Although I can’t be home every day enjoying the moment to moment blooming that happens during this magical season, I am grateful that the corporate campus where I work has quite the mini ecosystem. As I leave the building and pass the truck docks, I soon come to a small gathering of pine trees, the majestic holders of their quiet corner. Underneath are pine needles is soft and a deep breath will afford you that earthy dirt smell from these microscopic woods. Further down, past the sections made for stretchers and toners where they keep horizontal bars and wooden stumps, is the opening to the pond walk.

This is where I usually become more alert. As a starving reader who can never have enough time to soak in the words of others in the written form, I taught myself by age 21 to walk and read at the same time. Ok, I realize that this post can very well end up on the Darwinian award pages somewhere on the net, but really, so far, knock on whatever is eco-friendly and handy, I have not tripped and lost my front teeth, my dignity or unintentionally shown my underwear. Nor have I simply tripped. Or walked into walls. There are some clever co-workers who have fun with it and will walk directly toward me, hoping to win that first Noun prize – the first person, place or thing that I ever walk into (besides a bar! Ha ha! Well I AM Irish.) Yes, they are so cute and clever and who can blame them? I’d do it too I suppose. And I realize they are doing nothing more than simply reaching out in their own way to make some sort of contact.
Although walking straight into them full force with a book spine is probably not exactly probably the most pleasant.

I digress.

Whenever I enter Pond Area, my walk becomes the most alive. There are, many times, two of whatever creature is stirring. Two ducks. Two geese. Two turtles basking in the sun. Many tadpoles right now. A handful of birds. But mostly, for me, the presence of a Crow.
I realize that many folks associate the Crow’s appearance as a negative thing. I happen to love black birds of all types, but the crow is one of them that I look at and wonder to myself if I will ever pet one. Yeah, I’m forty and I said I want to pet one.

Usually, I will see only one at the pond. It might not be there at the moment I walk into the area, but then I have fun and say lightly and sing songy, “Black biiiiiiiiird….”. And then Snow White shows up and tries to kick my ass for nature rights.

What really happens is that within 20 or 30 seconds of my being in the area, a crow will show up or show itself somehow. I’ll be close enough to it so that we are aware of each other. Then I’ll say “Hi.”. Plain and simple. “Hi.”

The crow stays a moment and then flies off. I don’t know why I find this amusing, but I do. And it happens every time I talk my walks at work.

Other times there will be a small club’s worth of deer standing around looking all Gangsta. Deer do look Gangsta in case you didn’t know. If there is one of you and eight of them, it’s not very hard.

I usually stop under a Sycamore tree at the pond and sit, cross legged underneath, put my book down and attempt to meditate for a few minutes. I don’t work for Google or Amazon.com so it isn’t some extended yoga session. It’s literally five minutes at the moment but very peaceful. If you’re worried about looking like some kinda DAMN fool while other co-workers are brisk walking and chatting with their work wives/husbands, then I can’t promise that you’ll escape that feeling doing such a thing at work. I usually wait until it is Off Peak time for mine. I eat at my desk while working so that I can enjoy my alone time with whatever author out with Crow, turtles and Deer and the Gang.

The somewhat amusing thing (and it has to be amusing because you can’t take life too seriously when it isn’t warranted) is the Sign of the Dead memorialized near the pond. A metal sign, posted in the ground like a grave marker with a number of metal plates on it. Some of them are inscribed with those who have worked here and passed on. After those are a good number of shiny, unused metal plates, just waiting for someone to come unscrew one, have it engraved, and put it back on.

I wonder to myself if those people retired first. I don’t know why that is a point of any kind, but the thought of them dying before retirement makes me wonder how much they lived.
And that’s the point of squeezing in walk time. That’s what I want to do. I want to read and walk on Off Peak time. I want to have what communication I can with Crow as it swings by and then flies in the opposite direction, like a game of chase when I say “hi.” I want to feel brave (or alive enough to feel plain stupid) for passing a pack of degenerate deer (you can’t prove that they aren’t) on the same side of the path. And I want to look as though I’m waiting for a local and organic apple to fall off a Sycamore tree while I meditate for a splash in time. It’s about living my truth as much as I can…all the while learning what my own truths are and how they change. Because life is impermanent and it is change in every moment. As the saying goes, You never step into the same river twice.

Serene Life...Take Two!

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How About Now? Now? Now?

No.

The complexity of relationships. The complex simplicity of Buddhism. I’m wondering to myself how to merge forks into smooth flowing streams. I’m having Charlotte Kasl on my radio show soon (date not yet secured but she said she’d be on!) and what a good question for me to ask her – Who’s truth is THE truth? Is there more than one truth when dealing with individual minds? I understand that Buddhism tells us that there is no separation but I can clearly tell you that the mind that hopped in the shower this morning and drove off to get more bloodwork done is not the same mind that is sitting here writing this. So if our barriers are down and the Kick Ass God in you is the Kick Ass God in me, how do we assimilate that into our very vibe?

Many times during a ‘Lively Discussion’ (I hate to say ‘argument’!) I will say things that I believe are the truth as I see it….or maybe that is perception and a totally different thing altogether. I would think you need perception to see truth though. So if I believe I am saying one thing and his truth is that I am saying something other than what I actually mean when I am communicating, who’s ‘truth’ is going to be The Truth?

As much as I’d like to silently win, I’m not looking for the Gold Medal in owning the AH HA-SEE-I AM RIGHT AND OWN ALL THE TRUTHS NYAH NYAH NYAH category. I’m looking for us both to see the middle road, what is really there and if we aren’t agreeing on which side of the street the fire hydrant is really on, then to be able to understand that maybe I was going down the road so that it was on my left, but maybe you were in the opposite direction so that it was on your right….therefore, maybe we are both right…or at least both to the understanding of where the thought comes from.

The trick that I want to see pulled out of the proverbial sleeve is thought transference! I want to be able to say something and instead of having it Picasso’d into nothing that I’d meant it to be by my partner, I want to simply graph it into his cerebral Inbox and have him see what I really mean. I never believed in that Mars/Venus corn filled crap in my earlier days. Or even last year. Until Mars united the Warriors together – the Aries and the Scorpio and allowed us our playing field – play hard, love hard, fight to destroy – survivors optional.

*A momentary Brain Break as the dog crotch snorkels and my concentration is going into the wood chipper*

Ok. Absence of nerve grating sounds has resumed.
I have so much work to do on myself…especially to follow this path. The sound of the dog licking is enough to make me want to run down the dotted lines of the highway at rush hour.

I drive my mate crazy – whether my truths are real or imagined. I wonder sometimes if his calm as of this year, demeanor is more a product of not having an actual 9-5 workday anymore. He has been home since January due to surgeries and illness – not illness that keeps him in bed, but that keeps him from working. He gets a lot done in the house normally and I have no idea how to cook anymore since I usually don’t have to. I have to say, a House Husband is a sweet deal most of the time.

Sometimes though, I realize that I am on a schedule. Or rather, he is not on a schedule. There is no having to go to bed early for him because he doesn’t *have* to get up and work. He has time to pursue reading and interests and really really Get It. To allow it to soak in. To contemplate. I admit, I don’t do my best contemplating while driving to work and singing “Telephone”. Nor do I contemplate well during a 5 minute bathroom break. Nor coming home to homework whipping duties or after school/work schedules. That’s when the house is most psychedelicly active with everything in sight coming to life as distraction, falling in the path of a School/Work night schedule.

And maybe I feel in the way sometimes since my honey seems to have wonderful and serene days by himself at home, but then on days that Humanling and I are home, it feels almost like we are destroying his Silence and Serenity schedule that he has gotten used to. Perhaps it is all self esteem on my part, perhaps if I would just go to Snopes.com, I would find my truth exposed as a sham.

I’m discovering that I used to think we sat home very well together but that now since he has gotten his daily routine into what it is, that now perhaps I am not used to it or rather, I don’t depend on myself enough to go live and soak in joy…that I am waiting for him to have joy with me. That’s unfair to him, myself and the 11 year old Devil In the Making. One of my goals is to learn to simply live with or without the doting attention of a partner.

I am in the right line. I just haven’t gotten to the counter to have my ticket ripped yet.

How Fail at Applying Buddhism to a Lover's Spat

I’m going to do my honey and I an online outing. We both have really bad and childish tempers. We do pretty well in any argument – to a point. Then we fall apart and break down and resort to suckish behavior. It’s embarrassing. If aliens were looking down and preserving the argument for later viewing, I don’t think I could stomach my own behavior. And I’m sure he would probably get one of those travelling cartoon cracks that start in one part of his body and travel throughout his entire being so that he crumbles into dust on the floor if he saw himself as well!

With our combined readings and random philosophizing, you’d think that we’d be prepared for any potential Showdowns. We’ve pre-discussed how our next fight should be. We know all about Right Speech, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness.

We spoke of how we are going to incorporate Right This, Right That and The Other Right Thing into our parenting efforts with Humanling. Naturally she’d see our example and learn. Naturally our home is now and will always be swirled in love.

So kids, how’d it go?! The Deets! Must know the deets!!!

Well we had a lovely span of time with no disagreements. We felt honeymoonish! Aghast at how our former pre-Buddhist (and in my case I prefer a pagan-buddhist hybrid) acted out during disagreements. Such folly! What jerks! How Unenlightened!

It crept in out of nowhere. I’d spill the beans on how it started but who really remembers how any fight starts? I’m so bad at remembering how a fight starts sometimes that I just feel like calling a truce based on Why are we Doing This, again?

I suppose it doesn’t matter how it started but it had something to do with and ex girlfriend calling the night before….which triggered my memory that an ex boyfriend (who is currently on a completely different continent) had contacted me via Facebook to mention that he’d be in the country in May. And not on the other side of it. He wanted to get together for coffee and words. Those two things happened the night before. We used our Buddhist wisdom to talk through it in a newfound calm plane of existence. We went to bed happy and without incident.

Somehow, by the next morning, something about it festered and mutated with a Darwinian punch and what ensued was nearly something that sent the relationship to ash over the next couple of days.

That’s where it started. It’s hard to really find that moment where things go from Ok, We’re Trying To Stay the Path and Argue at the Same Time…to…Oh My Lotus! I Can’t Stand When You Bring That Up Every Time!

Needless to say, we were terrible. A big fat, flaming with gasoline ‘F’ in application of Buddhist philosophy in a moment of Ugly. We found ourselves lawyering Buddhist ways against each other to support our own position. Never stepping into the Same River Twice being a crowd favorite. We took each other’s deepest and most tender dealings of past bad decisions and opened fire with it. The secrets and issues we’d discussed at an earlier time with understanding and compassion, were now used as weapons.

Unfortunately, we are the couple you will hear yelling for one of two reasons. One…..heh, heh….The Good Stuff. Two….an Embarrassing Abandonment of How to be an Adult during a Disagreement.

For damage control, I’d purchased earlier last week, “If the Buddha Married” by Charlotte Kasl. I figured that if I read ahead of time, before the next blow out, we’d be armed with some major new knowledge that would help us out so that we could spare ourselves yet one more explosion of word shrapnel. I didn’t quite get past the Introduction in the book when the fight ignored its post dated moment and decided to show up early.

Yesterday morning, after wasting the entire Beltane holiday in the throes of a new argument low, I sat outside in the grass of our backyard reading some of the book. I got to a part that resonated strongly – especially with so much raw and unaccounted for emotion and hurt still woven throughout. It goes like this:

Take a moment to think of your partner (or special friend) as your beloved. Take a deep breath, relax your belly, and let the meaning of the word drench your heart – this special person who wants what you want – to be loved, to be free of suffering, and to experience joy. This imperfect being who has chosen you as you have chosen him or her. This one whose touch, voice, habits and smells are embedded in your senses. This one who shares the journey with you for better or worse.

How that hits me. I’m one of those weirdo mates that has to walk by an unsuspecting and comfortably sitting partner and simply bend down to bury my nose in his scalp, like a fresh bouquet of boyfriend! His scent is something that conjures up nothing but warmth.

Now when it comes to these bouts of Nasty (and I don’t mean the Come Hither Miss Jackson kind), my own beloved will tell me, no matter how angry or hurt, that I am the one he is in love with and wants to have a life with. I don’t know what kind of fight can cause anyone to not soften up a little when that sort of vulnerability is thrown at them. When he tells me these things, my defenses immediately spot a park and recklessly leave me for a shady tree. That is probably one of the best things for one of us to do. It does not necessarily mean that the fight is over. Or that there won’t be another ascension into a fiery tirade for the neighbors to hear. But it means something.

And whether or not I have gotten very far into If the Buddha Married, Buddhism supports direct learning experience over teachings. Teachings are important. But teachings without experience don’t mean enough.

When I read Charlotte Kasl’s passage above in the yard, I was overcome with such remorse and sadness and longing for my partner. Yes, she understands perfectly! And if you have or have ever had one of those Significant Other sort of things, then you do too – their specific walk, scent, the way they move or have a way of placing their things in a specific order in the house. I’d miss it!

I think what counts for us is that we truly want to be together. The love, attraction, desire, passion and will are all there. Our problem is confliction style. His mostly. Ok, that was a joke.
However, we did just learn on the heels of my beloved’s two hip surgeries, that he also has a Lyme’s disease relapse. More blood tests are needed to see exactly what is happening to him. There is a lot of stress if we allow it to get to us. His being that his body that he really kept in great shape for so long and that had so much strength is now not where he enjoyed it being. While I tend to just imagine that the wind will blow in what we need for a bill or two here and there, he bases his worry about our finances on reality since I am the only one working. What a buzzkill!

My stress is usually based on something like “ How come I had to ask for a cuddle this morning in bed instead of him just offering?!” Nice, huh? His love is beyond the physical….I am on a rickety jalopy to Buddhism with my focus being so much on the physical. He gladly cuddles when I ask so my perception of him not wanting to and then getting impatient while I wait for the golden offer is not based in reality, or the Truth as it Really Is.

While we figure it out, we are hoping to go back to that Aloof version of ourselves…you know – the couple that doesn’t have that bratty temper tantrum kind of fight that alerts neighbors that we aren’t naked and enjoying the other sort of noise. I’m sure experience is going to whip us well but might as well enjoy a few painful lashes along the way!