Day Two: make new friends before moving! why not?

Discovery of Day Two (38 to go)

It seems like I’m making new friends these days! If that seems like a funny thing to happen right before you leave, I agree. But on the other hand, why not?!

The picture here was made possible by some new friends from France who came to dinner last night. The mug says, “Demain je me lève de bonheur”: Tomorrow I’m getting up happy. (A play on the homonyms de bonne heure –early—and bonheur—happiness.)

Which reminds me of one of the great things about teaching: the students. Our exchange program with the Univ. de Rennes II (founded by me and friends Isabelle Brouard-Arends & Laurent Loty, in 2008) has been such a wonderful addition to our French program at Notre Dame. Last night’s dinner guests were the last in a long line of Masters students and their parents, but no less beloved for it! I hope we’ll meet again in Brittany one day. My secret weapon (a professional chef husband) has made those visits to South Bend memorable for all of us.

Thanks to all the students I’ve come to know.  You’ve made my work a pleasure. (Well, most of you.)  ^_^

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39 days to go. Day One: our trees are us

 

Today marks 39 days til we depart from the Midwest. That means 39 days to capture the essence of this region, to appreciate the people (and dogs) we have come to know here, and to contemplate what it means to return home after so many years spent in that vast region known to Seattlites as “East of the mountains.”

The trees seen here, laden with April snow and tender spring leaves, can be interpreted many ways. As I have gazed on them during my morning routine over the past year, my eyes were drawn to the point where the branches touch. You can see it in the right of the snowy scene. They touch gingerly yet steadily, tip to tip, jostled by the wind yet ever returning together. Neither one dominates. They look like friends, I’ve often thought.

Or, they could be likened to a teacher and a pupil. As The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting points out, “Old trees should show a grave dignity and an air of compassion. Young trees should appear modest and retiring. They should stand together gazing at each other.

Two trees crossing each other.

Two trees together yet separate.”*

Lovely thoughts.

Yet the Midwest where these trees grow can be a harsh environment for people. South Bend, Indiana is home to extreme poverty, violent crime, and thousands of people living in man-made misery. The state is a place where lawmakers systematically neglect the vulnerable, such as children born into poverty and elders lingering in nursing homes. Not to mention the chronic racism and homophobia that live on here in America’s Heartland… **

So the trees reaching in vain for each other could symbolize the human tragedy going on below.  They could remind people to try harder to fight these trends. You might think of the situation with the melody of “Ebony and Ivory” in mind, (in homage to the classic song by Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney),

Sycamore and Cottonwood,

Side by side in my South Bend neighborhood,

Live together in perfect harmony

Why can’t we?

***

* reproduced in The Tao of Painting by Mai-Mai Sze, p. 54

** https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/study-indiana-rate-of-kids-in-state-care-double-that/article_bf1139e4-1315-5c61-8774-1f228b2c71ff.html

https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/indiana-ranks-last-in-long-term-services-for-elderly-disabled/article_8a3e734e-efb5-11e7-9290-9f2188d5196b.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Freedom_Restoration_Act_(Indiana)

https://www.courierpress.com/story/opinion/columnists/jon-webb/2017/11/07/webb-indiana-still-has-racism-problem/827560001/

On bad surprises and apologies (and good-byes to Iris)

Iris, circa 2001

Much has happened since I last wrote. This week brought some bad surprises and a lesson which I will share with you.

1. Real estate surprise: bad

On Monday, some potential buyers made their second visit to our home. We were naturally excited as second visits are considered precursors to offers. However, it is now Friday and they have neither made an offer nor provided any feedback. (btw: Please, readers, if you are shopping for a new home, remember to pass along feedback. An hour and a half in someone’s house may not seem like a lot to you, but the owners had to clean, stop what they were doing, and go out while you were there.  They —like us—are likely anxiously awaiting your reply.)

Well, we are not really waiting any longer because we suspect we know why those people will not buy our house. To make a long and awful story short, here is the email I sent to our agent after the people left, on Monday night:

“Important update: Today’s people found what looked like the mummified remains of a raccoon in the attic crawl space. I just went in and brought it out and alas, it is Iris. Our long-lost black cat. She disappeared years ago and was clearly not feeling well. I think she went in there to hide and die in peace. We looked and looked, but I guess we never looked at the right spot.

There is not much sign of a struggle. Poor Iris.  I’ll take a picture to prove it was a cat, if you want, but we will bury the corpse. Please pass along that message so that they do not think we have rodents in our attic.”

Awful, right?!

Later that evening when I was up here in my little attic study meticulously grading sophomore essays and blog posts (argh), I suddenly realized that the place where Iris died was directly behind where I sit at my desk–about ten feet and two walls behind me. Isn’t that interesting?

Sweet little six-toed Iris. She was the cat who came with us to France and had that amazing accident in Angers–she fell more than six stories from our apartment balcony to the parking level below–and suffered nothing more than a disjointed jaw. The veterinarian said they see such things all the time. A dog or a person would certainly not survive. But cats go into l’effet parachute after the third or fourth floor (it has to be high enough), and it slows their fall almost magically.

Poor Iris. May she now rest in peace.

2. Teaching surprise: bad

This week I found myself issuing a veiled threat to some sophomores about what I thought was their disrespectful attitude toward my deadlines. On Tuesday, I said something like, “If your performance report is more than 10 days late—I don’t care if it is 11 days late or 111 days late—your final grade for that performance will be reduced by an entire grade. I know who you are! Turn in those reports!”

On Wednesday, one of the students came to see me and told me that he could not find any trace of such a deadline on the syllabus. He apologized profusely for bringing the discrepancy to my attention. And I felt HORRIBLE.  He was right; I had discarded that policy months ago when realizing that it did nothing to improve learning and only increased the students’ already heavy burdens.  (btw: Notre Dame is a very anxious world. To see the students walking around, earbuds plugged in and cell phones in hand, you’d think they had the weight of the world on their 19-year-old backs, and were dealing with international crises on a regular basis. That their anxiety is largely self-induced does not make it any less real.)

3. Ending the week on a good note: the lesson

After realizing my blunder, my stomach churned, my head ached, and I sat down immediately to apologize to the class via email. I apologized again the next day in class. The students got a reminder of the fallibility of authority figures, and I implored them to never hesitate asking questions because faculty members—like authority figures of all kinds—often make mistakes. I think we’re all ok. I know I felt better.

Before bed last night, I was reading Subhadramati’s Not Being Good: A Practical Guide to Buddhist Ethics, and came across the following quotes which sum up this week’s lessons.

“Apologizing is a spiritual act because it is a deliberate letting go of self” (110).

“This painful regret, in turn, becomes an incentive to act more skillfully in the future” (106).

***

Hope springs—or rather crawls out cautiously—anew.

 

 

day five, free at last

Hello on the final day of the five day meditation in the mirror challenge,

This experience has made me realize that I was on the right path before this challenge. Despite whatever anyone else might think, gazing out at nature is more valuable than getting too immersed in the self. Perhaps for those just starting out, it is useful to gaze into a mirror, but after ten months of the morning routine I have found the mirror meditation to be a tiresome and unnecessary addition to my life.

I also find many human interactions tiresome and unnecessary. (Sorry!)  As Bob Klein has noted, “Usual human interactions, centered around issues of self-worth, control and power in a social sense, become bewildering to a person involved in spirit breathing. The purpose and benefit of such interaction becomes unclear when viewed from the perspective of the Body-Mind. This perspective does not include the idea ‘I am better than you because…’ It is a perspective of connecting and unifying rather than overpowering.”  (Movements of Power, 75).

Nevertheless, here are the photos and descriptions as promised on 3/7. The setting: the sunroom of my beautiful historical house which will go on the market this Wednesday, via Cressy & Everett.  The mirror: an antique hand mirror with a long handle inherited from my mom, Mary Somerville (Sept. 7, 1930–March 11, 2015).

The photos are here and I leave you to draw whatever conclusions you choose.

strange, cold, rushing waters

Strange sounds accompanied our walk tonight as well. It was the sound of deep, fast-moving water, rushing round the river bend. And it was close at hand–much closer at hand than it’s ever been. Suddenly the neighborhoods I live in and walk through make a completely different sense. Suddenly the river is the dividing line: a wide, deep, unpredictable killer. Suddenly the past and geography of South Bend feel more alive and logical.

We’re the side high up on the bluff. We’ve got downtown, factories, a public library, bus, train, and air travel centers, and a lot of other things too: decaying empty industrial areas and crime, poverty and misery, as well as significant architecture, an art museum, and a big hospital. The other side has Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s–on the opposite bluff–but it also has a large development called “the Northshore Triangle” of charming one- and two-story houses behind grand mansions along the river,  in what is now obviously a flood plain. I bet some developer made a wager back then that this would never happen, and a group of investors went along because, why not? They’d be long gone by the time disaster hits. Well tonight, it’s happening.

Be grateful for your warm, dry home.

And if your life is uneventful be grateful for that too.

 

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!

 

flu symptoms and t’ai chi: to do or not to do?

Another day of feeling out of sorts. Made it to morning class but was showing flu symptoms by 2pm or so. Canceled a meeting to go home and rest. On the way home I felt sorry for myself, thinking, “I feel crappy. This is what I feel at this time of year every year, when the students get sick and then we all get sick and I hate the end of the semester, and I always get sick at Christmas, what a drag it all is, blah blah blah blah blah blah.”

And I thought, “God, are you boring. Shut up. This is today. The only today I’ve got. This is no longer those other years. What if I try the morning routine even though I feel crappy? Maybe my body would feel better. I can always stop and lie down if it doesn’t work out.”

So I did.

First the standing meditation, looking out the window from our son’s room here. Gazing at those colorful leaves gently moving in the wind, it was easy to practice the “fuzzy thinking” of Zen contemplation. With my hips more open from the V stance, the tightness and aches around my lower back faded away. With my mind peaceful and calm, I remembered the many fabulous things that are happening these days, and how lucky we are to be here in this pretty house. Then, the T’ai chi sequence as usual, in the other son’s room with the shades drawn shut. (Master Peng told us to practice it that way. It is very calming.) And as I moved to the sinuous sequence of Yang long style 108, it seemed like my inner torso of organs was loosening up from the grasp of nerves and tension. Being very attuned to my queasy stomach and stuffy head, I observed as the symptoms drifted away. Doing that long twisty sequence, I felt like I was becoming animal-like, agile and fluid. I felt happy. I was smiling. I smiled for several minutes and ended in a state of alert calm.

So I thought I’d describe that to you.

It appears flu symptoms can subside under the impact of what the Chinese call chi or vital energy. It is chi that circulates in the body up the spine. I often look at the kind of strange pictures (below) that Master Peng gave us last summer. One is a Chinese myth of a journey that begins at the bottom of the spine and moves its way up to the head and enlightenment. The chi is symbolized by the ball of white fire at the navel. The goal of Tai chi being to move that ball of white fire up as far as you can while you move.

These pictures inspire me to describe the experience in metaphor instead of science.  If anybody wants to explain to the blog how T’ai chi works scientifically, that is fine with me; please do! (I’m no M.D.; I’ve got a degree in French lit!)

In his wise and funny books, Bob Klein warns practitioners of T’ai chi that everybody will think you’re crazy if you start talking about it. But with all the miserable people I see around the campus and city and country and world, and all the colleagues, neighbors, friends and relatives I have who seem to be getting decrepit, sad, and old before their time, I feel it is urgent to let people know that T’ai chi exists. And it still works, just as it did in Ancient China. I am living proof of it. I feel pretty good tonight!

rainy thoughts

Today it rained all day but that did not stop Honey Girl and me from taking a leisurely walk through the neighborhood until we were totally drenched, but peaceful. There is something melancholy and touching about the natural world at this time of year; there’s a stark sunflower, blackened and brittle, which always catches my eye. Its silhouette against the grey sky reminded me of that scary scene in The Night of the Hunter where Robert Mitchum rides a horse in silhouette against a white sky singing an ominous hymn. Tragic, sad thoughts mull around.

I look at the picture of my relatives, the woman from whom I inherited the sewing machine that has become my spiritual inspiration, and I used to think, “How miserable to live in White Salmon, WA circa 1915. That battle-ax in the middle looks like a real tyrant. It must have been so awful and boring in the rain, in a wooden cottage, etc., etc.”

Today I was thinking of that little girl in the front row, second from the right, because I cut up a quilt that I think she made for me. It is all falling apart, we found it in a drawer a couple days ago. I cut off a piece, restored it, and I’m using it as the basis for the SPARK quilt, since our mothers were so important to many of us SPARK students this session.

Now I realize I may have her all wrong! She may have loved running up and down and through the dripping trees during those wintry days, and playing tricks on that grumpy old grandma to make her laugh, etc., etc.

We can choose the spin we put on our memories. We can choose the spin we put on every person we meet, thinking, “Hey this guy is actually really ….. (positive adjective of your choice)”! and this day is not so bad after all.

 

constant change

I write to you in the midst of a terrifying, electrifying storm. Honey Girl is huddled in the corner of the kitchen downstairs and will stay there for awhile or for hours, maybe, depending on what happens here. The storm has been overhead for about 15 minutes so far: it is close, loud, and electric–probably hitting the river. It reminds us of how lucky we are to have shelter, but also to let go of any certainties. Just as the storm will whip through or crawl and wreak devastation in its wake or not, everything else is in constant change too. Our cells, the air, our feelings, memories.

***

As Nao, the sixteen-year old would-be suicide artist of A Tale for the Time Being says, after watching her wise grandma die: “Everything in the universe is constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives.

“That’s what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again.

And just like that, you die.

***

The rumbling has moved on and the rain with it. All one can hear now is the dripping eves,  and footsteps below, a distant TV, a car. And the clock just struck nine.

***

Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (New York: Penguin, 2013), 408.

 

turning in a circle about oneself: a dog and a Taoist meditation

The two dogs here represent morning and night.

The dog on the left was waiting for attention of a rather intimate nature this morning when I came downstairs. It was Honey Girl, so warm, soft and loving that you felt like lying down on the wood floor beside her for a while, just to feel her warm fur and listen to her breathing.

What a soft launch to the day!

It is not surprising that this day feels so mellow: the students were lively and smart, the conversations were meaningful, and I had chocolate torte for dessert. Perfect, right?

The evening walk with Honey Girl swept us up in cold wind and darkness. The sky had cleared from the rain, and excitingly dynamic white clouds were stretching, morphing and flying across a backlit dark canvas—it was very hugolien and thrilling to the blood.

When we came back in, Honey Girl grabbed one of her (embarrassingly numerous) squeaky toys off the floor—a navy blue and red fuzzy bone–and started making it squeak, then walking all around making a joyful ruckus. She does that when she’s happy. Which is most every day! She does it at our parties too.

Returning home is what I want to capture: a good theme for Thanksgiving!

What I related above is a particularly joyful version of a dog returning home, but the concept is important to human psychology and Taoist philosophy too. Since T’ai chi, Zen, and Taoism are philosophically related, I am keen to understand them better. I really like explanation in The Tao of Painting, and wonder what other people think.*  Chinese painter and writer Mai-Mai Sze (1909-1992) explains the symbol of the fan, the benefit of considering the universe as a circle, and of “turning in a circle about oneself.” Sort of like Honey Girl does every night on the couch.

I paste here the cover and illustration from the page in question:

 

Fan (to turn over), shown here in its modern and old forms, describes the Taoist idea of “returning.” The pictograph represents the right hand turning something over. It indicates that the “other side” or the “returning” is the reverse of one and the same thing or process. The hand is specifically the right one; it appears to emphasize the manifest yang nature of the process.

The course of the Tao is not only circular motion but also, on the one hand, the marking off of a sacred precinct and on the other, fixation and concentration. The enclosing circle prevents “emanations” that, in terms of modern psychology, “protect the unity of consciousness from being split apart by the unconscious.”

“Turning in a circle about oneself” involves all sides of the personality, and has the moral significance of “activating the light and dark forces of human nature and, with them, all the psychological opposites of whatever kind they may be.”**

Wow! Didn’t know dogs were so deep, did you!?

Good night, dear readers, and sweet dreams.

*The Tao of Painting by Mai-Mai Sze, is a huge and impeccably scholarly tome (with its own distinguished box), that contains many beautiful color prints and the entire text of a painting manual from 1600s that is funny, witty, and rings true on many levels. It makes you love Chinese painting—something I never thought I would do. The manual explains things like the playful spirit of goldfish and the stern character of pine trees, the way that mountain ranges should seem to emerge in successive waves of energy, and how emptiness is compelling. I did not know, for example, that hollow trees were revered for the abundant chi that they held after a storm.

**Mai-Mai Sze, The Tao of Painting, 2^nd ed. With a translation of the seventeenth-century Chieh Tzŭ Yüan Hua Chuan or Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting ( 1679-1701) (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1963), 16-18.