Gratification Lost and Found

What was lost in space has been found in Santa Barbara, CA. I’ve no idea how it got there, but my roller bag is on its way home, twenty-five days after we were separated between New York and Las Vegas.

I will be grateful to have my rakusu back; I had finally resorted to asking the Universe, very politely, for its return.

(A rakusu, according to the claim form I filed with America West Airlines, is a “handmade religious garment” valued at $248.)

More exciting to my housemates is the fact that the luggage contains a large quantity of Lithuanian chocolate. As my nearest, if not dearest friends, they are looking forward to this sweet, dark “sokolade” from Vilnius. Especially the dark chocolate filled with Camembert cheese.

There is some alchemy that takes place when this creamy high-fat cheese is married with chocolate. It’s quite intoxicating. After eating just one, your mind stops. You don't want or need anything. I mean anything. There is only complete hedonic overload. Every pleasure circuit is awake and humming. Of course as meditators we greet all phenomena with curiosity and gratitude. So it will be interesting to investigate this chocolate again.

I don’t have an easy relationship with extravagance, as I found out today on my first day of my first “real” job in ten (sorry, mom) years. I’m very happy to be at Golden Crane, a Corvallis store that sells beautiful, cute, flowy, creative garment–as well as gifts, jewelry, and house wares. If you need incense or Indonesian handicrafts or stained-glass Tiffany-style lamps, Golden Crane is your place. It certainly would have been mine a few years ago. It’s what I used to refer to as a “Delia trap.” (Nowadays, dharma books are my weakness.)

All my jewelry and vintage dresses and cute jackets are packed away, sitting in the damp silence of a basement in California. So I reported for work completely unadorned: no hair, no jewelry, no ruffles or furbelows-- a little Zen pinhead in the midst of all that opulence.

Ruby, the owner, is a good person to work for. She’s a Buddhist in the Tibetan tradition, and is very smart, trim, and stylish. In an earlier life as a computer programmer–a VIP in the days when almost nobody programmed computers–she wrote an assembly language. Her programs were stored first on punch cards, then on perforated tape, and finally floppy discs the size of LPs. (LPs, called “records”, were a music storage device before we had cassette tapes, CDs or iPods.) Eventually the discs would come in a stack of five, which you’d tote around in a big plastic case.

Ruby understands the practice of helping people connect with material objects. She wrapped a fancy scarf around my neck and put me to work doing something I know well: cleaning.

I swept and dusted and straightened racks of yoga tunics and spangly skirts. Lifted up crystal balls and Japanese bowls to dust underneath. All was peaceful –I was getting the hang of things, even enjoying the pretty scarf around my neck– until customers started coming in!

I was at a loss. What do I do? I'm a friendly person, but intruding on someone who is in their own space is not a skill we cultivate in Zen monasteries. Much easier to stand there looking vaguely beneficent. Or just looking vague. By the time my three-hour my "first day of work" was over, I was brimming with anxiety. Not believing it– but brimming nonetheless.

I walked over to the Book Bin and had two mugs of decaf coffee and a brownie. Read People magazine rather than dharma books. It was perfect, even though the brownie was old and dry and I recognize none of the current celebrities. I just felt so much better: the system was reset by polyphenols and sugar.

How wonderful to encounter relief, when so few problems are actually solved by food! Body and mind at rest, I walked home peacefully, enjoying my rare good fortune: o be saved by chocolate. It will not be so easy again. Next time, I’ll need the Lithuanian stuff.