One Heart, Many Gardens

Deep Winter, Sheltering Winter

2010-02-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

Spring is coming early to the Northwest this year. As the Northeast is white once again, we are nearly four weeks ahead of what the calendar would otherwise suggest. Prunus blossoms scent the air. Camellias, sculpted from pure beauty, radiate iridescence. The temperatures roll around in the 50s day after day, and it becomes less likely by the minute that winter will visit us at all.

Winter is the quiet space between the beats, the interlude after the earth exhales in late autumn, and before it catches its breath again in spring. When spring comes early, and crocus and hydrangea alike are lulled into taking the stage prematurely, the shock of their early glory delights our weary eyes. But the vulnerability of such precocity means that the slightest turn of a fickle sky can cut them cold to the ground.

So we enjoy the early show with a tinge of fear rustling around the edges of our appreciation, because we know it is susceptible to nature's sway, and there is nothing we can do. Like a child pressed ahead by parents beyond the point that his maturity can support, early lilacs run the risk of failing to thrive.

The human heart needs winter, too. If we are in the midst of making a decision, we do ourselves no favors by rushing to an early spring. We need to nestle in the quiet in-between that separates this time and that time. It is in this space that our hearts nurture and prepare us for doing the right thing, the thing we were born to do, the thing wrapped up in our being as tightly as the DNA that declares one plant a tulip and another a rose. Under a protective blanket of snow, or a deep grey sky, or the fog of indecision, the latent prepares to go forth into the world.

This year's early spring, by virtue of its departure from norm, reminds me of winter's great value: it slows down metabolism and keeps tender buds from rushing to show themselves until the time is right for them to do their best.

Winter is the time of glowing embers deep in back of the fireplace, of ashes that will grow cold. It is the time when we know we must build another fire, until the sun replaces it as the source of warmth and light, and we can move outdoors for seasons of growth and abundance. We must stay in our state of ambiguity until the light shines through and we know what to do next.

We can only move forward in spring if we have spent our winter tending the resources we will need in order to burst forth when the timing is right. The constant center in the middle of change is your heart's desire. And your heart's desire is the becoming part of you.

So bundle up. Protect and prepare. Bloom when the sun shines. And should an early spring be forced upon you, take care not to blame your tender heart.

The Woman who Played George Clooney (Spoiler Alert)

2010-02-07T12:18:00.000-08:00

I didn't see it coming. Did you? I believed that the woman in Up in the Air was every bit as busy as Clooney with her crazy flight and work schedule. It was difficult for me to imagine a woman being able to manage the emotions of the intensifying relationship between them, though, and then turn her back and catch a plane, but I chalked it up to one more aspect of contemporary society that I don't understand emotionally. I figured maybe young women today are possibly more inured to heartbreaks, both the getting and the giving, since so many topics are so openly discussed in public these days. Maybe this is what the level playing field looks like: we are all able to use each other, men and women alike.

I thought, But I know myself. If I had spent that much wonderful time with Ryan (George Clooney), I'd have wanted more than the occasional airport tryst. I'd have tried to keep my head, but my heart would have been racing ahead to thoughts such as, This feels different. I really like this man. I'd like to see more of him. I'd like a normal relationship. The Road Warrior life wears a woman down. I know. I did it for a few years and couldn't tell the difference between Arizona and Connecticut because all I saw was the inside of airports and hotels.

So in the movie of the supposed role reversal -- as Ryan/Clooney feels his own passion build, leaves the podium from a speaking engagement, and flies to Alix's home in Chicago presumably to profess his love -- we are asked to believe that the loving, attentive, sexy woman he has fallen for has been playing him the way generations of men have done the same to unsuspecting women across the country.

We learn she has a husband, and children: she has what she calls a real life. That her time spent with Ryan/Clooney is a diversion.

I don't buy it.

You can't just write a man's perspective into a women's role in a script and expect me to believe that's how a woman would behave. I don't care which generation she calls home. This woman was aware of her own feelings, and those of her lover Ryan/Clooney. We are asked to forget about any guilt or shame or ambivalence she might feel as a wife and mother, and believe that she would not inadvertently display some of this pathos in her behavior.

This movie is based on a novel written by Walter Kim, with a screenplay by Sheldon Turner and Jason Reitman. It was directed by Jason Reitman. I don't know why they thought all they would have to do is switch the dialogue in order to switch the traditional roles. It takes more insight, and a lot bigger heart, to do that.

I'd rather have seen the same story written by a woman and directed by Nancy Meyers. Then perhaps we'd have had more than a gotcha cartoon. We might even have seen compassion.

What do you think of the man scorned turn of this movie?

Kindness: It's Where to Live

2010-01-23T11:13:00.000-08:00

It is commonly accepted wisdom that every generation complains about the immanent decline of civilization. In fact, it’s a cliché to bring it up in the first place. I do so because I think it may actually be time to think hard about this.

Usually, there are ways to defend the new, even when you don’t like it. For example, those who condemned automobiles may not have imagined the great progress the internal combustion engine could bring to food distribution. Those who condemned the telephone may not have envisioned the way it brings people together from all points on the globe. In our own time, microtechnology spreads into every domain.

Those are big examples. They’re easy to discuss, and their virtues are easy to dissect and define. What about the smaller things, though?

Here’s a mixed bag of concerns: What about decorum in small spaces (airplanes, for example)? What about people with car stereos so powerful (and invasive) that they shake the buildings as they pass? What about individuals who stand outside of a building with a cigarette and, with disregard, blow smoke in the faces of all who enter? What about talking in the movies as so pervasive that now it is expected, to the extent that every film is prefaced with a short clip that tries to be funny and clever while telling you to keep your mouth shut once the movie starts?

These are behaviors my mother would have called crude. By that word, she described acts that no one who knew better would ever perform. Her assumption was that there is a broad population of people who do know better, and that those who behave crudely would, therefore, stand out from the rest. Their crudeness would be obvious to all and worthy of a raised eyebrow, which, in her case, was delivered as a means of informing someone that a line had been crossed.

My mother, who died young 15 years ago, would be in a state of fixed horror if she were to come back for one day.

Please don’t think I’m talking about manners here as if they were the showy artifact of a privileged upbringing. My mother’s position was quite practical: if you are polite and treat people well, they will treat you well and you will get what you want in life. It was equal part kindness and self-interest.

Isn’t that the basis of the Golden Rule? It’s not just about treating others the way we would like to be treated, and, therefore, the way we teach them to treat us. It’s also about getting our own needs met by harmonious interactions with others. It means understanding the nature of compromise and that sometimes you have to give up something to get something else.

Our lizard brains understand this. We can feel its truth. That’s why we say things like, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” In our hearts, we all have experience that supports the notion that the kinder we are to others, the kinder they are to us and the more likely we are to have peace in our lives. Collectively, that would add up to a peaceful society.

To go back to the examples I mentioned at the start of this essay – the telephone, the automobile, microtechnology – I happen to think they are all early signs of our demise. This is not because these developments were inherently bad, but because we have not been intelligent enough or kind enough to harness their energy for the greatest good.

When you add to this the Supreme Court's decision which seems to define a corporation as a person, values such as kindness and thoughtfulness feel greased, as if they are slipping from our grasp.

I may be setting myself squarely into old fogey territory, but this time I truly do believe the breakdown in social interactions is serious. It is symptomatic of our deeply held values of self first, the individualism upon which our nation was built. That virtue has decayed, however, and the assumption that strong/kind individuals make a strong/kind nation has been lost. Now we think individual means one who gets his way all the time and this often manifests with no concern for the welfare of others. The battle cry is, “No fair!” Fair in this instance means I get what I want when I want it or I’m pitching a nasty fit, and I don’t care who knows or who gets hurt. There is no shame, just blame. And now a corporate board gets to decide how to spend shareholders' funds to influence political campaigns through advertising, which in my opinion is the least honorable of all expressive pursuits.

There are, of course, many individuals who don’t fit this mode, just as there are a few birds that don’t fly south when autumn chills the air. But can you honestly say that things are going well for our society, that we are kind to one another in our daily lives, that our children are being raised with values that take the welfare of the community into consideration? Remember: there were probably many solid citizens who got wrapped up in the vortex when Rome imploded, too. Saying, “I’m not like that,” is not the same as saying, “We are not like that.”

Labeling my perspective as cynical is actually appropriate here, though not for the reasons one might expect. The Cynics were a group of philosophers in fourth century BCE Athens who valued virtue and non-materialism. They distrusted such things as common wisdom because they thought that taking on a socially accepted position whole robbed an individual of the opportunity to think about something and come to his own conclusion.

So I don’t mind being called cynical if it means declaring myself openly after giving the topics of civility and the future of our country serious consideration. I don’t mind a bit if it offers a chance for re-examination and re-direction of our social constructs.

If you disagree with me, though, all I ask is that you look around and come to your own thoughtful and personal opinions.

I believe crudeness in society is the sign that we are slipping down the other side of the bell curve. It happened in Rome. It happened in Mughal India. It happened in Ming China and the British Empire.

It is hubris to think our society is so brilliantly created that such decline will not happen here. Scholars and journalists alike have outlined for us the reasons why our society and ancient Roman civilization follow similar trajectories, for example. And about that word ancient: Rome reached its pinnacle only 2000 years ago. Think about how long human beings have inhabited this planet. Then ask yourself whether Rome was really all that ancient. Technologically, yes. But emotionally and psychologically? I doubt it.

The Romans’s brains weren’t all that different from yours and mine. Their daily life just looked different, which made their cognitive structures different. They may have had different thoughts from ours, but they had the same feelings as we have. It must have been a frightening and directionless time to be alive as once-mighty Rome slid into obscurity. No wonder the entertainment industry was the only game in town. It distracted everyone from questions they couldn’t answer, questions they actually dared not ask. Does that sound familiar?

The question I see is this: what do we do, given this understanding of the thrust of history?

What do we do with our moment in time?

There is nothing new under the sun. But we can have peace in our own lives. It starts in the kindness of each individual’s heart. Yours. Mine.

Kindness is the place to live when everything is crumbling around us.

Why Does Rita Wilson Overact? It's Complicated

2009-12-28T08:21:00.000-08:00

I saw It's Complicated yesterday. I laughed myself to tears and enjoyed every minute of it. The setting, dialogue, familial structure, social milieu -- they all had a ring of truth and familiarity about them that made seeing into the emotional complexity of the story a more profound experience than I had expected from what was billed as a light romantic comedy. I'm still thinking about feelings that came up for me while watching this movie, but I'll write about those another time.

Today I have a question that truly perplexed me: why does Rita Wilson overact?

In this movie, she plays one of Jane's (Meryl Streep's character) three friends, with Mary Kay Place and Alexandra Wentworth. They represent us in the movie: it is to the three of them that Jane confesses to having begun an adulterous relationship with her ex-husband Jake (Alec Baldwin). Two of the three, Mary Kay and Alexandra, respond with subtlety. They both appear a little surprised, a little confused, even a little incredulous; they want to know more about the situation and all the details that led up to such a possibility's even having presented itself. They want to know how Jane feels about it, what she's going to do next. They hold her up with their good will. Yes, of course they have lives of their own. But right now those lives are offstage. This conversation is about Jane.

These are Jane's friends. They know her. We sense that they have witnessed her growth during the past ten post-divorce years, and while they are curious about what is going on between Jane and Jake, they also appear concerned about her, protective of her, unwilling to stand by and watch if she is at the point of sliding backwards into something that hurt her terribly in the past. You get the feeling that if Jane goes off track too much, these women will support her and help her find her way back.

Rita Wilson is another story altogether. Her character gets the news at the same time as the other two women. Instead of trying to take it in the way they do, however, she fairly bounds up from where she is seated on the sofa and exudes a glee for details that to me demonstrate more interest in salacious considerations than the heartfelt concern the other two women demonstrate for their friend's well-being. This is not friendly enthusiasm. It's bad acting.

That's not all. Rita has a few more lines. She delivers each with the fervor of a chorus line dancer determined to stand out from the crowd, who, in placing her personal goals over the success of the group, ruins everything. It's as if a member of the Greek Chorus in a classical play were to step out toward the audience and mug a particularly pained response to lines being delivered by the main character. What???

I asked myself why I was so annoyed by Rita Wilson's performance. First, I thought, maybe no one has the courage to criticize her acting; she wields power as a producer, and her husband (Tom Hanks) is a powerful player in town. Second, it is probably safe to say, simply, that if she knew any better, she'd be a better actress. But still, there was something nagging at the back of my mind that couldn't be explained by Hollywood. This morning when I awoke I realized what it was.

Rita Wilson's performance annoyed me because she reminded me of the person who makes your problems all about her. You break your leg: she tells you about the time she broke her leg. You get a divorce: she compares every step with what she went through during hers. Your daughter is getting married: she tells you about all the details involved in planning her daughter's wedding.

You feel as if your role with a person like this is Topic Chooser.

You leave such a conversation, if that's what it is, feeling slightly less well than you did before. You also feel the nonverbal message was It's no big deal; get over it. Lots of times, it may well really be no big deal, but that doesn't mean you didn't want to talk about it, explore it, just to be certain it was, in fact, just as you suspected, no big deal. You don't bring up something personal just to have someone else short circuit your process.

And you certainly don't bring it up as an oratorial platform for her.

I don't know what you do with someone like Rita Wilson if you're directing the movie. I do know, however, what I do in my personal life when I encounter someone like her; or, more accurately, I know what I don't do.

I don't invite her over for a glass of wine when I'm seeking compassion and feedback from friends during a transition in my life.

For times like that, only the best friends will do.

Photograph: Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin in It's Complicated, courtesy of Universal Pictures

My First Crush

2009-12-13T10:58:00.000-08:00

My first crush wasn't a star from the movies or television. And he didn't sit across from me in homeroom.

My first crush was Ludwig van Beethoven. I even had the sweatshirt to prove it.

Something in his work resonated within me well before I had the sense or sensibilities to understand such dynamics, and certainly well before I had the words to describe it. I knew it when I felt it, however, and through my fingers at the piano the circuit was completed: I played with the passion of a child on fire, my heart set on Julliard and the concert stage. It was a calling so intensely present in me that I didn’t even say it out loud. I had no need to say it. I was it.

Then I moved on to college. As an undergraduate in marine biology, I also studied German, and as one thing led to another, as it does in the labyrinth of our university days, I decided to spend my junior year in Vienna, Austria.

There were many reasons for this, not the least among them being the intense love I had developed for the work of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who would come to serve as guide for me during the rages of late adolescence and remain on duty to this day.

Vienna was also the city of residence for such luminaries as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Sigmund Freud—and Beethoven. These attributes overpowered the very real problem that Austria, being a land-locked country, was not a hot spot for marine biology. I switched majors.

As a result, I had the life-changing opportunity to live daily with the music I loved—concerts, the opera, in the theater, in the churches. It was nerd bliss.

So this morning, as I sit at my computer trying to weave together the strands of a paper for one of my classes, who drops in for a visit? LvB himself in the form of the Adagio Cantabile of his 8^th piano sonata, which we call The Pathetique.

My fingers fall from the computer’s keyboard and onto the keys of the imaginary piano on my tabletop. I close my eyes.

The theme captivates. It draws me into its beauty the way a lark’s call alerts us to her presence. It is at first a naked line, hanging in the air single note by single note, a linear progression across the scales, which, on the piano, lie at the command of the right hand.

We move forward in enchantment. For a few moments I am transported to the place where beauty lives.

Then the melody stops. The notes of the left hand come into the fore. They assert several changes in direction, subtle but unmistakable, as we range through several key shifts. This moves back from dominance as the melody line reasserts itself. This is when I realize that it is because of the gentle support offered by the lower notes that the melody line is able to continue its path. Because it is grounded in a nest. Because it is echoed, supported, and then even challenged from its depths through the key changes. The supple melody persists and thrives.

The pace quickens. I hear the base notes intensify as they reflect the shape of the melody line, and, perhaps more profoundly, offer it an inverse reflection, asking the melody to look at the other side, to hold in awareness the full range of possibility for expression.

The main melody is restated, only stronger this time, with less the quality of a moonlit rosebud and more the presence of a blossom opening in the morning sun.

I think, Well, that’s a pretty picture. I like the symmetry. Oh, that Beethoven! I fall in love once more, just as I do every time I listen to his music. The tension, the Sturm und Drang, ultimately settles in a dynamic balance of energy expenditures and rest. Beethoven demonstrates for us that peace is not an endpoint. It is a symmetrical mean, and it moves as the music changes. So does it move throughout our lives.

I ask myself, What is it that supports us the way the left hand supports the right in this sonata? What is our left hand, and what is it doing?

I believe this is the knowing self. It is the self of all our experiences from youth to this moment, the frame we erect for our lives, the very structure in which we live our days. The extent to which it is comfortable depends on the degree of conscientiousness we use while we are building it. We can only soar to the heights supported by the foundation we set down, and this foundation building is a personal job undertaken in the quiet of the interior self.

I might point out here that the Adagio Cantabile is the second movement of Sonata #8, and that it follows the tempestuous Grave first movement. Beethoven seems to have known that we are all so serious when we are young. Humor and light are the prizes that come with enduring the first movement of our own lives.

If you think past divisive discussions of left brain and right brain, and move toward a holistic model that includes the transportation of information and feelings across all parts of the brain at once (indeed, all parts of the body, but we can discuss that in another post), then you can sense the fibrous underpinnings we build day by day, moment by moment, that become our lives.

Here’s the gift I received today as the piece came to a close, and I offer it to you for consideration. Next time you listen to the Adagio Cantabile, listen to the way the last few bars slip into the center from both directions, and then meet at the point on the keyboard where the ranges of both the right and left hand converge.

Let us all rest in that point of energetic tension. We can soar to the extent that we are grounded, and once again return to the balance of a peaceful heart.

And by the way, Beethoven will always sit enthroned in my life. You know how it is with first loves.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year--Well, It Could Be

2009-12-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

What a wise grandmother might be able to do to help her grandchildren get through a dysfunctional Christmas...

Imagine a household on Christmas Day. The fire burns brightly and lights twinkle on the tree. Everyone is dressed nicely, cashmere and pearls, slacks and argyles. Adults drink champagne as they prepare the meal and watch the game. Then someone does something someone else doesn’t like. The sniping begins, quiet and measured at first, until all hell breaks loose. The children are hushed up, sent off to play, turned outside.

More alcohol flows. Now the adults sit purposefully with their backs to one another in a classic pose: “Did you see what she did to me/hear what she said to me? I’m ignoring her. She doesn’t exist.” They say things to each other that are so mean a child would be sent to detention for less. Worse, they say things about each other, behind each other’s backs.

And the children sit by and watch.

They can’t stop the chaos. They can’t drive away and go somewhere else. They are stuck. They are one big throbbing ache as It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year plays menacingly in the background of this cruel family ritual called Christmas. Their memories of this day will be a mélange of anxiety, grief, embarrassment, anger, hurt—but right now, they don’t even have the words to use to tell themselves what they think or feel. They go numb. It’s what they always do to get by.

Then Grandma arrives.

She just missed the latest spate of name-calling and finger-pointing, but she can feel the tension that still hangs in the air well after she has removed her coat and set her pumpkin pies on the counter in the kitchen.

Grandma has choices.

She can pretend she doesn’t notice. The advantages here lie in the fact that it is a pretty safe bet that as long as she is present, things will not explode again. Once she leaves, she can only imagine the chaos that will re-enter the household, but for now, at least, a semblance of peace will prevail.

She can say something to her daughter or her son. And what might she say? And is this the time, Christmas Day, to be bringing up such an enormous issue? Wouldn’t things only escalate? Wouldn’t she just be drawing the battle lines?

Or, she can resolve to bring this up later, another day, after the flames have died down and the embers have temporarily cooled once again.

Meanwhile, there is something she can do right now, today, that might be the most important gift she could ever give: she can offer herself to her grandchildren. I don’t mean she should sit them down and have a heart-to-heart. The kids don’t want to talk about it when they’re in the middle of the worst day of their young lives. What they do need is a sense that somewhere in this chaos there is a loving adult who recognizes their presence in their otherwise thankless existence at the periphery of the adult drama ratcheting up around them.

Tell them, one by one, privately, how much you love them. Ask them about their lives. Listen to what they say, and ask them questions related to things they bring up, not to things you’d like to talk about. Make your presence all about them. This is the loving support they don’t have when they are growing up in chaos.

By doing this, you are holding up a mirror to your grandchildren, and in this mirror they see that the ground is not moving, that they are solid and real, and that they matter, or you wouldn’t be sitting there.

It’s not much, perhaps, but it’s a start. You may not be able to stop the war, but you can protect the innocent from being trampled to death by blinded warriors.

Coming in from the Cold

2009-12-07T18:09:00.000-08:00

In a support group for co-occurring disorders, I listened to a client (clean this time for 14 days) articulate his reasons for being grateful that he has just moved into permanent clean and sober housing. Until this, he had been on the street for three years.

He said, It’s getting cold out now, and I’m tired.

It was such a simple statement.

Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes, because I realized his words are probably true for all of us, in one way or another. There may be a part of our lives—sometimes well hidden from others--where discomfort or discontent, confusion or pain, has nagged at us for so long that we could also say, It’s getting cold out now, and I’m tired. We may not all be trying to put down crack, but most of us are trying to put down something in our lives that we realize is causing us grief.

Where do we go with the unsettling realization that our version of reality is not doing us any favors, and that we need to make changes?

This client is making choices minute by minute to set aside a multi-year crack habit. He knows how many times he has tried to do this in the past. He knows how often he has relapsed. But his will to overcome his habit is now driven by a new set of emotions. He feels tired, and he feels he is living on the slippery boundary between the things he can control and the things he cannot. He is beginning to sense the wisdom that allows him to know the difference. This is where God lives in him. The scales are tipping in favor of his staying clean. His reasons to quit are coming from within.

The support this client gets at the mental health clinic has helped him reach the point of being able to respect and value his own mental health. Now he is moving into self-reliance as he realizes he can provide himself respite from being cold and tired, by staying clean and beginning to look for part-time employment, while continuing to take advantages of services at the clinic.

He may not succeed in these goals all at once. But he has cleared a significant hurdle in realizing that he feels his need to come inside and get warm by the light of the spirit. This is not a man attempting to follow someone else’s rules or suggestions: this is a man acting from felt need, who is starting to regain control of his own life.

I plan to talk to this client after the meeting this morning to see if he would like to make an appointment to explore these new strengths he is demonstrating.

Where do you see signs of newly emerging strength in your life?

Who's Hungry? One Billion Individuals

2009-10-11T17:06:00.001-07:00

One billion individuals on our planet are starving. That translates to one person out of every six.

I have read reports that attribute this to global financial crises, poor food distribution channels, and the high price of food. I have read reports that say it is due to over-farming, over-fertilizing, and over-harvesting of forests.

I have read so much in trying to understand--to grasp-- this situation that I no longer know what I know, much less what to believe.

But I do know that I am a few pounds overweight. I know I consider this fact an inconvenience, a matter of vanity, that has implications for my health. I tell myself it is because after breaking both legs in February, I spent so much time immobilized that I was not able to exercise away the calories I was consuming. Who wouldn't gain weight under such conditions, right?

And maybe that's true. But it doesn't come close to addressing the underlying sense of doom I am beginning to feel on the subject. I am starting to think every extra ounce I carry is a sign of spiritual debauchery: I may talk the talk about helping the needy and feeding the poor, but ample physical evidence suggests that for every morsel of food I pass along to the hungry, I'm keeping three or four for myself. Where is the justice in that? Where is the good will toward men?

Losing weight has shifted from being a question of vanity, or even of my personal health.

Losing weight has become a moral imperative, because I can no longer look in the mirror and say that I am doing my part to help those who are starving. I am not. I am consuming more than I need.

I know that there is no direct relationship between what I choose to eat or not eat and the personal fate of an individual who is starving in Africa. But there is an indirect relationship, and I can no longer ignore it.

I am one person with a few extra pounds--pounds I can no longer rationalize owning. I must give them up. I must relinquish claim to them. I have no right to be greedy.

Losing weight has also become a spiritual mandate. Suddenly losing weight is not all about me, which makes doing so not only possible but likely, because in my hand the motivational power of altruism seems to trump self-interest every time. I'll let my therapist help me unravel that one. Meanwhile, I'll focus my energy on what I eat--and what I don't eat.

We all have our tipping point, and I'm not talking about the scale. It seems I have hit mine.

Where is yours?

Memo to Your Inner Spendthrift

2009-10-05T13:53:00.001-07:00

I love Mad Men: the show provides an object lesson in the complete lack of concern for consumers that defines the advertising industry. It is, as they tell us themselves, where the truth lies.

Advertising is a business designed to do two things: 1) tell us we are imperfect, 2) sell us whatever we need to improve ourselves. Advertising’s mantra is create a need and fill it, whereas most other businesses operate to find a need and fill it.

When I figured this out as a youngster, I felt as if I had just discovered that the emperor had no clothes. I could not understand how adults could be persuaded by advertising. It was the same to me as letting someone else tell me what I want and what I need. Why would a sane person do that? Didn’t people know their own wants and needs?

Advertising is persuasive because it is seductive. Seduction is only effective when there is an imbalance of power. Look at the social constructs that underlie the interpersonal dynamics in Mad Men: the women are subservient, more decorative than useful, not to be brought in when serious matters are under discussion. They may as well have a target on their foreheads that says: tell me what to do to please you; tell me what to buy.

When we abdicate to the dictates of advertising, we give advertisers all the power they need to walk all over us, and we leave none of it for ourselves. No wonder we line up like sheep to buy expensive handbags, and shoes that would encumber us if we tried to run to safety from a burning building. Those are stupid shoes! They're not designed with your best interests at heart. Why do women buy them?

Look in any fashion magazine on the stands right now. Flip through until you find a pair of 7” heels with 3” platform soles and enough straps to bind a martyr to a stake. Can you honestly say those shoes were created with women in mind? No! And any woman who wears them is that martyr! Maybe they were designed for men who frequent what they alone like to call gentlemen’s clubs.

Close your eyes. From all the gratuitous scenes you’ve see on screen that involve poles and sequins, imagine the inside of one of these clubs. Smell the smoke. Smell the whiskey. Look around at the faces of the men as they watch the women on the poles. These gentlemen would like you to wear those shoes.

I have never purchased a pair of FMs.

However, I have overspent on a handbag or two over the years. I have more shoes than I need, and I have enough cashmere sweaters to outfit the senior class for portrait day. Even a vigilant stance in the face of advertising tsunamis is not foolproof: my own personal fool can still occasionally emerge and overspend.

It's easy enough to lose resources due to market downturns without adding to the crisis through your own irrational spending. It is true that the older we get, the less we need to buy, anyway. Most of us already have at least one storage unit. Some of us have many more. Just think: all that stuff (that now has its own rent bill and zip code) was accumulated transaction by transaction, cash register by cash register, signature by signature.

Then you had to bring it home. Unwrap it. Deal with the wrapping. Hang it up/put it on shelf/squeeze it into a drawer. And then—and this may be the biggest challenge of all—then you had to remember that you had it and where you put it so you could actually wear it/use it/carry it before it was completely out of style.

At some point, you put it into storage because you paid a lot of money for it, it is in excellent condition since you never used it, and it’s just too good to give away. So by paying to store it indefinitely, you have, in essence, never stopped paying for something you don’t even use. I have not said need. We all know need has nothing to do with it.

We have been duped by our advertising-trained spendthrift once again. We ought to put her in storage with all the rest of that stuff that may as well be flashing GUILT! GUILT! GUILT! because that’s what it brings up in you when you give this entire cycle any thought—which you try not to do.

This is a little like telling an alcoholic she wouldn't be an alcoholic if she'd just stop drinking. The key word is irrational, and I believe that's why shopping issues are so explosive for so many women. Somehow money, possessions, and status are all wrapped up in a sense of entitlement for many women, and this is a dangerous combination. Caveat emptor, indeed: the dollar you save will be your own.

So-called Self Storage (it is difficult for me not to read this term literally and wonder just what’s inside some of those units) operations have proliferated across our country like golf balls on a driving range. It is possible that together we can work to put them all out of business!

This brings me to two questions:

What will your children do with all the stuff you’ve squirreled away in your storage units once you’re no longer here?

How many handbags will fit in a casket, anyway?

And notice that you don’t see national advertising from casket companies—no prime time slickness, no half-time sponsorship. Why might that be? Is it because we all know better than to buy a casket we don’t need?

Photography: Mad Men, AMC

Hurt and Choice: What Viktor Frankl Knew

2009-10-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

When something goes awry, we have two obvious ways of viewing the circumstances in order to make sense of them.

Here is an exaggerated example to make the point: Let's say you promised your sister that if you win the lottery, you will write her a check for $100,000. Then, let's say you did not win the lottery. How would you feel if your sister told you and anyone with ears that you owe her $100,000, and that you refused to honor your word, which was nothing more than a cruel lie?"

You might say, "That's not fair!"

If so, ask yourself, "What is it that is not fair?"

Your answer might be: what my sister did to me--what she said about me--is not fair.

In this way, you can give voice to your perception that an injustice has been done. Your sister did something that hurt you, and you think about it in terms of fairness.

It is a very likely in this case that you will also think in terms of a perpetrator and a victim. To boil it down further, you feel that your sister has done something to you and that you are the victim of her behavior: she has twisted your good intention into a promise, which she claims you failed to honor. She is not being fair to you.

In other words, you react to this injustice by declaring yourself the victim. You stand accused of something you did not do. Not fair.

But another reaction to the same situation could be, "This is wrong."

Ask yourself, "What is it that is wrong?"

Your answer: The way my sister treated me--what she said about me--is wrong.

The situation shifts. The focus is no longer on you as the victim of someone else's bad behavior. It is now on the idea that your sister made a decision that is wrong. Her analysis of the facts is incorrect. She made a mistake.

The fact is that mistakes like this probably make her feel miserable. Remember that only a miserable person would feel a need to do something like what she did to you in the first place. No one misconstrues the truth like that out of happiness and contentment.

I'm not suggesting that you rush to embrace your unfortunate sister for her weak discernment skills. To the contrary, I believe that her choices create her life, and that her life is probably full of things she has created which she now trips over regularly. Which are not your responsibility.

The point I am trying to make is that your sister's behavior is not about you unless you choose to make it about you. You may choose to see her lie about the lottery money as a misguided departure from the truth, or you may choose to see it as something mean she has done to you.

You choose to see the incident as being unfair or wrong.

Of course, the incident described above is both: it is unfair and it is wrong. But if you choose to see it only as unfair, you are likely choosing the role of victim for yourself, a role that is not inherent in the facts of the case.

I bring this up because I see it as a way to set yourself free. Allow the choices someone else makes to reflect on her, and believe that the consequences of her choices pave the path of her life. In this way you can see that you are not part of the equation: you do not have to accept her wrong view of something just because she wants you to accept it.

This is your choice, and the same applies to you as to your sister: your choices pave the path of your life. Why litter it with misconceptions about the behavior of others, litter that can trip you and make you feel like a victim, powerless to change anything or move forward until justice is done? Victims are stuck. You don't want to be stuck, do you?

Something can be both unfair and wrong, and it can affect you deeply, but it doesn't have the power to mandate your response. That response is yours to choose.

Viktor Frankl survived life in concentration camps because he knew his dignity rested in his choice of how he would interpret the world as it caved in around him.

Choice is our greatest gift, and even our smallest decisions are important in making us who we are.

Photography: Clarice Cliff Winding Path, www.wye.co.uk

Panchromaticism--if It Isn't a Word, It Should Be

2009-10-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

What is your favorite color?

Did you have to think before answering?

I'm not questioning your memory. I bring up the subject of your favorite color because I suspect it has changed over your life; therefore, you may have to think about the question for a minute and actually make a decision in order to give an answer, because it is possible you're not sure right now.

Twenty years ago, I would have said yellow without a second thought. Now I think of my old stand-by yellow first, but then I wonder whether I might prefer that burnt orange some pumpkins turn when they've been outside through a frost, or maybe the pure cobalt of the sky at certain times of year…or the clear aqua of tropical waters over crystalline white sand. But wait--fuchsia! I just love fuchsia, I realize. I find it dazzling in dupioni silk nestled next to crimson.

So I say…what? Yellow, as usual? Or Oh, I don't know, I like them all (a lie--I can't bear silly putty pink).

Maybe the answer depends on the application. My favorite color for clothing? In that case, because I have green eyes, I'd say olive green is my favorite color because I wear it well.

Or in my garden? Well, there I'd have to answer that it really depends, because I can’t get enough of the blue of iris germanica, but I also love that orange-red of Bishop of Llandaff dahlias (but only when it sits atop the bronzy burgundy foliage of that particular plant, because it's really the combination of the two that I like). On the other hand, I might have to admit that staring into the greenish-yellow of coreopsis verticulata Moonbeam, which I used to love, now gives me the same twitchy sensation I imagine I’d get by sucking on a yellow pepper--but I love that golden color of giant sunflowers and certain calendulas.

What about favorite colors for my home? I like to be surrounded by the deep colors in the Persian rug on the floor in my living room (I took my first steps on that rug)--and oxblood Chinese porcelain and taupe walls with crisp white woodwork set it off perfectly.

This is a more complicated question than I originally thought. Must I really choose?

I now see that there is no longer such thing as my favorite color. I like different colors for different things at different times--and in different places.

Is it possible this panchromatic answer is a reflection of broader tolerance I've developed through living a little bit longer than I had when yellow was my immediate response to the question?

It seems that the older I get, the more I realize that there really is a time and a place for everything. Even silly putty pink has its place, I reluctantly admit: it is the perfect color for silly putty. And yes on the Moonbeam, too.

What is your favorite color?

It this a tricky question these days for you, too?

Photography: Coreopsis verticulata Moonbeam, whiteflowerfarm.com; iris germanica, fotonatura.org

How to Turn an Old Story into a New Story

2009-09-27T11:51:00.001-07:00

It all depends on how you look at it.

How many times have you said this to someone? It's one of those throw-away conversational elements that usually serves as a segue into expressing your own opinion about whatever is being discussed.

And what about when someone says it to you? What feelings does your body register when you hear those words?

My bet is that somewhere--and probably around the area of your solar plexus--you feel a tightening. A slight but perceptible tingling sensation spreads outward from there, and every little wavelength carries this message to your brain: I already know how I look at it. You're welcome to your opinion, but you're not going to change mine.

Think of Babe, the little pig, and her la la la singing voice--that's what your brain is doing to new information once you have made up your mind. You're not going to tell Babe to stop singing--you're too polite to do that. But you're certainly not going to listen. Your fingers are in your ears--la la la.

There is something in the world of counseling called narrative therapy. One of its assumptions is that the person isn't the problem: the problem is the problem. Narrative therapy suggests that this problem can be identified in the story a person tells about her life as much from the way she tells it as from the story itself.

Therefore, the theory goes, it is possible to address the problem by re-writing the story of your life to create a richer, more complex narrative that broadens and enriches your sense of self. In this manner, you build a larger context, a stronger foundation, for the memory you find problematic. You gather more information about yourself, which leads to more clear understanding.

What does this mean? It means that it--your life--really does depend on how you look at it.

I am not talking about retroactively assigning motives to someone who injured you in the past. Nor am I suggesting you redefine the emotional response you had when something happened to you. In fact, to the contrary.

If, for example, you feel overwrought because someone has taken advantage of you, your story to yourself might go something like this:

I have given her everything she has ever asked me for; I've helped her before she even knew she needed help, with my time, my money, my (fill in the blank)--and now instead of thanking me, she's angry at me because this time I won't give her (fill in the blank). I am generous by nature, but it hurts me when she tries to dictate the terms of my generosity: and now when I won't give her what she wants when she wants it, she gets angry at me. After everything I've done for her. I feel stupid. She's been taking advantage of me all these years and I didn't even see it.

You lick your wounds. You question your motivation: was I really just trying to help? Did I have ulterior motives? Was there a little bit of schadenfreude involved that made me feel happy about her pain and my ability to be generous in her time of need? Am I a big fat phony? Is she calling me on my own self-deception?

This is where you can stop the cycle. This is where it depends on how you look at it.

You can see that while you did give and give and give, you did it out of your desire to be helpful. Your desire to be helpful is good; however, you may have acted on it in the past with a limited understanding of how to take care of your own needs at the time. You may have thought that you were obligated to be generous in order to be a good person. You may have felt responsible to help because you always helped in the past, so how could you stop now? Or--did you feel guilty because you had so much more than the person you were trying to help?

You can continue to ask yourself questions about a past behavior in this manner. At some point, you will come to see that there is a more complex story line around the topic than the one you are accustomed to telling yourself. Am I a phony? becomes How can I continue to be generous without hurting myself?

You can, in other words, investigate an incident in your own past the way a good investigative reporter sinks her teeth into a story: follow all leads, don't make assumptions, don't draw conclusions until you have enough evidence to do so.

This can mean looking at your own memories. It can mean going back to your old journals. It can mean asking friends or family members to tell you their memories around an event. Whatever you can do to expand your understanding of something (without putting yourself at risk for further pain--I'm not sure I'd start this process by going to the person directly involved in the memory you're trying to come to terms with) is going to help you weave a larger piece of cloth in which your memories can be embedded. You can come to see that everything you have done in your life was related to everything around it; you can bring that new awareness of interconnectedness into your life today.

You can write a more complex narrative. You can tell yourself a new story about your life, a story that helps you grow in wisdom and compassion, away from self-blame and hostility toward others.

It all depends on how you look at it.

Postmodernism and the Human Heart

2009-09-25T08:25:00.000-07:00

There is something called the all-purpose saddle. The sides, called flaps, of the saddle do not go straight down to accommodate the elegant, nearly straight leg of the dressage rider; nor do they extend far enough forward to accommodate the bent knees of a rider who takes her horses over jumps. Instead, the flaps of an all-purpose saddle land somewhere in the middle, neither too far forward nor too straight. (The black saddle is a Passier dressage saddle; the brown, a Stuebben jumping saddle. Comparing the two, you can imagine what an all-purpose saddle looks like.)

Sitting an all-purpose saddle is actually a hindrance to equestrians of all disciplines. A dressage rider cannot extend her leg and drop her heel correctly; a jumper cannot place her knee forward enough to maintain her two-point balance. Most riders think an all-purpose saddle is a saddle that is good for nothing, for the simple reason that it tries to be all things to all people.

It may as well be called the postmodern saddle, because it pretends there is no validity to the question: is there a right way to do something? It pretends that whatever you want to think is fine, and that perspectives are equally valuable, and that the question of definition is supercilious: who is to say what riding dressage or going over a jump actually is, anyway? Are you implying that your way of viewing reality is superior to my way of viewing reality? is the unspoken question to anyone who states a preference. It allows a person who believes in the all-purpose saddle to hold her head up high. This is very different, however, from actually riding a horse.

How is this way of thinking an improvement over the contentious pondering done by early theologians in their debates about how many angels could sit atop the head of a pin? Postmodernism is a flurry of focused thought, but it is not taking place in the classroom of life where actual learning occurs. It is a diversion, off the point, an extra-credit hobby class that mistakes itself for core curriculum.

Still, we seem collectively to agree today that the correct perspective on existence is the postmodern point of view that includes infinite variability. Our zeitgeist is postmodern. We believe that time moves in one direction, and that what comes later is better than what came before. Postmodernism, therefore, is better than, say, The Enlightenment, as if to say history truly were an every-widening gyre, like the flight of the falcon in search of her prey (images extracted from the work of W. B. Yeats).

But which is better for the falcon: to seek the prey, which comes first, or catch the prey, which comes later? Put that way, it's easy to see how senseless the question is. So why do we assume that on the path of our development, postmodernism is better than any other historical perspective on human existence? It's just the philosophical version of the all-purpose saddle: the fact that someone invented it doesn't make it worthwhile. The fact that it came later doesn't make it better.

All points of view may be equally valid in that everyone has a right to think whatever she thinks. But that's where postmodernism has to stop. In our personal lives, we must choose what we believe, where we will put our energy and our faith. We must stand for something, not everything. We declare what is valuable to us and what is not. There is no such thing as an all-purpose belief.

A friend of mine died unexpectedly last weekend. He was here, he was healthy, and now he is gone. If he could come back for one hour, do you think he would go to his desk, pull out all his files, and rush in a fever against the ticking clock to be certain all his facts were straight, that his arguments were persuasive, that his points were clear and inarguable? That everyone would be impressed by everything he ever did?

Or would he sit with his beloved wife in the garden, holding her hand?

Eventually we will come to our senses, and all-purpose/no-purpose postmodernism will blow away to reveal once again the human heart that beats in us all.

*
Postscript: If you ride with an all-purpose saddle, please understand I am not sitting in judgment. The metaphor of the all-purpose saddle in this essay is based in my own personal experience of riding dressage.

RIP: Chris McCarthy, 1952-2009

2009-09-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to the news of the death of an old friend.

I bow my head.

My feelings don't translate to thought. They rush to fill every crevice, like a flash flood in a canyon. Until the surge passes, nothing matters but the tormented rush of water in its most powerful, most insistent form.

The canyon will re-emerge in time. Battered, it will need a season to refurbish. Flora and fauna will appear. To those who have never seen it before, it will look, simply, like a canyon.

But it is changed. Those who know the transformed canyon know this because they hold in their memories the time before the flood, and they see the tracings it left behind.

And now they sit in mindfulness, present to any moment under the sun when there is new growth and the flutter of birds. They know another flood will come another time to reshape the canyon once more, and then again, until floods and rain and wind eventually blow it to dust, and the dust becomes part of something else, and the cycle is renewed.

This is my moment to remember Chris McCarthy. Chris is the name of the flood now scouring the canyon walls.

For My Father, Who Would Have Been 87 Today

2009-09-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

People say of someone who is no longer here: not a day goes by that I don't think of him. It's a way to express love, to say you think about a person every day. I don't say that about my father.

It doesn't capture how much I miss him.

Standard-issue words won't hold the thoughts and feelings in my life that relate to my father, my mentor, my first best friend.

I can't separate us. Not only does my love of the natural world, and gardening in particular, connect us, but within that, our preferences, predilections, aesthetics. The spicy green scent of crushed geranium is home to me no matter where I encounter it (pelargoniums, we now know, but in those days we called them geraniums). I am once again my father's Sidekick (for such was my nickname) in the San Francisco Bay Area, where anything is possible at any moment.

One of my father's geraniums got away from him. In a herculean spurt brought on by the most perfect confluence of soil, light and water, this particular plant reached a diameter at its trunk (imagine a pelargonium with a trunk!) that was so thick my father could not get his hands around it, and mine fit around it the way your ears fit around your head. It was taller than I was, and I was just about right for a girl in the first grade.

Then there was the fire in the bamboo grove. Dad built a clay and stone fire pit into the side of an embankment which he outfitted with a grill. We didn't just barbecue. We cooked outside, and somehow dad's grill made it all a big adventure.

One day sparks escaped and lit the dry interior leaves of the bamboo he had recently brought home and planted ("Bamboo is actually a large grass," he explained. "Who do you think has to mow it?" I asked. "Maybe Paul Bunyan," he suggested,"and if the grass is this tall, how big do you think the ants might be?"). Flames erupted immediately in the bamboo tinder.

In an instant, we were no longer cooking outdoors. We were firemen! The hose! The buckets! Keep the little ones away! We did it. We overcame the blaze. The bamboo lived to sprawl indefinitely, and it would have overtaken the entire garden if it had not been surgically removed several years later.

He brought me many things: cotton bolls from a field in Mississippi; candy that looked just like rocks from Las Vegas; Sequoia sempervirens pinecones that were over a foot long from the mighty Redwood Forest. The best thing he ever presented to me was the Indian washing rock.

It was round, somewhat flattened, and it sparkled slightly with the mica inclusions you see in California granite. This particular rock had rumbled through riverbanks for millenia: it was perfectly smooth on every surface, and perfectly symmetrical.

How did I know it was an Indian washing rock? Easy. From all our visits to the Spanish missions that dot California, we knew many little facts about the native populations whose land we lived upon. We knew what they ate. How they diapered their babies (shredded bark and cattails). How they sewed their garments with sinews. We also knew how they washed those garments: crouched by the edge of the river, with the clothing submerged, women pounded and pounded with round river rocks until the garments were clean.

There are many tons of river rocks in California that could serve this purpose. Any one of them, now discarded, could have been brought into service at one point or another and later forgotten until my father found it.

But he found this particular rock because it had a red and blue Indian design on it. What good fortune! And he brought it home to me.

I was overwhelmed to have an actual artifact in my hands. Immediately, I wanted to share my excitement by bringing it to school on Monday.

"Well," my father said, "it might be a better idea to keep it here and protect it--respect it. What if you brought it to school and something happened to it?"

"Something like what?" I asked.

"Peanut butter and jelly might take the design right off the rock, for one thing," he said. "Also, someone could drop it."

"Oh," I said, disappointed but convinced by his wisdom. "Let's leave it at home." That dropping a rock might hurt it seemed logical the way he said it.

So instead of bringing the rock to school, I worked with dad to build a felt-lined exhibition box for it, and we put it on a bookshelf where we could see it without having to touch it any more than necessary. That rock was my most important thing.

Gradually, with other treasures of childhood, the rock was forgotten. I grew up and realized that one afternoon my dad had probably stopped by a river that appealed to him (trout spotting from the riverbank in his Brooks Brothers suit?) and then came upon this perfectly shaped specimen. He couldn't resist picking it up. Looks like something Indian women might have used to wash their clothes. I know what I'll do...

One rounded river rock. One red and blue editing pencil. One extraordinarily imaginative and loving father. Those were the three ingredients that went into the creation of my best thing.

My rock is right here beside me as I write this morning. The image has faded but it remains visible. I can feel his energy and see the bold, artistic strokes my father made with his pencil in his hand.

The rock still radiates the sun as it shone on that California riverbank one day so long ago, when the mica glinted and caught the eye of a young father who had stopped his car to breathe in the beauty of the natural world. Then he picked up that rock and thought of his daughter, and he knew what she would like, so he brought into this world the touchstone she holds precious to this day.

It's your birthday, Dad, the first day of Autumn. It's sunny here in Seattle. But you're right--if I look closely, I can see that the sun's rays are cast at a lower angle than they were earlier in the summer. In the morning, I can smell the coming of fall now in the damp air. Please tell me one more time: how many hazel nuts can a squirrel put in her mouth? Is it a million or a billion?

Photography: Pelargonium, about.com; Giant Bamboo, Scotteaux, 8 January 2008.

When Noise Hurts

2009-09-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

Noise!

For most of my life, I have struggled to repress what I have always considered to be a particularly sensitive reaction to it. I have no doubt that leaf blowers annoy everyone. A low-flying jet, a nearby freeway, a barking dog--we all have the buttons that get pushed by these intrusions.

As I said, I realize I may have a heightened stress response to noise, and that most people can withstand it well past the limits that cause me to tremble. I no longer think there is something wrong with me because of this, but I do recognize that everyone doesn't feel overwhelmed by noise the way I do.

Still, I'll bet I can name one thing that will drive you nuts no matter how much noise you believe you can tolerate, the one surefire provocation that gets to everyone I know and probably most people I do not know.

I'm talking about automobile speaker systems that could power the Hollywood Bowl if they weren't instead crammed into the trunk and back seat of a pulsating Chevrolet.

I have recently, and for the first time, moved into an elegant downtown condominium. It has a chic and urban feel inside with its slick surfaces and dark hardwood floors. A wrap-around deck provides a spectacular view of Seattle--I see Lake Union, Elliott Bay, the skyline, and, of course, our iconic Space Needle. It is like fairyland at night.

There are garden issues here for me, which I will not go into now. There are a few minor inconveniences: I have to walk the mighty poodle several times a day instead of opening a door and letting him outside; I have to use an elevator all the time, even to take out the trash; I can sometimes smell cigarette smoke from passers-by down on the sidewalk.

But the worst and most painful and unanticipated problem I face is those heart-stopping sound system-mobiles that for some reason constantly drive the east-west street a block away from where I live and still manage to shake the Chihuly.

Like members of any other narrow interest group, sound system aficionados apparently have no understanding that others are not enchanted. In a way, I can see this, because I share a certain incredulity of my own: I don't know why everyone else isn't moved to rapture by the arts of the Mughal Empire.

But I don't stuff the ears of non-fans with miniature paintings the way car-stereo freaks stuff mine with noise.

Isn't there a principle involved here? The one that says your freedom ends where it comes into contact with mine? And isn't the word compromise designed to negotiate the politics of the border?

It's clear the owners of these vehicles don't care about anyone else's choices or sensitivities. Every time they put the key in the ignition, it is an act of aggression. I'm afraid to tell them I don't like their noise because they terrify me--and it goes on unabated, as no one else seems able or willing to do anything about it, either.

This unchanging fact tears at me in the same way the noise does, and I cannot seem to come to terms with the barbarians, in my mind or in the street.

I've decided I'm not a condominium person after all. I'm more the house-and-garden-away-from-the-busy-street person I always was before I came to believe that this condo thing was a necessary next step at my age.

Bah. The noise lovers can have the city. I'm going home. My grown children may get nervous and think I'm a bird in flight--moving again will take some explaining--but I know my nest when I see it.

And a condo in the sky above the racket of the city isn't it.

How To Remember Good Things

2009-09-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

Studies have shown that we remember details of an event in relation to the intensity of the emotion it arouses when it occurs. And, apparently, according to recent research at Boston College, bad memories record more permanently than good ones because during a negative event, there is an increase in brain activity. Things are etched as if in stone to the degree that they frighten or disturb you.

Quite simply, more power is naturally available for the operation of remembering the painful than is available in a happy circumstance, when the bliss of the moment creates a sense of flow. In terms of evolution, this allows us to store more information related to danger, which will come in handy next time we feel threatened. A happy event presents no such concern. Our brains coast. We don't need to remember good times because they won't hurt us.

The Buddhist answer to the problem of remembering the good is resolved within the concept of mindfulness. Take particular notice of the details in a situation you want to remember (an event such as your wedding, for example): get conscious of the lighting; smell the flowers; taste the cake; listen to the music; really look at your friends and family members. Do all these things with the intent to remember just how things looked and felt to you at the time, and you will have a better chance of remembering them in the future.

Now, back to the negative. Let's talk about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, for example. Everyone old enough to remember the event also remembers where they were when they first learned the news.

I was in our high school biology lab. The announcement came over the loudspeaker in the boys' principal's clear articulation. I stared at the counter as he spoke, seeing nothing but that counter and hearing nothing but his words.

As I result, I can tell you today that the counters in our biology lab were a deep forest green.

I cannot tell you what color the counters were in the chemistry lab. I cannot tell you the colors of the walls in either lab. But I guarantee those bio lab counters were deep green. I associate that color with the death of JFK--all these years later, I still see flash-like veils of forest green whenever the subject comes up.

When I got home from school on the evening of November 22, 1963, house painters were just wrapping up for the day. Plastic sheets draped appliances and furniture, which was all I could see when I entered the house through the side door. The strong odor of oil-based paint clung to every molecule in the air.

Because of the fact that the kitchen and dining room were out of commission while being painted, for dinner we ate Chinese food out of red and white to-go boxes in stunned silence while watching the television news, as Walter Cronkite updated the information about the death of the president. This was highly irregular in so many ways, but most of all because eating and watching television were never concurrent in our household. Meal time was for conversation. Period.

As a result of this series of events, to this day the smell of oil-based house paint makes me think of--no, it's not what you're thinking. It doesn't make me think of the assassination of JFK.

The smell of oil-based paint makes me think of Chinese food. At our house, in my own small world, the link between that paint and eating Chinese food while watching television trumped the memory value of watching the news of the national tragedy.

It is Chinese food in red and white containers that makes me think of the assassination of JFK. Chinese food and forest green. And these links have remained in place my whole life, unlikely ever to be dislodged.

The Challenger Disaster, 9/11, Katrina--these disasters are hugely significant to the country at large, but they are embedded in the framework of every individual's personal life experience at the moment they occur. Each of these events, therefore, provides us with a lens through which we can see our national history, but they also give us a way in which we can remember our own lives exactly as they were when the disaster occurred.

The emotional stage for storing the memories I've just mentioned, for example, was set by the shock of hearing frightening news: the president of the United States had been murdered. Without that precondition, how else would I remember such an unimportant fact that the day the kitchen was painted we ate Chinese food while watching television?

Think back. You can probably see where you were in great detail when news of any of the above-mentioned events reached you. You know what you were wearing. You know what you were doing. You know which people you were with. You know how you felt at the time.

Can you say the same for a random date you pick out of the past? It seems pain has its gifts.

We can embed equally intense connections with good memories if we pay as much attention to them while they are unfolding in time as we do inadvertently when our brains make us hyper-alert in the face of evil.

Your mother was right when she admonished you to pay attention. She may not even have realized how right she was.

If your mother's advice is not enough to convince you, ask yourself this: why else might a rose bloom with such a fine scent?

Pierre-August Renoir, Roses, 1890 (Musee d'Orsay, Paris), one of many Renoir painted of this most wonderful of flowers; Chinese food container, goodhousekeeping.com; Rosa rugosa Blanc Double de Coubert, an old rose dating to the 1800s that has a magnificent scent.

Golf and a Haircut

2009-09-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

I had coffee with a friend and classmate this morning and the subject of golf came up. This was not because either of us golfs with any regularity, but because we were talking about hairdressers.

We discovered an interesting connection.

As any woman will tell you, her hairdresser must, first and foremost, be skilled at cutting/coloring hair, and doing so in a way that is individually tailored to face shape, hair texture and color, age, career and life considerations--the list of requirements is long.

Once these criteria are met, usually after several less than perfect experiences (it is sometimes a merciful quality of hair that it grows as fast as it does), the next level of operations comes into play. As soon as you feel assured that your hairdresser (let's say it's a woman, though it could also be a man) can do what you want and like with your hair, you no longer even think about it. In fact, you take her skill for granted.

But here's the key that unlocks the mystery many men see in the relationship between a woman and her hairdresser: the hairdresser's main role is confidant. I'm sure there's something I wouldn't discuss with my hairdresser, but at the moment I can't think of what it might be.

This role derives from one simple fact: if she has been helping women with their hair for any length of time, she has heard just about everything at least once. She has seen reactions, she has seen success, and she has seen failure. She knows happiness and grief; generosity and envy; kindness and nastiness; and every other polarity--as well as the range between them--that you can imagine.

It is unlikely you will bring a completely new story to an experienced hairdresser. The details will be different; the timing and consequences may be unique. But she already holds the basket into which you can set your fruit. She can therefore give you more comfort and better advice than just about anyone else. And she offers you an ear--bless her, she's captive as she's working on your hair.

Obviously, we need our therapists and our pastors and our friends. Very few of us can stand alone and face life's vicissitudes without help from others. But over and above that, when you really need to try out new ideas about who you are, or what you want, or what you might do, your hairdresser is your go-to person.

How does this relate to golf?

When my grandfather had to give up the game at 96 because he was losing his peripheral vision, he was understandably upset. He had been at it since the age of 16--in other words, he had been golfing for 80 years.

"Grandpa," I said, "you must be a fine golfer."

My grandfather shook his head gently. "No," he said. "I'm a very average golfer."

He must have seen the incredulity I was trying to hide.

"It has never been about the golf," he said. "It has always been about the company. Outside in all kinds of weather with three buddies week after week, year after year--that's what I'll miss." He let a great sigh escape. "Those fellows kept me sane."

And that's the connection: women have their hairdressers and men have their golf buddies (though I know there are also men with hairdressers and women who golf).

If I had asked my grandfather a direct question about the therapeutic value of golf, he might not have admitted it. He was from a generation that considered therapy with the same enthusiasm as they relished insanity. But when he told me what he would miss the most about golf, the therapeutic value of his game was clear to both of us.

There are two sacred dates on our calendars: hair appointments and tee times. Is it any mystery why most of us will juggle just about everything else in order to be there on time?

Photography: Drops of water, Staffan Enborn, Finland, July 10, 2004; masters-golf-tours.com; I can't remember where I got the hairdresser photo but if it is yours, please let me know and I'll credit you or remove it.

Finding Peace in the Autumn Garden

2009-09-14T15:09:00.000-07:00

It is possible to see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour, as William Blake suggests. We can invert the vast and concentrate on the small, though it takes effort to do so in this noisy world.

It becomes easier as days shorten and the sun's rays fall lower on the horizon: autumn in the garden is a quieter time, the time when small things come to the foreground.

There are extraordinary events taking place in your own garden right this minute. The spider's web drips with early morning dew and awaits the stumbling flight of an insect losing body heat as the days turn chilly. Chlorophyll no longer holds center stage in the chromatic scale. Where buds once formed, now there are acorns.

We expect permutations of orange, rust and maroon, veils of gold and brown in the garden in autumn. But then we come across a shock of violet, where golden-eyed asters bright as errant amethysts bob on the cooling breeze. Even more surprising is the shy and delicate pink of autumn crocus where it keeps company with brown mushrooms and fallen leaves at the base of a sturdy tree.

All is not quiet, however. The squirrel with the fat cheeks will screech the minute she stashes her hazel nuts, and the gathering crows will sound warnings to all birds preparing to migrate: the way is south and the time is now.

To paraphrase Blake, what immortal hand or eye could frame such a world as what we see before us? Hold this question in awareness as you go through your day, and hold it despite all the mounting evidence in our raucous, consumerist world that to do so is to indulge in a flight of fancy. Then, as the gentle rays of the afternoon sun fade, remember that night will come, and it will blanket you with stars that seem particularly brilliant at this time of year.

Autumn is a time of turning inward, a time of forgiveness, a time to let go of all past efforts. It presents an opportunity to rest, just the way the garden rests, before new undertakings which are soon to come at the turn of another year.

So hunker down: take care of yourself and all you hold dear.

Breathe in the deep calm of the season.

Relax as you exhale.

Photography: Aster novi-belgii, Wikipedia, public domain; Vine Maple Leaf, Nickel Eisen, 6 October 2004; Hourglass, S. Sepp, 21 October 2007

Susan Boyle and Bernard Madoff: Equal Energy, Two Directions

2009-09-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

Bernard Madoff slides from his self-created pedestal of exclusivity and respect into a miasma of lies when his life's work is exposed as common fraud.

Susan Boyle ascends to the stars as her natural talent rides the wave of personal courage and brings her gift into the hearts of people around the world.

These two individuals provide a perfect object lesson for something I've always suspected: it takes just as much energy to do what Bernard Madoff did as it takes to do what Susan Boyle did. Why, why, why, then, would a person use a limited individual allotment of this precious energy to suck the life from others when there is an equal opportunity to enhance the world and leave it a better place with the same amount of effort?

It is fiction to say that it is easier to cheat than it is to work hard. Cheating takes an enormous toll on an individual's mental, spiritual and emotional life: keeping track of frauds, which lies were told to whom, who knows what about what… Can you imagine the anger and stress that has been seething just below the surface for Bernard Madoff all these years? These corrosive feelings are emotions he could never embrace, nor show to anyone, nor discuss with anyone, not even his wife (if she is to be believed).

People have called Bernard Madoff a sociopath, but even a so-called sociopath might squirm when regulating agencies continually knock on the door with long lists of increasingly pointed questions; even a sociopath can suspect there might be a crack somewhere in his facade, a crack he needs to locate and repair fast. Sociopathy is no free ride. Thinking of oneself as smarter than everyone else can only work until you're caught, and as imprisoned criminals have repeatedly attested, they knew that day would come.

I don't even like typing all these ugly words. But they serve a purpose and form the dark background against which Susan Boyle's presence gleams.

Like Bernard Madoff, Susan, too, came out of obscurity. But here's the key difference: his mind was set on No fair! I want what everyone else has! At one point in his life, he could have decided to apply himself and work hard to make something of himself, but his overriding envy rotted his heart. He diverted his energy from creating something good toward destroying what everyone else had. And he probably worked every bit as hard as he would have had he lived honestly, in which case he would not now be rotting in prison.

Susan Boyle, on the other hand, had a gift which she nurtured on her own, and never let fall away. How many of us can say the same about the great promise we once showed playing the piano? or painting? or singing? Most of us have turned our backs on these pursuits in the manner of putting away the things of childhood.

But Susan Boyle persevered. She lived a quiet life, always singing, and made a promise to her dying mother: I won't give up. I'll stay with it.

Then she mounted what must sometimes have felt like an impossible campaign of personal courage, not only to her but to others. She was no doubt accused along the way of having pipe dreams, of reaching beyond her station, of thinking she was all that--and why? Because she dared to put one foot in front of the other, over and over, until she walked right into the spotlight that made her an overnight success in the eyes of the world.

Susan Boyle isn't an overnight success in her own estimation, though. She has been applying herself to her gift for her entire life. She was born with a talent for singing, and she honored her gift and continues to honor it, and look at the treasure she has brought into the world: her voice and her story delight the souls of everyone who encounters her.

Light and darkness; good and evil. Conversations don't get much more basic than this, and examples are seldom more clear than they are in the cases of Susan Boyle and Bernard Madoff. Fortunately for the world, Madoff will be no more than a footnote in the journals of sleazy financial crime. All the hearts he broke will find no sense of justice in whatever happens to him, but at least he won't be doing anything to anyone else.

On the very bright other side, Susan Boyle's light will shine for a long, long time. Even the souls bruised by Bernard Madoff can take delight in the gifts of Susan Boyle.

In this way, it can be seen that good outweighs the bad, just as we've always been taught to believe but have perhaps come to doubt over the years. The same equation holds true with tiny, anonymous acts of kindness in our own lives today.

I know this is true.

Photography: Susan Boyle, Perez Hilton; Rose bush, Fastily, 4/26/09; Rose, Beechesnursery.co.uk

What's It Really Like to Return to School After 50?

2009-09-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

I feared being the older woman in the back of the classroom, the person whose very presence caused the younger students to lower their voices and watch their language--the one who never said anything but took constant and copious notes.

I thought I would be older than the professors. I thought I would feel as if I were in class with my daughters and their friends, trying to crash through the age cohort barriers with the same success as middle-aged women wearing headbands and hiphuggers met when I was an undergraduate in the 1970s. Don't they have anything more appropriate to do with their time? Like go somewhere else and be old?

Let's put first things first: because I have daughters of my own, I have years of practice discerning which styles and articles of clothing can cross over into my closet and which absolutely cannot. I'd like to think I'd know better even without the training grounds my daughters provided. At least I'm confident I am not at risk for dressing inappropriately.

Secondly, though I've been away from the classroom for many years, I haven't rented out the space between my ears. I've read many times more books since getting my BA than I did up until then, and I have experienced exponential growth in the number of topics that interest me. Everything I learn builds upon everything that came before; I sense that the roots of wisdom have beed laid down.

My papers are coherent and writing them fascinates me. It is a pleasure to grapple with a narrow topic and discuss it logically within a limited framework of 7 or 10 pages. Assigments become like excursions into areas I'd probably be reading about anyway, only this time the instructor serves as a professional guide for the expedition. Questions can be asked and discussed; Google is no longer my main portal for information.

The other advantage I bring to my studies is the scope of experience that only derives from meeting the changing demands of life year after year. Confidence and preparedness for whatever may come next are earmarks of the returning student. Coursework often falls into already established categories. I already know a little about a lot of what we cover in class. Encountering new topics and refining the old becomes an immensely satisfying process.

As for stamina--it is amazing how energizing it is to undertake a project that fascinates and makes demands of you.

Yes, most of the students are younger than I am, but there is also a rather large group of individuals who are returning to school to redirect their careers, to learn skills for re-entering the job force, or to re-immerse themselves in the world of academia after a long absence of child-rearing or career building--or both. As it turns out, I'm not even the oldest person in my program, the professors are older than I am, and I certainly wouldn't call myself the quiet older woman in the back of the classroom.

I've completed my first year of classes in a three-year program. This fall quarter I begin a six-quarter unpaid internship as a therapist-in-training. I am excited about embracing this new area of endeavor.

The only disadvantage I can envision is that I will have less time available after graduation for working in the field than my younger classmates will have. However, that is balanced by my sense that the years I do have will be rich and valuable to my clients because I have so much life experience--joyous and painful, times of plenty and times of loss--to augment the M.A. degree that will qualify me to work as a therapist in the first place.

Less can be more if less means richer and more potent.

If you are considering returning to graduate school, I say give it a try. You are free to withdraw if it doesn't suit you. But what if it does? What if you find an entirely new path? And what if you discover that everything you've already done has paved that path with gold?

I like to think about Sarah, wife of Abraham, who gave birth to Isaac at age 92. Oh, how young I feel when I think about Sarah!

Photography: Sarah and Abraham, Marc Chagall; Agave americana in bloom, Johannesburg, South Africa 11 December 2008--this plant is commonly called century plant, though it actually blooms at age 28: compare that to your fleeting summertime impatiens!

Why The Mad Pruner Can't Get Me Now

2009-09-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

Bing cherries. Who doesn't love them? Summer in the Northwest is paradise for cherry lovers. The Bing cherry was actually first hybridized here and named after Chinese orchard foreman Ah Bing in the 1870s on horticulturist Seth Lewelling's Oregon farm.

The Pacific Northwest is also home to the magnificent Rainier cherry, which was hybridized in 1952 at Washington State University. With its delicate skin and delicious flavor, it is a clear (and expensive) favorite of cherry lovers everywhere. It bruises very easily and must therefore be harvested completely by hand, and even then you'll have to put up with slight bruising on most Rainiers you find in the supermarket or roadside market. Don't worry, though--as long as the flesh is firm it will remain sweet.

Many people have a cherry tree or two in their garden. Often planted is the self-pollinating Stella, a very sweet cherry with a dark red color that looks a lot like a Bing. What this means is that it doesn't need another type of cherry around. Bees transfer pollen from the burgeoning anthers to the stigma, and then come July you have paradise in your own back yard.

Unless you are The Mad Pruner.

Cherries set fruit on year-old shoots and lateral spurs. This means two things: 1)very old wood will not set fruit; and 2) this year's growth will not set fruit. The Mad Pruner, however, wanted his cherry trees to look a certain way: kind of like a lollipop, with dense foliage. He went at his trees with a power saw, and sheared them evenly in all directions, and he did this every spring, just as the new leaves were beginning to unfurl.

The Mad Pruner's trees did not set fruit.

He cursed them. He told them that if they didn't produce any damn cherries this year, it was their last chance: he would rip them out. In a predictable series of events, they did not set fruit and he ripped them out. He showed those useless cherry trees.

It sounds ridiculous to tell the tale this way. It even felt ridiculous at the time, and it is hard for me to admit this, but with this man I couldn't seem to find a way to approach the subjects of how cherry trees work, and how fruit comes into being, and that an open vase shape with strong horizontal branching is optimal for the health of the tree and for fruit production. If I came anywhere near these subjects, his eyes glazed over: he didn't seem to want his idea of the perfect tree shape compromised by anything I might have to say about horticulture. To paraphrase my father: The Mad Pruner's mind was made up and he didn't want to be confused by the facts.

It broke my heart to see those poor trees tortured into submission and then punished for not producing cherries. I felt horrible that I had been unable to intervene on their behalf. But, of course, there was a larger lesson here.

What doesn't work with cherry trees also does not work with people. That's why The Mad Pruner is now a man I used to know.

In my own case, I was able to intervene. I got out before he completely uprooted me.

Photography: Rainier Cherries on Tree, Yakimacherries.com; Stella Cherries, gardeningforyou.com; Rainier Cherries, Gilbert W. Arias/Seattle P-I; Rainier Cherries, Washington State Fruit Commission; Bing Cherries, AGS/USDA

That Was Then...but This Isn't!

2009-09-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

The past is what comes before this moment, but it is not a vessel into which you must pour the rest of your life. Nor are you obligated to look back in bondage: the present is not cast by tentacles from the past.

The dense web of memory (think of Marcel Proust) can seduce you into the illusion that you are present to the unfolding of your life if indulging in memories. But by coddling your memories you are looking backward, while each new moment glides past unnoticed like a new frame for an old photograph.

I know a woman who is so blind to today that she compares everything she does, hears, and sees either favorably or unfavorably to what she did, heard or saw as a child. Nothing exists in its own new moment: nothing new can happen. It is as if her book is already written and all that remains of the task is appending the footnotes.

In this way, the original memory disappears like a sunken ship overwhelmed by coral--a new monolith calcifies. Retrospection becomes a celebration of vocabulary: how many ways can you conjure anew something that once was but is no more? And if you do this repeatedly, you risk becoming like dust left in the corners as your life sweeps by.

Live bigger than that. Moderate your habit of looking in the rearview mirror in order to drive forward.

Suit up for snorkeling. Try the french fries with white truffles. Wear red. Tomorrow, do something else. Give yourself over to radical awareness of the present. It doesn't matter what you used to do, or what you used to resist doing.

On this plane and in this dimension, the arrow of time only goes in one direction. Unless you possess superhuman powers, why not go with the flow?

Photography: Is this a new plant to you: Jade Vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys), Hawaii? If it is--oh, good!

Kirkegaard Suggests that You Smile

2009-08-31T11:05:00.000-07:00

It was Soren Kirkegaard who said, Our lives always express the result of our dominant thoughts. Not generally remembered as a woo-woo, out there kind of guy, he nonetheless anticipated contemporary pop psych notions of manifestation and the laws of attraction.

Is Kirkegaard's prescription really so different from creating a sound moral compass and letting it guide you throughout your life?

His statement describes an orientation of awareness toward the result of each choice you make. In that sense, it is being present with the simultaneity of eternity: what you do now will look like this (exhibit 'a') tomorrow, and like this (exhibit 'b') a year from now. The shell that encases choice is responsibility, and it surrounds every decision you make now and will ever make. That is the mechanism behind Kirkegaard's observation that our lives express the result of our dominant thoughts.

I once heard an older person (who could have been 45) say that when you're young you have the face you were born with, but when you're older you have the face you deserve.

Because I was a child who habitually took things off to the cave for more thorough examination later, I rolled this around in my mind for years before I understood what it meant. How could it be that the very structure of your face could reflect your life's decisions, everything you've ever done or thought? I didn't understand how skin and musculature work, for one thing.

I didn't understand, for example, that a perpetual scowl brought on by cynicism and distrust would eventually demonstrate before you even uttered a word that you were cynical and distrustful.

I didn't understand how pursing your lips in disgust would eventually incise lines radiating outward that made your mouth look drawn so tight that nothing kind could ever slip out.

I didn't understand how squinting your eyes in perpetual chagrin and impatience would eventually make you appear to be straining just to see what lies directly in front of you.

Look around. You can tell at a glance whose company you are likely to enjoy and whose you would more likely avoid, given the choice.

Is this prejudice?

Prejudice is using your own criteria, internally derived, to judge another person. But when you look at someone's face, you are reading what is there, not writing it. You are reading it and saying: I don't have to get to the last page of this book to know how this story ends.

And if you doubt the possibility that this might be true, why do you think you smile back when someone smiles at you?

Photography: Albrect Durer, Portrait of an Unknown Man, 1524. Museo del Prado; Mother Teresa; Scowl, The Karma Report web site; Selection from Kirkegaard manuscript, Philosophical Fragments

Remembrance of Sea Turtles Past

2009-08-30T10:35:00.000-07:00

I remember the things I wish to forget and forget the things I wish to remember.

I am writing from my balcony on the nineteenth floor of the Sheraton Waikiki overlooking Diamond Head and the vast green and blue Pacific. Rolling curls of white surf tickle the sand. I see the outline of reefs which are remarkably close to the shoreline. And then I notice some of the shapes I took for reefs are moving.

Up pops a sea turtle, and then another, and another. My immediate impulse is to call to my daughters and make certain they have a chance to see these gentle creatures.

But my daughters are not here. Daughter One parlayed her film degree into work in the Los Angeles movie industry. Daughter Two used her degree in French and Anthropology as a ticket to law school in Seattle. I am alone on this balcony in Honolulu watching the sea turtles.

I reach for my cell phone and call Los Angeles.

"I can see sea turtles in the water from my balcony!"

"That's great, Mom."

Pause. "I didn't realize how big they are."

"Yeah, they're huge! I saw some in Fiji last week."

"I- well, I just wanted to say hello, Honey."

"Glad you called," my daughter said. "Have fun at the writers conference."

"I will," I said. She could not see the tears welling in my eyes and I hoped she couldn't hear them in my voice. Mom can get so emotional. "I'll call you when I get home."

"Okay," she said. "Love you, Mom."

"I love you, too, Sweetheart."

I did not want to cry. I did want to touch my daughter. I wanted to touch my daughter when she was a wide-eyed four year old who had never seen a sea turtle. I forgot for a moment all the time that had passed. A part of me believed I could call her name out loud and she would rush to my side and look at the water until a sea turtle emerged, and then her face would light with glee and she'd call to her little sister to come look, too.

I go down to the poolside cafe to meet a friend from Australia whom I only get to see when we both attend this annual conference in Hawaii. I arrive a few minutes early. Children shriek and splash. Wait a minute. I know this place. I've been here before.

My daughters are 2 and 4. They have water wings and inflatable blue and green turtles that encircle their waists. I hover, holding both at once. These Seattle babies frolic without their raincoats, sweaters, boots in warm water under the Hawaiian sun on a clear November afternoon. Such beautiful skin they have. Time to apply more sunblock. Are they getting hungry yet?

When I signed up for this conference several months ago, I picked this hotel because it is where the conference is headquartered this year. At the time I was just three months out from breaking both legs. It was an act of faith to register in the first place--I believed I would be walking well enough by Labor Day that I could manage to attend, but I didn't want to push my luck by staying at another hotel that would require additional walking just to get to a meeting.

Not for one second did it enter my mind that I had been to this hotel before, and that memories of my babies would be there waiting for me when I arrived.

I love memories of my children. But I grow weary of tearful encounters that come from living in two moments at the same time when the choice of which to stay with is not mine to make.

Memories create many parallel currents in the rivers of our lives. They stay with us, and we recognize them as memories when we are thinking clearly, when we see things with enough emotional separation.

It's like watching the sea turtles from the nineteenth floor. If I were swimming down there among them right now, I'd be face to face with one, and how my adrenaline would rush and how alive I would feel! From my balcony, though, I see the whole picture. I see the ocean, the horizon, the sky.

I know my daughters are not my babies any longer. But I forget every now and then, if, for example, from my balcony I see sea turtles come up for air under the Hawaiian sun and I want my little girls to see them, too.

Being a mother means living in a thousand simultaneous minutes. Sometimes it feels like an act of courage to stay with the one the calendar calls today.

Photography: Green Turtle, Mila Zinkova, 2008; View of Diamond Head, Ergo Sum 88

Scale and Balance for the Human Heart: the Comfort of Feeling Small and Significant

2009-08-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

I watched a National Geographic special called The Sahara last evening. During the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, the area approximately the size of the United States that is now barren desert was once a verdant temperate zone teeming with plant and animal life--and, of course, inhabited by people who hunted and gathered to feed themselves.

A cyclical change in Earth's axial orientation to the sun brought a about such swift climatological changes that advancing desertification would have been evident within a single person's lifetime. Lake Chad, which was once the size of Texas, shrank to the size of Vermont. The mighty horse once used for transport could no longer bear up under the conditions. The camel was introduced from southwest Asia, soon to become the embodiment of all that is harsh about living in the desert: two eyelids, one of which is clear to keep out driving sand; wide feet to prevent sinking into loose sand; a hump of stored fat to provide nutrition over long periods during which food is not available.

If you close your eyes, I'm betting you are able to imagine a caravan in silhouette on some long-ago evening against the red fading light of a setting sun as the long chain plods along the crest of a sand dune (some dunes are as tall as a 50-story building). Can you also imagine the next day as Homer's rosy-fingered dawn unfurls ribbons of light and brings the desert into relief under the morning sky? And later as shimmering sheets of heat disorient you to both time and place, and your depth of field is ratcheted down to only what you could capture with a macro lens? Any time of day, the Sahara is unfathomably broad.

Saharans and visitors alike describe being overcome with a sense of the immensity of the universe as the sand stretches out below and the stars above. They say it creates a distinct awareness of the place in creation occupied by human beings, specifically the individual who is sitting in awe of being cradled in this environment.

Early Moslems called the Sahara The Garden of Allah. In my ignorance, I thought the idea was perhaps an analog to the Garden of Eden, or even a reference to a heavenly installation similar to the lush paradise gardens the Arabs built on the earthly plane. But The Garden of Allah is much more than that: it is an empty and private place where Allah can go to be alone and think. Even Allah acknowledges the vastness of the Saraha.

You don't have to go to the Sahara for this experience. One evening under the stars in even the Mojave Desert provokes similar sentiments. Is it the desolation, and the awareness that one is there despite such obviously great odds? I don't think so, because the same feelings of being part of something much larger can come to you on an empty beach on Oahu or during a quiet break at the side of a groomed slope high upon a snow-covered mountain.

I think it is the separateness. All evidence of human context slip away in environments such as these. A person stands alone as if it were the first moment in time. Ticklish reminders of daily life do not enter such rarefied places: it is you--mind, body and spirit--and your creator in a moment of intimacy seldom available to us in the rush of quotidian getting and spending. No wonder clarity descends like manna from the heavens.

But it is also possible to see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. William Blake's words suggest we can find the same peace by inverting the vast and concentrating on the small. For example, there are extraordinary goings-on in your own garden right this minute in these last days of August, where now the spider's web drips with early morning dew and awaits the stumbling flight of an insect losing body heat as summer turns to fall. Chlorophyll no longer holds center stage in the chromatic scale, and where buds once formed, now there are acorns.

What immortal hand or eye could frame such a world? Hold this question in awareness as you go through your day, and hold it despite all the mounting evidence around you that to do so is to indulge in a flight of fancy. Night will come again. It will blanket you with stars. The majesty of creation will once again be self-evident, and you will no longer doubt the wisdom of the tenderness you allow into your heart when you contemplate such thoughts as these.

Let yourself be. Let Earth be your home and heaven your state of mind.

A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage.
--William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, written 1803, published 1863

Photography: Sahara Desert in Tunisa and Shadows of Camels and Travelers, Alexey Kkrapckhen Moscvitch, 2004; The Large Turf, Albrecht Durer, 1503, The Albertina, Vienna; The Pleiades, NASA/ESA/AURA/CalTech; Sahara, 1908, Page; Erg Chebbi, Morocco, Rosino, December 2005

Three Ways to Grow

2009-08-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

So the question is this: do we grow strongly and independently toward the light like the sunflower? or, do we lean into the darkness to get support from anything we come into contact with, like the ivy?

The sunflower, Helianthus annuus: its stem is stout and strong because it has to support itself. It bears a large flower that has a lot of fast growing to do and insects to warm and feed.

A vine is slender and graceful (think of the annual sweet pea Lathyrus odoratus). It has an entirely different orientation. It grows its leaves and flowers out in the sun, where flying insects are made at home, but deep underneath it sends out shoots and tendrils to attach it to anything it can reach in order to remain upright.

I'm sure the metaphor here is obvious, but I'll say it outright anyway.

It's unwise to judge the stem of a sunflower by comparing its appearance to that of a vine. One is not right; one is not wrong. One is not beautiful; one is not ugly. They are different manifestations of what is possible in the plant world, different answers to the same questions regarding propagation, nutrition, security. They grow under different conditions.

There are times in my life when I am like a sunflower. My strength flows, I feel the radiance I project, and I am strong in my sense of purpose and my role here in this life. Connection to the transcendent spirit that rolls through all living things pulses through me. God's in his heaven, and all's right with the world, as my mother said on many a fine summer evening, quoting Robert Browning.

There are other times when that strength slips away. I am more like the sweet pea: I don't mean to pull the life out of anyone else the way an ivy, given enough time, can strangle even the strongest tree. However, when I'm knocked off my feet, I need support: I will lean on someone or something else until I once again feel my own independent orientation to the morning light and can stand on my own again.

And then there are the darkest times when my strength has gone underground. I won't--can't?--lean on anyone. Circumstances have changed too much, and the connection is ruptured; new questions have arisen that I can barely articulate, much less expect someone else to understand. Such confusion can overwhelm me, and I will hide until I can re-emerge into the light with some sense of direction.

We are constantly charged with maintaining a course that we can seldom accurately anticipate. It serves us well to be flexible, and adapt to each new reality as we face it. Breathe in and breathe out, moment to moment: peel back the illusions of what you thought about something or what you hoped or how it used to be. Face the day. Every day. Every moment. Buddhists call this mindfulness.

I call it sanity. It is the way to receptivity, which is the only state in which the divine can enter into your life and re-animate you. Its gift is quiet hopefulness that leads to discernment.

Right now in your garden there are plants like the sunflower that seek the sun with no illusions of doing anything else. They're sunflowers, and this is what sunflowers do. There are also plants whose furtive and tentative reaching out for support is hidden by a lush display of leaves and tumbling blossoms. And then there are the plants still in the pots from the nursery that you somehow never got around to planting last spring. They don't look their best off in the corner by the planting shed, no longer in bloom with a few broken stems, lined up as if waiting for the bus to recycle-land.

How many times have you gone out looking around in the garden on a wet day in early spring and discovered that your dead plants in this discard pile are sprouting new growth? And the growth is at all angles, because the pots were heaped in a lopsided fashion for a disorderly demise? The urge to survive has transcended all the constraints you tried to enforce on them through your neglect.We contain all of these proclivities: we are created beings and we are not perfect, yet we are capable of remounting ourselves with great success if we go inward and rely on our connection to all of creation to get us through. There are seasons in the garden, remember. We can't expect the hydrangeas to bloom or the sunflowers to germinate in December, at least not here in the Pacific Northwest.

Photography: A Macro Photo of a Cluster of Sweet Peas, Giligone, August 31, 2008, Wikipedia; Vine Climbing on a Fixed Steel Ladder, Menazu-tron, 12 July 2009, Wikipedia; Flowerpot, Lombroso, 20 August 2006, Wikipedia. All are in the public domain.

Tropisms 101

2009-08-26T07:31:00.001-07:00

Is there anything more undeniably cheerful than the open face of a large sunflower?

You don't even have to like them to get the effect. Your brain will lift you up anyway because of the color: yellow stimulates the nervous system, activates the memory, stirs up feelings of optimism and happiness, and encourages communication (yellow legal pads come to mind). 85% of all pencils are yellow, but that's because in the 1880s the best graphite came from China where the color yellow is associated with royalty (Ming yellow) and respect; pencils were painted yellow to borrow a little of the glory. That was just the beginning of its use in advertising. You will see plenty of evidence in any fast food operation that yellow is powerful in its effect on consumers' moods: be jolly, enjoy your food, eat fast, and then get out of here so someone else can use the table.

Sunflowers (Helianthus anuus) are all native to North America. There is enormous variety among members of the helianthus family, but the specimen familiar to most people is the tall annual that bears one large flower head atop a very sturdy stem.

Sunflowers demonstrate the remarkable property of phototropism, which is to say they all face the rising sun. In a mechanism on the plant's stem, turgidity is controlled by varying the water pressure within the cells, and the side that swells bends toward the side that does not (in effect it is much like the way hair curls by uneven growth one side to the other).

Why would a plant do this? The more surface area a flower can expose to the morning sun, the warmer it becomes (I have read that this difference can be up to 14 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the ambient air). Given a choice from among all the flowers in the garden, where are cold-blooded insects likely to go to jump start their days? The sunflower sauna. And, in this way, the sunflower is sure to be pollinated.

There is a slightly different phenomenon called heliotropism: this mechanism works all day to bring either the flower's face (such as the common buttercup Ranunculus repens) or the leaves (nasturtium Tropaeolum majus) and garden heliotrope (Heliotropium peruvianum, hence its name) into perpendicular alignment to the sun for maximum exposure. The flower turns all day long to face the sun, maximizing opportunities for photosynthesis. Leonardo da Vinci was first to describe heliotropism in a work on the nature of plants. But hadn't anyone noticed this before? Look in any meadow and you can practically watch the buttercups move like little satellite dishes primed to pick up ancient noise in the heavens.

There is another light-related characteristic of plants that is equally intriguing: skototropism (Strong and Ray, 1975), or negative phototropism, which means exactly what you think it means (skotos is Greek for dark). Skototropic plants grow not only away from the sun, but emphatically toward darkness. (Have you ever had an errant English ivy Hedera helix grow through the concrete window casement of your basement? You've seen skototropism.)

One thing the ivy gains by this process is a way for a plant to attach itself to something else for support as it grows. Pretty as it may be, don't let ivy fool you: if you let it grow up against your beautiful brick facade, the mortar will deteriorate and soon you will have a pile of bricks where your wall once stood. What you see in the photograph above is an explosion of the growths which can develop in one of two ways: they can attach themselves to a structure and bind the plant to it with great strength; or, they can touch down on the soil and extend downward (gravitropism, of course, which was first explored by Charles Darwin). Darwin also worked on understanding heliotropism by covering the growing tips of seedlings with foil to block the light; they stopped turning toward the sun.

Grativropism describes the movement of roots as affected by gravity. It used to be called geotropism, but that is no longer seen to be accurate since epiphytes like orchids, for example, have gravitropic roots and they grow downward but they extract their nutrients from the air, not the soil/earth (geo-).

So many questions swirl in my mind related to the implications of the various tropisms. This list covers a mere handful, though I find these to be the ones that merit particular attention for considering psychology and spirituality in the garden.

I'll pick up the threads tomorrow. I'm still thinking all this through, and want to sleep on it.

Photography: Bumble Bee, Darren Hachter, 19 May 2006; orchid Holcoglossum kimballianum (Rchb.f) Garay, 1972; buttercup Ranunculus repens, Sannse, Great Holland Pits, Essex, 6 June 2004; nasturtium Tropaeolum majus, Armon, 22:19, 17 February 2006; Hedera helix root system, Bialowieza, 2005; Sunflowers in Fargo, South Dakota, Bruce Fitz; Sunflower in Victoria, Australia, Fir2002, November 2008; heliotrope Heliotropium peruvianum, Algirdas, 2005

We May Decide which is Right...but the Apple Falls from the Tree, Nonetheless

2009-08-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

Breathe deep the gathering gloom,

Watch lights fade from every room...
Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colours from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion.

Can you hear the orchestra swell? Of course you can. Late Lament was spoken by Graeme Edge on the 1967 album Days of Future Passed (the album that gave us Nights in White Satin) as the music swirled around him like mist from a rock concert fog machine. It was a little spooky but a little seductive, too.

My friends and I mocked such lyrics as pseudo-philosophical (we called them tief, the German word for deep, which shows you just how effete we were). A spoken poem and The Moody Blues' florid musical style and clean melodies felt a little out of the mainstream musically (after all, they included the London Festival Orchestra on their album), and frankly, because of that, I wasn't sure whether I should like them, which left me no choice, given my position on the consciousness learning curve at the time: I joined the group and mocked the lyrics. Secretly, of course, I had all The Moody Blues' albums, knew every word to every song, and, truth be told, was deeply, tief-ly touched by the sentiments they expressed.

I still am.

I'll start with the part about the gathering gloom. Have you ever sat at dusk with your mind prepared to experience the reality of twilight as it turns to darkness? You know how infinitely small the incremental changes are, and you know you cannot perceive them discretely. What your eyes tell you is that what once was red is now grey; what was yellow, white. Your brain consolidates everything for you with one big and rather crude information blast to describe a process that is as mysterious as anything in this universe: it was light; now it is dark.

I've always liked the neatness in the approach the ancient Egyptians came up with to explain things. The sun disk was drawn across the daytime sky in the sun boat by Ra, who nightly sailed into the the underworld to bring the prayers of the living to the dead. Every morning the cycle was renewed, thus repeating the moment of creation in the constant and closed circle of being that the Egyptians locked in place for thousands of years. Dusk in this worldview was the point at which the entire system had the potential for failure: Ra could decide from this day on I will no longer set sail. Priests and ritual guarded the night; songs of praise and gratitude flooded the early dawn.

There wasn't much room, officially, for thinking or doing otherwise, but who knows what a lowly villager thought about while pondering the night sky? Just because his musings weren't laid down in hieroglyphics doesn't mean they weren't interesting, and possibly heretical at that. No human being since time immemorial has been born immune to the call of the natural world, regardless of the canonical views of contemporary times. The divine is lodged there, and our spirits know this. We seek it and nothing can stop us from doing so. Doing so is an accident of our birth, just like breathing and breaking fingernails--and thinking big thoughts.

It is the human mind that conforms reality to ideas of the created universe, but as The Moody Blues hinted at above, there is a lot of wiggle room in this area, and interpretations rightfully vary.

But variations in interpretation--is it red now? or black?--do not alter the reality that undergirds the perception. Just as apples will fall from trees regardless of whether we believe in gravity, the divine lives in the world and in us without any need for help from our faith.

It is nearing time for apple harvest. It may be worth a drive to an orchard, not to see whether apples fall from their trees, but rather to breathe in the gathering light of spiritual incontrovertibility that will fill your soul and get you through another winter, and still be shining in your heart when spring comes again.

Photography: Seascape after Sunset, Rabc, Wikipedia 2008-02-01; Ra with Sun Boat, Wikipedia, public domain; Apple Trees at L'Hermitage, Paul Gauguin, 1879. Property of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Days of Future Passed album cover, The Moody Blues, 1967. Deram Records.

Toshiro in the Rain

2009-08-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

I have never been a movie star devotee. Thinking too much about people I don't know personally feels voyeuristic, like driving slowly in a residential neighborhood so you can look in the windows. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered I was madly in love with Toshiro Mifune. I couldn't explain this reaction, and I didn't tell anyone, but I absolutely did not think John Belushi's samurai was funny. In fact, the nerve of him. He spat on sacred ground.

It was probably Roshomon (1950) that started everything when we watched it in our high school film history class. That movie with its triad of contradicting stories made me sick with worry about ever being able to communicate with another person again as long as I lived. I got over that eventually. But thoughts of the dashing Toshiro lingered and grew. I didn't realize until much later that Toshiro's great appeal to me was due in large part to the directorial eye of Akira Kurosawa who in my mind stands alone as the great genius of filmmaking.

Kurosawa was a painter by training. Once I learned that, things began to fall into place. It explained my reaction not only to Toshiro: the angles and planes of his face, his elegant posture and gestures regardless of what he was doing were choreographed for effect, frame by frame. It also explained something I couldn't otherwise understand: I could sit through three hours of some of the bloodiest sequences ever filmed (Ran, 1985) and come away with an overriding sense that I had viewed something horrible of extreme beauty.

For example, look at this carefully composed scene from the opening sequence of Ran. Four warlords face four directions while mounted on horses, the stealth bombers of the day; soft green hills roll off into the distance. Clouds loom on the horizon, and let that be a warning (we all know this from our own personally compiled encyclopedias of movie imagery). In this case, our sense of menace has been manipulated: it turns out the warlords are on a boar hunt. But don't get complacent. This is more than hunting for sustenance: the reddest screens you've ever seen are about to unfold before you. You were right to feel uneasy from the first frames. In Japanese symbolism the wild boar (a favorite image of warriors) represents war and violence.

Often when this film is discussed, it is in terms of the unrestrained carnage, brutality, man's inhumanity to man, to use Robert Burns' pure reduction of the sentiment. So why is it that after all these years what I remember is the sublime beauty of that opening shot, the exquisite balance of the placement of the figures in the scene, the rootedness of the men on the horses and the horses in the grass and the grass on the hillside under the clouds and the sky?

Let's move for a moment to the sword-fighting scenes in The Seven Samurai (1954). Do you remember those? Maybe instead you can visualize the gunfights in The Magnificent Seven (1960) which was based on Kurosawa's film. Here's the difference: the sun shone as the bullets flew. While the swords of Kurosawa's rogue samurai clashed, rain drenched everything, watering down the potential for genuine human interactions by obscuring facial details of the other. Dense rain like this is noisy. It blocks out anyone else's voice and deadens any possibility for influences from the outside of the single mindedness in each man's heart: kill the other. The other thing heavy rain does is give you a sense that time is slowing down, so that while the sensibilities of these ronin were blunted, the same rain that blunted them also created the mental state of readiness in slow time that permitted indelible mental imagery to be planted in their minds. They were brutal, vicious, inhumane. By adding rain to the scene, however, Kurosawa demands they they bear the consciousness of their deeds: they will not easily forget those images which will haunt them for the rest of their days.

Japanese artists hail from a long tradition of sensitivity to cues from the natural world. No haiku or screen or brocade obi is conceived without consciousness of the reference to its correlate in nature: everything is symbolic, nothing stands alone. For example, there are many fine permutations of the meaning of rain, from gentle awakening in the early spring to torrents that nearly obliterate everything on the earthly plane. Kurosawa's rain in The Seven Samurai is torrential. Since it comes from the heavens, as the gathering storm clouds on the horizon in Ran also suggest, it is fitting and just that these violent fights should be showered with sadness from the heavens above.

There is an exquisite pain in beauty underlying much of Japanese art. Conversely, there is often beauty in pain. A message can be conveyed without a bludgeon: art can be horrible and beautiful at the same time (as opposed to much of what passes for art today, but that's a subject for another post). Every film made by Akira Kurosawa bears testimony to this belief.

The samurai in The Seven Samurai were ronin (masterless samurai) recruited to fight on behalf of some farmers and their beleaguered village which was constantly under siege by bandits, another group of rogue samurai. After all the bloody scenes in the rain, after all the slaughter, the farmers' champions prevail, though they don't seem to feel like conquering heroes. It is actually the farmers with their ties to renewal who have overcome the evil wrought by the bandits.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, God sent Noah the rainbow as a reminder that there is life after death. In the closing scene of The Seven Samurai, the farmers plant rice in the abundant paddies filled with captured rainwater. The warring ethos represented by the samurai on both sides was as defeated as the wild boar in Ran.

In both the bible and Kurosawa's films, the divine is revealed in nature. Even within the concrete bulwarks we call our cities, and beside the labyrinthine corridors we call freeways, it waits quietly for us. It tugs at our souls, no matter how hard we fight to pretend it isn't there.

As long as we have city parks and hiking trails funded by public money, as long as kayaks sprout in the rain atop every Subaru Outback in Seattle, evidence of our search and desire for a soul-deep connection with our creator will remain in evidence and prevail, just like the rainbow and the rice paddies.

P.S. Toshiro Mifune didn't appear in Ran, but you can identify him easily in The Seven Samurai: he is the samurai with the biggest sword.

Photos: all photographs are from Wikipedia, public domain

Hypatia of Alexandria and The Evening Papyrus

2009-08-19T12:13:00.001-07:00

There are atoms in the void. Democritus (460-370 BCE) Imagine what it was like at the dawn of western civilization to think things like that for the first time. Democritus had the opportunity to tease ideas out of primary material. He observed, deduced and hypothesized. He didn't have to push the river of historical precedent out of his way first.

Democritus arrived at his theories by looking at life around him with only his eyes and his mind. He decided that truth was perceived through the senses, which were subjective and varied from individual to individual. According to Democritus, sensory perceptions are then interpreted by the mind and contain truth because truth underlies all perceptions.

I was profoundly moved in high school philosophy class, in spite of being seriously distracted by the boys in the class who infiltrated the girls' school for certain courses. This was my first opportunity to think in such a completely abstract fashion about something so essential and so far beyond the stuff of everyday conversation. It began to frame questions that had swirled in my nascent consciousness. I could practically smell the limestone dust gathering slowly in the quiet rectilinear corners of Athenian brilliance as intellectual fireworks exploded one after the other.

Later that semester I first encountered Raphael's painting, The School of Athens. I imagined all early Greek philosophers stood on steps outside gleaming white buildings wearing flowing gowns, gesturing broadly, exchanging profundities--it was a club of sorts that met outdoors in the clear Greek air flooded with sunshine. That fantasy evaporated when I learned that the figures in the painting were not all contemporaries, and, in fact, my old friend Democritus was not represented. He wasn't all that well liked in Athens, it turns out, and if it hadn't been for Aristotle, we may not even know his name today. Plato wanted his works burned.

That bit of information hinted at a descent. I wanted mountain tops and clean air because I had enough chaos at home in the hidden depths of dysfunction behind our closed doors. In ancient Greece I thought I had discovered a world in which high motive and intellectual pursuit sustained all interactions, where logic prevailed and good triumphed over all contenders. Something died for me when I realized the sun was not really any brighter in the ancient world. It must have been just the flash of clarity in Democritus' thought that made it seem that way to me.

Still, I liked to imagine what it was like to live during those times and to think about the unseen and the unprovable core of material reality. Though nearly all the big names of the ancient world were the names of men, I discovered Hypatia, the one woman who was granted scholar status (and dressed like a scholar instead of in the female fashion of her day), whose image Raphael sneaked into his painting in defiance of strict orders from the reigning prelates of the Catholic Church to omit her. Instead, Raphael painted his own mistress dressed in pure white as Hypatia and placed her figure next to that of Parmenides very near the central vanishing point occupied by Plato and Aristotle. Whether Raphael was influenced by ideals or by lust we will never know; I like the result.

Why did the Catholic Church feel so strongly about eliminating this woman from the School of Athens painting? It wasn't because she hadn't live in Athens; nearly 2/3 of the philosophers included hailed from other places. Hypatia (370-415 CE) lived in Alexandria, the renowned city in the Nile Delta created by Cleopatra as her capital.

Daughter of leading scholar Theon, Hypatia herself was brilliant and popular, the teacher of many fine young minds both male and female. Among other things, she was an expert on conical sections, and kudos for that--all I saw when I looked at cones in trigonometry class was the dunce hat I ought to have been wearing. Hypatia paid for standing out from the norm. At a time when the ascendancy of Christianity meant converting or conquering all dissenters, she tried to remain neutral but was involuntarily drawn into the chaos.

Accused of being a prime player in the non-Christian camp, she was attacked in her chariot one afternoon. Women didn't drive chariots in Alexandria or any other Greek or Roman city; it wasn't the done thing. She was dragged from her chariot and slashed to bits by a mob. Then the flesh was scraped from her bones with sharpened oyster shells and scattered around the streets; what remained of her after that was set afire. The gruesome murder of Hypatia of Alexandria was the climax of the first great witch hunt.

As often happens when my mind wanders off into the very small tributaries of history, once again I stumbled into a topic that was already vibrating in the atmosphere (oh, if I could bottle this talent!). To wit: by pursuing Hypatia of Alexandria I inadvertently did so just as a movie is about to come out on the subject. In this case, the movie is called Agora and it stars Rachel Weisz as Hypatia. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this past May and is due to open in theaters in the fall. Here is the link to the Agora Review from Variety.

The review of Agora is favorable, though I'm not sure that translates into the movie is good. (Note my restraint in avoiding any references to agoraphobia while mentioning my concerns.) I hope the message of Hypatia's life is not lost in the artifice of imagined ancient splendor. She made difficult choices to follow her gifts, sensing correctly that she would be of the greatest service to her community by doing so, and also become the finest vessel for the divine spark she carried within. She was aware of the price such freedom entailed for a woman in the fifth century, even in the enlightened environment of the Roman-run Greek city of Alexandria in Egypt. Hypatia found the courage to move forward anyway.

Honoring the gifts we are born with is a perennial challenge we face as human beings. We can learn so much from Hypatia. Her historical moment wasn't that far in the past; we are closer in time to the days of Hypatia than she was to the days of Egypt's pyramid-building pharaohs. Did she stare into the papyrus reeds (Cyperus papyrus) that choked the Delta region and wonder whether the sun shone more brightly in earlier times? Or did she cast her mind forward into a mist of possibility that one day things would not be as difficult for women as they were for her?

Her work lives on. We know her name. What were the names of her accusers? Who were the men who killed her? I can't find them in history's footnotes. They didn't even make the Evening Papyrus.

Photo credits: Sculpture, Democritus Meditating on the Seat of the Soul (1868) by Leon-Alexandre Delhomme, Wikipedia; The School of Athens (1510-1511) by Raphael, Wikipedia; Cyperus papyrus, Wikipedia

Lavender and Global Warming

2009-08-18T07:48:00.001-07:00

Lavender has enraptured me for as long as I can remember: the mere idea that a single plant from tip of root to top of inflorescence can offer such aromatic treasure demonstrates what a gift it is to us.

The color itself is soothing, gentle on the eyes like mist on a far horizon. Sitting in the midst of a lavender field is a multi-sensory event: the rolling shades of blue and green and grey relieve any tension you brought with you, the comforting tang of the volatile oils relax you as they are released by the warmth of the sun which also shines on you, the soft and lulling buzz of bees grounds you in the world of nature and blankets any intrusions related to civilization. (If you are allergic to bee stings, my dream could be your nightmare. Imagine the whirr of butterfly wings instead.)

I've always thought of England as the mother lode for lavender plants. Lavandula angustifolia is the group usually referred to as English lavender, but this plant was actually introduced to Great Britain by the Romans who used it in their laundry (lavanda, Latin for things that need to be washed from the verb lavare).

Gardens like Hidcote Manor in the Cotswolds (shown here) and renowned garden designer Gertrude Jekyll's (pronounced gee-kill) own garden at Munstead Woods give us two Lavandula angustifolia cultivars, Hidcote and Munstead. From there the list grows long as new cultivars are always being introduced. Also, lavender cross-fertilizes easily, so if you have more than one type in your garden and you find little sprouts of new growth where you didn't plant them, odds are they won't be true to the parent plants that bore them. Don't worry, though; they will be lovely regardless. Why not name them after yourself? Some people do that with newly discovered stars. (I do it with hosta sports, but that's for another post.)

Apparently lavender was used during World War II to disinfect hospital floors and walls, which means the scent of lavender must bring a flood of memories for anyone associated with those facilities at that time. For them, the scent of lavender may not be so wonderful. As Proust reminds us with his madeleines in Remembrance of Things Past, the olfactory system and the part of the brain where memories are stored are inextricably interconnected.

I've always had good results applying lavender oil to my temples to get rid of headaches. To me it is comforting. It seems it was comforting for Napoleon and Josephine, too, though not as a headache cure. They drank a mixture of coffee and cocoa infused with lavender as an aphrodisiac. Here's a very simple recipe, if you're curious: Put one cup of hot coffee and one cup of hot cocoa into a French press coffee pot and add 3 tablespoons of fresh lavender flowers or 1 tablespoon of dried lavender flowers (use only Lavandula angustifolia for culinary purposes and make certain, of course, that it hasn't recently been sprayed with anything you don't want to ingest). Let this mixture steep for three minutes and add honey to taste. What do you think?

I first tried growing lavender in Seattle in the very early 1980s. At that time, small plants were available in a few nurseries, looking wan and leggy. I bought them anyway and tried to coax them along. I thought if they could grow in England, they ought to be able to grow in the Pacific Northwest. Generally that is true because there are many similarities in our garden capabilities. However, something was wrong. Maybe it was too cloudy. Maybe too much rain. More different than we thought from the gardens of Great Britain? Maybe the soil had the wrong basic set of nutrients. I couldn't get the combination right, however, so for several years I gave up.

Then I started noticing heartier plants in larger containers in my favorite nurseries. They must know what they're doing trying to sell those here, I decided, and brought home a fine selection that included the Lavandula angustifolia of my previous and unsuccessful efforts.

This time it worked. Mighty hedges of lavender took hold and bees and butterflies covered them the moment the buds started to show color. Had the plants changed? Had my horticultural practices changed? No and no.

So it must have been the garden itself--the weather? the soil?

Since my early days with lavender, gardens of Seattle have changed considerably. Now it's not just lavender that grows on every corner (and parking strip and median strip) but also rosemary, Rosmarinus officinalis, a plant native to scrubby and rocky areas along the Mediterranean coast.

The first olive tree I see growing in Seattle will be not the symbol of enduring peace that is has been since time immemorial. Tolerant of virtual neglect, able to thrive in rocky soil while being baked under an unforgiving sun--Olea Europaea will become for me the symbol of how we have breached our covenant with our creator and spoiled the garden created for us and all other creatures.

I just read a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges entitled, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (New York: Nation Books, 2009). I'm glad I read it but it terrified me. Mr. Hedge's discussion of global warming woke me up to the reality that my fears about seeing olive trees in Seattle someday might be warranted, at least until they won't grow anywhere anymore.

Photo credits: Wikipedia, lavender fields and lavender flowers; Hidcote Manor courtesy of The National Trust UK.

Stumbling upon The Blue Flower

2009-08-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Campanula rotundifolia to the left is commonly called harebell. It is also known as the Bluebell of Scotland.

C. rotundifolia forms slowly growing clumps of basal leaf rosettes which are about 3" tall. Floral stalks can reach 18". The color is described as light clear blue. They are fairly widespread, and can be found from Alaska to Southern Europe (and Scotland). They like well-drained soil, good light and will bloom happily in the early summer for many years if they are well-sited.

The Campanula family is huge. According to the Sunset Western Garden Book/My Plant Bible, there are over 300 species. But there's another very large plant family, also with blue bell-shaped flowers, some of which are clear light blue like C. rotundifolia. That family is the gentians.

The Gentiana acaulis at the left is commonly seen in the embroidered company of Edelweiss blossoms on clothing from Bavaria, Switzerland and Austria. It grows happily in alpine scree and blooms heartily in summertime.

Many people who have pondered such matters believe that the gentian is Die Blaue Blume created by Novalis, The Blue Flower that spearheaded the passions of German Romanticism, becoming the symbol of genius and the quest; more poignantly, it was the symbol of the unattainable.

I recently re-read Novalis' account of the blue flower. It is in his novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen that he describes a tall light blue flower blooming at the edge of a mountain spring. As Heinrich approaches it, the flower leans forward toward him and the petals remind him of a blue ruff, in which hovers a lovely face. At that moment the hero is awakened from his dream by the voice of his mother (and I wonder whether Freud gave this matter any thought). Before that, however, we learn that there are dark blue rocks with multicolored veins surrounding the spring, and that the sky is deep blue black. One can assume the water also had a blue tint.

Searching for the origin of the blue flower, the actual model Novalis used, became high sport among certain literary types. There have also been theologians who wondered how many angels could fit on the tip of a pin, so I'm not going to be too rough on these scholars.

However...

Novalis wrote poetry, essays and fiction in the 18th century, specifically to counter the ideas of the Enlightenment which he found devoid of spirituality. He was a broadly educated and keenly intelligent man, more philosopher than anything else. As such, he was certainly competent at developing a metaphor or two as he told his tales. The Blue Flower is one such metaphor: blue is the color of the heavens, it is the color of clarity, and in the field of optics, blue light vibrates at the highest frequency.

I've also seen The Blue Flower label pinned to Lithodora diffusa, a ground-hugging perennial that forms a carpet of shocking blue. (I'm not fond of Lithodora because I find that its strident color is difficult to work into the garden, though I love its name: a gift from the rocks. Lithodora often appears to thrive in gravel that wouldn't host much else.)

In other applications, to offer a frame of reference, blue violet is the color used to describe the Crown chakra, the level of pure consciousness in the ancient Indian energy system; in modern times we have the notion of Indigo Children originated by New Age thinker Nancy Ann Tappe to describe children who represent the next phase of human development. Blue is now and always has been an up there color.

Why would common plants become a symbol for everything beyond our reach? Novalis was smarter than that. I'm positive his flower wasn't based on anything but his own imagination, and I ask anyone who believes otherwise to explain the part about the tender face that appeared to Heinrich in the center of the bloom.

Nonetheless, if I had to choose, I like Campanula rotundifolia for The Blue Flower. The bloom is the right shade (light blue) and it is tall (18"). It grows in a similar habitat to Gentiana and to Lithodora. It is a far more graceful plant than the other two, a quality not lost on 18th century German writers.

Here's the weird part: I came to these thoughts about a week after I had ordered my new business cards, which happen to show an open Campanula rotundifolia blossom on a field of pale blue violet. I haven't read Novalis since my undergraduate years. I was not conscious of making this choice. I picked the design because I liked the image and the color.

This issue doesn't require the genius of Freud. It simply shows how deeply things can be rooted in your psyche without your awareness. A Blue Flower, for instance.

It comforts me as proof that I don't have to have all the answers: I am still on a quest, and I see the face of the divine in every flower I meet.

photo credits: Campanula rotundifolia, www.plant-identification.co.uk; Gentiana acaulis, www.srgc.org.uk; Lithodora diffusa, www.donnan.com

Naked as a Caladium

2009-08-12T20:41:00.001-07:00

I'm going to start right out by saying I don't like white caladiums (Caladium bicolor).

Native to the lush shade of Brazilian forests, caladiums are grown in pots in the Pacific Northwest. They'd never survive a winter here, and probably not even a summer, so we keep them indoors. And though houseplants are beyond the scope of my talents (tiny sucking spider mites seem to know where I live), I like them in the homes of my friends.

I know a woman who banishes all multicolored plants from her garden, whether striped, streaked or spotted. Some of my very favorite plants are variegated, so it's not that.

The garden of my childhood included a bank of the magnificent green and white large-leafed English ivy Hedera helix 'Glacier' and it was spectacular. Every leaf was different from the next. There were areas of green, white, grey green, quite distinctly separated from one another.

During the Christmas holidays I like to have cut holly in the house, and my favorite is the green and white Ilex aquifolium 'Argenteo Marginata' which will look fresh and crisp in a vase for a month. Like the ivy, each leaf is distinct and the colors are clearly delineated.

The caladium, on the other hand, is not at all like the ivy or the holly with sharp lines and glossy surfaces that deflect light away from themselves. In contrast, the caladium has a matte appearance to it, and nothing is reflected: all is absorbed because in its native habitat very little light hits the forest floor.

Clearly articulated green veins stand out sharply against the white background. You can see them from across the room. And that's the problem: they are way too exposed, unprotected. The plant's operational parts, its elemental working innards, are visible. It's as if it were a creature without skin.

The personal seems much too public with this plant and it unnerves me. But then I'd be the first to admit I wouldn't wear a bikini on the beach in Ipanema.

Refuting Illusions: Picasso and Lady's Mantle

2009-08-10T14:44:00.000-07:00

The leaves of Alchemilla mollis are often wet. In fact, lady's mantle could be the Official Plant of the Pacific Northwest: people think it's always covered with dew just as people think it always rains in Seattle. But both suppositions are incorrect.

The weather myth is easy to refute: Seattle's average annual rainfall of 34.5 inches is nearly ten inches less than the 44.4 inches of average annual rainfall in New York City's Central Park.

Why then does Seattle have the reputation for being so rainy? Because myths are difficult to uproot (think of the story of The Hook and how there's always someone who swears it really happened). The sky is definitely cloudy in Seattle more often than it is in Manhattan. That's probably why people think of Seattle as Rain City. They equate clouds to rain, and the fact that our grey skies are often just that--grey skies--seems to have little influence. You will win every time if you lay down your money against someone who wagers it rains more here (and who thinks you're a moron for taking the bet), but be prepared to support your position with statistics.

That Alchemilla mollis has the reputation of being dew-drenched most of the time is also more related to appearance than to fact. In reality, it looks dewy because some mornings the leaves are covered with water that the plant itself expels in a process called guttation (gutta, Latin for drop). This is not the same as dew, which is condensation from moisture in the air. If you're not familiar with lady's mantle, you can see the same phenomenon on the umbrella-like leaves of the more generally available nasturtium (Tropaeolum) and Fuchsia. The water droplets look like dew but they are not. Things are not always what they seem.

I realize I'm not breaking any new ground here. My mother started warning me about judging books by their covers before I was even old enough to understand that she was speaking metaphorically. But judge we do, and generally by what we see repeatedly. With equal frequency, we form our opinions based on what we repeatedly hear.

Pablo Picasso painted the portrait shown to the left in 1903 during his so-called Blue Period. He referred to it as The Old Guitarist. Writer Wallace Stevens, influenced by Picasso, wrote a poem which he called The Man with the Blue Guitar in 1937. Since that time the painting itself is often referred to as The Man with the Blue Guitar. But look at the image again: the guitar is the only thing on the canvas that is not blue. In spite of the evidence to the contrary, most people will tell you the guitar is blue if you ask them to imagine Picasso's Old Guitarist painting and then describe it to you, and I am sure that anyone who can imagine the painting well enough to do that has actually seen it or seen a reproduction of it. Seen, yet not seen.

Wallace wrote: "They said, You have a blue guitar. /You do not play things as they are. The man replied, Things as they are/Are changed upon the blue guitar." Maybe Wallace wrote with irony. But isn't it also possible he wrote from a faulty but permanently lodged impression of what Picasso had actually put down in paint?

I'm attempting heavy personal rationale building here. The fact is that during my marriage I was repeatedly regarded as someone other than the person I actually was. My husband's ideas about who I am were as concretely formed as Wallace's mental picture of Picasso's guitar. And over the course of the marriage, I, too, became like Wallace: in spite of all evidence to the contrary, in spite of what my own eyes and my own memories told me, I came to agree that the guitar was blue.

I chose divorce. And for the most part I know that Alchemilla mollis isn't covered with dew. I know Manhattan is rainier than Seattle. I even know Picasso's guitar is more red than blue.

But sometimes in dark and quiet moments I forget I'm not the person my former husband told me I was. Sometimes I have to force that phantom to leave me alone.

Sometimes I still feel small.

Under Wet Eucalyptus

2009-08-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

Walking to school in a blustery San Francisco Bay Area rain storm was a surefire way to get drenched. The rain came at my face as if I were being squirted by a summertime hose, but this water was sharp and ice cold. My feet felt slimy in my white uniform oxfords. But I thought of a day like that as a chance to swim in air, and I liked it.

A dense aroma predominated as I neared the groves of Eucalyptus globulus that surrounded our school. The towering trees had been planted as a wind break early in the 20th century and by my time they nearly reached the sky. Long strips of shredded bark flapped in the wind and whistled in a mysterious way before flying off in large chunks and thudding to the ground below. Long, narrow leaves were pungent underfoot. Little grey-green caps were generally abundant and made my fingers sticky if I rolled them around in my hands. The caps were from seed pods and each was unique--some were very pointed, some much flatter, some with a heavy grey blush and some more green, as if the blush were rubbed away. I knew they were helmets of some kind for the wee folk who lived in the area. It was worth the mess on my hands because they smelled so good.

By the time I got settled into my desk and the school day began, I had already packed enough into my morning to nurture any daydreams I might need for getting through any lessons I already understood. Just where are those little people on a day like this? I imagined the coziest of all possible dens, tiny fires blazing on river rock hearths, porridge steaming in an iron pot. What is porridge? No idea. Elf food. I could see the little bentwood rocking chairs, the colorful crocheted afghans, the rag rugs. Beds with patchwork quilts. Small green shoes with pointed toes lined up by size to dry by the fire. Curtains drawn. A curl of smoke from the chimney obliterated by the raging storm outside. They were safe. No one--not a person, not a crow--would find their cottage today.

I rested my chin on my hand for a furtive sniff of the resin, but my fingers now smelled more like the cedar of my pencil, which was okay. It was probably time to pay attention anyway.

I loved the eucalyptus. It was the gateway to magic.

I'll get some more of those little caps after school.

Photography: Eucalyptus globulus, www.anbg.gov.au