transcendental vs earthly love

Love hurts. It shouldn't be that way. Transcendental love may hurt if you are taking upon yourself the sorrows of another in prayer or meditation, but to walk in that state is sublime. It overcomes whatever road blocks life puts in your way, you 'float' over them.

But love between humans, love that does not also share the transcendental Reality, sucks. It seems to operate at the most base level of the human, the untranscended form. Is there a transcending love? I make observations of other humans that empirically seem to lean in that direction, but on an experiential level I have yet to discover the answer.

One friend may be on the right track. He remembers the woman who bore his children, and inspite of her rejecting and betraying him, he claims she is the only love of his life. He chooses to live his own independent life protected from making that mistake again by persuading himself that he has found his one true love. His natural bent is towards hermithood, so he has the best of two worlds.

What causes the pain? It is the rising up of untamed human emotions. Greed, ego gratification, ignorance, intolerance, impatience, the seven cardinal sins. How do people deal with it? I guess sometimes they just harden their heart, turn a blind eye, work a patch around that blind spot and move on. Denial: it wasn't my fault, it was YOU. Or they can face up to the pain together, look at it in clear light, and apply a remedy. People can change, if they are committed to change. But how many people really are?

I believe I am ready for change. I look at this shattered relationship, and I can name my faults. Because the other party is not committed to the relationship, not committed to change, I can not learn a new way to behave, when this fault tries to arise again. The fault doesn't go away just because I recognize it. It is like any other habit; it requires step by step action to reduce its power and to change. Like quitting smoking, where you have to learn to feel the impulse to smoke and then apply countermeasures to distract and eventually extinguish that impulse.

I can remember a time when I was living in community, in the early years of the new millennium. We could laugh at my clumsy, abrasive ways of expressing myself. They accepted me and all my faults. Their persistent friendship through the years and separation of miles shows that they went beyond the external appearances and saw the loving, caring heart beneath. Even with differences of age and perspectives, they love me. When in community, I found it easier to control those unrefined parts of me.

I do not believe that humans are meant to live alone, I don't care how realized they may be. A hermit in a cave is surrounded by the spirits he communes with. My living alone, my apartment inaccessible by distance from the students, the Chinese indifference to just another foreigner, no ex pat females on the staff or nearby, all this conspires to an unnatural situation. Add to that the work load put on me by my school contract, there is precious little time to search for companionship, to go out into the city to find an existing community.

I joined the gym. Usually I swim when the pool is fairly empty. But the pool was closed for weeks during the holiday, so once it opened I went for a swim regardless of the crowds. The pool was so crowded that there were two or three people in the same lane, trying to swim laps without bumping into anyone coming or going. I found that I did not watch the clock. I continued swimming longer than usual, simply because having other people there gave me energy. And that is my reality. Am I alone in this? It is not a defect, it is the way I was made. I was made to serve; to be part of a community. My positive energy flows out and into others, and this recharges me. My purpose cannot be fulfilled when I live in isolation. The only contact I have is with the students in front of the classroom. I serve them the best that I can, but I could do so much more. This looks, feels and tastes like frustration. May the grace of God keep it from slipping into despair.

Winter Love

Finding love in winter?? I don’t want to go there; don’t make me. Well, all right, if you really want to talk about it. But what’s the point?

Yes, it’s true. I have known for some time now that it is necessary to find a life partner. I am not getting any younger, I know I am growing weaker, and two are stronger than one.

Did I expect that finding that partner would bring joy in my life? I don’t need joy. I am at peace, content with my purpose in life and my efforts to realize to its fullest that purpose. I have found equilibrium, far more satisfying than joy.

Until, that is, I found my partner. Did I expect him to be Superman? Quite simply, I had no expectations. Surely he needed to be a traveler and on a spiritual path. Beyond that, the trivial things I asked for (a musician, no taller than 5’9”, to name two) were nonessential frills.

He has a noble name, although his parents ignobly denied him its full breadth, Gregory. They chose instead ‘Gregg’. And so the tone was set for his life. A luminous essence traversing a wobbly orbit, compass set to a noble course, on torturous tacks towards it. .

Surely finding each other was a joyous event. The joy was short lived, like a magnesium flash measured against the time span of eternity. Now comes the hard part. Two creaky cranky people learning how to appreciate, love and respect a space invader.

Too soon to move in together, our time is spent invading the others home for short spans, trying hard to adjust to an environment not conducive to our habits. I like my oatmeal every morning; he takes breakfast casually. I need my face cream, hair brush, morning toilet rituals not available at his cramped abode. At my abode, he wakes up wanting his own shower, not mine. He sits looking lost, finger crooked for a phantom cup of coffee, while I buzz around in my morning rituals.

And the physical! Oh don’t get me started. My atrophied body was not ready for the brutal assault of sexual awakenings. I had forgotten how messy sex is. In the habit of celibacy, desires long ago extinguished, how am I supposed to suddenly feel aroused? I remember the hot flames of desire, but weren’t they fueled by hormones now dissipated from my frame? I respect this man, I enjoy his company, I find him gentle and easy to be with, I lean on him happily. I would not want him to leave my life ever again. To return to my familiar single life would be a journey down to spiritual and emotional impoverishment where once there had been contentment. But he is still a man, hormones still course through his body, and he expects to be sexually desired and completed.

Winter love, then, is a fascinating phenomenon. It is something new, altogether not expected, not predicted by media hype. They don’t try to sell products to us, so they project us no image to help us find our way. Not a love ruled by hormones, it is the discovery of a new way of caring. With the heart, with the mind, especially with the spirit, it is a reaching out, an opening up, an expanding of Self to accommodate Other who walks into your arms a stranger.

Just at that moment in life when we old people are reputed to be fixed in our ways, unchangeable, old dogs incapable of new tricks.

All right then, now you’ve heard. The good, the bad and the ugly. On to a brave new adventure, probably the most significant of a lifetime. Certainly the toughest. One can only hope the rewards will be equal to the challenge.

uncivil discourse

How do I work my way out of a social dilemma. I am Christian, important people in my life are Christian. I do not have any homosexual friends right now; in fact, it is safe to say that there are no close friendships in my life at the moment, gay or straight. But I move in a world that is rich in diversity, and I feel a need in my heart to be balanced. There is a war raging, but I cannot take sides.

On the one hand, there are those ‘eternal verities.’ There is a ‘creator’, a great intelligence we can only sense in our spirit, but cannot prove with scientific certainty. This created world has its natural laws that keep the planets orbiting in their proper space. There is inborn in humankind the longing for goodness, a distaste for hurting self and others. Alongside this there is also the urge to gratify ones own self. In a world governed by divine love it is possible to balance these divergent longings. Yet as man strives to live in society with other men, people do develop the capacity to hurt and to pursue what goes against the greater good of society. This fact only underscores another verity, that man is born with free will. He can choose to follow his yearning for goodness, or abandon it to his self interests.

The portion of the population that has chosen to follow Christ have as their guidebook for right living the many books and chapters that comprise the Bible. A large portion of this Book is shared by followers of Islam. Exercising that free will, these disciples of Christ and Muhammed have chosen to interpret this great book in many divergent ways. There are clear statements in different places of the Book that indicate a natural formation for society, and an unnatural one. Sexual love of man for man or woman for woman has clearly been placed in the latter camp. Even the word ‘abomination’ has been the English translation of choice from the original.

Weigh this against the teachings of Christ himself, as reported in the New Testament. He has asked us to learn how to love and to forgive. He identifies his people, speaking through the apostle Paul, as a peculiar people, set apart. In this world, but not of it. Even so, we must render to Caesar his due. We must abide by and respect the law of the land, and when that land is a republic functioning as a representational democracy, then we are called upon to participate in creating as well as abiding by this law.

I believe that all of this has led us to a cultural civil war. In ever increasing numbers, people are choosing to focus on their own gender in their search for loving companionship, for stability, for their fulfillment of the natural yearning to belong. This is an alarming trend when viewed from the perspective of social history, where the extended family has been the traditional bedrock of stability and cultural continuity.

This schism did not arise spontaneously. There is no virgin birth here. It is the inevitable outgrowth from the destruction of the traditional extended family unit. We have brought it on ourselves with the industrial age, where factories supplanted farms as the source of income. This apparently simple shift has spawned many unnatural alliances, sundering the natural order of society.

Workers left the extended family in order to find work. Without the natural support of the extended multi-generational family, the stressors that afflict all marriages could not be contained. Cracks formed in the nuclear family unit, infidelity became easier when greater distance was put between the home and the work place, and the inevitable divorce occurred. The restless spirit was no longer contained within the walls of the defining rural social community. The anonymity of the city permitted experimentation with alternate forms of gratification. With divorce comes single parenting, step-parenting, week-end parenting with divergent values. The suffering, confused and alienated children produced in these environments have grown to adults with a very different concept of home, family and community.

Arranged marriages such as seen in Asian cultures, and formerly in European cultures, has no formal part of the modern post industrial culture. In rural America, however, when young people grew up with their entire extended family living within miles of them, coupling of young people having similar values and temperament was a given. Choices were limited. This usually worked to the benefit of all involved, ensuring continuity of the family, of financial stability, and ultimately of the strong community. Droughts occurred as well as bounty, recession as well as plenty, but the community leaned upon its own resources and rode the tides of good and ill together.

There are hardly any such pockets of healthy communities left in America. Young people are faced with options that will easily take them away from the security of whatever community they came to know, and in spite of their best intentions they may not return except perhaps for weddings and funerals.

A good mother learns quickly that a child needs boundaries. As the child grows within these boundaries, gaining in confidence, experience and wisdom, the boundaries can safely expand. But even adults find comfort in boundaries. Given the breakdown of society, boundaries have expanded beyond anything healthy, yet humans need these boundaries no less, to feel safe. We all have heard the phrase, “It’s a scary world out there.” It has never been more true.

Single young adults have a daunting task in the search for a life partner. The 2009 film He’s just not into you portrays this world with humor that masks a deeper angst. It is economically practical to find a housemate, rather than living with parents or tackling the emotional uncertainty of living with an uncommitted lover. Compatibility can arise, making for a satisfying home life. The definition of ‘family’ blurs, when no blood relation lives in the same city, and the majority of your free time is spent with this housemate. Years can pass, and these two can become each others strongest supporters. But what if one suffers a medical emergency, or a car accident? Will these two not experience the same drama as any sibling or husband and wife in this situation? The injured person would want the security and comfort of that housemate by their side. It is that housemate who will carry on with the necessities of life—bill paying, pet caring, keeping friends and coworkers apprised of the situation. And here arises a conflict. The hospital has rules keeping ‘non family’ out of the ICU, for one example. After decades of growing numbers of people in this situation, policies have finally changed to give recognition to vital life relationships outside the traditional definition of ‘family.’ And so we have ‘civil union’ laws, to extend insurance and other benefits to householders not having a blood or legal relationship.

All of this makes perfect sense, so far. Then love and sexual gratification enter into the picture, and sensibility is fractured. The relationship takes on a whole new meaning within the context of community. Beyond civil union, there is the romantic notion of marriage, a gesture to all the world demonstrating that the universal search for love and marriage has been fulfilled. Who is it that desires this romantic gesture?

There are two camps, in my opinion. There are life partners who have a solid and discreet relationship. They have no desire to call attention to themselves, they have found stability as well as emotional fulfillment in their relationship. Having filed for ‘civil union’ status, they are ensured the civil right to take care of and protect each other. "Marriage" would be the icing on the cake, a cake perfectly edible without icing nonetheless.

The other side of the coin brings us back to that young adult search for a life partner. How does someone identify themselves as gay or straight? This is a complicated issue. Each person is born with the capacity to find beauty in the same gender as well as the opposite. We are acculturated to prefer the beauty of the opposite sex, a healthy natural urge built within us to propagate the species and continue the social order. But in an unhealthy society where natural boundaries have been torn down, a young person can be without a true compass. They may have gotten the message to seek love and marriage, but the traditional urges such as for species propagation may have been extinguished. It is also a scientific fact that a small number of people are born with gender ambiguity, a small number.

Out there cruising for love and acceptance, it comes as it comes. We have heard that women are from venus, men from mars. This translates to mean that women tend to ‘get’ women easier than they ‘get’ men. Yet the acculturated desire for the romance of marriage to the object of love and adoration remains.

It shouldn’t be surprising that same-gender coupling is on the rise, an innovative solution to the breakdown of the more traditional means of find ones life mate. It is also a very practical solution to the complex personal finance dilemma, where the mortgage for a house requires two incomes. Can we heal these cultural diseases just by outlawing committed relationships between same gender couples? Oh, if only we could. In fact, homosexual marriage is just one more nail in the coffin of our decaying society.

The moral outrage of the more conservative, traditional minded to the idea of escalating the ‘civil union’ to the level of officially sanctioned marriage is a volley in this civil war, scorching and tearing as it flies. In the wake of its trajectory lies pain as much as ignorance. It accuses these relationships of tearing a rift in the community, of not carrying weight, of not bearing children. Would that I had statistics here to get a clearer picture of reality. Same-gender couples do raise children. Such children have an equal chance to socialize normally, following traditional gender roles. Are civil unions more or less stable than traditional marriages? The often heard statistic on male-female marriage is that there is a 50% chance it will end in divorce. We don’t yet have statistics on this recent innovation, same-sex marriage. Perhaps it will reflect the anecdotal breakdown of hetero couples who live together peaceably for years, only to get divorced after going through the wedding commitment.

I fear the outrage is misdirected, much like putting a band-aid on a broken bone. If we attempt to legislate who can get married, why not go a step further and revise the laws governing who can get divorced. Legislate against single parenting. Legislate against taking the influence of grandparents out of the lives of their grandchildren. Why don’t we make laws that will force 5% of the population to live in communities organized like the original kibbutz in Israel, which were self-contained communities. Children raised in those communities grew to be outstanding citizens. During the Yom Kippur war of 1973, 25% of the commanders of the army were products of these same kibbutzes, which were comprised of a mere 5% of the population of Israel. In fact, we cannot legislate behavior. It is closer to the truth if we say that behavior dictates legislation.

We have created a society with a heightened sense of entitlement to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A society where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has been redefined. Because these changes are being aired in a public forum, thanks to this era of all-pervasive multi-media technology, we cannot sit quietly and try to adjust to these changes. We are polarized, a rift is forming, social civil war seethes just below the surface.

I wish there were a solution—easy or difficult, if only we could find a path to chart through this morass. In fact, it will escalate. We have also seen alarming upheavals on the surface of our planet—tsunamis, earthquakes, war-induced famines and genocides. It is likely that nature will once again intervene, to take our minds off this social upheaval. In the face of disaster, we work side by side no matter what our social agendas might be, to feed and to bandage and to shelter the victims of tragedy. We ourselves might be such victims. Would we refuse to quench our burning thirst if the hand holding the bottle of water was a hand we saw betrothed in a same-sex marriage?

Laws change in two ways. Our elected officials can vote for change, and the citizenry can vote for a referendum to direct the lawmakers. Our citizenry has shown an appalling indifference to the great right and privilege that is our participatory democracy, as reflected by the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast a ballot when given the chance. I would like to see mandatory attendance at refresher courses periodically required of all citizens on our constitution and how government is supposed to work. But we can no more legislate that than we can legislate who will fall in love with whom. I do not like the idea of getting voters to the election poles by whipping them up with emotionally charged rhetoric, bypassing reason and logic. More often than not this is how it is done, and I abhor it. I would so much rather discuss ideas through civil discourse. But I am spitting in the wind.

What I would wish for is that people of power and influence would call our society to conscience, reminding us that we most of all desire to be a loving and forgiving people. That a self-regulating society that disciplines its self-interests to yield to the higher interests of the greater good is really what was intended for the United States of America. That includes tolerance for different interpretations of ‘greatest good’, allowing for separate but equal public services. That there would be hospitals that protected its staff against the act of abortion, and hospitals where abortion was protected. Schools where more traditional curriculums were taught, and schools for progressive curricular choices. That communities would have the right to permit public prayer in their schools, and communities that prohibited it.

These are the words of an idealist, ignoring the realities of the times. If such a vision were ever to come into being, it could only be at the hand of God allowing a great natural calamity to destroy the world as we know it. We all pray that will not happen. But we also pray that each one of us will seek within us for the voice of peace and love, from which can grow a greater respect and tolerance for each other. May this prayer stem the tide of civil war that threatens us all.

Night Encounter With Vermont Wildlife

Night driving never used to be a problem. On this night, I was returning from Chester to Ludlow after a lovely dinner with Ron at a fine restaurant. I know the unlit country roads around here well, and could take the 50 MPH speed limit comfortably. But that all changed last week, sitting in the optician’s office. The petite and efficient Viet Namese intern echoed the optometrist's warning, for emphasis. “Your vision will be blurred; it won’t be crisp like you’re used to.” I never dreamed these words would lead to a moment of terror behind the wheel.

It was time to get my eyeglass prescription renewed, before another year abroad. I went to WalMart for an eye exam. I didn’t intend to buy glasses, but only to have the prescription to take with me in case my three current pairs of bifocals all broke or got lost. On a whim, I asked if my prescription would be suitable for contact lenses. I have asked that question periodically over the years, waiting for technology to catch up. This time I was told that yes, there were bifocal soft contact lenses. I got fitted with a test pair that I was instructed to wear for a week.

I interpreted the ‘blurred vision’ caution to mean that in the distance objects would have soft edges. I was not prepared to lose the ability to read road signs, MPH markers, store marquees, and to see all lights as blurs.

I was driving home this evening at dusk. It was raining. What little traffic there was moved along at the speed limit, the road seemed fine. My headlights were on, but there was still light enough to see the colors of the flowers in the gardens I passed along the way. Then I came to the Proctorsville Gulf, a twisting road that rose up an escarpment through a canopy of trees. Suddenly my horizon shut down to the edge of my bright beams. There was no car ahead of me.

Around a bend I came upon the flashing lights of an 18-wheeler. I eased up on the gas a little as the lights of the truck grew larger in my windshield. The next 15 seconds are a blur. As soon as I saw that he was parked square in the middle of the downhill lane I took my foot off the gas completely, and edged halfway into my shoulder lane. The truck lights filled my view; all else was black as I peered through the windshield. Just as I came parallel with the truck a looming shadow jumped in front of my car and I felt a thud.

“What the…?!” I pulled all the way onto the shoulder and parked. I reviewed the flash that imprinted on my mind, of a dark shadow against bright lights, of what seemed to be a head and an outstretched arm and leg. A man waving me down, warning me to slow?

I grab the umbrella and jump out of the car, heading back down hill to check on the man who is surely lying on the road. A car drives past me going uphill, and in his lights I see a vision straight out of ‘Northern Exposure’[1] Across the road on the shoulder I see a moose walking uphill. I stop and stare at this amazing sight. I am not used to seeing wild moose walking along the side of a road.

On my soggy walk down hill a car slows to my pace, and the woman driver starts talking to me. She seems to be speaking softly from within her car, the dense trees and the sounds of the rain dampening what little voice escapes. I hear the questioning tone and in my tense concern I start to explain.

“I think I hit someone.”

“….hurt?”

“I am going to see if he’s hurt.”

“…moose?”

“Yes, I saw the moose up there. He seemed fine. I think I hit a man.”

“Oh!…moose…you mean…OK.”

And with that she drove away just as I came up parallel with the back of the truck. My eyes scoured the lane in front of me, and across to the downhill lane, the shoulders, and I saw no man lying in the road, no markers to ward off other travelers. The driver of the truck is walking around his vehicle, its Christmas-tree brightness bouncing off his red shirt. I toss my voice into the echoless night.

“Did I hit a man?”

“Oh, did you hit the moose?”

I turned my head uphill under the umbrella, as if I could still see the animal. “Well, I just saw him and he looked all right.”

“I turned my flashers on to slow down traffic…”

“So I didn’t hit anyone?” The rhetorical question hung in the air as the trucker moved through the bright lights with a rag in hand, oblivious to the drizzle.

I trudged uphill to my parked car, walking to the hood to check for damage. I didn’t see any, but I did see that the moose was trotting back down hill, still on the shoulder. I waited for a car to pass, then crossed over to him. I trailed behind him, like a squawking duck flapping my arms and bobbing the umbrella hissing ‘shoo, shoo’ in a vain attempt to get him to go back into the forest. But there was a guard rail impeding his egress.

Headlights rounding the bend from above redirected my focus. A large truck was coming down the hill. In fear of the moose making another dash into traffic, I began to pantomime for the driver to slow down. I didn’t hear an immediate easing off. Why wasn’t he getting my message? I flashed on what he must be seeing.

A red umbrella bobbing up and down. An outstretched hand held parallel to the ground, pushing the air down. An ankle-length dress, black with bright splashes of red, orange and yellow flowers, going up and down like an accordian. I would have thought that at least the absurdity of the sight would have caught his attention enough for him to ease off the gas…

There was nothing more I could do. I got back into my car and drove off. The canopy thinned as I reached the top of the hill, and dusky visibility returned. I hadn’t been on the road ten seconds before I saw clearly what had just transpired. Had I heeded the trucker’s flashing lights and pulled off the road immediately, together we could have herded the moose across the road to carry on his journey. Instead, he was trotting up and down the hill, up and down, frustrated and perhaps dazed by the blow of one of these two-eyed speeding monsters. Had I my normal clear vision I would have been quicker to recognize the situation ahead of me, and responded properly.

If I do decide to take a supply of contact lenses to China with me, I will remember not to wear them at night, when I need to see where I am going.

---

[1] Northern Exposure was a TV series of a fictional Alaska town. Each episode begins with credits rolling in front of a moose trotting down the main street of Roslyn.

Spring--A road trip beckons

It’s officially Spring. The earth turns, nature shifts into Spring gear, and I feel myself sliding. The winter job is over, there are decisions to be made. For a gypsy with no fixed abode, life is a series of transitions; there is no standing still.

Times like this I keenly feel the lack of a Significant Other. Such a relationship would offer an anchoring. In fact, I am set adrift with no home port, this is my life. It is not for everyone—I believe that’s the appropriate expression here. In weak moments I think perhaps it is not for me, either. But I know I am called to this life, a unique calling, of course it seems lonely at times.

The options that seem most viable to me are three. First, I could go back to China and earn some money. Money is important; no faulting that choice. Second option, go to India where I already have a visa, and live cheaply while focusing on Writing for Publication. Or, third, stick around for another winter season at the ski resort. That seems the least practical, the most expensive. At the moment, it seems to be my choice.

Now that I have a ‘new’ car, the road beckons me. I have unsettled business in Florida that I ignore at my own financial peril. Once on the open road, my diasporic community beckons me. My old friend in Kentucky and the Phoenix Institute calls for a brief visit. There is another newly unearthed old friend in Ohio, just three hours away from the Kentucky friend. She invites me to come and stay for a few days. An elderly aunt in New Jersey, who has an ancient claim on my heart but whose reclusive ways have kept me from her for far too many years. I will no longer allow her to keep me at a distance. Time is too short for us both. And then, of course, there are my siblings. For obvious reasons, it is for me to visit them and not the other way around, if we are to keep in touch. Their homes are on the path south to Florida.

It is simpler to take the trip first, then come back and resettle my meager possessions. I have put energy towards preliminary packing and sorting. This road trip should be less encumbered than previous ones, when I would carry all my possessions with me. Just one suitcase, my laptop, and a bag full of food. I was moving towards the point of departure, targeting Tuesday.

On Sunday I took a trip to the ski town in order to return Sylvia’s rental skis; we had rented them for the whole season. Knowing that Old Ron was feeling homebound, suffering from shingles, I offered to take him along. Late in the day we noticed that when I turned the steering wheel, a loud clicking or snapping noise rose from the front end. I dropped him off at his house with his groceries, plowed through the deep mud of his driveway, and just as I swung into our driveway the clicking turned into growling. A churning, mashing noise grew louder, so I shut down the engine half parked and left it.

I am happy that the CV joint decided to declare itself rotten at this moment, and not another. Still, I thought this mechanical drain on my purse had been shut off when I got rid of the ’92 Saturn. I was counting my pennies as it is, thinking to sleep in the car rather than pay a motel on the long hauls from north to south. I have to get over the affront. It could have been a lot worse, if indeed it had been a transmission problem. And I must remind myself—it is only money. Though at times it doesn’t seem so, in truth it is a renewable resource.

April will unfold itself outside my shuttle window. At times I will stop, leave my craft, sink into the damp green earth and enjoy the riot of colors and balmy breezes. The celebration of renewal and regeneration of friendships, of human bonds, will last for weeks, and leave a fragrant bouquet in my heart. With this green bounty I will settle on the mountain for the summer, and generate manuscripts that might produce some of that precious renewable resource.

Those are my tentative plans. Rent a condo on the ski mountain in the off season. Write. In the Fall, find a cheap apartment in town a mile or two from the mountain, and hope that I can work again at the ski resort. I think to provide myself one more season in which to learn to ski, and to enjoy the company of my grandchildren. These are my thoughts, my plans. In the end, another expression is appropriate: Man proposes, God disposes.

At last, I get it. Sort of.

One more go 'round in the ongoing saga of me trying to learn how to ski. To recap my skiing experience so far, my first group lesson turned out to be a private lesson, see the article below. A second group lesson was on an icy slope, and ended in my being carted off the mountain by the ski patrol toboggan. I had one happy day of practice at the Okemo Jackson Gore beginners slope. All five grandkids were skiiing with me. The sun was shining, the snow was crisp with just enough friction. Though terrified every minute, I did manage to get down the slope a number of times, with no falling. And I enjoyed the company.

Then, on a day when the snow conditions were very fast and the slope crowded, I began a ski afternoon with Molly and Sylvia, ages 16 and 12. They took off on the lifts, while I stuck to the 'magic carpet'. One out of control wild swift slide down the mountain, where I used the tall sign at the ski lift to stop my flight and bring me off my skis, was enough. I took off the skis and relaxed on terra firma, sipping hot cocoa while the girls enjoyed their runs.

Thinking that perhaps the third time is the charm, I booked one more group lesson. I woke up feeling good. This would be it, I thought. After all, I had actually managed the afternoon at Jackson Gore without falling. It is possible.

The ski instructors at Okemo deserve enormous credit. Of course, they are skilled skiers. But more than that, they have a great attitude, and seemingly infinite patience and good humor. This time my instructor was Tom. An interesting old codger, a backwoodsman. His was an interesting story which I will save for another telling. The group was five ladies, mixed ages including some teens.

And I got it! By the end of the two hours, I was relaxed in my skis, enjoying the view of the distant mountains. The weather had been good, warm without sunshine. Just before the end of the lesson, an expected snow storm began. Oh! How beautiful. A misty veil enshrowded the distant vista that I had been enjoying. Big flakes were falling. It was a delight to ski through them. Then the lesson was over, and it was time to deal with snow on the roads and the long drive home.

The last time I took Molly and Sylvia, on the drive home Molly was almost obnoxious with her exuberant exaltation on how much fun, how very wonderful the afternoon was. How great is skiing, how very much fun. Sylvia sat in the back seat feeling the same but not able to get a word in. At the time, I thought it was a bit much. But now I have changed my mind.

It was great. It was wonderful. It was so very much fun to glide down the slope making lazy S turns, bobbing around the little kids and their instructors, dodging the snowboard riders in their clusters. In control. No more terror when shifting turns, no fear of getting stuck in the middle of a turn and hurtling down the slope out of control. I now know that I can make controlled turns, go faster, go slower, and stop at will. Wow.

OK, so I'm not quite ready for a lift. One more afternoon of confidence-building at the Jackson Gore beginner slope, perhaps with a different surface condition. But I am already studying the trail map, plotting the Big Adventure when I actually get on the lift with the grandkids and take the loooonnnngggg ski down.

Skiing is fun.

Of Nordic Gods and Princesses

Tuesday morning, my day off! I am stoked. Today will be my first day on skis; I have a lesson scheduled at Okemo Mountain, a perk that comes with employment there.

I am taking Sylvia with me, for moral support. Happily, Okemo also offers free lessons and ski rentals to all during the opening weeks of the season. My granddaughter, aged 12, was on skis once before 2 years ago, but she will be taking the beginners class along with me.

An early riser myself, I fix my usual oatmeal breakfast in my own efficiency kitchen in the basement. I take my second cup of coffee upstairs to the dining room table, to chat with whatever of my six grandchildren might arise early. Sylvia, however, is a late sleeper. I sip coffee, time passes, and still no Sylvia. It is almost 8 a.m. now and I want to leave at 8:15 for our 10:00 lesson; Sylvia saunters down the stairs sleepy eyed, hair dissheveled.

“Sylvia, it’s time to go. What are you planning to wear?,” I ask her.

“Um. I have a pair of ski pants.”

They are pink hand-me-downs. Later on, sitting next to me in the car she gently says, as if to set the record straight, “I hate pink.” That strikes me as funny, because I think she looks beautiful in pink, with her long blond hair and delicate features.

The crisp Vermont air greets me as I go outside to get the car ready. It will need time to warm up, and then there is the ice to scrape. At last Sylvia emerges and our adventure begins.

Twenty minutes later we arrive at the day-skiers parking lot. This is where I park five mornings a week, looking out of place in my khakis and sheepskin jacket. Today I blend in, with my down-filled pants and a ski jacket I found in the hand-me-down box. Sylvia is wide awake now; we share the rising excitement.

We find the ski school counter. We fill out the forms, move along to the ski rental area, and get fitted with boots and skis.

We are geared up and ready. We are running late. I have been scatter brained through these steps, dropping this, forgetting that. Sylvia goes ahead to find her instructor while I dash back inside for my gloves. Is it just the excitement, or am I subconsciously delaying my first encounter with skis. No more stalling, I push through the doors and look for the sandwich board that identifies the ski school rallying point. By the time I arrive, Sylvia is chatting comfortably with the group of instructors that are waiting for the last stragglers. That would be me. Not many beginners have arrived for these free lessons so early in the season, so Sylvia and I each get our own private instructor. A tall, graying blonde with glasses and deep smile lines dimpling his cheeks greets me.

“And you must be grandma,” he says.

I look up past broad shoulders to a handsome Nordic face that exudes kindness and confidence. We begin our two-hour lesson with some basics.

First, I learn how to walk uphill in skis. There are two methods: walking sideways, and walking head-on in a wedge. Standing sideways across the incline, I jam the inner edge of the downhill ski into the snow and lift the uphill ski, shifting my weight over the uphill ski. Then bring up the downhill ski making sure it anchors me with a good edged grip. Next, we do the wedge facing up the hill, a duck walk. Okay, that’s lesson one. Two more to go.

Next, we learn how to stop when going downhill. By now we are perhaps 50 feet up the slope. The ‘magic carpet’ (a long conveyor belt) ascends to my right, the ski lift and fast traffic to my left, and the base lodge just below and to the left. And where is the EMT stretcher, I wonder?

The wedge is my friend; the wedge is my friend. Ski tips together, heels far apart, the instructor goes over basics on how I should stand, how to distribute my weight and find balance. The stiff boots have a stranglehold on my feet, ankles and low shins. I should relax, lean into my boots and just glide down the slope. Then, to stop, I simply have to push my heels out to widen the wedge, and turn my arches in to put pressure on the inner edge of the ski, and voila! I stop. Or so handsome Sven leads me to believe.

Now this is where my age shows. I am reasonably fit, though no muscle-bound jock. I send the command down to the leg and foot muscles: “Dig into the snow, turn that edge in!” The right leg responds, but the left hears as if I am shouting from the mountain peak and it is lost in the mists below.

As long as the slope is shallow, I can manage to stop, sort of, eventually. So we move on. Next, we learn turns. First, we learn the left turn.

It doesn’t take long before I master the left turn. That faithful right toe digs in there, weight on the ball of the foot, shin putting weight against the boot, and smooth as frosting on the cake we turn left. I am so good at left turns that before long I have strayed too far into the fast lane! I stop, dig my skis in, and glance uphill. Two skiers fly by me, first one side then the other. Looking up I feel like a deer caught in headlights as the downhill skiers whoosh past me front and back. Sven calmly talks me out of danger.

Now, for the last step. Mastering the right turn. This is my weak side. I later learn that it is common for skiers to have one side stronger than the other. I tell the left toe to dig in, heel to thrust out. A feeble response. The Instructor, Sven, is in front of me skiing backwards downhill, as I come towards him. Over and over again, we try. He talks me through what my muscles and limbs should be doing, how my body should be standing, and we creep down the mountain. He is cheering me on, indefatigably good natured and smiling. Or grinning. Or is that a grimace?

Now we have reached the bottom of the slope. He shows me how to use the ‘magic carpet’. I waddle up to position like a fat old penguin, line myself up with the belt, and with my skis together inch my way forward until the belt grabs me. I am leaning forward braced for the motion, but still my shoulders are thrown back and my arms go out, like the wings of a bird winding up for takeoff.

I regain my balance, and enjoy the slow ride up. It gives me time to look around for Sylvia. I see the pink snowsuit on the snow by the top of the carpet. She and her instructor are standing at a short steep slide, down a burm, on the vertical. I confess that by the end of my lesson I still didn’t know what its instructive purpose is, I didn’t get that far. As I watch, Sylvia glides the vertical five feet smoothly, in control. And then she is off to the lift.

The ride dumps me off at the top, I am disoriented. I martial my thoughts to send signals, one by one, to every part of my body. Heels together, toes out, body forward, elbows tucked in, and the instructor gently reminds me that other people might be coming off the magic carpet and so I really need to move along if I don’t want to get plowed into. Oh, the pressure!

I shuffle over to face down the slope again. Sven tells me to look up, not at my feet. But when I look up I see how steep the slope is, and how far away is the bottom. My stomach knots. Then I really have to take myself to task. This is fun, I can do this, I need to relax. Take a deep breath, and relax every part of the body, like I learned to do in yoga. So I take a moment, breath deeply, look up and feel the thrill of the moment. I am on skis, on the slope, I have a handsome man giving me his undivided attention, the sun is shining, the snow is perfect (so this is what they mean by ‘powder’), I am having fun. Yes!

Sven is instructing me to take wide turns to the left and right, snaking our way down the mountain. Again, no trouble with the left turn, but the right is still giving me fits. Again, I wander dangerously close to the speed demons whizzing down the mountain. At a lull in the traffic, I do a lateral shuffle and head back to Sven.

Try again. I am getting a little impatient with myself. Patient Sven repeats the instructions that, by now, my own brain should be sending to my limbs. I am determined this time; I feel my whole body stiffen and twist, even my fingers curl with the effort to dig that left toe in, to find the edge. My feet are in the wedge, I have forward momentum. I am willing myself to the right. I am gaining speed, but the vertical drop is not changing in the slightest to horizontal. So I try to dig both edges in for a stop. The right seems to respond, but that deaf and dumb left ski glides along flat and merry. Sven is in front of me, legs in a wide V with heels together. He is skiing backwards, facing me. My speed increases, and I fly right into him. My skis, still attached to my body, slip under him. His hands are out, grabbing me. I am horizontal, all but my shoulders which are in his hands, and we are drifting down the mountain.

He pulls me towards him, to maintain his center of gravity. Slowly, slowly, inch by inch, I climb up his body. In spite of the danger, my sense that things have gone terribly wrong, the inner female speaks: Oh my, I haven’t been this close to a man in years!

Somehow he manages to get me upright again, and I lock my skis in the ‘stop’ wedge. Once again to the magic carpet we go up. Laughing at my foibles, light hearted although clearly I still am not getting it, I am determined to continue. I can do this!

Of all the spills I take, one in particular is worrisome to the weak knee. I fall straight down, sitting on the back of my skis, my knees locked. It is painful. Sven is game to maintain his charming calm to the bitter end, but after an hour and a half of the two hour lesson my aching knee calls it quits. As we are saying farewell a skier comes up to him, urging him to his next activity. Apparently, the youth races he was meant to coach this afternoon are about to begin. He explains a little about them to me, with obvious relish, and off he goes with another skier who has also come looking for him. I change back into my own boots, and stand on terra firma for the next twenty minutes admiring Sylvia’s progress.

I am able to pick out the pink of Sylvia’s snowsuit high on the ski lift. I watch a while longer, amused by the sight of a row of ‘Snow Stars’, ages three to six in their bright orange vests, all in a row like ducklings, smoothly making long arcing curves down the high slope herded by their instructor.

Then my eye catches a sight of pink. Here comes Sylvia, a serene look on her lovely face, in beautiful form sashaying through the curves and over the bumps after a long run down the slope. She meets with her instructor for a last debriefing.

The lesson over, Pete informs me that Sylvia has mastered the ‘green’ (easy level) slope. Her next lesson should take her on the more challenging blue slope. I am in awe. Am I a proud grandma, or what?

Leaving the rental area we are back out on the pavement and stairs leading down to the archway under the clock tower. I point to the upstairs windows, where my office is.

We walk across the parking lot to the car. My knee is fine until I try to climb into the drivers seat. I wince. For the next week, I will enter the car like an old lady. Feet and knees together, back into the seat, swing the legs around. But hey, a small price to pay for the priceless memory of a shared adventure with my granddaughter, and my first day on skis.

Of Nordic Gods and Princesses

Tuesday morning, my day off! I am stoked. Today will be my first day on skis; I have a lesson scheduled at Okemo Mountain, a perk that comes with employment there.

I am taking Sylvia with me, for moral support. Happily, Okemo also offers free lessons and ski rentals to all during the opening weeks of the season. My granddaughter, aged 12, was on skis once before 2 years ago, but she will be taking the beginners class along with me.

An early riser myself, I fix my usual oatmeal breakfast in my own efficiency kitchen in the basement. I take my second cup of coffee upstairs to the dining room table, to chat with whatever of my six grandchildren might arise early. Sylvia, however, is a late sleeper. I sip coffee, time passes, and still no Sylvia. It is almost 8 a.m. now and I want to leave at 8:15 for our 10:00 lesson; Sylvia saunters down the stairs sleepy eyed, hair dissheveled.

“Sylvia, it’s time to go. What are you planning to wear?,” I ask her.

“Um. I have a pair of ski pants.”

They are pink hand-me-downs. Later on, sitting next to me in the car she gently says, as if to set the record straight, “I hate pink.” That strikes me as funny, because I think she looks beautiful in pink, with her long blond hair and delicate features.

The crisp Vermont air greets me as I go outside to get the car ready. It will need time to warm up, and then there is the ice to scrape. At last Sylvia emerges and our adventure begins.

Twenty minutes later we arrive at the day-skiers parking lot. This is where I park five mornings a week, looking out of place in my khakis and sheepskin jacket. Today I blend in, with my down-filled pants and a ski jacket I found in the hand-me-down box. Sylvia is wide awake now; we share the rising excitement.

We find the ski school counter. We fill out the forms, move along to the ski rental area, and get fitted with boots and skis.

We are geared up and ready. We are running late. I have been scatter brained through these steps, dropping this, forgetting that. Sylvia goes ahead to find her instructor while I dash back inside for my gloves. Is it just the excitement, or am I subconsciously delaying my first encounter with skis. No more stalling, I push through the doors and look for the sandwich board that identifies the ski school rallying point. By the time I arrive, Sylvia is chatting comfortably with the group of instructors that are waiting for the last stragglers. That would be me. Not many beginners have arrived for these free lessons so early in the season, so Sylvia and I each get our own private instructor. A tall, graying blonde with glasses and deep smile lines dimpling his cheeks greets me.

“And you must be grandma,” he says.

I look up past broad shoulders to a handsome Nordic face that exudes kindness and confidence. We begin our two-hour lesson with some basics.

First, I learn how to walk uphill in skis. There are two methods: walking sideways, and walking head-on in a wedge. Standing sideways across the incline, I jam the inner edge of the downhill ski into the snow and lift the uphill ski, shifting my weight over the uphill ski. Then bring up the downhill ski making sure it anchors me with a good edged grip. Next, we do the wedge facing up the hill, a duck walk. Okay, that’s lesson one. Two more to go.

Next, we learn how to stop when going downhill. By now we are perhaps 50 feet up the slope. The ‘magic carpet’ (a long conveyor belt) ascends to my right, the ski lift and fast traffic to my left, and the base lodge just below and to the left. And where is the EMT stretcher, I wonder?

The wedge is my friend; the wedge is my friend. Ski tips together, heels far apart, the instructor goes over basics on how I should stand, how to distribute my weight and find balance. The stiff boots have a stranglehold on my feet, ankles and low shins. I should relax, lean into my boots and just glide down the slope. Then, to stop, I simply have to push my heels out to widen the wedge, and turn my arches in to put pressure on the inner edge of the ski, and voila! I stop. Or so handsome Sven leads me to believe.

Now this is where my age shows. I am reasonably fit, though no muscle-bound jock. I send the command down to the leg and foot muscles: “Dig into the snow, turn that edge in!” The right leg responds, but the left hears as if I am shouting from the mountain peak and it is lost in the mists below.

As long as the slope is shallow, I can manage to stop, sort of, eventually. So we move on. Next, we learn turns. First, we learn the left turn.

It doesn’t take long before I master the left turn. That faithful right toe digs in there, weight on the ball of the foot, shin putting weight against the boot, and smooth as frosting on the cake we turn left. I am so good at left turns that before long I have strayed too far into the fast lane! I stop, dig my skis in, and glance uphill. Two skiers fly by me, first one side then the other. Looking up I feel like a deer caught in headlights as the downhill skiers whoosh past me front and back. Sven calmly talks me out of danger.

Now, for the last step. Mastering the right turn. This is my weak side. I later learn that it is common for skiers to have one side stronger than the other. I tell the left toe to dig in, heel to thrust out. A feeble response. The Instructor, Sven, is in front of me skiing backwards downhill, as I come towards him. Over and over again, we try. He talks me through what my muscles and limbs should be doing, how my body should be standing, and we creep down the mountain. He is cheering me on, indefatigably good natured and smiling. Or grinning. Or is that a grimace?

Now we have reached the bottom of the slope. He shows me how to use the ‘magic carpet’. I waddle up to position like a fat old penguin, line myself up with the belt, and with my skis together inch my way forward until the belt grabs me. I am leaning forward braced for the motion, but still my shoulders are thrown back and my arms go out, like the wings of a bird winding up for takeoff.

I regain my balance, and enjoy the slow ride up. It gives me time to look around for Sylvia. I see the pink snowsuit on the snow by the top of the carpet. She and her instructor are standing at a short steep slide, down a burm, on the vertical. I confess that by the end of my lesson I still didn’t know what its instructive purpose is, I didn’t get that far. As I watch, Sylvia glides the vertical five feet smoothly, in control. And then she is off to the lift.

The ride dumps me off at the top, I am disoriented. I martial my thoughts to send signals, one by one, to every part of my body. Heels together, toes out, body forward, elbows tucked in, and the instructor gently reminds me that other people might be coming off the magic carpet and so I really need to move along if I don’t want to get plowed into. Oh, the pressure!

I shuffle over to face down the slope again. Sven tells me to look up, not at my feet. But when I look up I see how steep the slope is, and how far away is the bottom. My stomach knots. Then I really have to take myself to task. This is fun, I can do this, I need to relax. Take a deep breath, and relax every part of the body, like I learned to do in yoga. So I take a moment, breath deeply, look up and feel the thrill of the moment. I am on skis, on the slope, I have a handsome man giving me his undivided attention, the sun is shining, the snow is perfect (so this is what they mean by ‘powder’), I am having fun. Yes!

Sven is instructing me to take wide turns to the left and right, snaking our way down the mountain. Again, no trouble with the left turn, but the right is still giving me fits. Again, I wander dangerously close to the speed demons whizzing down the mountain. At a lull in the traffic, I do a lateral shuffle and head back to Sven.

Try again. I am getting a little impatient with myself. Patient Sven repeats the instructions that, by now, my own brain should be sending to my limbs. I am determined this time; I feel my whole body stiffen and twist, even my fingers curl with the effort to dig that left toe in, to find the edge. My feet are in the wedge, I have forward momentum. I am willing myself to the right. I am gaining speed, but the vertical drop is not changing in the slightest to horizontal. So I try to dig both edges in for a stop. The right seems to respond, but that deaf and dumb left ski glides along flat and merry. Sven is in front of me, legs in a wide V with heels together. He is skiing backwards, facing me. My speed increases, and I fly right into him. My skis, still attached to my body, slip under him. His hands are out, grabbing me. I am horizontal, all but my shoulders which are in his hands, and we are drifting down the mountain.

He pulls me towards him, to maintain his center of gravity. Slowly, slowly, inch by inch, I climb up his body. In spite of the danger, my sense that things have gone terribly wrong, the inner female speaks: Oh my, I haven’t been this close to a man in years!

Somehow he manages to get me upright again, and I lock my skis in the ‘stop’ wedge. Once again to the magic carpet we go up. Laughing at my foibles, light hearted although clearly I still am not getting it, I am determined to continue. I can do this!

Of all the spills I take, one in particular is worrisome to the weak knee. I fall straight down, sitting on the back of my skis, my knees locked. It is painful. Sven is game to maintain his charming calm to the bitter end, but after an hour and a half of the two hour lesson my aching knee calls it quits. As we are saying farewell a skier comes up to him, urging him to his next activity. Apparently, the youth races he was meant to coach this afternoon are about to begin. He explains a little about them to me, with obvious relish, and off he goes with another skier who has also come looking for him. I change back into my own boots, and stand on terra firma for the next twenty minutes admiring Sylvia’s progress.

I am able to pick out the pink of Sylvia’s snowsuit high on the ski lift. I watch a while longer, amused by the sight of a row of ‘Snow Stars’, ages three to six in their bright orange vests, all in a row like ducklings, smoothly making long arcing curves down the high slope herded by their instructor.

Then my eye catches a sight of pink. Here comes Sylvia, a serene look on her lovely face, in beautiful form sashaying through the curves and over the bumps after a long run down the slope. She meets with her instructor for a last debriefing.

The lesson over, Pete informs me that Sylvia has mastered the ‘green’ (easy level) slope. Her next lesson should take her on the more challenging blue slope. I am in awe. Am I a proud grandma, or what?

Leaving the rental area we are back out on the pavement and stairs leading down to the archway under the clock tower. I point to the upstairs windows, where my office is.

We walk across the parking lot to the car. My knee is fine until I try to climb into the drivers seat. I wince. For the next week, I will enter the car like an old lady. Feet and knees together, back into the seat, swing the legs around. But hey, a small price to pay for the priceless memory of a shared adventure with my granddaughter, and my first day on skis.

On writing and dieting

I have come across a book. It is 'The Writing Diet, Write yourself right-size'. Fascinating concept. One other great thing about living in the Holleran household is the wealth of books. There are overflowing bookshelves in every room. This one is fairly new, in hardback still wearing its original pristine jacket.

The premise of the author is that we eat because we are blocking out thoughts that would reveal unwelcomed emotions. Because this successful author also has a career as a teacher of writing, a leader of writer's workshops, she can get such a book published. Is there any new thought, new concept in this book? Maybe not, but she has collected or created a good collection of interesting anecdotes, has arranged them well and woven them together with discipline to emphasize each point, and so it is a good read.

She begins with the suggestion that you set your alarm clock an hour earlier so that you can start the day writing three pages. Nothing artistic, just a dump of whatever is bothering you, she says.

If I could put my life on halt and spend my first hour of every day writing, I would have plenty of material to publish in no time. First of all, nothing is bothering me. Try as I may, I can't dredge up a rant, or even a pithy kvetch. So my hour would be spent painting a word portrait of The Good Life.

There are exercises I plan to do, as soon as I can wrestle a free hour each morning, to hone my skills as a writer. For example, if I began each day writing I would work on describing the characters that are in my life right now. Just a thumb sketch of, say, the overweight middle-aged woman in my office who is dripping with peevish negativity. Yes, the one who insists on not working on Sundays, such a devout Catholic who Oh! by the way never goes to Mass. Her husband is the cantor at the parish church, she knows all the gossip...but it's not for her to say...but she won't set foot in the church until [whatever] changes. She uses her diabetes as a crutch to justify her grouchy moods. Let's all feel sorry for her, ignoring the part about her weight being the cause of her self-induced condition. In between calls she plays spider solitaire on her computer, or sits with her arms folded, staring blankly at the screen attached to a computer that terrifies her. Although she has been coming back to this seasonal job for years, she doesn't lift a finger to help the new hires. She doesn't get paid enough, it's not her job, not her problem. Ask her for help and she gets flustered, sputtering fretting, once someone touched that key and the company lost millions, you'd better ask the supervisor.

In her younger, slender years she was a petite beauty, with a pretty upturned nose. She was fawned over, doors opened for her, flatterers abounded. Now she is a blubbery frumpy mess spewing nastiness, sprinkled with efforts at sweet comradrie. You've come a long way Baby!

But there is no one hour to write each morning. Another suggestion by the author is to walk for inspiration. Have we not heard this before? How I long to be able to get out each day and speed walk my way to thinness! If one has managed to earn a healthy bank account through writing, or by whatever other means, surely one can make leisure time to journal ones frustrations in the morning, and walk twenty minutes a day to receive creative inspiration, or to unblock a tangled plot. But for us grunts, us working stiffs cum slugs in a factory of one sort or another, our creativity being sapped by the very act of pretending to be a diligent slug, these cheery helpful suggestions are vinegar in the wound.

The above inkspots are oozed leakage from a thwarted pen. One thin day it will come unstuck, and will overflow with inspired creativity.

Or not.

Mid winter reflections of a slug

We are having lots of snow here. The temperature is momentarily back up to around 30, and that’s where I like it. For about ten days the thermometer was reading in the teens and single digits. That’s when the ground freezes, hardening to ice all the layers of snow and melt. On top of that falls a fresh dusting of snow, and driving becomes a hazardous winter sport. Get behind the wheel and the thrill of adventure sends adrenaline coursing through the system. By sheer grit and determination I will the car to stay on the road and moving mostly forward. I am definitely getting too old for this, because too easily the image incongruously pops into my head, of me sitting in front of a fire with a lap robe and a good book. At the end of a typical day of fighting the road, the drive bookending a grueling eight hours of sitting cramped at a desk helping people spend obscene amounts of money for a few days on the snow, I drop exhausted into bed with the dull mind of a slug.

Yesterday, on my day off, I gave Manny a massage. I have a certificate saying I am a trained masseuse, if I never mentioned. I am so out of practice that I have to have a cheat sheet sitting on the unknowing patient’s back telling me what to do next! Nevertheless, I set up a rollaway bed here in the basement, and Manny laid quietly on his stomach while I tried to relieve some muscle pain he’s been having in his back.

Manny is checking me out as a potential life partner. This brings on a whole range of mixed feelings. He milks cows on the night shift at the dairy next door. He is an intelligent, sexy, sensitive man who could do much more with his life, but now he is a slug at a dairy farm.

I heard myself telling a dear friend that I am repulsed by the idea of losing my independence. Repulsed! What a strong word. At the core, it only tells me that Manny is not The One. Surely when I meet The One I will concede my independence happily.

For many weeks I was intrigued by the idea of it. I fantasized, given the parameters of who he is and with what resources, and who I am and what I have. I liked best the idea of moving into my house in Florida. I would live on my social security check and focus on writing and getting published, letting him get a job at whatever comes to hand, and he is handy.

Because he works seven nights a week, it is difficult to find time to spend with him having casual conversations. So he finally arranged to prepare me lunch at his house, rearranging his sleep schedule. The massage was, so to speak, the dessert. But we came to my daughter’s house to do it, because here the rollaway gave me 360º access, and because here we were adequately chaperoned. We did get to speak, and it turned out more like a job interview than a romantic luncheon. I tried to penetrate through the slug mentality to connect with the creative man I believe him to be. But either I am wrong, or he has morphed totally into a slug and it is too late. I sought out his dreams, his visions. Finally I just asked it outright: Where do you see yourself in five years? Right here, he said, milking cows. Now I think I am over it.

Christmas in Vermont 2008

http://picasaweb.google.com/Satina.Anziano/Christmas08?authkey=Bmbvi8_uWTE&feat=directlink

Swimming through a snowstorm

Time to clock out of the job, as lodging reservationist at Okemo Mountain. At 5:30 p.m. I expect it to be dark, but am a little surprised at the large falling snowflakes caught in the glow of the parking lot lamp posts. I am tired, my neck and shoulders stiff from sitting in a cubicle talking on the phone all day. It is Sunday night, I know the house will be dark, cold and empty after the 30 minute drive through this cold white stuff. The family planned to go to Vespers at church tonight. There's no one home to light the wood stoves.

In the quiet of the deserted parking lot, the world softened by the piling snow, I am certain as if long planned that tonight I will go for a swim at the resort's heated pool. I dismiss any thought of slippery roads home.

I drive five minutes to the Spring House Aquatic and Fitness Center. The wind is blowing the large flakes into my headlights, visibility is poor, the road is lined with a white accumulation.

I almost feel my way through the dimly lit parking lot to the aquatic center; there is only one car parked there. I grab my gym bag, and playfully kick up the untouched snow at my feet.

I change into my swimsuit, bracing for the cold walk to the heated pool. But the air is pleasant, not chilling. I step into the water; its warmth quickly swallows me up. With long leisurely strokes I begin to do laps. The warmth is delicious; I feel the tension slowly slip away, as my face slips in and out of the water with each stroke, arms reaching, legs scissoring. After a few laps I stop at the end of the pool, and glance towards the windows. Contrasting amniotic warmth I see the snow in the pools of light driven horizontal by the wind. It is disorienting. A distant thought says I should be concerned about the drive to come, but it has no weight and quickly passes.

After about six laps I begin to bore, when I notice a water slide. It is perhaps five feet high, with a turn and a half. I am curious what it feels like. I climb the steps and find a broad gentle stream of water falling from a slit at the top, down the gray length of the slide. I sit and give myself over to gravity. All of a sudden I whip through a turn and am thrust with surprising force into the pool! A yelp escapes, I hit the water and before plunge down four feet almost to the bottom. That was fun! I have to try it again.

I walk in the opposite direction from the entrance, and find a hot tub. In my placid state of mind it doesn't occur to me to look for a timer to set the jacuzzi jets. I follow the circular ramp up to the top, find the steps and sink deep into the hot water. I stretch out my limbs and wait for my core temperature to rise.

Eventually I leave the pool area and head for the locker room. I strip off the wet suit, and feeling perhaps like Eve in Eden I walk with poise between the locker, toilet and shower as I assemble my toiletries and change of clothes. Once in the shower, hot water gushing down on my head, I forget my usual Army shower habits--water on, get wet; water off, soap; water on, rinse and leave. I heap shampoo on my head and exult in the luxurious bubblous lather. What feels like twenty minutes later, I emerge with pink steaming skin and a towel wrapped around my head.

At last I am content to once again enter the black and white world of dark night and blowing snow. It takes a while to clear my car windows enough to drive. Nevermind, the cold can't penetrate the warm glow I feel from head to toe.

The road isn't that bad, I take it slow and easy. The plows and sanders have preceded me. Halfway along the drive I pass through what is called the 'Proctorsville Gulf', where the weather abruptly changes. Gradually the snow disappears, and by the time I reach Chester the roads are dry. I still puzzle at what a land-locked gulf is.

Life is good. I don't understand how it got that way, but I accept it with deep gratitude. Perhaps next year the tough times will return. Knowing that is ever a possibility, I cherish all the more the goodness and richness that fills and surrounds me right now. Thank you, ever merciful God.

Mongolia: temporal vs spiritual conquests

Grandchild #5, John, has become obsessed with Ghengis Khan and the Mongolians. What planted the seed? I can only wonder. It seemed to be connected, originally, to a computer game. The kids have software that allows them to create their own games, and he wanted to create Ghengis Khan and his warriors on the battle field. But why Ghengis Khan? Well, the obsessed wonderings of a grandma are not much different than those of the grandson! But at least the latter can find clean data, thanks to the internet, and also of course the public library. He spurred his mom to find a movie on the subject.

What John doesn't realize is how close to the heart of his grandmother this whole topic is. His mind is occupied with weapons and guy-kind of things. But grandma remembers how the spiritual pursuits of this Mongolian Khan clan resulted in a major alliance between the Mongolians and the Tibetans. The very name of the Dalai Lama was bestowed by this clan. 'Ghengis Khan' means the leader of an ocean (of people), and so this ancestor claimed the Tibetan spiritual leader to be the teacher of that same ocean. And that is how the diverse Tibetan clans came to be united around a 'god king'.

I don't know how to label the frustration that arises. Could it arise from hubris? And so I brashly said, 'Anything you want to know about the Mongolians, I can tell you.' Wow! Did I take a step into the abyss or what? I want to share my interest and admiration of the Mongolians with my grandson, but his ten-year old mind is only interested in 'cowboys and indians', as it was in my youth. My wild claim did have the desired effect, however. He has been coming to me with his questions about good old Ghengis, and we have sat at my laptop and sought answers. We have researched the Mongolian archery prowess in great detail, searched Wikipedia to know the size of his armies.

The crowning jewel was when he said to me, "Grandma, I like coming to you with my questions. You give me straight answers, instead of all the roundabouts."

dark basement musings

It's early dawn. Last night’s fire threatened to cool around 2 a.m. With images of waking up with a cold nose and the desire to dawdle under the covers until the sun warmed my room (that would be April), after flushing the toilet I opened the stove door and stirred the embers. I fed it a couple of tasty mortals, to tease it to wakefulness. Then I hunkered down under the covers again with a good book, to see if it would take the bait. Absorbed in Aunt Ophelia’s terrible discovery of the reality of slaving, a half hour passed quickly without even a word from Uncle Tom. Nor did I hear the comforting cackle of an awakening fire. Nevermind, sweet Eva was just making the acquaintance of the new slave girl bought from the monsters at the tavern; I wasn’t ready to turn the light off yet.

It took a few more pokes, and inevitably the old fallback ploy of a sheet of newspaper thrown over the embers before the fire finally decided to awaken. It was an hour pleasantly spent, nevertheless. With the roar of it comforting my ears at last, I shut down the draft and tamped down the damper, and let my eyelids pull me back into the dark of slumber.

The book, "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" begins in Kentucky, and takes us back there often. And so that is where I went in my dreams. I visited my old friend David, whose tall lanky frame and loose bones fits the description of a number of characters in the book. I think in fact David’s grandfather was actually born in Ohio, not a slave owner of the 19th century, but nevermind, it was my dream and it was sweet.

On my nightstand I have a silly little frail thing of a clock. When I push down on it, it speaks the time and temperature. As the first light of dawn crept through the window, I nudged the clock and found the room temperature had risen to a tolerable 68 degrees. My taste buds stirred up the image of coffee; my limbs responded. Disentangling from the layers of blankets married to the sheet, I swung my feet to the floor and into the slippers in one smooth move. The water was on to boil almost before the jeans were on my legs. What despots, those taste buds!

And so begins another late autumn day in Vermont. One of the last, maybe a handful left, of leisure days before work at the ski resort begins in earnest. Come next week, the pleasant dawn footfalls on the ceiling above me that now serve to remind me that this gypsy woman is, for a frail moment in time, sheltered in the bosom of the family will actually serve the very practical purpose of a wake-up call to the start of a work day.

Dust off the shoes

It is time to dust off this old pair of shoes which has lain forgotten at the back of the closet.

In my mind, the whole blog thing smacks of ego. As if my thoughts, opinions, experiences should matter to anyone! Life is so one off. Early on, if you are watching, you get a reality check when you compare your perception of an experience with someone else's. Were they watching the same proverbial car wreck?

I was convinced that the conclusion I drew from my experience was Absolute Truth, and that she just hadn't gotten it. Then she traced her experiential steps that led her to draw her conclusion, and it hit me. Her truth is as valid as mine, although opposite. Now, though I sound like I know what I'm talking about, any opinion I put forth is a target to be shot down, and I know I want to pay attention.

Maybe it is only the difference between seeing the cup half empty or half full. But maybe it goes deeper than that.

Having said that, I restart this blog with a whole new concept. In the past, while living in China, it was simply a way to put a postmark on my intellectual property. When I was 16, back in the 50s, I wrote a song. The high school band leader said I could get protection equal to copyrighting if I would write the music down, fold the piece of paper, put a stamp on it and mail it to myself. The official post mark from the U.S. Post Office provided legal proof of creation and ownership. More recently, when I saw that the articles I had written and which were published by my chosen venue, Escape From America eZine, were being 'stolen' and posted on various other sites without my permission, I thought I had better create a collection of them here at my own space, giving them as it were an official postmark.

As if it mattered! It turns out, the subject matter was the point of interest, not what I had to say about it or my special gifts as a writer. If the article I wrote with the word 'Kangding' in the title had been no more than a tally sheet of Kangding's demographic statistics, it would have received an equal number of hits.

That having been said, the next logical thought would be to identify this new concept, the new use for this old pair of shoes.

Logically, this should be a place for me to express my opinions. To lay out my experiences, and the conclusions I draw from them, or my punto de vista, how Life looks from here.

That recalls my worst nightmare. Being naked in the school yard, lining up to go back to class.

Never let it be said that I lack courage.

Oh, wait. In truth, the older I get the more unreliable my body becomes. That includes the courage muscle. Let me rephrase that.

Never let it be said that I lack will to pull together whatever courage I can muster.

Knowing that I am talking to myself, and that Self is not all that interested in listening, I will nevertheless make a commitment to post once a week. Here I am, a sitting target; have at it. Naked in the schoolyard, fast forward sixty years? Oh, not a pretty sight!

Yangsi of Gen Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey

Posted by ChinaSatin

Links to other articles

Hot Day, Hot Pot, Hot Time in Guza
and
A weekend in Kangding

Perilous Passes in Winter

It was Saturday night, I was with the friend I'd driven over the mountains to visit, but this was no restful evening of dinner and a movie. We were in his nephew's van, heading back down the mountain. This day had gone terribly wrong.

***** *****

A couple years ago, during the winter break, I came across a monastery cradled in a small grassland area. There are plenty of monasteries much closer to where I live. Those are either small, or in an urban area. This monastery, 180 kilometers from my home, was large, yet away from any population center. I began to harbor dreams of meditation retreats on three-day weekends, eventually a week-long retreat. I was eager to meet the head Lama, to see if that would be possible. Meeting him, however, was not so easy. Oh, he's approachable enough, a real down-to-earth kind of fellow. But hard to reach. Though the location is not far, 'you can't get there from here'. Few public vehicles traverse the required route, and not at the times suitable for a quick weekend trip. When I did have the time, he was traveling.

When I finally connected with the head lama in May and received a courteous carte blanche for future visits, this getaway spot breathed new life into me. I am passionate about teaching Tibetan college students. Even so, day after day of rambunctious students can wear an older person down. I bought a car last January, no longer dependent on public transport. However, it's been a busy semester; I am lucky if I can free up one weekend a month to travel over the mountains.

From the Tibetan plateau east, the mountains gradually recede in a series of steppes, high mountain passes and grassy plateaus. As the crow flies, it may only be about 600 miles from the western Tibetan border at Yushu-Serxu east to Kangding, the former China-Tibet border. That translates into days of difficult driving on the Chengdu-Tibet highway 318, even when the winter hasn't closed the road off to passenger traffic.

My junior college is at the end eastern end of the road. We are at a mere 4,500 feet, with just one more 7,000 foot pass before the road descends to the Chengdu basin. My students are all from the mountains west of here, right up to the Tibetan plateau.

The school holidays include a month in the winter and six weeks in the summer, when the students return home. I am drawn like a magnet to these mountains. China is a vast country, there are many interesting sights to explore, but I cannot pull myself away. I accept invitations from my students, spending my free time eating tsamba[i], and yak noodle soup, and drinking gallons of salty buttered tea. I learn new Tibetan dances on these trips, drink barley moonshine, and record it all with my digital camera. These families are warm and welcoming. They live with hardship. Harsh weather and high altitudes. No indoor plumbing. Cooking done over wood or dung fires. Telephone service is spotty, mostly available only in the more populous centers of commerce. Farms and most villages are not connected. Cell phones are useless. When a visitor comes to their door, the family circle widens just enough to draw in one more, then closes ranks again.

These people have a reputation as fiercely independent warriors. Over the centuries they have chased out explorers, exploiters and adventurers. The nature of these mountains is more conducive to isolated fiefdoms than a confederated republic. This has left an opening for the Chinese to send banished public servants to set up residence in the towns established along the main road, declaring themselves the occupying government of China. The Tibetans, if they didn't find them too offensive, left them alone. This wasn't much of a problem, until the communists came along.
***
As we headed down the mountain, the three Tibetan men kept up a lively conversation. I felt like a shadow, sitting quietly behind Urgyen, not understanding their Tibetan. I was along for the ride because I had created this mess that they were going to fix. It was almost six when we left the monastery, night would quickly engulf us. There were icy patches on the road. We were in the same kind of car as mine, a minivan with rear wheel drive, no chains, but the nephew, Gondun, maneuvered the icy twists and turns with a practiced hand.

I set out that morning before 8 o'clock. I would arrive at lunch time. I tried a few times to phone ahead, but got no answer. Tried both his land line and cell phone. My friend had proudly given me his cell phone number on my last visit a month earlier, but I had never been able to connect. I was to learn he keeps it off until he wants to make a call. The main monastery phone is in a back room of his residence. In winter it usually rings unanswered, except late at night, when I know he would be watching TV not far from the phone. I knew to let the phone ring at least twenty times before hanging up. But I didn't try to call him Friday night. I was dithering, not sure I'd make the trip on Saturday. I would have to return on Sunday, and that was a grueling trip leaving no time to recover before stepping back into the classroom Monday morning. I had promised to bring some English books and tapes, and I had a movie I wanted to share with him. I didn't want two months to pass without a visit. I missed my friend, and the restful sleep I always had when there. So I set out early, dialing his numbers as I left our village, before heading into the blackout area. No answer.

Rather than taking the heavily traversed highway 318, I prefer the back road. It is a few kilometers shorter, and the mountain pass is lower. The road is a patchwork of pavement and dirt. Man comes along and paves, using gallon drums to build fires and melt tar, and moving fallen rocks using a wire sling hanging from a pole on the shoulders of two men. Fallen boulders are broken down by men with hammer and chisel. Landslides are frequent. During rainy season I pray that enough cars have gone before me to flatten down the mud to two tire tracks. So far I've been lucky, not stumbling onto a fresh slide. When the rain dries up, the road is a mess of rutted dirt, loose stones, narrow lanes. The river rages on one side, the steep mountain rises on the other. In spots, the rock wall hangs over the road, a passage carved out with dynamite.

I had passed the halfway mark in good time, the town of Danba. I filled up on gas, and tried again to call my friend. No answer.

The road was dry. I hadn't come that way before at that time of day, and the play of brilliant sun and shade as I wove through the folds of mountains was dazzling. The sun caught the river spray over a rocky drop; I had to stop and take a picture. No traffic bothered my line of shot. In fact, there seemed to be no one else on the road but me.

I noticed my windows were dirty. I tried the window washer, but it was either dry or frozen. I thought, I should stop and clean the windows with the handy wipes I carry. But I didn't. I kept pressing on. Almost there! Just thirty kilometers more, I won't quite make it by noon, but maybe there will be some lunch left over.

Climbing up into the last pass, the glare of the sun through the dirty windows blinded me, and abruptly I was in shade again as the mountain road twisted. Before my eyes could adjust, I felt the front end drifting left toward the stone retaining wall, the rear swinging out towards the river. Before I could move the wheel I bounced off the wall, the nose coming around, slowly swinging in an arc, nose to the river, then sliding into the wall. The left rear tire rested straddling the ditch, at the edge of the snow covered road. Well! Now what?
I got out to survey the damage. Left edge of rear bumper against the retaining wall. Front left tire flat, rim badly dented. Fender smashed, the headlight wall-eyed. I went to lift the front hood to get the jack, but the impact had jammed it shut. No jack. I noticed liquid seeping from the damaged wheel. It was quickly freezing. Rubbing a drop between fingers, I recognized it as brake fluid.

A big blue cargo truck came around the bend up the road, and stopped. A guy came down to survey the damage. Help had arrived quickly, I thought. He walked past the car, looking at the road. He gave a passing glance at me and the car. He waved the truck on, there was just enough road to squeeze by. Twenty minutes later, the same thing happened again. I tried to engage the men, asking for a loan of a jack. The truck drove past, the scout listened patiently, then disappeared around the bend after the truck. He didn't look back.

Sporadic traffic passed going down the mountain. Nothing moved going up the mountain. A pair of tractors stopped, looking like something out of the Dukes of Hazzard. The most talkative one, dark close-set eyes, long face, cunning gap-toothed smile, offered to help for three times the amount of money I carried in my pocket. But they were headed down to Danba, 60 kms away, and wouldn't consider taking me the last 30 kms up to my destination, for any amount of money. By tying a rope to my car nose and their tractor box, using the hydraulic lift, they raised the car enough to change the tire. But my spare was flat, so it was useless. They said there was more ice on the road ahead. So I asked them to help me put the chains on, maybe I could limp forward. They hooked the chains around the tire, inexperienced; the chains lay loose upon the rear tires. I paid them the going rate for changing a tire, and they went on their way.

I limped forward on a flat tire. Where was I going? The road nearby had no ice, but the rutted road was peppered with large rocks. If this flat tire was still to be any use, I couldn't afford to tear it up over these rocks. As I stood by my car surveying things, another truck stopped ahead of me. A guy came down to scope things out. He wanted me to back up onto the icy edge closer to the rock wall. I tried, but my rear tired slipped on the ice and wouldn't mount the edge. While they waited impatiently, I managed to creep right to a smoother section of rutted road, edging forward to a snow-covered lip on the river side, just wide enough for my car. The truck was able to pass me. I decided the car wasn't going anywhere else on its own. I pulled out my valuables, packed them in my bag. I used the remote on my key chain to lock the doors, and hand locked the rear door which isn't on the remote system. I started to walk. If nothing else, I wanted to reach a side of the mountain that was in sun. It was very cold in the shade.

I reached the monastery around 5 p.m. As I passed the temple back door, on the way to my friend's compound, I heard his voice. He was coming down the stairs. Had someone run ahead and told him I was coming? It sounded like everyone else was still inside chanting, in the midst of evening prayers. He asked why I was on foot; I told him my story. He instructed me to sit
down and rest, and that after prayers were finished we'd go after the car. As he turned away he pulled his cell phone
from his breast fold of his robe. I settled myself in his compound, but I saw no signs of dinner. It was unusual to find not even a thermos of buttered tea. Must have been a long day of temple prayers, where buttered tea is served lavishly.

Forty-five minutes later, his nephew had arrived and we were headed down the mountain.

I hadn't met his nephew before. Gondun was about 5'9", built solidly. His hair was smoothed back, ending in a neat braid down his back. He had already driven to my van, after his uncle called, but without the key he couldn't do more than change the tire. And lock the doors. He no sooner laid eyes on me than began berating me for not locking the car. My language skills deserted me, I had neither vocabulary nor energy to defend myself against this charge. If I simply said, "I did lock it," he would think me daft or an artless liar.

It was dark when we parked my car in Urgyen's compound. His sister and niece arrived, and put together a dinner of noodles. While we waited, I brought out the store of things I had brought for him. A bottle of hand lotion from the States, to combat the very dry winter climate. How often had I seen him use butter on his hands. A few copies of an English text book, and its tapes. His monastery hosts a school for village children, and he has included English in the curriculum. And finally, the videos. I brought a couple of movies that were made with a Tibetan cast, speaking Tibetan. Before dinner arrived, he animatedly berated me for causing such anxiety to his nephew, by having left my car doors unlocked. What shame it would bring him if his guest's car was found the next day by the side of the road stripped. Again I wished to defend myself, but couldn't find the mental or physical energy to do a dictionary-search conversation.

To change the subject, I suggested we watch a video. We fumbled around with the wiring, we old folk don't have the agility of the youth for sorting out all the reds, whites, yellows. After some false starts we finally got the picture and sound on the screen. But the dialogue was coming out in Cantonese! I asked him for the remote control, so we could use the menu to select the Tibetan track. He produced three remotes, none of which worked on the DVD player. I knew the video by heart, so periodically I updated him on what was going on, feeling so disappointed that he wasn't getting the full effect of this delightful movie. He said maybe in the morning he'd be able to find the remote. The warm meal had made me sleepy. I filled my hot water bottle, grabbed my chamber pot, and found the bed that Urgyen had set up for me. I don't know what time his kin left, but my bed was on the other side of the wall, so I know he stayed up late watching his satellite-feed TV.

As is my habit, I rose early. I wrapped myself in the sheepskin coat and went across the courtyard to the kitchen, hoping to find a lit fire. Urgyen's sister soon arrived, finding me huddled in the wool quietly building up body heat. She fired up some coals and carried them up to the house. I savored the quiet hour, communing with the peace and spirituality of the place.

Breakfast of tsamba laced with his wry humor brought me out of the cold gray dawn into a day of brilliant blue sky with the late sun hinting its presence behind the mountains. We talked a bit about the icy roads, and both agreed my life would be safer if I left the car parked in his compound until late February, when the ice begins to melt. He probably doesn't mean to yell, but I've noticed that when he speaks with others his voice is soft, but when he tries to communicate with me, he employs the 'louder is better' method of communicating with someone who doesn't speak your language.

Talking sternly, as a Dutch uncle might, he yet again went on about my leaving my car unlocked. I opened my mouth but the words wouldn't come. The shock I had just experienced, on top of all the pent-up frustrations of this term, the exhausting schedule that choked off normal activity--academic research, language study, writing, sustaining friendships, leisure activities--broke through fortified denial and poured out in tears cascading silently.

He looked on mutely, a man accustomed to managing a staff, directing and instructing monks of all ages from the most tender years, but not accustomed to dealing with weeping women. After a silence he gently asked again, "When will you come back with a week to spend?"

After breakfast I packed my bag and headed out the door, to begin the long journey by public transport back to college. He told me not to worry about the car, someone would take care of repairs, it would be safely parked until the spring thaws.
******************************
footnote:
[i] Roasted barley added to Tibetan (salted, buttered) tea, along with two to three tablespoons of butter and some sugar. Worked with the hands to form a ball of dough. Pieces pinched off and eaten, with sips of buttered tea.