meilleurs voeux!

In France, people have a tradition of sending holiday greetings to friends as cartes de voeux, or new year’s greetings, instead of Christmas cards. This is a great tradition for many reasons: it is secular and thus non-discriminatory and especially it is less time-sensitive. Although debates abound on this as on all aspects of French etiquette, from what I’ve heard, you have until Jan. 31 or even Feb. 15 to get them sent. This leaves lots more time to get them out than the three weeks of the frantic pre-Christmas dash to do everything and have a wonderful time while singing carols, baking cookies and other “magical” tasks (that all seem to land on women’s shoulders or psyches, if they fail to meet everybody’s expectations).

This “family fun activity” (haha) has been gathering dust in our house for months, and it is still no closer to being done than … well, than the COVID-19 virus is done wreaking havoc on our psyches.

So enough with the guilt: here’s your “carte de voeux” in all its unfinished glory. Here’s to survival…

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day 24: feeling quiet

Philosophical street art on Admiral Way: “April distance makes for May existence.”

And a photo of yesterday’s face mask production, including the limited edition violet model with contrasting ties in a floral fabric. It is fun to experiment and make these strange new ordinary objects into tiny things of beauty.

A poem by Emily Dickinson rounds out the slightly grim quiet of this day, when it seems like life will never return to “normal”:

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)

by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

 

 

bye for now

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.

people are like trees, and other fables

I woke up with a start at 4:30am and have felt off-kilter ever since.

It seems that it must have been the tree branch, which fell off our neighbor’s tree last night and landed right outside our kitchen window that made the huge THUNK I heard. It sounded like a distant bomb going off.

Staring out at the windblown snow during this morning’s meditation brought more sad thoughts to mind, of death and weakness. The trees react vividly to the wind blowing their branches and, if we could watch ourselves from without, we’d probably say the same thing about ourselves. Sometimes I feel like a cedar, other times like an oak.

The cedar tree bounces and sways with every fiber of its being: from bottom to top the whole tree bows and flutters nervously. The maples and oaks more stiffly sway, hold their arms up to the sky despite the wind; but their tiny red and green budlets break off and fall down.

This weather reminds me of LaFontaine’s fable, “The Wolf and the Lamb.” A harsh little story! My own version, “April, the Cruelest Month,” inspired by life in South Bend, awaits below.

The sounds of tires slushing on the street below make me feel excited, like it’s Christmas time, then bewildered when I see robins hopping in the garden. How easily our minds are fooled and confused about what is, versus what is “supposed to be”!

A proverb in closing:

En avril ne te découvre pas d’un fil. Au mois de mai, fais ce qui te plaît.

(trans. “In April, don’t take off a thread. In the month of May, do whatever comes into your head.”)!!

Hang in there!  Only 4 weeks til May!

These pages are from Hey LaFontaine! Are You Ready for South Bend? (ten fables illustrated in a hand-made book, 2016).