Changing Places

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”
– Edith Lovejoy Pierce (via Whiskey River)

“Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.”
– Thomas Mann

“New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.”
— James Agate

The new year comes to us like an uncarved block — we do not know as yet what we will create from it. There are limitless possibilities — I hope you will embrace your new year with compassion and substance…

Know the masculine,
but keep to the feminine:
and become a watershed to the world.
If you embrace the world,
the Tao will never leave you
and you become as a little child.

Know the white,
yet keep to the black:
be a model for the world.
If you are a model for the world,
the Tao inside you will strengthen
and you will return whole to your eternal beginning.

Know the honorable,
but do not shun the disgraced:
embracing the world as it is.
If you embrace the world with compassion,
then your virtue will return you to the uncarved block.

The block of wood is carved into utensils
by carving void into the wood.
The Master uses the utensils, yet prefers to keep to the block
because of its limitless possibilities.
Great works do not involve discarding substance.

– Tao Te Ching, 28

Leah at Creative Every Day has given us a great theme for the first month of the Creative Every Day 2009 Challenge — Play!!

Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable. Without it, life just doesn’t taste good.
-Lucia Capocchione

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.”
– Arnold Toynbee

“If I get to pick what I want to do, then it’s play…if someone else tells me that I have to do it, then it’s work.” — Patricia Nourot

I originally wrote this in 2005, as I was starting to become involved in politics. Many of us saw the economic crisis coming, and have been working for some time now to create the changes that began this year with Obama’s election. We all know we have a lot of work left to do, that next year will be a busy one of restructuring so much of what has gone wrong in the last eight years. In looking back through my posts, wondering how we will accomplish all that we need to now, I found this post, which reminded me that we do have the resources we need to create change within us already.

Use a mirror in difficult times:
You will see both cause and resolution.

When faced with adversity, you must ask whether you have done anything to bring misfortune upon yourself. If the present difficulties are the unforeseen outcome of events that you yourself set in motion, then it is necessary both to learn from your mistakes and to search for any possible way to correct them. If the difficulties are due to character flaws, then the situation should be resolved, and the basic fault must afterwards be eradicated.

The wonderful part of all this is that the resources for resolving our problems are also within us. When we watch athletes in competition and they outperform even their own high standards, we often say that they reached down deep and were able to give something extraordinary. When we are in the midst of our own confrontations, we must be the same way. We need to reach deep within and use the utmost of our abilities to overcome our obstacles. This is one manifestation of our continuing efforts at self-development.

When confronted with problems, we have all the more power to respond. When we triumph, we have even more confidence and facility to handle future problems. Therefore, meet life head on. Maintain your self-cultivation, move forth to confront difficulties, and accumulate the momentum that success with give you.

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

My biggest problem today is that I’m extremely tired. What I did to bring this misfortune on myself was stay up late last night playing with my new Powerbook… but it was fun!

Ah, so much new stuff to learn - makes me happy! So far, I am able to play music I’ve downloaded and imported… well, I’ll learn to do more stuff, really…

I love the way it is ready to go out of the box, the wireless worked flawlessly, nothing has crashed, yeah!

I think we are all faced with adversity right now, or will be soon. A lot of it is of our own doing, not working hard enough to make other people see what seems so obvious to us about what has been going wrong in this country. But a lot of us have been speaking out, have been doing our bit, and we wonder if our efforts will ever pay off.

Well, looking back to my own personal history, I spent many, many years being selfish and not recognizing what other people needed in their lives. I spent a lot of time beating myself up for my mistakes, and mostly for not being able to rescue people from what I saw as their mistakes. My own meltdown and recovery pretty much taught me that you can’t rescue others, you can only work on yourself. And perhaps to some, I still seem selfish for doing that. But the difference is, I’m no longer trying to run anyone else’s life, just my own. If people want to hang out with me while I do that, great, and if not, that’s ok too. I don’t insist anymore that I “need” other people in my life. I am self-sustaining. Not that I totally support myself, but that I accept total responsibility for myself and what happens in my life. And expect others to do the same. I’m no longer dependent, codependent, or independent. I’ve become inter-dependent.

I’ve tapped into my own resources, in other words. And, to solve problems you’ve brought on yourself, that is what you need to do. It is a lesson this country is going to have to learn, soon enough. We’ll start to figure out that the Saudis can’t always provide us energy, the Chinese won’t always want to float us loans, and the rest of the world is getting tired of producing stuff for us to consume. We can’t be the kids consuming all the resources much longer. It’s time for the U.S. to grow up.

We more than pulled our own weight in the past, that’s for sure. But this generation, my generation, is a bunch of spoiled brats. The rich ones keep demanding more and more, the poor ones are resentful that their dumb luck has kept them down. The adult ones, the lucky few of us who have managed to grow up in the midst of an environment that either spoils or deprives, depending on wealth or the lack of it, are now looking for some way to restore sanity to this country.

And the answer is to use our own resources. We have plenty of them at our disposal, we’ve created many of them. The Internet is the best tool we’ve ever created, the prime accomplishment of my generation, in my opinion. We’ve made this tool to bring people together, and that is what we need to do right now. And if all bring the best of our own resources to the table, we can sort this out, undo the destructive threads that run through this country and start to reweave a new fabric for our culture, one that is more progressive, tolerant, and looks to the future instead of clinging to the old, wasteful, selfish ways of the past.

I know this is possible. I’ve done it in my own life. It’s up to us, the engineers, the techies, the people who read blogs, to work with the smart kids we’ve raised and create the new solutions we need. Many of my blog links are to the people trying to build these solutions. ALL of my blog links are to people with great ideas, great writing, and wonderful, positive messages. Well, a few are snarky just to keep me entertained. But none of them are the mean-spirited, destructive negativity of the right-wing. And they used to accuse the liberals of being negative. Hell, they’re in power, and they’re STILL yelling about everything.

It takes more than words, of course. That’s why I’ve started my MoveOn group and am getting more involved politically. I certainly don’t have much experience at this, but I’m learning. And I see other friends doing the same. So we learn, and grow, and learn more, and do more. And that is what it takes. Use the mirror, see how strong you are instead of what was wrong, and go forward.

Via Squid:

Hine Mizushima, a Vancouver based illustrator/animator who makes great squid art and amazing They Might Be Giants videos, recently posted a wonderful “Beware of Giant Squid” holiday card that she made two years ago. The next time you walk by a public Christmas Tree you might think of the happy giant squid that lurks below the surface.

And here’s “A Metaphor of Love” by Dan Santat

Jonathan Coulton » I Crush Everything

I lie below, you float above
In the pretty white ships that I’ve been dreaming of
And I’d like to swim beside you
Getting dizzy in your wake
Getting close enough to touch you
Getting brave enough to take you into my arms
And bring you down to be with me

But I can’t do that thing anymore
I can’t be the thing I was before
Maybe I am better off alone
Because I crush everything
And I crush everything
And I crush everything

Those who seek mentoring, will rule the great expanse under heaven.
Those who boast that they are greater than others, will fall short.
Those who are willing to learn from others, become greater.
Those who are ego-involved, will be humbled and made small, –Shu Ching

The passing of the throne by the sovereign to a virtuous and competent successor was known in early democratic Chinese history as “Shan Jang”. Literally it means, “the enlightened stepping aside to create room in the center for the next deserving person to step in and take charge”.

– Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch, Tao Mentoring

I need to do some stepping aside and am finding it a bit difficult today. It’s not easy to pass along a tradition that has been yours to someone else, but I’m finding it necessary.

On the plus side, I won’t have to clean up after the New Year’s Eve party…

Hope Santa was good to you!

My Santa was!

Happy Holidays to all from Darwin and Donna!

Frederic Larson, Silent Night, Mystical San Francisco

Feeling a bit of my darkness today, as Christmas Eve brings up the memories of those lost to me and mixes with the happiness of having those in my life who are with me now. I never quite know how to feel about this… but I know it is not a unique feeling this time of year. Auld lang syne, and all that.

Via Whiskey River today:

“When we imagine that our experience is unique, we may imagine ourselves particularly talented or particularly hopeless at whatever it is we’re doing. But since all of us are struggling with the same problems inherent in being human, it turns out that all those things we thought were so unique about ourselves are precisely what we have most in common.”
- Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness

There Is A Brokenness
by Rashani

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
A shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
Beyond all grief which leads to joy
And a fragility
Out of which depth emerges strength.
There is a hollow space
Too vast for words
Through which we pass with each loss,
Out of whose darkness we are sanctified into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
Whose serrated edges cut the heart
As we break open
To the place inside which is unbreakable
And whole.

To all those suffering with losses this Christmas, my heart goes out to you. Those loved ones will never again join you to celebrate the holidays, but they will always be with you in your heart. Remember them with a moment of silence and then move your heart into joy, for having known them. We cannot celebrate birth and the new life brought into the world without recognizing death and knowing our light will eventually fade, and we will return to the Silence that is our real nature.

May all beings know peace.

Winter Solstice, Brigitte Lopez

“In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer” — Albert Camus

“Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the
landscape - the loneliness of it - the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it - the whole story doesn’t show.
- Andrew Wyeth

Of winter’s lifeless world each tree
Now seems a perfect part;
Yet each one holds summer’s secret
Deep down within its heart.
– Charles G. Stater

“One kind word can warm three winter months.”
– Japanese Proverb

“In the summer I have this friend who I am closest to, and sometimes, in the winter, I long to call her up and say, come here and live with me, in this cold place. But we are summer friends. There is a rule it seems, that summer friends don’t get together in the wintertime. Now, sitting here, waiting for her, I realize that I have never seen her in a winter coat, and for some reason that makes me sadder than anything else in the world.” — Jacqueline Woodson

Now the seasons are closing their files
on each of us, the heavy drawers
full of certificates rolling back
into the tree trunks, a few old papers
flocking away. Someone we loved
has fallen from our thoughts,
making a little, glittering splash
like a bicycle pushed by a breeze.
Otherwise, not much has happened;
we fell in love again, finding
that one red feather on the wind.

– Ted Kooser, “Year’s End”

“I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

‘We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,’
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.”

- Oliver Herford, I Heard a Bird Sing

From Sunset to Star Rise

by Christina Georgina Rossetti
(1830-1894)

Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer’s unreturning track.

“Nothing in the world can change from one reality into another unless it first turns into nothing, that is, into the reality of the between-stage. And then it is made into a new creature, from the egg to the chick. The moment when the egg is no more and the chick is not yet, is nothingness. And philosophy terms this “the primal state which no one can grasp” because it is a force that precedes creation; it is called chaos. It is the same with the sprouting seed. It does not begin to sprout until the seed disintegrates into the earth and the quality of seed-dom is destroyed in order that it may attain to nothingness which is the rung before creation. And this rung is called wisdom, that is to say, a thought that is not yet part of revelation. Then this thought gives rise to creation, as it is written, “In wisdom has Thou made them all.””

- Martin Buber

As we end this year of chaos, the year when everything seemed to fall apart and we planted the seed of a new era in electing Barack Obama, we need to reflect on our intentions for growth. I note that I posted the original post on chaos at the beginning of this year. Now, we are ending this chaotic time, and have to make new decisions, move in new directions, start to grow again. But first, there is a rest, a period of nothingness, a time when we can relax and gather our energy again. I hope you will all use the holidays as a time to enjoy family and friends, to enjoy yourselves, and not to be caught up in the busy-ness of making things perfect or try to get everyone the perfect present or whatever it is that may make you crazy at this time of year. We need quiet reflection right now, time to rest and renew ourselves.

Because next year, we have a hell of a lot of work to do, people.

Which is only funny if you grew up watching Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live…

Last statue of dictator Franco removed from mainland Spain

The statue, which stands at over 20 feet tall, will be stored in a warehouse until it can be displayed in a museum on the history of Spain that is planned for the coastal city.

During his 36 year dictatorship many such statues were erected in town squares across Spain but they have gradually been taken down over the years following his death in 1975.

A similar statue was removed from a square in the Spanish capital in 2005. It had served as a rallying point for pro-Franco supporters in Madrid and was dismantled in the middle of the night to avoid protests.

Last year the socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero approved a law that forces the removal of all public symbols of the Franco era, such as statues and plaques, and to rename streets associated with Franco and the generals who fought alongside him in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.

But in the case of Santander, the capital of the northern region of Cantabria, city hall approved the statue’s removal in 2004 so the plaza could be refurbished but it had taken four years for the work to begin.

The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), which represents the forgotten victims of Franco, welcomed its removal.

“It’s good news for the thousands of victims of the Franco dictatorship who for the thirty years since democracy was restored have had to live with these reminders of a regime which seized power in a violent coup and caused the death and disappearance of over 100,000 people,” read a statement from the group.

These are the days I wish it snowed here instead of raining — the entire yard is turning into a flood zone… at this point I worry about the plants drowning.

And rainy, gray weather takes away all my energy to actually do anything, hence the lack of posts, etc.

Sigh.

UPDATE: It seems to have stopped for the moment — ran out to clean out all the storm drain pipes so at least the yard and patios stopped flooding!

Sure wish we would have gotten those new rain gutters done this year, though. Seems like it may be a very rainy season…

Eh. More on the way in…

We is getting SOAKED today!

My garden will be happy, at least. The dogs are very bored, being stuck indoors, so they are snoozing the day away. Good day to be indoors, sitting by the space heater…

Hattie wins comment of the day….

a little red hen: Last Minute Preparations…

Here is a modest proposal: why don’t we bankrupt the insurance companies by not paying our premiums, so that they can be taken over by the government?? Then they could be dismantled and replaced with a single payer system.

What Is Wabi-Sabi?

In Japan, there is a marked difference between a Thoreau-like wabibito (wabi person), who is free in his heart, and a makoto no hinjin, a more Dickensian character whose poor circumstances make him desperate and pitiful. The ability to make do with less is revered; I heard someone refer to a wabibito as a person who could make something complete out of eight parts when most of us would use ten. For us in the West, this might mean choosing a smaller house or a smaller car, or-just as a means of getting started-refusing to supersize our fries.

The words wabi and sabi were not always linked, although they’ve been together for such a long time that many people (including D. T. Suzuki) use them interchangeably. One tea teacher I talked with begged me not to use the phrase wabi-sabi because she believes the marriage dilutes their separate identities; a tea master in Kyoto laughed and said they’re thrown together because it sounds catchy, kind of like Ping-Pong. In fact, the two words do have distinct meanings, although most people don’t fully agree on what they might be.

Wabi stems from the root wa, which refers to harmony, peace, tranquillity, and balance. Generally speaking, wabi had the original meaning of sad, desolate, and lonely, but poetically it has come to mean simple, unmaterialistic, humble by choice, and in tune with nature. Someone who is perfectly herself and never craves to be anything else would be described as wabi. Sixteenth-century tea master Jo-o described a wabi tea man as someone who feels no dissatisfaction even though he owns no Chinese utensils with which to conduct tea. A common phrase used in conjunction with wabi is “the joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe.” A wabi person epitomizes Zen, which is to say, he or she is content with very little; free from greed, indolence, and anger; and understands the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers.

Until the fourteenth century, when Japanese society came to admire monks and hermits for their spiritual asceticism, wabi was a pejorative term used to describe cheerless, miserable outcasts. Even today, undertones of desolation and abandonment cling to the word, sometimes used to describe the helpless feeling you have when waiting for your lover. It also carries a hint of dissatisfaction in its underhanded criticism of gaud and ostentation-the defining mark of the ruling classes when wabisuki (a taste for all things wabi) exploded in the sixteenth century. In a country ruled by warlords who were expected to be conspicuous consumers, wabi became known as “the aesthetic of the people”-the lifestyle of the everday samurai, who had little in the way of material comforts.

Sabi by itself means “the bloom of time.” It connotes natural progression-tarnish, hoariness, rust-the extinguished gloss of that which once sparkled. It’s the understanding that beauty is fleeting. The word’s meaning has changed over time, from its ancient definition, “to be desolate,” to the more neutral “to grow old.” By the thirteenth century, sabi’s meaning had evolved into taking pleasure in things that were old and faded. A proverb emerged: “Time is kind to things, but unkind to man.”

Sabi things carry the burden of their years with dignity and grace: the chilly mottled surface of an oxidized silver bowl, the yielding gray of weathered wood, the elegant withering of a bereft autumn bough. An old car left in a field to rust, as it transforms from an eyesore into a part of the landscape, could be considered America’s contribution to the evolution of sabi. An abandoned barn, as it collapses in on itself, holds this mystique.

There’s an aching poetry in things that carry this patina, and it transcends the Japanese. We Americans are ineffably drawn to old European towns with their crooked cobblestone streets and chipping plaster, to places battle scarred with history much deeper than our own. We seek sabi in antiques and even try to manufacture it in distressed furnishings. True sabi cannot be acquired, however. It is a gift of time.

The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty

Heather Mendel

After A While
by Veronica A. Shoffstall

After a while you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn
that love doesn’t mean leaning
and company doesn’t always mean security.
And you begin to learn
that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of woman, not the grief of a child
and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow’s ground is
too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down
in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn…

I read this poem ages ago, while I was learning these things. Now having learned them, it still speaks to me.

But I am glad I still have someone to bring me flowers, too.