WHAT WOULD SHE PUT IN IT?

IF SHE ONLY HAD ONE MINUTE

What would she put in it?

She wouldn’t put

She thinks she would take,

suck it up

like a deep lake—

bloat indiscriminate

on her last instant—

feast on everything she

had released, dismissed, or

pushed away; she would make

room and room as though

her whole life of resistance

had been for this one purpose;

on the last minute of the last day

she would drink and have it; ballooning

like a gravid salmon or the moon.

—Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, New York, Grove Press, 2010

Well, it is still overcast here although the last weather report I read did not indicate rain today. The afternoon will be clear, or so it is said. 

I mention this because I need and want to be gardening, but I am having one of those grey day sleep attacks. I want to crawl in and be gone for a few hours. I don’t think I will though. I am more likely to get into a bath and spend some reading time.

Janet is in the kitchen fixing her oatmeal, courtesy of Trump-supporting-actually-practicing-Christianity neighbors (TSAPCN). I made some Jim Lahey No Knead Bread, but, in my typical scofflaw-of rules way, did not follow the timing directions. After consultation with my brother, David, a known bread baker, and Le Chef d’Ess, I just let it rise for 24 hours. It came out great, although difficult to remove from pans as I neglected to put any cornmeal on the bottom (assuming I had any that was not full of bug protein). I took two small loaves over the to TSAPCN with some roasted garlic and herb butter. I ate mine with the Trader Joe's chicken mousse pâté I have been indulging in. Mighty fine. Janet had hers with oven-roasted cod stew.

Yes, I have been cooking. While trying to clean the freezer and use some things, I found a soup stock from 2015. Where there’s some more room right there! The frozen bananas were defrosted and became part of spiced dark brown sugar banana bread with cashews and dried mandarin oranges. I think spaghetti sauce is on the agenda for today as well as some ground turkey taco filling.

Hit me up for the recipe if you want it.

But I just want to sleep.

Janet and I are getting on pretty well considering. (Oh no! The Enemy of the Laptop is here, claiming her right to purr on me. This is adds to the considerable weight to the napping argument.) I think she (that would be Janet as clearly Vera Paris would be conked out somewhere if work were being done) enjoyed my bustling in the kitchen last night. So inspired was she that she voluntarily cleaned the kitchen. That rarely happens. I do hope it warms up enough for her to walk today.

It has been Simpson's clouds for about two weeks when it isn't raining.

Long bath later.

I am losing the productivity games today. I am actually enjoying the stillness. I have been hearing the traffic noise from the 605 since I was ten, but it is all but quiet. Through my bedroom window, the orange bougainvillea is swaying along, the tangelo tree is all about growing, with fresh, thorny branches shooting up at the sun and sky. The catercorner neighbor is working on his deck roof. I wonder if he can see me.

The bath was deliciously quiet. The book group is reading Norwegian Wood this time around. We are going to try a Zoom meeting which is nothing new for me. Although I don't think I would particularly recommend this book, I can understand why many are taken with Murakami. His writing is lovely. 

If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do it sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.

—Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

That surely feels where we are at the moment ... and maybe for many moments to come. I feel relatively isolated so I am not immediately worried about myself. But my homelandheartland is Brooklyn and my dear peeps are right on the front lines. One of them is a doctor who posts intelligent things on FB. She thinks she has had the virus and her partner is isolated to see if she comes down with anything. Another friendsister's husband has it and her live-in daughter had been exposed elsewhere as well. Still another friend works at a homeless shelter. Yeah, the darkness around us is deep.

"What marks his plays is the way things get so messed up the characters are trapped. Do you see what I mean? A bunch of different people appear, and they've all got their own situations and reasons and excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own brand of justice or happiness. As a result, nobody can do anything. Obviously, I mean, it's basically impossible for everybody's justice to prevail or everybody's happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over."

—Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

And a hell-to-the-yes on that.

This is a rambling post, take it as you will.

Spotted on yesterday's ramble.

It's easy enough to feel isolated and therefore safe and not to extrapolate or feel too far into the distance. But I made the faux pas of suggesting the Kermit Place Readers try Atul Gawande's Being Mortal on the immediate read list. I admit to being a bit embarrassed now. I thought it would be a good starting point for some deep and perhaps soul-satisfying conversation, but when the disease is in your house, at your work, down the apartment house steps, it is a whole other matter. I think the measured but negative response pulled me out of La-La Land denial. More focus.

This is taking me hours to write. I drift off. Eat popsicles. Muse. Work on the sorting of the feelings. 

I did go to practice this morning. There were four of us plus the instructor. We were able to practice social distancing. It might seem as if I should quit teacher training but this is the time I need to do this. This was a furlough week for the training and we start up again on Saturday. I need the grounding I am getting from training.

Plus, I am already not practicing enough. At home, there are those bulbs begging to be planted, and always always always housework, reading, crafts, and Mom. (The sun did finally come out but it is windy. For those of you keeping score.) With social distancing and the instructor teaching an instagram class, practice is different. I was in the front of the room and the other three were behind me in the studio, so I could only see the instructor. (My arthritic shoulders are giving me a hard time so vinyasa and garudasana are extra hard for me.) So, without seeing them, I was comparing myself to the other yogis and beating myself up because that's what one does when one's head is up one's ass for a time. And then I turned and saw that indeed I compared favorably to them and more importantly to what I can do now.

My point being about being in some bullshit isolation in your home, you head, your ass, as the case may be. And my suggesting an inappropriate book was another exampled of self-reference and isolation (although my intentions were good). 


Getting a workable perspective on any part of this is a challenge. It is too easy to put oneself into a frenzy (if you are me) and spend time hating the OrangeToupeedPutridMeatSack that currently sits on the throne. That's not a productive focus (although there is the release of saying as many cuss words in as many ways as you can think of).

I lifted this from Peter Coyote's FB page.  It's on the bliss ninny spectrum so if you can't stomach platitudes and get nothing from a dharma talk STOP HERE. See you next time.

The picture at the bottom of this text is the costume I leap out of the phone-booth wearing, like superman arriving to save the world, but mine are just the robes of a Buddhist teacher. Watching the news and feeling the agitation of so many has prompted me to try to respond to peoples' anxiety and fear in some way, and so I'm posting this short dharma talk about fear in the hope people will find it helpful. 

A deep bow.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

Martin Heidegger

The current virus will disappear eventually but another fear will arise in its place. While we applaud the selfless efforts of doctors, nurses, first responders and countless beings who continue to serve the public in this dire time, we might take a few moments to consider fear itself. It rarely rests. It arises when we face poverty, consider nuclear weapons or mass shootings, sometimes when we just walk in the dark. We fear for our children and quite rightly fear for our entire planet. Most constantly, though usually on a back burner somewhere, we fear death. 

I’d like to offer a few thoughts about fear and particularly the fear of dying which have helped me when I have been afraid in the hopes that they might help others who may be suffering now. 

When we think about dying we are, without realizing it, imagining ourselves as an isolated entity unattached to the rest of the universe, fragile as dandelion fluff. We are fearing the loss of an “idea” that doesn’t actually exist in the way we habitually think of ourselves.

It’s useful to remember that we have never, for an instant, been separate from oxygen, from sunlight, from water, from the microbes in the soil that grow our food, from the pollinating insects, from the birds that control pests. Even Genesis reminds us that we are made of the Earth.

From the perspective of being inseparable from “the rest of it” the idea of a separate, isolated existence dims and sometimes disappears temporarily. Which is not to say that it’s false. We all have self-awareness— a sense of self— but the central delusion of mankind is to believe that that’s all we are, while ignoring visible evidence which supports a deeper view of what our life really is.

Those of you who meditate should understand that you practice dying on every exhale. If your body inhales the next moment, blessings— you are still alive, rejoice for that. However, at some point, each and every sentient being will have a final exhale. That’s what life comes down to. One way to understand meditating is that, while meditating, we allow the small idea of who we are to dissolve into formlessness—the Big Mind of the Universe. Breathing in and out, whether we live or die, has, for the most part, always been out of our hands. The belief that we can grasp and control it is the same sort of delusion as believing that we only exist separately. The waves are never separate from the Ocean. When it arises into form, we call it a ‘wave.’ When it sinks back to the source we say ‘Ocean.’ It is the same for everything that has form. 

Considering this deeply has always helped me when I’ve been afraid. I hope you find this helpful.

Hosho Peter Coyote,

Zen priest

'Nuff said.