David and the Dancing Rats

 David lives in Northern California. He lives in a house which he almost completely remodeled. The urine soaked carpet had to be pulled up and then the underlayment sanded and Natures Miracled.  He painted ALL surfaces, ceilings, walls and the underlayment. He removed the roof, repaired rot and replaced it with metal roofing. The attic got new insulation and the gutters and vents were repaired or replaced.  After new flooring and a revamped kitchen, appliances and lighting he moved on to installing solar panels and an air source heat pump hot water heater.  Ta Da! A beautiful new sweet smelling house with modern energy!  

And then the rats moved in.  David lives on a mountain side which is for all practical purposes, a nature preserve. There are turkey and deer and raccoons and elk, yes ELK which just roam around the homes and eat flowers from his front porch.    It’s both open and wooded   Despite its filth there were no Rats in the house when he moved in. But  while David had the old roof off,  before the new metal one went on,  the Rats figured out how to get in. He started hearing them in the walls  He  crawled under the house (about 2 ft clearance) and put foam and wire mesh anywhere he thought they could get in.    The Rats were silent for a while.  And then they returned. They particularly like to tap dance   It’s never clear; is it the ceiling? In the walls? or underneath? He put cameras under the house and found new places to seal up    They’d pause then return. He put snap traps with peanut butter in the crawl space, kill rats  even caught one who left his tail behind when he escaped.   But they kept dancing!! He put the camera in the attic.  No sign of them. Ahh but could they be dancing under the new insulation!?!    After the last inspection under the house in the crawl space he concluded there was NO WAY they could get in down below.  There MUST be a roof level spot they get in and then come down to their ballroom.   

To be continued (unfortunately)

David is nothing if not persistent    But of course so are the Rats.  But I’d put my money on David figuring out their  entrance and eventually putting an end to their dancing

Speaking in Quaker Meeting

 At meeting this morning: “Since moving from the farm into town I’ve been hoping for a new purpose, a project, a cause.  In this morning’s silence  I am reminded that simply the way we live our lives sets a tone a reverberation through the world.  The way we breathe, the way we frame our stories, our openness to new ideas, people, perspectives, and how we notice the Divine in everything around us and in ourselves. The way we live sets a tone that ripples out into the world.    Rilke quote. “Spirit wants only that there BE SINGING; as to who does it? in that He has only a passing interest”.  And Blake  “they also serve who only stand and wait”

I have such ambivalence re speaking in meeting.  Of course I love the ideas that pop into my mind and feel like of course Everyone would want to hear them!  But I also am aware that I can tend to be a “sage on the stage rather than a guide on the side” which I am slightly embarrassed about.    

The silence in Quaker meeting has a quality that is different than everyday silence when alone.  There is the suppressed energy of a room full of people with clear hearts and minds listening for The Divine, almost a hum.    It is a particularly delicious Silence and hard to break.  

 So when I feel moved to speak in the silence I go through several levels.  First I note the impulse but then move back into the silence. I ask myself is this insight for me alone or the whole meeting?  If it comes again, I distill it,  what exactly is the essence of the idea?  And then I let it go again. If it rises again I face the fact that it wants to be spoken but I still don’t stand  I may distill it some more. And then wait for the urge to overcome the surface tension of the silence and almost make me stand.  Having been propelled into the air I’m sort of obligated to follow through.  The whole sensation is oddly like needing to have a bowel movement.  There’s the initial sensation and then if suppressed many times it subsides and goes away.  But if it keeps coming back i need to face the fact that its going to come out so lets make it as short and nondistruptive as I can.    The few times that I haven’t done the final step of speaking , there is a definite uncomfortable almost constipated feeling.        

Today’s meeting needed to remind me that though I’m not doing anything dramatic to further the action of the world, that my being does set a tone that contributes to The Song, whether or not I ever know it. 

Pain

 Pain is a background hum of so many lives these days.  There is so much pain out there and a hopeless sense that there’s nothing to be done.   It can feel overwhelming  

 I have an ambivalent feeling about low level pain.  It’s an annoyance, an energy drain but also a motivator to do what I can to relieve it.   I think it’s a fool’s goal to eradicate it; won’t happen while I’m in a body.  And as long as I can escape in sleep or a good story, I can attenuate to it most of the time.  I’m not clear if chronic shoulder pain led Bob to take an overdose of Lorazepam yesterday, or boredom.   I think of people with intractable pain and wonder how they can stay engaged with their lives.  I think of Freda Kahlo  how did she turn her pain into art?  Was it the escape drug of creativity?   How do I find that?  I think getting back in the harness of new habits, walking, writing and now the touch typing app,  may eventually bear fruit    

I remember a bolt of awareness when I was a teenager  that “comfort addiction” was the great danger   I feel it playing out now when I “don’t wanna” take a walk or wash my floor.   I see Bob’s situation as exacerbated by that and want to learn from his pain not waste it

This isn’t working

 Somehow leaving the writing til the end of the day ISN’T working.    I’m relying on late night, half asleep ruminations where what I really want is to built a scaffolding of habit.  For all of my going on about not wanting to be driven by the need to accomplish, I do need to feel like I’m building something in this new life    I know I’m hanging open but it can’t all be just what’s  easy and no stress.   A little daily discipline, for no other reason than because I said so, would be good for my soul.     

So I’m going to recommit to 24 days in a row of writing. And I’d like to build it into my morning. And it isn’t going to be easy,

My bro in law may have tried to commit suicide tonight   It doesn’t appear that he will die from it  but in so many ways he’d already chosen to let go of his life, to avoid effort, discomfort, engagement    I love him; he reminds me so much of Gil   But that is Not how I want to live this end phase of my life   So perhaps a little more effort, discomfort, engagement is what I can try to commit to as a response to what he is choosing     It’ll be hard perhaps, but I may feel more alive because of it

Crises

 I noticed years ago how during a crisis I feel more alive.  Slightly embarrassing, when I was 9 I remember saying to my mom that I wish I’d been alive during WW11   She shushed me, said I didn’t know what I was talking about (true) but what I was getting at was the clarity of good and bad that comes with crises and the energy, the urgency.  I definitely had a long stretch of never ending crises with Gils health, David’s prison, Adam’s GB and others at work and building the house.  And they did indeed clarify thought and add (and drain) energy.  They also gave me an intense experience of “there’s More going on than meets the eye” a feeling of spiritual closeness.   I said once that era ended with Gil’s death, that I’d become a crisis addict   Not only did they make me feel intensely alive they also gave me permission to only deal with the challenge in front of me not the day to day slog of keeping floors clean and paying bills.   

I am not in crisis mode now.  I’m rewatching  A Gentleman from Moscow  and as I watch the way life and death War time informs the characters, I wonder is it possible to have that without all the fear and pain?  I’m listening to a podcast about someone who with a devastating cancer diagnosis, is blown open with feeling connected to LIFE, with loving even the mundane day to day of it.     I’ve been there.   Can I experience that without feeling on the edge of disaster?

Many years ago when Adam was about a year+ old, Tom wasn’t sure that he wanted to stay married to me.  We were living in a trailer as we were trying to build our house and during the day Tom would take our one vehicle over to spend time “working” with his new sweetie.   I was 24 with no marketable skills and I was terrified.    I remember one night lying in Bed with Tom who didn’t want me to touch him, feeling like I was falling into a black hole.   And then.  There was a feeling (I don’t think I actually saw anything) of a bright light at the end of a tunnel. And a voice said  “ You will survive. There will an other slide of this experience and you will be stronger and wiser for what you’ve gone through. You are not alone”.  In my memory It was such an intense feeling    And it was the beginning of my experience of crises as a potential gift.  And a reawakening of my spiritual curiosity.      

Lord only knows there are plenty of crises in our world right now.  But the portal is not wallowing in the awfulness.  It’s using the fear, and….?  to feel the intensity of life,   See the beauty and possibilities.   I’m not sure the way in.  I think I thought the challenge of the downsizing and the move might do it.  Not yet.  I want to find the way in without disaster at my back.   But how? (A common refrain in my life these days)

I call BS

 Hmmm what I wrote last night has a strand of BS and perhaps some truth. Being alive in a body IS all potential energy and not doing things which feed, cloth repair and grow our lives , is a waste.   I DO like to move through my lists, checking off calls, bill paying and floor cleaning without anguishing about whether I want to or not.    Just DO It, don’t think about has been a long held mantra.

So what was I dithering about last night…?   I think it’s about balance and a gentleness of self admonitions    Some days I barely start my list (or never make one!), other days I cross off everything.   Yes it feels good but the balance for me is finding equal enjoyment from letting the list go.   And not becoming too attached to my worth being tied to my level of accomplishment as my mom did.    

I’m starting to tire of navel gazing.   I’m hungry for doing (yes accomplishing) something of value,  to me or those I love or better yet the World.  But what?

So the bored and restless phase is hitting me.   I think my chewing on the idea of doing something of?worth?meaning?usefullness? Is the start of the discomfort of no longer having a role defined by my Doing.  So I should expect BS to come out of my fingers. I am trying to shed many years’ identity as a farmer, a counselor, a crafter.    I am grasping at straws of what else I have in me.   And do I have the energy to become it?

Accomplishment

 I remember mom saying that she didn’t feel good about herself if she wasn’t accomplishing something.  It made me feel a little sad for her.  But I know the heady sense of power that comes from making and tweaking and jarring 29 quarts of Minestrone AND dispersing them to various freezers and fridges!   I DO like the feeling of crossing things off my lists, but I fear the busyness which distracts me from asking what do I want, to do, to be, to contemplate; ?  I don’t think accomplishing needs to be mutually incompatible with Being, but it def can be misleading, pointing to what was done rather than why and to what end?  

My fear is with all the silence and lack of demands or responsibilities,    that there will be Nothing, crickets, pointlessness.   But I think that’s what I need to face and find out.    “It wouldn’t be the Hero’s Journey if the outcome was safe and certain”

But having a body and breath and hands means having potential.   Potential energy is to be used.   I can scribble nonsense and crumple it up and throw it away.   Or I can try to Further the Action, make my spot in the world a better place, more kindness and order and gladness for the miracle of being alive.  Perhaps accomplishment in the service of being alive is sufficient      Blah blah blah.   Is this just pointless bullshit ruminating or am I actually pursuing something important?    Maybe both