A Bold Undertaking

I have been reading Thomas Lynch and realizing that all writing is poetry—all writing of mine is, at least. Or it wants to be. Words want to sound right; they want to flow past one another. They want to find meaning in a clear unambiguous fashion, but they want to do it with flair, with an awareness of their own sounds and history. Each word wants to be properly placed in the matrix of history, meaning, and personal significance.

I want to write like Lynch. I want it so badly, I am romanticizing his profession. The man is a writer and poet by avocation, but an undertaker by trade. Casting the poet’s life as a worthy one is no great leap; making a funeral director’s existence sound worthy of envy is a greater accomplishment.

Lynch says that poetry is appreciated by many and avoided by most. But we should write it anyway. Be like him: write poetry for twenty years in order to develop in your bones a feel for language. After that long marinating in poetry, the prose you produce will be the sort that people want to read.

His insights into death are similarly practical and profound. Listen to the stillness of the body, says Lynch. Find the space where consciousness resides, and notice the quality of its departure. Contemplate what it means to be alive, to have a life, to be alive and relating to children and lovers and family and coworkers. Marvel that time will proceed apace in your absence, after your own personal world is snuffed out.

There are Zen stories that pivot on just such admonitions.

I could never write like Lynch. For one thing he is a better writer: more practiced, more disciplined, more experienced, more possessed of an entertaining personal history to use as fodder. More importantly, though, is the fact that we can only write as our selves. I cannot write like someone else. Suitably experienced, practiced, disciplined, suitably wise and rueful in retrospect, I would be a terrific teller of my own story, a masterful sharer of my own mind.

I could follow that advice: I could write poetry for twenty years. The wisdom and life experience and regrets will all take care of themselves. There is always something to write about. The challenge is finding the words to capture the truth.

what Zen is all about
Originally uploaded by sujathafan

Related Links:

Frontline: The Undertaking

Bodies In Motion and At Rest

Koans

A Baby Babbles--Is Anything Said Or Not?

When he woke up from his nap today, the baby stayed on the bed and looked at his French book. Then he lay his head down on the picture of the playroom ("La Salle de Jeu") and said very clearly:

Aihavows

I tried to ask him about this, but he wasn't responding.

All day this has stayed with me, less for what it means about him than for what it means about me, hearing it as I did.



What are my vows for this life? And with what resolutions does a tiny person enter, and re-enter, this realm?

World Aflower

We are in the full swing of spring, not the painful first bursting that gives me annual pains in the head and heart, but the real open, easy flow of clear air, clear skies, and clear-mindedness. This time, right now, holds the fragrance of life in full bloom. Green plants are fresh, earnest, and lush. The world has awkened, stretched, and is under way.

This is the season of magnolias, magnolias of so many moods. There are the lacy fingers of Wada’s Gift, and the giant loud blossoms tiny trees in Washington Park that are dwarfed by their own enormous purplish flowers.


Camellias clamor from every corner, too, it seems. But today it was a pale pinkish daffodil trumpet that called to me as I walked with my son up to the Japanese Garden. I nearly heard that flower.

The son and I have been coming here since he was tiny. But a year ago, we were still mostly indoor creatures. One day at two weeks of age, I took him into the courtyard of our building, thinking he was long overdue for some fresh air, for the sight of the sky, for the smell of dirt. But he looked at me like a little blob. Take it or leave it, he seemed to say. Actually, he’d rather leave it. So we went back inside. But today he is calling out to birds and people as we walk through the woods, and his bouncing threatens my balance as we go up the wooded stairs to the garden.

I let him down on some flagstones near the Tea Garden. He’s been fond of stones lately. He finds a favorite one and carries it along, over a threshold here and past a mossy boulder there. We settle down near a favorite pavilion so he can study gravel. As I hunker next to him, I realize a square foot of gravel is a fascinating thing seen through a toddler’s eyes. The boy pops a couple little rocks in his mouth and looks at me. Spits them out on cue. Pours gravel into my hand. Holds his hand out for some. Locates the favorite stone, and hits it against the gravel. In this tiny patch of ground, he could spend hours. He could examine every rock as though it were a unique gift. Which of course it is.



Everywhere we go, I see old things through fresh eyes.













I spot things I've never seen before.



The camera seems inadequate. At best a photograph is a cue. Pixels on the screen hope to evoke the sound of water. The snowy cascade of blossoms afroth over white gravel. The way the sun rakes over texture and caresses form.

The Son spots a pagoda and calls out to it. Hey! You, standing here amid moss and trees. What are you?

Baby Buddha

Baby Buddha
Originally uploaded by Sean Maynard

Sun-block for my son’s tiny face and legs
And we walk up, up
Singing in the heat and light--
Sweet water on the Baby Buddha
Upright under flowered eaves--
Having already forgotten reason
for such a journey,
Having lost all hope to life
Made more pure and blessed.

Under the tiny raised finger rises my son’s earnest face,
awash in bloom. The world, alone and honored,
That’s us and him: all one, all once upon this time,
Together under heaven, for the bright mind is found by all things.

座禅 Zazen

座禅 Zazen
Originally uploaded by kamoda

Home At Last?

Birds draw the baby’s attention. From his post on my back, I feel him twist and wave his arms. We stop and mimic their tweeting song. And then we resume our energetic uphill walk. There is a spring in my step, a bounce from the little rider, and the scent of budding trees.

With every out-breath I consciously release what I have been holding. The tension in my throat can go. The clench of my jaws can go. The knot of maternal worry between my eyebrows can wash away. I breathe, we sing, and there is a synchrony between us. The baby vocalizes quite actively, and I take his syllables into my own song. Lo-i-LO, iloilo! We improvise together as we bounce and stride through the tall trees of Washington Park.

At the Japanese Garden, I have the urge to slow down. Walking becomes slow and meditative. I plot out a winding course on the plank walkway over the koi pond. The sound of a small waterfall here and the large one there should keep the baby’s interest along the perpendicular twists of the walkway. Perhaps as we go he will remember this sort of meditation from before he was born. I settle into a brisk kinhin pace, taking two steps on a slow inhale, and two steps on a slow exhale. I lift each leg, marionette-like, from the knee, which causes the foot to naturally touch the ground heel first.

Koi
Originally uploaded by BBMaui

Taking in the world, the breathing child on my back, and the sounds of water, I walk. There is only walking, and then there is no walking, just the functioning of nature.

And then there is a group of people striding toward the large waterfall that is also our destination. An dark Indian man with a generous belly leads the way, steering through the screen of his video camera. His wife and son trot down to sit on the bench in front of the waterfall; they are photographed, and they trot away again. In the space of a few steps, they’ve hooked me. I become lost in some thought about their cultural past and my own, about experience mediated through technology, about which of us is living in our own personal travel show.

I have forgotten the world is one thing. There is only walking, the sound of the water, the sight of the family with the camera, the chatter of another camera-led group behind me, the simultaneous being of one world, independent of judgment about who is the better garden guest and the more authentic liver of life.

The baby chooses this moment to grunt and wiggle. We are walking entirely too slowly for his taste. I pick up the pace from glacial to ambling, and begin to sing:

I’ve been a wild rover for many a year,
I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer.
But now I’m returning with gold in great store,
And I never will play the wild rover no more.

The lyrics vibrate softer and sweeter than ever before. They speak of our spiritual journey, of the urge to avail ourselves of distraction upon distraction in hopes of finding relief from the travail of being alive. We make the same mistakes over and over. And then one day our roaming comes to an end.

I’ll go back to my parents, confess what I’ve done,
And ask them to pardon their prodigal son.
And if they’ll caress me, as oft-times before,
Then I never will play the wild rover no more.

I think of how we are the poor man in the Buddha’s parable, who does not recognize his birthright. Of how we can return at last to our true home, the source of our being, no matter how crazy we’ve been in the past. We can make peace with ourselves, setting aside notions of being born some other way. And we can choose to withhold judgement on the years we ran wildly in search of something other than the person we’ve always been.

And it’s no, nay, never! No nay never no more,
Will I play the wild rover, no never no more.

I make a promise to stop wishing for something else, to enter my life just as it is, and to cultivate, without regret. Knowing there can be no other way but the way I’ve come, having learned what I’ve learned, and possibly wasted the time I’ve wasted, I have come full circle. So I can start all over again. Right here.



A deep breath, and we stop to look at the waterfall. It really is grand. Carefully designed so as to look completely natural and beautiful, the water’s course branches to fall, here fast, here slowly, in a dynamic curtain. Some streams of water spray furiously off the rocks in a blur. Others fall gently into miniature pools on their way down, running languorously from rock to rock. No thing is the same from one moment to the next. And yet there is some continuity to the waterfall, as one moment’s existence conditions the next. It’s the same way with our minds, our breath, our life.

Travelling Portland

While the baby sleeps, I have been reading McCarthy’s Bar, a travel-guide-cum-inner-exploration by a boozy English-Irish writer named Pete McCarthy. To be honest, some of his stories seem so bizarre that it’s hard to believe they’re true. The man has a mind and a mouth that never stop chattering. Together the two of them seem to be responsible for a fair amount of anxious speculation, snarky commentary, and--I suspect--general embroiderment of reality. It makes for excellent reading.

McCarthy is propelled to wander the Emerald Isle by a sense of doubt as to whether or not he “belongs” in Ireland. Who wouldn’t want to belong to Ireland if they didn’t already? In fact, it's those who don't belong already who most want to. Ireland is loveliest to those who don’t live there permanently, I’m told. Over and over, as if he’s making his case to the reader, McCarthy wonders if he’s really Irish. Is he more Irish than the transplanted German running a hostel in an old convent? More Irish than the Italian tourists in expensive parkas who sip soda water in the pub? With two Liverpool-Irish parents both named McCarthy, I’m not sure why he feels the need to belabor the point: he’s obviously a McCarthy, and the McCarthys were Irish until the generation before him. Go back to Ireland if it makes ye feel good, say I.

But without the nattering doubt, there would be no story. It makes as good a scaffold as any, I suppose, for a string of tales centered around standing stones, standing pints of Guinness, the idiocy of tourists, the idiocy of the Irish, and more Guinness. Reading his book, I am reminded of the poignancy Ireland evokes in the children of emigrants, and the frustrations as well—so much so that I’m tempted to go back for a nice nostalgia-busting visit.

I close the book and idly start thinking to myself how you don’t really need to leave the US to get a taste of the foreign and the bizarre. Within this one sprawling country you can encounter completely foreign ways of doing and being. Within an hour of Portland—not to mention the rural South, or New Mexico—you’ll find people and places that will throw you for a loop so wild you’ll find it hard to believe you’re in the same country.

Today after the baby’s morning nap, we suit up and board the city bus for a cafe that features lunchtime folk music for small children and their families. Baby K watches the pimply guitarist with a passionate infantile intensity and crawls over to try to eat his sound cables. I distract him with his very first Cheerios, which he ignores. Nearby, a short slapping-match between two four-year-olds who hadn’t previously been introduced goes right over his head.

The music winds down just in time for us to miss the bus back to our neighborhood. Suddenly we have half an hour to kill along a desolate patch of East Burnside. We are only about 40 blocks from home, but they are unpretty, industrial, and involve a bridge and a large river. We will not hike home today. Instead we loiter near the bus stop, strolling about in the exhaust of an urban thoroughfare, marveling at particularly evil-looking examples of graffiti and particularly mangy cyclists.

We stroll downhill to the next stop, where a toothless woman with a jutting chin is sucking face with an blue-collar gentleman clad in a dirty baseball cap and plaid wool jacket. I keep moving, and the baby does not object. A fat man with a Santa-Claus beard whirs by on a small blue electric bicycle. I pretend not to look, but I can feel the baby cranking his neck to watch fellow go by. Behind the tall glass windows of the rock gym, people with time and money to burn are seriously contemplating a plastic wall as they rub chalk on their palms. We sit in a bus shelter and the baby tries to touch the graffiti.

When the bus comes, we are suddenly in close physical and olfactory proximity with an assortment of our fellow humans so eccentric and fragrant as to make me wish for staid, stodgy old Ireland. There is a black guy with mirrored glasses, fifty strands of Mardi Gras beads and old keys around his neck, and fingernails out to here. A disabled lady with stringy grey hair and a striking black mustache, who sits next to us and tells us about her grandson. A brown-skinned guy with some sort of skin infection speaks enough English to communicate that he has a son, “a junior”, K’s age.

I realize we are surrounded by the Other Half, the silent Americans who never had much to begin with, who saw no part of the last economic boom, who have been getting screwed for years, and who are on the brink of something much worse.

I may feel averse, but these people are interested in connecting with me; they sense a linkage I am slow to acknowledge. A Buddhist moment overcame me: suddenly we were all deluded beings, yearning for something we couldn’t quite comprehend, much less grasp. In our obliviousness and shortsightedness, we grasp whatever means of distraction is handy: music, drugs, Mardi-Gras beads--or Guinness, if you’re a boozy Anglo-Irish writer with an identity crisis.

Back in our neighborhood, I stop at the upscale “Artisan Bakery” for the express purpose of communing with my yuppie hipster brethren and sistern. They’re there, all right, hunched over their MacBooks, eating croissants with their babies, checking their Blackberries, tucking their perfect hair into hand knit caps for some purposeful striding in the cold sunshine. It’s a bracing re-entry into my particular cultural sphere. Just a quick stop to soak up the atmosphere and remember who we are, and we’re off down the street.

Coming toward me I spy a man with a bushy blond beard clad entirely in buckskins. They are clean, tawny, and fringed at every opportunity. On his head sits a tan leather Stetson. On his feet are tall moccasin-boots with fringed cuffs and rawhide laces. He wears a fringed tan leather jacket with extra fringe. And he’s feeling his way along with a massive red-tipped cane. He bumps into the mailbox on the corner and lurches around to cross at the same crosswalk we’re using. I sing quietly to the baby so he’ll know I’m there. The light changes and I mumble, “Let’s go,” to the baby, which he takes up as a helpful cue. He veers out of the crosswalk and bumps into the opposite curb. I’ve never seen a blind person do such a bad job of walking about. Maybe this is a candid camera spoof, or a psychology experiment. He stumbles sideways along the sidewalk until he’s in the middle of a group of people waiting for the bus.

I avoid eye contact and address the gold Sherriff’s badge hanging around his neck. “Sir, do you need any help to get where you’re going?”

“Oh, no thank you.” His voice is high and prissy, and his tone suggests long experience fending off helpful bystanders. “I’m right where I want to be, waiting for the number seventeen bus at the bus stop.”

And so he is. As are the other riders, who look at me as if I’m an idiot, trying to help a blind man get to where he already stands.

I stammer something and look up at the man’s eyes. He is wearing purple-tinted sunglasses, with a tiny sheriff’s star pasted to the center of each lense. Funny that someone who can’t see at all would take such pains to look the part of the psychedelic buckskinner. But maybe that’s just who he is.

And what am I? I walk along realizing I never have questioned whether I “belong” in Portland. I’m just here, along with the sad underclass of society, the posh upper minority, and the odd befringed blind-as-a-bat frontier sheriff. Nobody thinks to question another’s right to breathe this air and hash out a living on this land.

Oregon may resemble Ireland in its rolling green hills, and in the inhabitants who brew alcoholic beverages by any means necessary. But we do not have the fraught history of crowding, poverty, warfare, emigration and return. You just come here, or you are born here, and either way you live your life here. No one wonders if they legitimately belong here. You just do.

I sympathize with Pete McCarthy as he wrestles with his Irish identity. Occasionally I think the same thoughts myself, but in my case the question is theoretical. I already have the luxury of feeling at home here, in Portland, where the toothless and the tortured, the eccentric and the ethereal, the wealthy and the wanna-be, all live together in something resembling harmony.

Cooking

Here is what is hard: to express oneself or create something new when the child who is coming into this life as the nearest and most profound recipient of one's love is ill.

Over six weeks, the baby has slowly descended into diarrhea. Then came his illness. Even though he's no longer ill, the poop situation is worse than before. He is drained. And so part of me is drained. There is the constant nursing--he eats more from Cafe Mom now than he did two months ago. But more depleting is the worry: the low-level ache that something is wrong; the problem-solving head on addressing of the issue, again and again; the flicker of fear when the pediatrician says she's out of ideas; the whipping flames of terror when I realize he doesn't eat, he's dehydrated, his poops are completely watery, he's losing weight, he isn't his sparkly curious self, and there's no explanation why.

A renowned ND has been called. Some remedies have been ingested. The effluent may be firming up; it is less frequent for sure. We are waiting for a cancellation. In the meantime a tub of baby diarrhea sits in the fridge, ready for delivery to the lab tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I hold him and look into his eyes as he nurses. You are here with us, I tell him. Papa and I will always take care of you.

I have taken special care to make sure his naps are regular, his fluid intake is ample, his days filled with both security and stimulation. Every once in a while a bloggable idea overtakes me, but it just isn't important. There is nothing as important as this child's health.

Today he ate a bit: chicken bits and applesauce and some nutrient-loaded muffins I concocted in his honor. Things are looking up, and it is on that thread of hope that I find the strength to write.

Muffins for a Sick Baby Who Still Loves Baked Goods

1. Preheat oven to 350F

2. Combine:

3 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. wheat germ
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp spices

3. Blend thoroughly:

2 eggs
1/4 c. olive oil
1/2 maple syrup
1/3 c. tahini
1.5 cup mashed sweet potato (or pumpkin puree, or applesauce)
1 c. rice milk
1 c. grated carrot
1/2 c. grated golden beet

4. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Mix until just blended. Fill greased muffin cups just to the top.

5. Bake 350F for 35 minutes. Makes 18 full-size muffins.

6. Break into little bits and put in baby's mouth. Give him some bits to hold. Say "Umm!" along with him.

Quiet Ill

After three days pain, some relief from the flu. There has been chaos every which way.
Then the baby’s turn begins
with a cry, a little head standing by my pillow.
I pick him up, and something silky and warm
wets my shoulder, his neck, the pillow,
the towels, the cloth diapers laid down. Over and over
through the dark night, he vomits out
complete composure and an uncomplaining sweetness.

I think of my own groaning and feverish thrash.
How much was refusing to be there, just there, as trusting and open as this little boy?

Where the Treasure Lies

It’s a lazy weekend, and my sister in law comes over to visit us and play with the baby. She has been to banks all over town looking for the safe deposit box where her mother’s jewelry was kept. She was relieved to find all the pieces she remembered. Thank goodness her mom hadn’t hidden it around the house, where it might be missed by those going through the dead woman’s effects.

My sister in law opens an unusually heavy little box full of tangled chains. One by one, she takes out necklaces, bracelets, and earrings to see if I want them.

As we talk, my chest feels funny and my voice doesn’t sound quite right. Apparently I’m not accustomed to being offered gold in bulk. On one hand, it’s quite enticing to be faced with so much yellow metal. Perhaps because of that, my more conscious self is worried about looking greedy in the wake of my mother-in-law’s death.

Ought I to accept any of this? My sister in law regards me steadily. It can remain a family asset, she assures me. If I’ll enjoy it, I should take it and have the use of it.

You could say the same of any material thing, couldn’t you? When you die, you leave everything behind. What we call ownership is really a long-term rental, a guarantee of rights to use something while you can.

Before I know it, I am the guardian of three high-karat necklace chains and a jade Hotei pendant. The baby scoots around wearing a pair of gold jingle-bell anklets handed down from his cousins. His every move makes an infuriating din. He picks at the metal, puzzled.

I have gold. And it gives me a rueful feeling in my heart. Like guilt, perhaps.

My mother in law worked so hard, and had no luxury in her life. She never wore her jewelry until right before the end, when her body was swollen with illness. The last time I saw her, she wore a beautiful gold chain over an old sweatshirt. She fingered the pendant as we talked. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it; I knew it meant something. At the time I didn’t know, but I think she intuited how few days actually remained.

This gold of hers is about more than just adornment. There are numerous items from the safe-deposit box that my mother in law surely never planned to wear. She had no use for the heavy men’s chain bracelets or, as a Buddhist, for the gold crucifix. These are a legacy of the old days in her country, when inflation and violence meant you needed to have your wealth close at hand. A gold bracelet might buy a bag of rice; a bag of rice might buy a gold bracelet. From the stories I hear, it did.

By the time my husband’s family came to the US, their gold had all been redeemed to buy something more precious. This current trove of rings and necklaces was gathered in this country, in spite of the FDIC’s guarantee on bank deposits—and more tellingly, in spite the social stability that most of us take for granted. The majority of us have never lived in a collapsing society, or run for our lives. For those who have, a pile of gold means a hope security.

In the end, though, we are actually all running for our lives, in a race we cannot win, on a course whose end rapidly approaches. In reality, there is no true security in gold or any other possesion. None of this metal changes how my mother in law’s time came; none of it redeems our lost future with her.

What is left now, beyond the end? Rather than security, this gold now holds a memory. It is a small token from a life of little beauty and much hard, hard work.

In the evening, I slowly put one of the chains around my neck. I have to fumble for a while to put it on. The bright yellow 24 karat gold is so pure and soft that it deforms easily. The clasp is different: you must bend it open and bend it back closed. You cannot just take these Asian-style chains on and off at whim; wearing them involves a commitment. You wear the chain, and it wears you.

That night, and into the next day, I am bathed in the gold’s marvelous warmth. I feel a tremendous love for my baby and for my husband. The world seems complete, beautiful, and totally sufficient just as it is. When I look in the mirror I see an impossibly yellow, radiant, bright, ornate blessing around my neck. Like the ring on my finger, it symbolizes a bond to the family I have joined; a bond to the heritage that my son carries mixed with my own, in his veins. My heart feels larger than my chest can contain. The heavy links around my neck have enriched my blood, and made the whole world golden.

Perhaps this light, and this blessing, is her final gift to us.

Jizo

Originally uploaded by rachepol

If you don't change direction, you'll end up where you're headed....

Lately I have been seeing children as timeless beings, already whole but focused on developing and blooming into maturity.

My husband is out of town, so the baby and I have been taking care of each other. Tonight, after K was done sitting at his new little eating table, I took my turn. He stood next to me and kept up a companionable interaction.

Suddenly, I aspirated a grain of rice, and coughed. For some reason, K is really perturbed by coughing. He can be in deep slumber, but if someone coughs, he jolts awake crying. Tonight, worry flashed across his face, and then an uncertain smile, in anticipation of my reassurance.

I patted my chest. "I'm fine, honey. Just a little rice."

He looked me in the eye, coughed twice, and patted my chest.

This sort of thing may be why I have the sense that there is considerable understanding residing in this tiny 9-month-old's baby mind.

This baby was really keen on saying "mamama" and "baba" (papa) two weeks ago. But now is only word is "ub" (up). He doesn't reach his arms up, or even use the ASL sign I've modeled every single time I pick him up. He just looks at you and says "ub" in a completely matter-of-fact tone. And sure enough, you pick him up!

He is an inveterate wiggler, and he doesn't like to hold still to have his diaper changed. But if you ask him to hold still, and then count to three, he holds still. Papa discovered this.

It was predicted from our horoscopes when the baby was born that he and I would be very much in synch with each other, and we are. Spending time together seems effortless this week. There's an easy harmony to our company. When things aren't going well--every once in a while I get bent out of shape--the baby gets cantankerous and his sleep goes all to hell.

The other day I was noticing the usual fantasies about doing something "real" and "important" with my life, maybe embarking on a career at last, or going back to school. As if I haven't had enough opportunity to learn that the conventional path isn't my natural course! But anyway, there I was, and I realized: if my son is going to be happy and peaceful, *I* need to be happy and peaceful. Maybe some moms can be stressed and wrestle with life and still have happy children, but that's not us.

I may go to school, or I may tutor again, or I may look into patent law. Or I may realize my dream of starting a book hand-bindery (really). I may stay home for years and homeschool my kids instead. Whatever I do, conflict-ridden, dysfunctional workplaces are not an option. A hectic pace of life that disrupts our ease is not an option. Knowing this is nice. I don't need a galaxy of options. I can only do one thing at a time. And I am doing the right thing for right now.

Whatever I do, one thing is certain: this little fellow will continue becoming who he is. I recognize his newborn self in the bigger baby. And someday I will recognize this charming, energetic, curious, sweetheart in the body of a grown man; I pray that day will come. Until then, we will turn our hearts ever in the right direction, and take it one step at a time.