we do not achieve things …

by way of proclamations and slogans

but through

persistence,

effort,

and

enthusiasm.

“May 15” in Path to Peace by Shi Wuling.

***

The venerable Shi Wuling once came to South Bend, IN, and it is from her that I first learned about Buddhism. Lately I’ve delved into Tibetan Buddhism with Lama Surya Das’s audiobooks, Buddha Standard Time and Buddha Is as Buddha Does. Perhaps it’s working, because I finally feel more at home at home. It’s almost three years since we moved. Since I left my identity at the curb and took on a new everything. (Well not quite everything. The husband and dog are the same.)

And I swear we’ve both lost 10 years in attitude-drag. To see him on his e-bike & going to the gym, and me with my regular T’ai chi and Aikido sessions, we are both way more disciplined and physically fit than we were in our 50s. We’re also cheerful now. I think we are actually happy, most of the time. Pretty amazing in comparison with the stressed-out wrecks we used to be!

Funny, what you realize when you have the time to realize stuff.

• 

Creating intricate quilts with symbolic meanings and diverse textures continues to be my passion and way of communicating with the world. Above and below you’ll see some pics of my latest work, the “Respect” and “RARE” quilt projects, which have drawn me to connect with people of color from all around the USA and increasingly, here in my hometown. That development–and the chats, smiles, and thank you letters I’ve received–give me great pleasure and life satisfaction.

Thinking it over as I work in silence, I realize that these projects are a continuation of friend-making I learned to do in France. After years of feeling estranged in my beloved adoptive country, and never really connecting in a long-term way with a French person, I moved to France again in 2001. We would be there for two years, so I needed a friend. One day, I put up a card in the library, asking basically if anybody felt like being friends. Or at least talk once a week. Then 9/11 happened the very next day. And on 9/12, two French women called. It worked. Life-long friendships were born there in the Bibliothèque anglophone on rue Boisnet in Angers, France.

Now I’m trying to reach out, or deepen friendships, with people from a different population–namely my fellow citizens. Through the “Respect” quilts, I seek to support and celebrate people of color in the USA. And make friends, if possible. As a very white person living in a very white city, it is not that easy. But little by little, what do you know? The same technique seems to work. People like people who like them. A smile begets another. Hope begets hope. One person’s search meets another’s.

These latest quilts are for inspiring Black women who live in the Seattle area, a top-echelon hospital administrator (and a friend, whose name starts with “J”) and an award-winning high school student.

Drop by West Seattle Grounds coffee shop during the month of June and you will be surrounded by my handiwork. I’ll be there in person smiling at everybody, and hosting the “Make a quilt” game, during the West Seattle ArtWalk on June 10 from 5-8pm.

• 

On another note, it would be amiss of me to neglect mention of Taiyaki, a Japanese delicacy that I discovered today after T’ai chi class. (Which was fantastic as always.) The taiyaki truck Bean Fish parked right behind me. When I smelled that good smell and saw the truck sitting there, I thought: “If this is not synchronicity then I don’t know what is!”

Wow! Good call. I highly recommend the Food Truck, Bean Fish, for these deliciously comforting treats. I had an “original” with red bean paste and loved the warm, crunchy, gushy sweet combo of flaky crust, soft inner layer and perfectly textured bean paste (very important). Plus the adorable fish’s face and cute scales! It made me quite content, all the way home.

(Or for the rant version: all the way through the convoluted Pioneer Square detours, past the rude/terrifying speeders who zoom by and/or cut in on the highways, and behind the long lines of patient neighbors working our way back to “Vashon East”, otherwise known as West Seattle, cut off from the mainland since 2020 when our bridge broke.)

Either way, it was an excellent Saturday morning.

FYI: The Bean Fish truck is parked across the street from the busy and amazing Asian grocery store, Uwajimaya, for your shopping convenience.

Long live Seattle’s International District and Chinatown, for bringing the tastes, sounds, smells, and arts of Asia to the West!!

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day 63, we’re back, slowly but happily

Hi again,

It worked. A day of rest has restored both Honey Girl and me to our usual selves, maybe not so bouncy as we used to be, but we are both happy to be here.  (Those squeaky toys don’t squeak themselves!)

Sometimes slowing down, or even stopping entirely, is what we need to keep going.  Doesn’t make sense? Just look around—there are many models of movement other than the fast lane / 1,000 Mbps bandwidth / hyperlinked way of living we prioritize nowadays…. Or at least we used to do, in pre-COVID-19 times…

Take sloths, for example. As Lucy Cooke points out in Life in the Sloth Lane, “Sloths don’t hop from tree to tree in a blaze of glory—they gently test the next branch to see if it’s sound before they proceed.” Cooke thinks sloths have much to teach us, writing: “We humans—busy pedal apes who are determined to move faster than nature intended—sometimes need a little help remembering how to slow down and appreciate what we have, rather than racing after what we desire.”*

Not a fan of sloths?  What about tugboats?  I stood and watched this tugboat in Elliott Bay for a few minutes this morning and was amazed at how fast it was moving, though it appeared to be standing still.  Seems like there’s a lesson there… if we took the time to think it.

Fyi: yesterday’s face mask production (once the migraine pain lifted, it was such a pleasure to get back to work!) 

* Lucy Cooke, Life in the Sloth Lane, (New York: Workman Publishing, 2018), p. 69, p. 1.

day 46: local stuff

I’ve been carrying around an article ripped out of last week’s Seattle Times in my bathrobe for a few days now, and since it’s been useful to me, I’ll share the advice with you too.

It is a query from a young person wondering how to go on, in this time when perils loom large all around (environmental crisis, public health disaster, financial ruin, dashed hopes of professional work). “Be local” is the advice.
Being local, what does that mean?
The usual stuff you’d expect—volunteering, donating time and energy, connecting with neighbors. But when we’re sort of afraid of being around other people, and the officials tell us to stay inside, it is hard to muster the motivation to do all that.

So today, I just treated myself to the best that my local situation has to offer: a nice brisk solitary walk up and down a couple steep hills to get the heart pumping, some sunshine, and a visit to my favorite rock. I cleaned it off and put some new flowers on. It feels like a secret, though it’s in plain enough sight if people really looked.
Feeling strong and healthy, having a secret that I put out for others to discover, that’s enough to get me smiling again.
Before I get back to work, here’s yesterday’s mask production, for Kelly, and her bag awaiting at the Honey Girl face mask “store” in the early morning light.

Hang in there, until tomorrow at least. Maybe things will be better. One thing’s for sure, they will be just a little different from today…

daily message, if not daily joy .. today we need Roethke

Hi out there,

Here in Seattle (Ground Zero USA), it feels like months have already gone by since we’ve gone into health-scare hibernation. It is a strange time. We’re in here, poring over the awful statistics and fascinatingly grim reportage from the New York Times, (Yikes! latest headline is: “New Yorkers Told to Stay Indoors and Shutter Most Businesses”), our stomachs flip in anxious sympathy, our backs stiffen and shoulders tighten as we wonder and worry. Meanwhile just outside our windows, we’ve had-all week!–glorious spring weather, fragrant breezes through the pink and white flowering trees, and a gazillion birds chirping, zooming by, and squabbling in the trees around our yard. (Advice: Get and install a hummingbird feeder! Super fun.)

Apart from my husband and son, I have not been in close contact with any human since Monday. (Today’s Friday.) Ooof!  It feels much longer than five days. Luckily, I have three things that guarantee well-being and you can have too: 1) a passion for some manual art or activity, 2) a nearby dog to love (it doesn’t have to be your own dog), and 3) lots of books and stuff to read. With those three things, you can do OK in times high and low.

My manual art passion is sewing (see HGBG website; quilts are it!). My dog is Honey Girl, who helps in every way she can to make me happy, which is apparently what dogs love and live to do (if the adorable books of W. Bruce Cameron can be believed).  See Honey Girl here, in a quiet moment with her squeaky pig.

The books are for my head: that annoying voice of critique and complaint that talks too much unless given something else to do. You know what I mean. I work on my head, regularly, as if it were a pony, a plant, or a high-powered engine that harms itself if left to its own devices.  (I now practice Qigong and T’ai chi at home too; they care of the body-mind.) Many, many writers are close at hand, to remind me how to live and why it’s worth the bother. (I read a paragraph or two from the Stoic philosophers, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, on a daily basis and I enjoy others such as Jane Austen, W. Bruce Cameron, and Lori Gottlieb, just for fun and relaxation.)

My conclusion? It is time to act, to share the wealth.  People are reading more on-line these days. Maybe my bookish discoveries could be distilled into small bits on this blog, where people like you will read them, and maybe you’ll pass on the good thoughts through the internet, and we as a species will benefit.  Maybe we’ll remember why it is worth the bother to go on living. We might even learn something important. Is it beyond hope that we might evolve for the better? Must gun sales soar? (One friend writes that people are buying guns to protect their toilet paper stash, haha; virus humor.) Maybe we’ll become more thoughtful, introspective, and grateful for the present-day and careful with each other and our living planet. However, we’ll be poorer in pocket, though… and there’s a whole lot of misery going around.

I can’t do much, apart from offering quilts and good thoughts. But at least I can do that. So from now on, I vow to post a good thought from one of my books every day for the duration of this virus crisis, here on this blog. If you like it, pass it on.

Today, I think we need Roethke, “I wake to sleep”:

 

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

 

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

 

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

 

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

 

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

 

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

 

– Theodore Roethke (American, 1908-1963). I never had the honor of meeting him, but he looks like such a nice person.  Love this photo. Looks like your favorite teacher, doesn’t he?

Lo

taming our fears — and back to school

I just reread The Little Prince slowly, over the course of the last three days here and there. What a great vacation read! Along with bemusement over the clever wording and adorable illustrations, I was left with a sense of awe at the way the author weaves moral philosophy into a classic travel tale to make a story that has much to say to readers of all ages. Few “children’s books” can do that so well.

The concept of taming–spoken by the lonely fox whose ears are too big– knocked me over again, just like it always does.

On ne connaît que les choses que l’on apprivoise, dit le renard. Les hommes n’ont plus le temps de rien connaître. Ils achètent des choses toutes faites chez les marchands. Mais comme il n’existe point de marchand d’amis, les hommes n’ont plus d’amis. Si tu veux un ami, apprivoise-moi !*

“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things already made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where you can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me!”

To tame is to “make less dangerous or frightening,” according to the dictionary. But for Saint-Exupéry, taming is the basis of friendship: we allow each other to depend on each other, and the world becomes less dangerous and frightening. Pictured here are the pillows I’ve been making during this same time period, which feature hand-made shooting stars designed to resemble  Saint-Exupéry’s. I make them to help people tame their fears. And maybe the making helped me tame my fears of being suddenly in this new place with a new name, no job, and starting over again…

Taming fear is what Tranquility Pillows allow us to do.  By expressing an emotion–by snapping on one of three stars–you can put that feeling at arm’s length, or make it into an external object. If you snap on the scary black star, your fears wield less power over your mind, because you can see that they are just a little black star.  They exist out there in the air, like the Little Prince on his planet, and you may or may not ever encounter them in person during this life. And maybe a friend or parent will see you’re worried and lend a helping hand…

So this year as you head back to school, why not get a Tranquility Pillow?  Let the pillow  help your mind rest now and then, while you are working so hard…

 

*Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince / The Little Prince, 1st ed. 1946 ; (Paris : Gallimard, 2000) 69.

Letting go: on moving, death and the untidy garden

One of the poignant things about moving is letting go of things we once held dear. I’ve been abandoning books right and left (to the bins managed by Better World Books, but still…). Rich has abandoned his garden, once a crowning achievement which fed our family for weeks in the summer. Gazing out on the garden this morning while meditating, I savored its lovely untidiness, which brought up the connection to one of my favorite quotes of all time, by the French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne.

Thought of the day: Letting go is healthy and delightful (even if it feels wrenching at times).

***

“I want death to find me in the garden planting cabbages, but not afraid of her, and even less of my imperfect garden.”

“Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux, mais nonchalant d’elle, et encore plus de mon jardin imparfait.”

Michel de Montaigne, Essais, 1580

***

Imperfection and letting go are key concepts in Zen philosophy as they are in T’ai chi. As Bob Klein writes, “Many people are drawn to T’ai-chi-Ch’uan because it enables them to let go of their tensions permanently. Without tension, anxiety and worry, life is a lot more enjoyable. … to release this tension, you must go through the nervous system, for it is a nerve, constantly sending its signal to a muscle, which causes that muscle to tense. You are making yourself tense. Tension, therefore, is not released by doing something extra, but by letting go of something you are already doing.”  (Movements of Magic, 16)

***

Did Montaigne know of Zen philosophy?! Or perhaps the Stoics before him? sure seems like there is a connection between East and West deep down …

At any rate, Bon dimanche!

Why do I do this? (Give trust a chance)

I write this blog for those who want to feel better and have a more peaceful life. But I also write this blog for me. It is a record that shows how determined I am to keep feeling good and experiencing less pain in daily life, as time goes by.  I do walk Honey Girl  every day and that helps. But where she can just chomp on some grass to get relief (like she was doing this morning), the various disturbances I feel now and then get stuck deeply in my system. Recreating a peaceful mindset is more of a challenge. Chomping on grass doesn’t work.

This blog reminds me that peace is possible, despite it all. But it is a daily effort.

Let’s take today as a case in point. This morning, I encountered a cluster of alarming icons on my phone screen. (I admit it: as soon as I opened my eyes, I looked at my phone. Bad habit, I know! But I’m just like you. We’re all addicted to those phones.)

Immediately, my stomach flipped and my shoulders tensed up, as I saw that my husband had called twice around dinner time, and my faraway son had called after midnight. Neither had left a message, as is their habit. I never know what that means, but it did not look good. Then I saw some texts. My Chicago-based son (with whom my husband was supposed to be dining last night with my brother and sister-in-law who were in town specifically for that purpose) texted the following message at 12:36am: “Hi, I just received an alarming call from Nick that you and Dad were worried about my whereabouts. If you can, can you give Dad my cell phone number. I forgot the details of his email for dinner reservations tonight and forgot to go. So I assume they were worried. Can you also tell him I’m sorry that I forgot.”

Well, as you can imagine, I immediately texted back to him and in no uncertain terms told him to deal with his own mistake and make his own apologies. Then ensued more texts. YUCK!   Whatever happened to waking up slowly on a peaceful spring morning?

Well, I tried to recapture the moment. I looked out the window, and opened it wide to take in the sight of a pear tree covered with white blossoms, to listen to the songbirds in the trees, and to admire the powerful St Joseph River flowing swiftly by down below. But that sick feeling remained in my gut.  It remained for a couple hours, until after I took Honey Girl for a walk and did my morning routine. In retrospect, it just makes me a little sad. And a little tired. (Actually, very tired.)

Anger management has been an issue with this family. I am a bit worried about witnessing the remnants of Rich’s anger at that son when he gets back later today. (See the book by Mason and Kreger on the bibliography: an essential help for living with hotheads.)

So what can meditation and T’ai chi do for all that emotional turmoil?  Like most people, I exist in a web of relationships. For better or worse, I do not seek to extricate myself from that web or to adopt monastic vows. So I must cope. And it is the coping that brings the joy, because it allows me to spread peace to the ecosystem where I am planted. It is a sad fact, however, that joy is personal. You cannot force others feel it. Nevertheless, it can be yours!

Bob Klein describes the typical person’s nervous system as a dammed-up mountain pass or blocked riverbed. T’ai chi and meditation are tools which allow one to chisel an opening in the stone, and allow the water/spirit/energy to flow through freely.  For daily practitioner of T’ai chi, life can be transformed. As he writes inspiringly, “When you speak or act, the channels have already been opened; you are satisfied with what you have created and now your creative spirit flows through. In other words, after you work on yourself, transform yourself, empty yourself, then you must trust yourself. You must trust that when you act or speak spontaneously, good things will come out.” (Movements of Power, 161).

Let’s give trust a chance.

simple tools for the art of living

People spend money on devices to make them feel better. Yet it is not necessary to strap a plastic band to your arm or scroll across a metallic screen, to feel good on a daily basis.

If you, like me, seek to simplify your life, may I recommend some excellent basic tools.

After that long trip to France and New York, today was the first day I feel strong and centered again. Just as the trip was not a haphazard event, but took much planning, the equilibrium achieved today represents one part of a long-term, creative way of life.

La chance, ça se prépare.  {good luck comes from good planning}

The image above shows the simple tools I used today. They include:

1. Peter Ralston, The Principles of Effortless Power
2. Mai-Mai Sze, The Tao of Painting
3. The little notebooks where I record my daily routine. (The routine is described here). It includes meditation, warm-up exercise and the 45 min. T’ai chi sequence. NB: As you can see, the little notebook records a person’s handwriting, and allows for short thoughts to be recorded and pictures or doodles to accompany the fitness record.
4. The basic laptop computer where I watch the video of Master Peng and practice T’ai chi Yang style 108. (It was recorded last year in a gym near my home.)

C’est tout!   {that’s all!}

Here are the quotes that guided my spirit this morning, I read them with my morning coffee.

from Ralston, “Fill out and be complete, yet be empty with nothing to protect.  … Integrity, like relaxing, grounding, being calm, and centering, must permeate all aspects of our activity.” (Principles, 17)

from Sze, “In the handling of vast space, their [Southern Sung]  ink paintings are some of the greatest expressions of the human spirit. … they merged the details in mists, obliterated them in space, and emphasized by depth of distances the silent majesty of nature and the mystery of the Tao. … The great oceans on these maps were space, the perfect symbol of which is merely the black silk or paper, and in many instances was so represented in paintings. By the directness and purity of this device, the awareness of space was made more acute and its effects more profound. … it should be added, however, that the effectiveness of blank spaces was achieved only through contrast with the vitality of the brushstroke that rendered the forms it surrounded.”  (Tao of Painting, plate I, Landscape by Yen Tzu-yu, XII-XIII centuries, Sung Period), below.

The “reverential” attitude toward the vastness of the cosmos in this artwork is refreshing in the early morning. As my mind took its time emerging from sleepiness with lovely strong coffee, it was pleasant to contemplate the unknowingness that exists above the blue sky. It was good to put my feet flat on the floor and think about gravity and living on earth. With so much ugliness from humans contaminating our senses and our media-saturated public spaces, it is refreshing to see people in this painting represented as tiny things in contrast with the soaring space of the evanescent clouds.

Later on, I found this good quote in The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp:  “A lot of habitually creative people have preparation rituals linked to the setting in which they choose to start their day. By putting themselves into that environment, they begin their creative day.  … What makes it a ritual is that they do it without questioning the need.” (Creative, 16).

I don’t know about you, but with a rigorous, uplifting morning routine, artwork like Yen Tzu-ya to contemplate, and good thoughts from great thinkers in mind, I can sail through any day.

I felt calmly content as I did every single thing I did today–not only a good conversation with a young friend, but also the more banal things like the long cold walks from a parking lot to a meeting, a visit with an uninteresting salesman, and the time I spent out at Dale’s Auto, waiting for a ride after a mixed-up communication. (Rich is watching some loud obnoxious sport channel right now–a good test of my mettle! But even those loud, aggressive men on TV cannot bother me.)

It is all good simply because it is, and was, my life.

And soon, it will be “fun time” again with Honey Girl.  I wonder where she’ll take me this evening?

 

El Dorado in the night sky

Look carefully at this picture.

Do you see the words EL DORADO perched on a translucent building across the street?

It is a phantom of the glaring glow behind it, the real building.

That seems like a metaphor for something.

It seems like a metaphor for the meaning of life–a floating symbol of perfection, situated somewhere far away and inaccessible–somewhere that we’ll never get.

If that seems bleak, focus inward instead and consider the things you can alter for the better. As Bob Klein writes, “Whatever you pay a great deal of attention to will become a pivotal point around which your life will revolve.”

He goes on to explain how things affect us from without, such as living with other people, whose lives “begin to revolve around each other” and existing within particular belief systems, where “your behavior begins to revolve around those beliefs.” [As a non-Catholic working at a Catholic school, I can certainly attest to that.]

Bob Klein recommends the pivot-like practice of T’ai Chi. T’ai Chi creates swirls of momentum around your central core, or Tan-tien, like a “biological gyroscope.” It is amazing and you finish by feeling very peppy and centered.  See video of Master Peng, in case you missed it.

Whether or not you begin practicing T’ai Chi in 2018, it is good to think about what we spend our attention on, that “pivotal point around which your life will revolve.” I’ll be doing T’ai Chi, for sure, because it is a living metaphor for my goal of peace. I aim for peace and harmony in the family (and in my own head), this year more than ever. If you knew us, you’d realize that is quite a lot! and it’s going pretty well for the first time in a long time, right now. 2018 will see my brothers and I–and our spouses–living in the same region for the first time in 34 years. With one son nearby and the other undecided where he’ll be.

2018 will see a move for our household and a new job, too, for me:  from full-time to retired professor and from business nobody to founder and CEO of HGBG!

That’s a lot!

What are you seeing off in the distance in 2018? What do you hope for? Will it be money, like in Reno, Nevada where I took that picture of the El Dorado Hotel?  Or do you deserve fame, at last? Or perhaps you’re thinking of living off the grid, and cultivating cyber-invisibility.  Whatever it is, hope of some kind would be good. Pass it on, if you’ve got something good!

 

 

a walk in the snow

Time for a walk!

Off we go.

The river looks good.

Trees are pretty in the snow.

What’s that?

Don’t know.

It’s quiet out here tonight.

Over the river and up the hill…

… to Honey Girl’s house we go!