Turn, Turn, Turn

“Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.” ~ James Joyce, Dubliners

Ah, the neck muscles of youth. Was that really me?

Around the time of these antics, my Father died suddenly of a heart attack.

Life was irrevocably changed. My sisters, new mothers at the time, were gone from the house. It was just me and Mom.

I felt like a lone confused wolf. The breadwinner who provided for us was no longer at the dinner table. Shouldn’t I be sad?

I confess that one part of me was relieved. No more fights between him and Mother, the worst being a particular Christmas Eve — finding him slumped over the steering wheel of the car in the driveway after his visit to a local tavern.

I did not want to be a grieving 16-year old.

I wanted fun, to make people laugh. And so I sought surrogate sisters vis-a-vis my “friends.”

But Mother told me my friends were sophomoric.

Sure. We were sophomores in high school.

Then Mother told me I had to find a job. After Dad’s death, our social security checks were not enough. If I wanted to go to college, I’d better start saving.

The florist in town hired me part-time. She had a heavy German accent. Wass ist los? she’d ask, hovering close. My reply: “Eh?”

I found myself emptying containers of stinky flower water and making corsages for the prom I did not attend.

The jewel in the crown: helping the florist set up funeral wreaths in churches. My Father’s spirit seemed to hover at every turn. I felt lots of heaviness and guilt in my heart over him. What had I not expressed to him that he needed to hear from me before he crossed over?

I showed up erratically at the flower shop. The florist dismissed me — I was no longer needed.

Meanwhile, my friends seemed like they were having a ball. They worked at Turnstyle, a discount department store. They bought hip-looking clothes on the layaway plan. They formed a clique, but I was not in their sisterhood.

The lone wolf once again.

To everything turn, turn, turn

I started dating a guy down the street. He was Edward Scissorhands minus the scissors. We talked about our plans once we graduated from high school.

What were his plans? He looked forward to joining the circus.

Perfect!

When my “friends” learned I was seeing “circus boy” (as they called him), they laughed. Then they spray-painted an expletive on ES’s driveway.

ES did not deserve this disrespect.

Lightbulb: my friends were sophomoric. Could Mother possibly be correct?

Though I severed from my friends, I did not stay with ES. Barnum & Bailey claimed him and I needed to move on.

And so, to supplement college savings, my Aunt found me a summer job at the factory where she worked. I found myself bagging cotton and polyester fabrics alongside a tall, dark hippie sporting a handlebar mustache.

Here’s where the rubber meets the road …

Name a maiden who does not want to be looked upon as eye candy. Especially by a hippie who sports a handlebar ‘stache and rides a Harley-Davidson.

My Aunt, much to her dismay, spotted me on the back of Easy Rider’s motorcycle as we fled the factory and sped down Cuba Road on our lunch hour.

A short-lived tale. ‘Stache and the factory did not last beyond summer.

Fast forward. I am in college. Headstands are a long-gone thing of the past.

I trudge across campus, pre-Kindle and pre-computer days, backpack laden with classics: Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, and James Joyce’s Dubliners.

It is in Dubliners where I learned that “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.”

I could relate to Mr. Duffy. I was largely living in my head, an English Lit major, enthralled by the classics.

I was in heaven, curled up in my apartment with its old, hissing radiator, sipping Constant Comment tea. Books became my BFF’s. I was feeding my mind.

Was it around the time I was reading Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis that my neck and shoulders started aching? Relieved that I did not wake up in bed transformed to a vermin like Gregor Samsa, I phoned a chiropractor.

“Lose the backpack,” he said, after examining and noting the Atlas bone in my neck was out of alignment.

Was it the backpack? Maybe it was the headstands of the “sophomoric” years. Or reading so much and living a short distance from my body, like Mr. Duffy.

No. I would never give up reading.

I feel I personally know Mr. Duffy.

Now, my book choices are more of a buffet. The entrees include Zen meditation and mindfulness books, creative non-fiction, poetry and contemporary literature. And when my eyes are tired, podcasts. (Some fave podcasts: Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris, Clear & Vivid with Alan Alda, The New Yorker Fiction, and On Being with Krista Tippett).

My body is becoming a portal for the breath. I “train the puppy” as the mindfulness facilitator leads our weekly meditation group. Why is it so difficult to sit still? “Don’t just do something, sit there!” my brain scolds my squirming body. I embrace that voice too and listen for waves of breath, to let go.

I am not the only Boomer who has lived a short distance from her body.

We are at the end of 2020 and approaching the hopes of 2021.

Turn, turn, turn.

Is it a cosmic coincidence that 1/21/21 is a palindrome? Read backwards and forwards it is the same — and it is the day our new President is sworn into office.

I leave you now with that mystery.

Shift Happens

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Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. ~ Henry David Thoreau

 

I thrive on walks in Seattle’s Lincoln Park, which faces Puget Sound.

Curious how the driftwood belched up by the Sound looks sculpted into the shape of animals.  First I spot a sea lion in  a log amid pebbles, and now a swan ~

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Lythe young bodies jog past me on my way to my meditation bench.  Some clock themselves with Fit Bits.

The show-offs!

In my forty-somethings, I walked more briskly.  With each decade — surprise — I have slowed down.  In my fifties, I developed plantar fascitis and now, in my sixties,  lower back issues.

Shift happens.

I reach my meditation bench.  At its base, a plaque engraved with the words Carpe Diem — Seize Today.   Nowhere does it say Carpe HisternoSeize Yesterday.  Nor Carpe MananaSeize Tomorrow. 

I am here to calm the internal chatter, to feel the pulse of this sacred, public park.  I am here to spend time as deliberately as nature, to notice the cries of  gulls, the flute-like melody of thrushes, and lately the sight of sea lions.  I am here to engage my senses and practice what the Japanese call Shinrin-yoku — having a forest bath.

Lowering myself onto the bench, I hope to spot my sea lion today.

Seagulls scud across the water.  The tide froths against the rocks.  Opening my ears, I try to memorize the rhythm of the tide. Inhaling the kelp-scented air, I consider the irony of “smelling the Sound.”

What would Henry David Thoreau have made of the sea lion that bobs up during my dusk quietude?   Most likely he would spend an entire day  in this spot.  Thoreau would stand motionless for eight hours beside Walden Pond to watch young frogs, and all day at a river’s edge watching duck eggs hatching.

Thoreau may have been extreme in his nature studies and solitude. During  my forest baths I have at least learned to leave my cell phone behind.

A dog trots past, smiling.  Is he experiencing a forest bath too?  I smile back.

Eyes half-focused on the horizon, on the quicksilver water, no sea lion appears today.  But something shifts and releases in my hips just by being here.

Do I Contradict Myself?

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Spotted on bike ride in our neighborhood. Message feels global.

 

I have umpteen self-help books on meditation and mindfulness.

Do I practice what they teach?

A bit of background:  As a young lass in the cro-Magnon, pre-digital era, I  signed up for a mantra.  (Partly influenced by the fact that George Harrison was playing sitar and following the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at that time).

I even recall my mantra.  But today it goes something like Om…Om…OMG I forgot I have a dental appointment at 3:00.

How do I know this?  My smart-ass phone just beeped.

OK.  I realize this is a 1st world problem, but though I am thankful for the modern conveniences of our digital age, these days I crave mindfulness.

Am I contradicting myself by being on the blogosphere?  Is this yet another distraction?  If so, I am in company with the Good Gray Poet, Walt Whitman:  “Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then I contradict myself,  I am large, I contain multitudes.”

At any rate, I left Chicago in the 1990’s and moved to Seattle.  Mt. Rainier, the Pacific Ocean, the Hoh Rain Forest — all eye candy for me and my husband.

And something else called out that was new and exciting:  the Internet.  When we arrived to this high-tech city, the Internet was just a dirt road, not yet a superhighway, nor had it become The Cloud.

The Internet was cool; I enjoyed scootering on the dirt road.   I created a health and safety intranet site for the organization I worked for.  But then, during a walk on the beach, I spotted a young man wearing a t-shirt that said “Rage Against The Machine.”

The t-shirt was disconcerting enough, but at the time I was also reading a book titled I Live In The Future and Here’s How It Works:  Why Your World, Work and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted: 

“There needs to be a way to opt out of the constant retrieval of images, audio, and information. What do we do when the Internet or computers refuse to forget?”

And “The Internet is changing our concept of location, trust, space, time and connections.”

The dark web is undeniably out there today.  But I like blogging.

Walt Whitman, will you please travel to the future and help me deal with these contradictions?