days of beautiful nothingness

i can't believe it's already getting near the end of july. i suppose that's a solid testament to the relaxing and care-free month i've been having on the mountain. i don't seem to do a whole lot, but the days slip away and i'm having a great time just reading, swimming, catching up with family, and doing not much. right now i'm down at the salisbury library with my aunt olivia and uncle dick, while we run our daily errands, and the routine of life on the mountain has been just what it ought to be: slow and rather uneventful.

examples of this are the fact that the most inane stories get repeated to everyone who already knows them, and are avidly recounted to any new person who comes up the mountain. this must be what it's like to live in iowa, except not as flat.

here is one of the stories that have no real pressing interest to anyone, but which have been widely circulated: aunt olivia has been having uncle dick turn on the generator every day so that she can blow dry her hair. somehow everyone knows about this. we went down the mountain to visit chauny and crosby, and the first thing chauny said was "so i heard you've been blow drying your hair."

i have much else to reflect on, but just as i'm not doing much this month except relaxing, i have no desire to tax my brain right now into deeper reflexion about my mt. riga time. that'll be for august, i expect.

small cat = great destruction

so everything is packed up and shipped out. i won't see my things for a month, but that's ok, so long as i didn't pack something away that i need... but for a month, i'll make do. now, to finish off work with panache, or at least without leaving some major forgotten project undone.

slightly dramatic story with my cats: they were packed up into my dad's car yesterday and went back to brewster with him and kornelya and jalom. when they got home yesterday evening, they let huckleberry out and he immediately ran to the wall and pulled open a panel they kept for getting to the water pipes, and disappeared into the wall.

anyway, i found this out today at lunch time, and, slightly apprehensive, as you can imagine, called kornelya, who said they could get the carpenter to come and pull open the panel further to get him out. slightly assured, i said ok.

by the time i got home from errands tonight, i had a voicemail from dad saying that the cat was still in the wall and to call him immediately. freaked out, i called and dad said they'd pulled apart half the kitchen wall and couldn't find him. he said there was nothing he could do and he didn't think the cat would last very long in the wall. of course i started sobbing and dad kept saying he was sorry and i couldn't help berating the fact that they have this easily accessible hole in the wall when they've had up to three cats living in their household for this potential disaster. then dad said he would try getting a panel open on the other side of the kitchen. i felt bad asking him to take more of the kitchen apart, but on the other hand, i would bulldoze my house if that's what it took to save my cat.

i got off the phone and told the story to courtney, at whose house i'm staying until the end of work. she tried to comfort me by counteracting dad's melodramatic prognostics by saying cats are clever and can survive days without food and can fit in all sorts of small spaces just fine. but of course i was panicked now and afraid i'd arrive back in brewster with my baby dead. so she distracted me with youtube videos of people dancing for oprah, and it kind of worked, and then at that point, dad called back to announce that they were able to get huckleberry out of the wall, and he was cooped up in the bathroom with the window closed.

he informed me that it was stifling in there but he wouldn't open the window in case huck tried to go out the screen. i said, why not open the window an inch or two? he was convinced huck would get through this. i was convinced that after the trauma of being forced into a cat carrier and riding in an un-air conditioned car for six hours with total strangers to an unknown destination and fate, to get stuck in a wall for over twenty-four hours, huck would end by dying of heat stroke in that bathroom with no ventilation.

finally a compromise was reached, in which the window was (slightly) opened, and the bathroom and bedroom doors were left open, with an outer hallway door to act as the actual barrier between that portion and the rest of the house. jack was stuck with huckleberry for companionship, and hopefully that is the end of it.

funny, i had thought the packing up part would be the part to give me a near-heart attack.

the personification of my subtle anatomy

dreams of recent note–

in my most recent dream, i am riding on a train, out of philadelphia maybe, and i'm taxed by the thought of the journey ahead. the train seems to hit delays, or there's something about the ride that makes me uncomfortable. there's other people on the train, but i don't see anyone i know, no friendly faces to make me feel more comfortable about being here.

then i'm lying on one of the seats of the train, and suddenly, there's a train conductor standing beside me and looking down at me, smiling. i look at her and feel a little better, and then all of a sudden there are many women surrounding me, looking down at me, smiling and benevolent, protective. they're beautiful, and robed in greek-looking garments. or maybe they're naked? i'm not sure, but it's like they're angels or something. i just watch them, smiling at me, surrounding me in a tight circle, ethereal and luminous.

waking up and thinking about it, i wondered if they were my chakras, the personification of my Subtle Anatomy, as kundalini yoga teaches. i have been practicing meditation on the chakras lately, and so far it is my favorite yoga position, or asana (i'm trying to learn the language of yoga), next to the position where you just lie on your back with your arms outstretched and drift into a trance-like snooze.

the wide stretches of fiction and reality

"even once we consciously know something is fictional, there is a part of us that believes it's real."

isn't that a great photo up above? i found this article today speculating on why it is that the imagination is such a pleasure to us. it's the kind of question an adult would ask, after all; children, with a more instinctive wisdom, already know. paul bloom, this article's author, cites his colleague's theory of "aliefs"–or rather, instinctive beliefs that are intrinsically linked to emotional responses over objective, sensory responses to fiction versus reality. or maybe "sensory" is the wrong word, if in this context an alief is triggered by more primitive sensations. seeing a man stumble over a cliff in a scary movie makes us jump, even though we know we're just watching a stunt double hopping against a blue screen.

i wonder what mr. bloom would have to say about dreams, then. are they an extension of the imagination, both real and unreal, full of both beliefs and aliefs? i sometimes wonder. there's no saying how wide are the stretches of the capacity of the human brain, nor how much we think we sense is reality. and if dreams are, on some plane of place and time, real, then why not novels and fiction? we long for stories, but what are we creating in the telling?

wisdom teeth extraction update:

agatha = 1. wisdom teeth = 0. ha!

which way the wheel turns

in thinking about planning for my future, i can't help having flashbacks to being a much younger girl, and thinking a bit wistfully how much easier life was in many ways. one of my favorite activities, when i was younger, was to go to our massive town library and go and scavenge for ten or twelve books i wanted to read, and then to either go and find a comfortable chair in the corner in which to horde and devour, or to take them home and, with a large piece of chocolate in hand, go one by one. the library even had shelves down in the basement where the cafe was, where you could buy used books for 25 cents. if i had $5 in my pocket, i could buy a sandwich and a snapple and sit and happily read for hours. there's a certain charm to that simplicity; and yet i'm not foolish enough to forget the many hours of boredom and frustration that go with being young and feeling powerless. no real money, no freedom to go where i choose, no sense of feeling that my opinion had any importance. when you're an adult, you can choose how you want to live your life, and how you want people to treat you.

so i don't un-wish the responsibilities that i have now–they go hand in hand with the freedoms of getting older. i guess it's just that being free is both terrifying and exhilarating–if you are submitting to someone else's will, you don't have to think for yourself. i think a lot of people feel it's easier not to, actually, even when they grow up. sometimes, in a moment of mental and spiritual exhaustion, i can almost understand why–but the terror of giving up that right is so great that the feeling is quickly vanquished by the tremendous courage and confidence you get from steering your own life.

do please forgive me if i quote the same passage again and again…i trust that the (possibly) three people who actually read this blog are of such a kind friendship with me that they'll either forgive me or just skip past it. i mean, do you ever have such a revelation, that you feel is so much a cornerstone of your own faith that you can't help returning to it like a prayer wheel?

at any rate, the point is that i said, reflecting on a particularly animated dream i had, that, despite fear of the unknown, despite the crushing weight of responsibility to be something beyond myself, despite all this, i still retain a fervent gratitude "to be the one who decided which way the wheel turned."

because i am truly thankful. i've had a lot to bear in my life, but could have borne a lot more, and am only too conscious of the great blessing i have in being able to strike out my own destiny. what is fate? the apple rolling on the plate? still, i am rolling the apple.

for a reason?

do you believe that everything happens for a reason? i actually do–or rather, even rejecting the supposition of a higher power pre-determining this reason, when actions happen, there is reason behind them, and reason to be gained in their happening (reason in the purpose sense, not the logic sense).

i can't quantify how often this thought comes back to me, but it makes my life feel fuller somehow. negative experiences still hurt, but they lose some of their bitter tinge in the thought of what i gain by them: greater perspective, understanding of human nature, understanding of what i want in my life. i know i'm being vague, but it's because i'm thinking of several experiences over the past year, not just one. and i see more and more how, as i said, every experience is an opportunity to be happy. and for me to realize what i need in my life.

isn't that the hallmark tenant of buddhism? my friend paul tells me that his favorite aspect of buddhism is the symbol of the lotus flower. have you ever seen one? they really are very beautiful:

he says it is a buddhist symbol because the lotus can blossom in most any location–a crack in the sidewalk, a pile of refuse; from bad beginnings comes something beautiful and pure.

it reminds me that there is so much room for goodness.