Okay, It's Day One Again

Last night I had dinner at the home of a new friend in Memphis and I forgot to do my evening meditation.

This morning I awoke with a sinus headache and I forgot to do my morning meditation.

Today I will write myself a Post-It. Sheesh.

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There

As you may know by now, I am a big fan of Patti Digh, her book, Life Is A Verb, and her blog, 37 Days. I admire her so much that when she suggests that we all do something, whatever it might be, I try to do it.

Her latest idea is that we should all pick one thing to do just for ourselves, and make a commitment to ourselves to do that thing every day for 37 days. I've been struggling to decide what that thing is, and it's already Day Four.

See, I already do just about everything for myself that I can possibly do. I wanted to live a simple, stress-free life, so I retired early and started living in a 19-foot motorhome. I wanted to see the country before I got too old to drive comfortably and that's what I'm doing. I wanted to work for peace in the world so that I could feel that I had contributed something important, which led to my discovery of Eckhart Tolle, who told me that the best way I can contribute to peace in the world is to stop thinking and align my consciousness with the collective consciousness of the universe. Aha! I have been trying to decide what to do when what I really wanted/needed to do was...are you ready?...absolutely nothing. That includes absolutely not thinking about what I want/need to do.

So I laid back on my comfy cushions and looked out the window, something I do several times a day already. Then I looked out the opposite window, and out the roof window. And while I was looking at the redbud and my sister's house and the trees, I stopped thinking about what I want to do for myself for 37 days and became one with all that is.

And then I realized that what I want to do for myself is just that, more often, and that I don't have to "meditate" in the traditional sense in order to do it. I just need to stop thinking and sit here. I don't even have to close my eyes; in fact, keeping them open, looking at all that is, seems to work better for me than closing them. I can keep the thoughts at bay more easily if I have something to look at (as long as I don't think about it, don't name it). I don't need a special mat, or special clothes, or a special posture, or special words. Oh heavenly relief.

So now I will set aside two specific times for not doing. In the morning, before I roll out of my bunk, I'll raise the curtain and look out at the fresh new morning and the big magnolia over my head. At night I'll go outside and look up at the stars, or the moon, or the clouds, and listen to the night sounds.

Hey, you know, if you do "not doing," too, we'll have world peace that much sooner. Just slip into the stream of consciousness, get on the frequency, ride the wave (to mix a triple metaphor). Oh my, what peace.

Spring

My friend Patti reminds us in her blog post that yesterday was the birthday of poet Billy Collins, on whom she has a giant crush that you can't blame her for. He is a brilliant and totally accessible poet who served as Poet Laureate of the U.S. 2001-2003 and has a zillion other awards to his credit. But it's more than that (I think it helps to hear him read his poetry). I've heard him on A Prairie Home Companion more than once.

Patti asks us to submit our own poem in honor of Billy's birthday, and even though I'm not "standing in [my] slippers at a granite counter with good light on ripe bananas," but merely looking out the window of my motorhome, parked in front of my sister's house in Memphis, I am inspired to submit the following:

Spring

How wonderful to be back

Where Spring is anticipated

For its flowers,

A winter-long yearning

Satisfied,

The change of seasons

Bringing daily surprises.

How can I not remember

From one Spring to the next

That the redbud tree

Sprouts flowers on its trunk?

That there is no green

Like the green

That mists the maples?

That a simple walk

In the neighborhood

Is like seeing the world

For the first time?

It is Nature's amnesia,

Otherwise my heart would break

To see it go.

On The Road Again

Oops, I'm behind again. When there is not much going on where I am, I get complacent (lazy). Too much TV watching for one thing, which is why I have chosen not to have a television machine in my motorhome.

When last we met, back on March 2, I had left the Mardi Gras crazies behind and although I didn't report on my whereabouts on that date, I was in Houston visiting my long-lost friend, Mary Helen. I had intended to head north to Memphis to visit my family after my month in New Orleans, but after a reunion with Mary Helen in Lafayette, LA (halfway between NO and Houston) a huge cold front came through and I decided to keep to the southern environs a bit longer. I followed her back to Houston where a one-week stopover turned into two as the front dumped a steady, chilling, 3-day rain on Houston and freezing rain on Memphis.

While in Houston, where I lived 1985-1988, I visited some old haunts, including the duplex where my daughter and I lived, which as I had suspected, had been returned to its original single-family configuration. If I had not accidentally run across the address on an old piece of mail, I would not have been able to pick it out. And Houston has changed so much that it was as if I had never lived there, which was disconcerting, so I didn't go out much. Besides, Mary Helen has moved to a lovely waterfront condo in Dickinson,

an hour on the freeway from Houston and not a pleasant drive. I walked her new old dog (and drew the dog's portrait: the black & white Border Collie mix in the slide show, which is out of order and I can't seem to fix it), reorganized her kitchen, and watched too much daytime TV: Live with Regis and Kelly, The View, The Price is Right (I'm not proud)--but no soaps (okay, maybe the first five minutes of All My Children).

Then it was on to Memphis by way of a one-night stopover in Center, TX, another night in Arkadelphia, AR, an hour in Little Rock just to visit the capitol and get a postcard for my collection, and into Memphis on the third day, a distance I could easily have covered in one day in my youth. Oh well, what's the rush? I often take the secondary roads rather than the interstate and this was one of those times when I was happy to be tooling along practically by myself. The fuzzy photo at left is I-30 and the one at right is Hwy. 67. Which would you choose?

I didn't get a photo of the Houston skyline, which has long been a favorite, but I took this picture of downtown Memphis as I crossed the Mississippi River bridge.

Downtown Memphis has retained much of its "classic architecture" (old buildings) and looks about the way it did when I lived here 1974-1976, with a few notable exceptions. I suppose that says something about the city's growth and prosperity but, hey, it's also one of the few cities left where you can actually afford to buy a house. And I love that there are so many interesting 1920s homes still gracing the lawns of Midtown.

My sister Marcia lives in an area called Central Gardens and today I walked a few blocks with my camera so you could get a feel for the area. (See slideshow at right.) The Azaleas have barely begun to bud but the Redbud, Cherry and a few other trees are very pretty. I missed the Daffodils and the Bradford Pear, but there is a gorgeous Magnolia in Marcia's back yard, not the big Southern species with the wonderfully fragrant, huge white flowers, but the pink-flowered species generally referred to as a Tulip Tree.

I'll be here for a month so there will be more to report later on, including our trip to The Pink Palace Museum for the "Scoop on Poop" exhibit. You'll want to tune in for that!

On Writing

Do you know who wrote the first "essay?" This is from Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for February 28, 2009:

It's the birthday of the essayist Michel de Montaigne, born near Bordeaux, France (1533). He became a lawyer, but when his father died and left Michel the family estate, he took over the property and retired from the law. He spent the next 10 years in relative seclusion in his tower, ignoring his family and society. His best friend had recently died, the man he would have written letters to, so instead of letters, Montaigne wrote down thoughts to an imaginary reader. He wrote about all kinds of things: liars, smell, prayer, cannibals, and thumbs. He mixed anecdotes with academic thoughts. And he called his short pieces "essays" because he considered the pieces small attempts at addressing big ideas, and the French verb "essai" means "attempt."

This is from the Montaigne link above, in Wikipedia:
On the day of his 38th birthday, as he entered this almost ten-year period of self-imposed reclusion, [Montaigne] had the following inscription crown the bookshelves of his working chamber:

"In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, his birthday, Michael de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned virgins (italics mine: I love that phrase), where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquillity, and leisure."

Perhaps I'd have done likewise if I'd inherited an estate. Perhaps he'd have stowed his laptop and taken to the open road in a small motorhome.