should we hold that it needs fixing, and so a struggle ensues to find and move to a place in which the disturbance can be corrected. This way of holding calm makes calm almost inaccessible.

Being calm is essential to all that we do. Having a calm mind doesn’t depend on appearance. It doesn’t depend on situations. It is more powerful to see calmness not as something that we have to force into being, but as something already existing, or simply as a quality of being in which we can abide, something to be fallen into or uncovered. It can be held as a base or context to those qualities that we call non-calm, or different from calm. Thus we can see attaining calmness not as something that we do, like jumping from one item to another, but as a shift into the sea in which all things float.

It is our tendency toward constant reactivity that reveals to us the power of stillness.

[…]

By holding calm in the way suggested here, we can simply not “do” those things. … instead of trying to make those things disappear, we can simply let them be, not feed them energy and attention, and let them float in the base that we now call being calm. It is from this principle that we can be responsive and clear.

• Peter Ralston, Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power, pp. 5-6.