If control is the goal this is not love. If I listen to others yet don’t share myself, this is not love. If you hoard information about others, this is not love. If I reject people I can’t control, this is not love.
If you have to be the smartest, this is not love. If I have to know the most, this is not love. If you keep everything secret, this is not love. If I share nothing with others, this is not love.
Is it fear that keeps me from loving? Is it anger that keeps you from loving? Is it hate that keeps me from loving? What keeps us from loving?
Merle is in his tiny cabin. The cabin far away in the woods. He is holding his guitar. When he realizes where he is, he puts down the guitar, carefully.
He hears crashing outside right away.
He looks. Bear. It rises onto it’s back feet. It is a sow, with cubs! Three!
No, thinks Merle, two cubs. And: “Kurt!” he yells, “Run!”
Kurt just looks at him and turns back to the cubs. The sow is looming outside. This is wrong, why isn’t she attacking Kurt? Kurt is pushing and wrestling the cubs, who are large.
The sow knocks on the cabin wall. “Merle?” says the sow.
Merle doesn’t say a word. This is all wrong.
“Merle?” says the sow bear. She is talking in bear noises but it’s also words in his head. “Well,” says the sow, “you said you could read my mind.”
Merle does not answer. He shakes his head. “Kurt.” he whispers.
The sow bangs on the wall again with a great paw. “You said you’d always be my friend. I miss hiking with you. The rest of it, forget it. Phone, texting, the other stuff. Let’s just hike.”
Merle remains still.
The sow drops to all fours and then sits, her front paws on her back paws. The forest is greening at the tips of the conifers. The grass is electric green from the rain. Kurt and the cubs roll around. Kurt looks ok, really.
“I gave it 50/50 from the start,” says the sow. It’s a meditative growl, if that can be imagined. “I thought you could choose. It was a lie that you could read my mind. You read what you wanted to read. I let you. I thought you’d either keep your promise or break it. I thought you could choose, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe that’s the thing about trying to control other people: if you realize that they are not controlled, you never speak to them again.” The bear rocks forward and back a little. She does not look cute. She looks lethal and smells like bear.
Her mouth opens wide and tongue lolls. “After all, I think people can change and you think they can’t. If you change, then I am right.” She coughs. Merle realizes that it’s laughter.
One of the cubs barrels into her, rolling. She swats it away. Kurt is right behind the cub, but she catches him. She sets him aside, standing up.
“Up to you,” says the bear. She turns towards the woods to the north. Kurt gives a wave and he and the cubs scramble after her.
Merle struggles out of the dream like a diver coming up from the deepest possible dive. “Kurt,” he says, “you said you’d come back and tell me the truth.” He shudders and gets up.
I have been dreaming regularly since mid-January, nightmares. The cause is my sleep apnea machine. I got it in December, but two days before I flew east to my son’s for Christmas. I did not take it with me. I delayed getting back for nine days to visit an ill friend in Michigan and help out. On January 11, I took the class on how to use the machine.
My initial “mask” was the “nasal pillow” one. I go to sleep by slowing my breathing and using the Zen Buddhist and Jon Kabat Zinn’s body scan to relax. However, if I slow my breathing, the CPAP will start to blow pressure when my breath out drops below a certain volume. Then I was breathing against pressure and it woke me up. Also I would sometimes open my mouth, which lets the air out and the machine instantly increases pressure and is much noisier.
I got another mask within ten days. This is a face mask. It did not have one strap around the head, but four. The hose is attached to the top of the head. The main pressure point is where the four straps meet right at the back of the skull.
The dreams started. Nightmares every single night. About being trapped and trying to escape. An octopus grabbing me by the skull. One dream about trying to rescue a man from a building that was under attack or going to blow up and he kept saying, “But I’m not READY. I have to PACK.” I’m arguing, “You can get more stuff! We have to go! We’ll get killed if we stay! Come on, I am here to rescue you.” He keeps looking for his stuff because he can’t believe that a 5 foot 4 female could actually be a heroine and there to rescue me. Dumb male. I wake up and laugh. Even men in my dreams have little respect for me. That is a pretty sad illustration of my lifetime experience with the other gender.
Anyhow, to have the insurance pay for the stupid sleep apnea machine, I needed 21 out of 30 days with more than 4 hours on the machine. And I have to do this within 3 months of getting the machine. I got it in December, remember? So I was motivated and hella grumpy with it. At least twice a night I would wake up from a nightmare and rip the darn thing off my head. The cats do not like it when it hisses.
I took to using it during naps too. Since I was NOT sleeping well on it, I was sleeping longer. Nine or ten hours a night, at least three or four OFF the machine. Pretty pathetic.
Last week I had my visit where I am blessed and the insurance will now pay for the machine. I begged a little to talk to the mask guy. They said no at first and then yes. He gave me another octopus headdress. This one also goes around the back of the skull, but the hose is hanging from the front. That means the weight is more in front.
It still took three or four days before I got to four hours on the new one. It works better and I am not dreaming about escape rooms twice a night. Phew!
The interview to have the machine paid for was pretty amusing. The insurance wants me to say I am sleeping better to qualify for the machine. I answered that I was sleeping longer. There are a bunch of questions. Mostly I could be positive except for the “are you waking up less?” “No, more.” “More? Why?” “Because the octopus has me by the head or I am dreaming I am trapped.” I had the nurse laughing at my answers, but I still qualified.
Anyhow, if I can invent a different mask that doesn’t feel like an octopus, I could probably be a gadzillionaire. I think I will look at some bondage stores, seems like they have various masks that could be adapted. Then they could do double duty and I will be a double gadzillionaire!
It snowed last night. Covid is making me fall asleep at 4 or 5 pm which means I am very awake at midnight. The cats and I checked out the snow at 1 am.
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Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva is the Bodhisattva of Compassion. He is enlightened, yet chooses to return to earth over and over, until everyone is enlightened.
In China, he changes gender and names into Kwan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
In college I date a lapsed Jewish Zen Buddhist and I learn to meditate. At the group meetings there are 6 or 7 of us. The Heart Sutra is recited and we meditate facing the wall, sitting on our zafus, for 40 minutes. It is easier to meditate in a group, though I have no idea why. Pride? Some connection to other’s breathing? The breathing will serve me very very well later, when I keep getting pneumonia. The ability to slow my breathing will help me survive.
When we had a group meditation, the Heart Sutra was read slowly and clearly. It has it’s own rhythm. I had lost it and finally found the translation we used. Here it is:
There is more than one translation, here: https://dharmanet.org/HeartSutra.html. I have tapes and books by Jon Kabat Zinn, who has studied mindful meditation for 30 years. He gets better results in his mindful meditation pain classes than opioids, with an average decrease in pain of 50%. His tapes have the same slow gentle speech as our Heart Sutra readers. It is hypnotic and I can relax. Though my oppositional defiance kicks in when he says firmly that I am to fall more awake, not asleep. I listened to that CD every night for a year after my father died. When he would tell me to fall awake, I would smile and slide into sleep, a happy rebel. I was comforted that I did not have to do what he said.
Where is the Avalokitesvara, the Kwan Yin of the West? What examples in the largest religions are there? Someone who stays even after they have achieved enlightenment/heaven because they want everyone there. Not only that, but they believe everyone can be there. And they will not give up until everyone is there.
I was surprised when a Unitarian Minister stated that Unitarians do not believe in Hell, because a loving creator would not consign anyone to Hell. I didn’t really want to give Hell up, but I also agree that a loving creator would not consign anyone to hell. It’s a bit easier for me to think of people as continuing on a wheel of life until they achieve enlightenment than to think of some people going to Heaven, but after all, I don’t know the whole story. No one knows another person’s whole story. I wrote DMV to figure out the Hell/Heaven thing. And the lead character wants to go back, because her work is not done yet.
I am thankful for paxlovid at the moment. I am thankful that I found this translation of the Heart Sutra.
Happy Solstice.
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The first photograph is Elwha looking very meditative after going out in the snow. Here they both are in the snow:
That moment after the tree is taken down not from greed but because the trunk has split dangerous operation; all survive Even the tree. A split 20 foot trunk may survive. We won’t know until spring. You are hunting in the sections that are down. “Yes!” you say and hold them up. “Invaders. They’re not native. I shoot them when they steal the birdseed. They crawl into the trunk to die.” You hold a shriveled carcass up with each leather glove. They too look like leather or shrunken heads. Your smile lit up at this evidence of your successful aim: killing squirrels.
I think this is my first ekphrastic poem. Inspiring photograph, right? So that makes me laugh, it’s so gruesome. I was looking for a photograph for the Flower of the Day and came across this. Taken in January 2022.
Elwha is too relaxed to get a tattoo. He mostly seems to think about food, belly rubs, and how much he would like to catch a bird or mouse. Otherwise he is the epitome of mellow. He has enough decoration already, doesn’t he?
I try a little more but I am tired. I am tired of drama, trauma drama. I dream and dream and dream. I dream that my ex touches a live bat. The bat changes in my dream, from a tiny brown nose bat to a huge fox bat with fur and stripes. It is unconscious.
“Don’t touch it! You touched it! Now we have to take it to the Health Department!” I am eyeing the bat and thinking of throwing something over it. A container. It’s huge.
My ex laughs. “No we don’t.”
“Yes we do! Rabies! It could have rabies! If we don’t take it in, you’ll need rabies shots!” Poor bat, I think, it will be killed to test for rabies.
My ex keeps laughing. “I’m not going to be tested, I won’t have shots, and the bat is fine!”
“WHAT!” I say, “No, you could die!”
I wake up. What was that dream about? Oh. It’s about you, refusing to test for Covid after being exposed. You said you would hike with me. “Not if you won’t test,” I say, “I can’t afford to get Covid again, I can’t be around you for 15 days if you won’t test.”
And you go silent.
And I try a little more and I let go. You will have to break the silence if you plan to keep your promises. Will you or won’t you? I am supposed to trust you. But people say trust me, and then sometimes they are drunk, and lying, and you can’t trust them. “I will never hurt you,” is a lie. Try this instead: “I will try not to hurt you and I will listen if you feel hurt.” And change, maybe?
I wrote about the two dreams I had one night, with seven people. Two babies, a boy and a girl. Two professionals, a woman physician and a male policeman. Two rebels, a woman and a man, the man lying or at least misleading the rebel woman. The rebel woman trying to do something that she suddenly realizes is not important and is, in fact, foolish and dangerous. And a quiet woman.
I have been thinking about the quiet woman ever since. My Meyers-Briggs type in medical school came out INTJ, but we are not one thing or another. We have preferences, but we all have to use all the skills. I can be extroverted. I had to work on feeling, that was the really difficult one for me after a frightening childhood. I can pay attention to facts though I sweep them into the intuition very quickly. Medical school is facts and facts and facts, except then there are parts that turn out to change as science changes.
The eighth person is a quiet man. He is not present in the dream. I am thinking about him. I wonder if I will have another dream when I am ready.
I am attending some workshops on line for treating trauma. It is quite fascinating. They talk about working with clients who have aspects like my dream: a small child with trauma. A “fake adult”, aka “adaptive child”, with the tools that the child develops to survive in their childhood. Helping the “fake adult” recognize that some of coping tools may not be helpful or necessary any longer. First, they thank the “fake adult”, for protecting the traumatized child and for surviving at all and for not giving up. I think this is so important, to acknowledge that we have to thank that part of ourselves that did what it had to, that did what it could, to survive. And this can include things that we are ashamed of or fear that others would hate us for if found out. We had a temporary doctor at the hospital who described being a boat person escaping Vietnam at age 8. They were picked up by pirates. “We were glad to see the pirates, because we had run out of water. If the pirates had not picked us up, we would have died.” So there is perspective: death by dehydration or pirates? And she went from a refugee camp and then through medical school and became a physician. Survival and success and I hope that she is thriving.
I like it when a dream has such recognizable symbols. My now retired Unitarian Universalist minister says that we can sit with dreams for a time. What do the symbols mean to me? What is the dream telling me? My dream is in part telling me that I do not need to have the rebel woman lead: she can rest and let the quiet woman take over. And that I am very tired of rebel men who mislead me or run away. I woke up and thought, oh, yes, I see! I am tired of that and ready for change.
Change and transformation can happen throughout our lives, at any age. I welcome it.
Blessings and peace you.
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The photograph is Sol Duc and Elwha enjoying doll bunkbeds. And acting like siblings do sometimes. And then they curl up together.
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - Flüchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflüchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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