philosophy

Happy Holidays

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This isn’t the road I was on when it happened. This is the road I rode by bike after I got home to calm my nerves.IMG_1703
Christmas had started fine. More than fine was prepping my older teenage kids that we were taking consumerism to an all time low this year. I decided this not because I had to but because I was sick of meaningless stuff feeling a space.

We opened presents late and calmly. Everyone liked what they got.
Slowly I baked a cake and got together personal items to go down South a bit where we yearly spend Christmas with a 27 person odd group of alternative type friends, all ages.

It’s satisfying mostly because conversation is interesting, we are in the country surrounding by large trees and the food is deliciously plentiful.

Unfortunately I burn my right hand. I take the teapot off the wood burning stove and go to the sink to fill it. The teapot is hot hot from being on the stove empty so when I put the water in, it streams furiously and burns by hand. Though not dangerous, it is painful. Years ago when blowing neon, I learned to put a hand in cold water if burned. Despite everyone’s well intentioned advice for different methods, I keep changing the water to cold (no ice) until finally when I take my hand out, it no longer hurts. For me this cessation stops at 3 am., long after we’d finished with desert and caroling.

Tired, after breakfasting with more interesting slow conversation, Me and the teenagers set out on the long country driveway to the road to the highway home.

It happened on the highway. 880 north is as ugly as any with six lanes each direction. I didn’t see him in the lane next to me. He was in my blind spot and I wasn’t paying serious attention. All of a sudden I brushed up (at 60 mph) against the car on my right while starting to go in that lane.

There was nothing jarring or dramatic about it. However, it was still an accident, It took me a little while to figure out where to get off and talk as I knew we must. I was in front of him and pulled off on a large shoulder off the next exit. I stop. He stops behind me.

I get out and say, “How are you?” Looking at his truck which has ladders on top and miraculously, no damage.
He says, “Fine. How are you?” I say “Fine.. well a little a little scraped up but I’m not going to do anything about it…. It was my fault, right?”
He says, “Right.”
I say, “How about we give each other a hug, and wish each other a Happy New Year”
He says, “Okay” so we do that.
Then I hold his hand for a moment and say, “Thank you for being a person.”
It was kind of a stupid thing to say but that’s what came out. I think he knew what I meant.

I walk back to my car and get in. I wave as I drive away.

I continue until there is an intersection where I can turn around and get us back to 880. There is a beggar with a sign at the intersection as the cars stop. I give him a five. I can afford to.

Museum exhibit

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Walking through the exhibit at the museum, I have what I often have. An uneasy feeling.

I notice that the child gurgling is attracting more attention than the paintings, just for a second. Then the patrons go back to viewing the paintings. After the brief bleep of real life passes, art appreciation or faux appreciation, of art or faux art, resumes.

Two other children are with their parents in the exhibition. The goal of these kids is to move as quickly as possible. They are playing a game. Upon entering the new room, they look for the “EXIT” sign. As soon as parents allow, they follow it.

An older woman in a seventies medium brown pant suit severely limps. She steps with one leg and then drags the other one after her. She moves awkwardly along trying to catch up with her husband which she eventually does when he stops in front of a painting.

I am drawn to the work that is the early work. This work shows some artistic ability. The later work, before which people dutifully stand, seems to me not to deserve the stop of attention. It all seems like a case of the emperor’s new clothes.

I find myself at the end of the exhibit and I go backwards to the beginning. I see the exhibit a second time, to be sure of my judgement. I am giving the artist a second chance and I want to remember the few works that I do like. Having done that, I find I can not exit through the gift shop, therefore I go through the exhibit a third time. I stop a third time at the charcoal drawing of a seated woman in a striped dress which is my favorite work.

Upon this last viewing I realize this drawing reminds me of expensive clothing store ads from my childhood. Those days artists drew the objects for sale. They were good drawings.
The artists were not trying to prove anything. They were just making a living. They weren’t even called artists.

In the museum signage, the famous painter’s statement claims not to stop at the beautiful but to go deeper. To me deeper wasn’t deeper, it was just messier. No one else seems to feel this way. They stand reverently at what is presented to them by the esteemed institution.

In the museum rest room, while washing my hands, I peripherally watch a woman in front of the mirror. She keeps looking in the mirror like she is trying to fix something that can’t be fixed. She is looking at time in the mirror but can not see it. This is what she is doing.

Leaving San Francisco going over to Oakland in heavy traffic, I anticipate the change that happens after Treasure Island. The white wideness of the new half of the Bay Bridge is wonderful and uplifting to drive on. People on the side are walking and riding their bikes. It is a good feeling to like the new version more than the old. To be driving on a man made object that makes sense.

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Diversity

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I am in a cafe when this young fellow walks in with a jaunty step. He’s a lively guy and catches my eye.  My mind is in it’s habit of constantly sizing things up to put them in a place where it interprets in the hopes of understanding. Like any mind. Image

I am not sure whether this guy is hispanic, southeast asian, maybe middle eastern, turkish, philipino, south american or what.  I am lucky this way in that there are lots of people like this in the San Francisco bay area. My daughter can pass for a lot of ethniciities but in fact she’s just a white girl.

This young man has on a terrific shirt. It says, “Everything is Beautiful but Beautiful isn’t Everything”

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I get my coffee and as I am leaving I compliment the kid on his shirt. He responds to this and now I can guess his ancestry from his accent but it doesn’t matter.  Just like everything is beautiful, so is everywhere. Inside and Out.

Dharma talk

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I tried to draw her as she was giving the talk on the importance of community. Referring to that story where Buddha himself says spiritual friends are the whole of your practice, not the half.

I am in a bad mood and say “pshaw!” Or something like that. I’m thinking in my wordless mind something from a gentler decade when exclamations like” Bullshit” we’re yet to be dreamed of.

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I couldn’t quite get her face down but the statue looming over her was easy to get. Her head was drifting beneath the grand stone giant like a delicate moon made of barely illuminated paper.

There she was in her calm authority. Both of them, real and stone, representing this group consciousness which by definition allows no one to raise higher than the group.

I in my ppshaw say, who was with Buddha under the tree? Who was with Jesus in the desert? I’ll tell you who, no one.

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Crutches

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After my son and I biked 600 miles in 12 days, he jumped off a wall he’s often jumped off and sprained his ankle.

That was a week ago because it takes a 16 year old a week to figure out it’s sprained by the fact that it isn’t getting better.

So we know. He needs crutches. Kaiser doesn’t sell crutches but at the doctor’s visit they’ll give them to you. So, a doctor visit is too much as usual, (due to high deductible) therefore we “google” “crutches”.

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I do this first and get offers of surprisingly pricey crutches. They are inexplicably expensive even in supposedly cheap places like Walgreen’s. When Noah googles “crutch”, he gets an entirely different response. He gets all this “church” stuff, referring to belief in god as a crutch.

I probably had the word “buy” in my search. Noah says he had nothing but “Crutch”. Maybe. Noah’s relationship since the get go with reading has been to guess the word first and recheck it later if necessary. It’s gotten him this far. He considers spelling yet another storefront the computer is making obsolete. So maybe his crutch is the computer.

I’ll take “god” over the computer. We ended up borrowing crutches from a friend.

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Two sides of the Coin

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Normally, I’m all for meditation. All over it in fact, every morning.

There are “mindfulness” programs in schools, especially inner city ones where all the kids are on the free lunch program and 70% of the kids when asked will answer yes to the question, ” Do you know anyone whose been shot and killed?”
Ditto, for this program in jails. This program is very helpful and successfull. Simply put, it brings in the pause ( the old “count to ten”) before you hit someone on the playground. It’s very helpful. In schools like the ones I teach at, this program is maybe less necessary.

After school art class had been over for a while and I was cleaning up. David was hanging out while I did this. I thought he was waiting for his parent to pick him up. He is lithe and lively and bounced around in his tiny six year old body talking to me as I gathered my tools and such.
Almost done, I checked my list and saw that David was supposed to go to the schools’ after care program so I mention perhaps he should get on down there.

His bouncy body slumps into a giant C as he plunks down in a chair.
“Oh no.”
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like after care? Why not?”
“UGH! They make us Meditate.”
(Feigning indignation I say) “What!? Meditate!? You mean you don’t get to run around with a ball or something? What do they make you do, listen to a bell?” (Knowing they do this)
“Meditation is, well, (groan) it’s hard to explain.”

Highway one

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I bicycled alone, self supporting from Seattle, WA to Oakland, CA this summer so I biked a lot of Highway One. One of the many things that happens when you are doing this is, you start to meet other people traveling Hwy 1 on their own power and you naturally take an interest in each other.
This past weekend driving it to Big Sur, CA. I saw three touring bicyclists. I waved.
Then I saw a young couple with backpacks. I wondered if they were walking between towns which would have been strange enough or if they were hiking Hwy 1 as I’d met a few people doing that. I noticed the guy was walking in his socks and immediately decided they were doing the highway itself. People who walk the coastline highway are even crazier than those who bike it.

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The Moat

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Without the moat, hundreds can die unnecessarily. That little bit of water tells those smart ants that the honey is inaccessible. If I forget the moat or leave the honey out unprotected on a cold rainy night, I wake up to a kitchen full of enormously industrious ants going to and from. They communicating about it all., as well. I think it’s amazing how when two of them meet from opposite directions, they stop to check in with each other. What do they say?
Weeks before my teacher died he said if he and an ant were the only two beings left living on earth, how glad they would be to see each other and how he would try his hardest to make friends with the ant. How can you make friends with an ant?! Well, by not killing him for starters.
After thinking about befriending an ant, I can no longer massacre them so when my carelessness leaves me with a kitchen counter full of busy ants, I remove the honey. It is mind blogging how fast those very smart ants clear out.