Good Days

This is one of those posts that will probably appeal only to family and close friends, and only then because I'm sure they are totally enthralled with everything I do. It also may appeal to people who:

• like Perkins Restaurant but haven't been there in a long time
• are interested in the obscure architecture of Minneapolis
• like to gloat because they are enjoying Spring in its fullest flowering
• have a passion for New York City memorabilia

Okay, I know you must fit into two or three of those categories at least, and can't wait to read on, so here goes.

This is the dessert menu at Perkins. I opted to take home a Cranberry Nut cat-head muffin (I took a picture of the bag I carried it home in, too, but I'll spare you that).

This is the building where I go twice a week to have acupuncture. I must give them a plug, for your benefit as well. A few years ago I discovered acupuncture as a treatment for tendonitis (the link lists many conditions that can be treated with acupuncture), after a friend told me he had only three sessions for his neck pain and was completely cured. So whenever I feel the need to have my Chi jump-started, I go in search of a practitioner I can afford (the going rate is about $60 a session, which is too much for me). My first practitioner, back in Asheville, was a woman just out of training who just wanted to help people while she got her "real" practice going. The second was a student at an Asheville School of Chinese Medicine (who told me to eat more millet--ugh). Now I go to Three Treasures Acupuncture in Minneapolis, just while I'm in town. I got hooked up with these folks through the Community Acupuncture Network. These "clinics" are located all over the country and they charge on a sliding scale (I pay only $15 for each session). Check it out!

Okay, here's your chance to gloat over my having to have hay fever all over again now that I have arrived in the cold northland. You are probably going swimming already! I'm wondering if I will have to do Spring again when I go through the Montana Rockies in June. Sheesh!

This is my present from Rita on her return from The Big Apple, where she went to meet family for a concert by her nephew and the orchestra of The Curtis Institute at Carnegie Hall (not too shabby). She got to go to New York and I stayed here to eat at Perkins, have needles poked into me and sneeze. It's all good.

Good Day, Sunshine

Much better today. It's still a bit nippy but the sun is out and I walked a new route today that took me past one of my favorite places: Perkins Restaurant. It's a great place for cheap breakfast (and a cat-head-sized muffin to go) and it brings back happy memories, too: my daughter Liz is particularly fond of their Eggs Benedict. We have often wondered why, since Perkins is headquartered in Memphis, they haven't opened any restaurants in North Carolina, right next door to Tennessee. It's probably just as well, my willpower being what it is.

Then, while sitting still, next to a window, I spotted a Yellow-rumped Warbler in a bare shrub (if it had been leafed out I might have missed it). Now, if you're a warbler snob I'm sure you've already been out looking for these, and no doubt found them, too. But I was three feet from one, so there.

And that's not all. They don't call Minnesota "The Land of 10,000 Lakes" for nothing. Do you have one in your neighborhood? How about several, within walking distance?

That's Diamond Lake. I can also walk to Lake Nokomis (you know, Hiawatha's mom, who had a wigwam "by the shores of Gitche Gumee") and several others. And the forsythia are still in bloom here, so that's a treat, along with the tulips. What a lot to be thankful for indeed.

And something else has happened to brighten my day. I have been accepted as a presenter for the RVing Women National Rally in San Antonio, in October. I will be leading a discussion of A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle! I'm so excited! This is such a great opportunity to meet other women who are already interested in the work, and to help others to awaken to their primary purpose in life, which is, according to Eckhart, simply to awaken, to become one with the collective consciousness of the Universe, so that together we can help to bring about world peace: a New Earth. Perhaps some day I will learn how to embed a few minutes of Eckhart video in a post. Meantime, if you don't know what he looks and sounds like, but you would like to, click here.

Feeling Better Already

Here is today's Peace Quote:

Everything in the universe is connected, everything is osmosis. You cannot separate any part from the whole; interdependence rules the cosmic order.- Taisen Deshimaru

I could easily find a dozen more quotes that support this contention. Can all of these wise ones be wrong?

Peace Be With You, too.

Lost

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but the means by which we arrive at that goal.

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

(As I read this post now, I find some formatting issues that I am unable to resolve. Sorry, you're on your own.)

I have the blues. This is unusual for me and it makes me want to figure out why it's happening so I can make it go away. Is it the rain, and the 45-degree temperature, and the bare Minnesota trees (just when Spring was really showing herself so gloriously in Memphis)?

Rita has left on a family trip to New York City so yesterday I drove her car to all the places I lived from 1991-1997, including a house I owned and lived in with my teen-aged daughter, a huge house that Rita and I shared with 3 other women, and the duplex she and I shared after that, right before we moved to Asheville. It made me sad, and upon examination, all I can come up with to explain the sadness (which even now is bringing tears to my eyes) is:

--I am longing for good times past

--I am regretting bad times past

--I want to return to a time of connectedness with another that felt good

--I remember a time of connectedness with another that felt bad

--I'm lonely

--It's just the weather and I'll feel great as soon as the sun returns

I hear Eckhart telling me that I can stop all of this bad feeling if I stop thinking about it and just breathe. But I don't want to. What is this need to wallow in sadness? It's sick. Or just human, I suppose.

Here's a funny story that happened yesterday, maybe telling it will help me feel better. I drove to Hopkins, a suburb of Minneapolis where I owned a home and where my daughter and I had some really good times. She was in 8th or 9th grade, old enough to be good company, and we used to have dinner at the restaurant connected to a locally-owned grocery store called Lund's. One of my favorite dishes was their Chicken Chili, which has a cream-soup base rather than the usual tomato base. We both liked their popovers, which you could get as a bread choice with any meal.

After driving by my house, I was looking forward to a late lunch at Lund's, and hoping that they still had some of the old menus choices available. I parked my car, and as I approached the restaurant I could tell that it was closed. The sign said "New Hours: Monday-Sunday, 6 a.m. - 2 p.m." It was 3:00. Yet another disappointment to add to my melancholy.

I decided to check out the grocery store for something from the deli, and while I was getting my Death by Chocolate Brownie, the woman who waited on me said the restaurant had had to shorten their hours because of the economy. (I am just realizing as I write this that not getting chicken chili and a popover has been the single most personally identifiable effect of the worldwide economic crisis. Poor me.)

On the way to the checkout, I remembered how much I used to like the wild rice soup with ham made by another local grocery chain and sold frozen, so I asked a passing employee if he could direct me to the Byerly's frozen soups. He seemed a little confused so I repeated my request, "You know, the frozen Byerly's soups?"

"Oh," he said. "I thought you said barley soup."

I had to laugh when I realized, as I followed him to the frozen foods, that it was my North Carolina accent that had confused him. How ironic, since my Memphis brother had chided me not two weeks earlier for using the Minnesota long "o" when saying the word "you."

Okay, that didn't help.

Perhaps this melancholy stems from the same kind of disappointment that I experienced while in Houston: there's so much of this place that I don't remember. It's like I never lived here. (Here come the tears again; this must be it.) What is this about? Fear of change? Fear of forgetfulness? Fear of anonymity? Longing for connection to place and then disappointment when the place doesn't live up to expectations?

I had a dream last night that is typical for me; I've had it for years. I am in a familiar place but when I turn the corner, or enter a building, or look for whatever it is that I know to be in a certain place, it isn't there. The familiar has become totally unfamiliar and I search in vain for whatever it is that I expect to see.

I had expected that being in my old haunts would be a great homecoming experience. Instead, I feel alienated. Like I don't belong anymore. Anywhere. Perhaps these tears just need to come and I need to let them flow. After that, I'm going to let it all go.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a Right Spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy Presence. And take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the Joy of thy Salvation and uphold me with thy Free Spirit. Amen. Or something like that...

Catching Up

Today I finished the post I started on April 10 (see below). Damn but the days do fly by! I had to look at the pictures I've taken to remind myself of what happened on which days. Here's a synopsis in photos:

Big fun around sister Marcia's dining table.

More fun at the Pink Palace Museum where we saw the traveling exhibit The Scoop on Poop. Here we are pretending to be dung (that's a dung beetle above our heads).

My nephew Austin pretending to...well...you know.

At the world-famous Rendezvous Restaurant, #1 in the country for ribs, where they have just recently started hiring white men (still no women) as waiters: southern traditions die hard.

Iowa out the right side of the motorhome.

Iowa out the left side of the motorhome.

This is pretty much what Iowa looks like October thru May. Later there will be corn. Just corn.

Right now I'm in Minneapolis, where I lived 1990-97. I'm sitting in the living room of my former partner, Rita, who is at school, where she still teaches high school English, mainly creative writing. We had a pretty bad breakup in 2000, after 6 1/2 years of struggle, and didn't have any contact at all for about four years, so this reunion has been fraught with nervous anticipation on both sides. Fortunately, we are both wise enough to know, without having to mention it, that it is best not to unpack any of that old baggage, so the visit has been wonderfully pleasant and satsifying for me, and I think for her as well. We are enjoying all the things about each other that we used to enjoy, without any of the rancor. I've missed her more than I would have admitted (although I really did know because she showed up regularly in my dreams).

Today is Rita's birthday, so in honor of the occasion, a birthday poem:

For Rita at Sixty-Five

Girl, you are really old now
Like, Medicare-old
Like, get reduced-price-tickets-old
Like, wise-crone-old
Old enough to know better
Old enough to just sit in the sun
And relax
Take it easy
No excuses required
Girl, you are one fine
Old lady
My heart welcomes you home
Be still, my beating heart.

Fear Not

If you no longer believe what fear tells you, you will live and it will not. - Cheri Huber


The view from my bunk window this morning was like a kaleidoscope, the colors shifting as a strong gusting wind blew the clouds around: now dark, now light, the trees green to yellow to gray, almost black against a bright white sky that also changed to gray with occasional patches of blue. I was mesmerized. The wind was blowing when I went to bed last night around 10:30 and the temperature hovered around 70 degrees. This morning I heard there had been stormy weather all around us, including a very destructive tornado somewhere in Arkansas, just across the Mississippi.

Living in Asheville, NC, has made me rather complacent about bad weather. I can recall only one tornado watch/warning in the 11 years I lived there. We endured some flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan (I think) in 2005: lost power and everything in my fridge; but that's about it for really bad weather. Sure enough, as soon as I ventured east out of the NC mountains toward the coast during this past hurricane season, I had to run back inland when Hanna threatened the coast. Now I'm on the outskirts of "Tornado Alley" and I'm starting to think about what I would do if there were a watch alert.

It's good to have a plan, I suppose, but I refuse to worry about something I can't control, just as I don't worry about living alone in a camper. A friend whom I will be visiting in Rochester, MN, as I make my way to Minneapolis next week called today to confirm my arrival date and, as many friends have before her, she told me how brave I am to travel alone. Then I opened the Peace Quote for today, found the opening quote above and decided that the muse wants me to talk about fear today. But Cheri Huber says it all and so I'll just shut up now.

What Day Is It?

Is it Day 11? Day 12? Yesterday I rolled out of bed at 5:15 to accompany my sister Marcia as a volunteer for The Food Bank of Memphis. We drove to Amory, Mississippi, to interview 12 people at a food pantry as part of the Hunger in America survey. We were home by 1 p.m. but I was a slug the rest of the day: watched movies, etc.

Today we drove to Oxford, MS, to do the same. But instead of vegging out when we got home, I put on my walking shoes and took Trixie and myself for a walk. It was so beautiful I just had to share it with you. I hope that wherever you are, it is this beautiful, and that you are really looking at it, and thinking of nothing at all. I am. And I'm hooked into the collective conscousness of the Universe. Peace.

Day Nine?

Oh yes, Day 9 of 37. It went, never to be seen again. And I went to hear my sister and the Lindenwood Christian Church choir (one of the best in the city) sing Handel, always a favorite of mine. Then we had a lovely lunch with a friend and attended a play, Moonlight and Magnolias, a comedy. I fixed one of my favorite meals, from the old Weight Watchers Cookbook: Thai Marinated Steak (for my meat-eating brother-in-law), with a marinade made up of lime juice, cilantro, jalapeno, green onion, soy sauce and garlic--yum.



I did "not doing" in a lovely sanctuary surrounded by colorful stained glass and people who, like me, were there to find their own inner peace. It was Palm Sunday and the children's choir carried palm fronds and made me cry (as usual when I see children singing).

As I participated in the service I tried to focus on the Jesus I know, who is a different person than the one I knew as a child and as a young adult, a different one from the Jesus the minister talked about. I took the bread and wine that was offered, to be polite, but I didn't think of it as the body and blood. I thought of what Gandhi said: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

I also thought of what Eckhart says of Jesus: "Jesus on the cross said it all when He says, 'Forgive them for they know not what they do.' Which means they are unconscious. So when you realize that you naturally forgive." That is what I did yesterday morning, while music swelled and the prayers went up.

What I Saw When I Was Still

Today I sat on the deck again and surveyed my sister Marcia's backyard. When I had been there for about 15 minutes, a Bluejay flew down carrying something in his mouth, which he laid in the grass. Then he poked around a bit and I thought perhaps he had decided that the thing he had brought was not what he really wanted and he hoped to find something more appealing in our yard. He picked up a fallen leaf, put it down and gave it a tap. Next he picked up something else, which I took for the preferred thing he had been looking for, put that down, then picked up another fallen leaf, put that down and gave it a tap, tap. Then he flew away over the fence.

It was then that I realized that the Bluejay might have used the leaf to cover something, perhaps two things, so I got up to investigate. Sure enough, under one leaf I discovered a morsel of dry dog food, possibly taken from the dog next door. But even more interesting, under another leaf was a piece of wood about one inch long and one-quarter inch wide (probably a piece of mulch), and under that was another bit of kibble!

Well, of course, I ran to get the camera. See what happens when you stay still outside for a few minutes? It was so awesome! I felt like one of those people you see on National Geographic channel who discover that animals in the wild do things you never thought they would do! Wow!

If you are capable of living deeply one moment of your life, you can learn to live the same way all the other moments of your life. - Thich Nhat Hanh

This is my new mantra. Peace.

Day Three, Day Seven, Whatever

I don't know what number to assign to this day of the Do Nothing Challenge but it's not important. What I have learned is that taking the time to "become one with all that is" has helped me reconnect with the self that I was becoming before I found myself involved in a couple of situations that made that becoming more challenging. Those two situations are visiting an ex-lover and visiting my family.

Are there people in your life whom you have known so long, or so intimately, that they may have expectations about how you will behave based on past knowledge and experience? Does the "family dynamic" take over when you are together for holidays or other gatherings? I am the oldest of five children. Do you think my siblings see me in a particular way based on 50 years of experience, without regard for, or knowledge of, the work I have done to become the person I am today? It can be frustrating, but of course, it's not all their fault: I easily fall into those old patterns if I'm not constantly vigilant.

The same thing happened when I visited my friend Mary Helen in Houston a couple weeks ago. We dated for one year, around 1986-87. During the two weeks I spent at her house recently I felt the pull of our old relationship dynamic, which can be summed up as, "Just let me tell you how to run your life and we'll both be much happier." (Guess who had the control issues?)

So this challenge has come at an opportune time in my journey. I need a daily reminder that being Here and Now is the only place to be, and that the "I Am" that Eckhart talks about is not anyone's sister or mother or partner, but pure ego-less consciousness: One With All That Is. Peace.

Pretend You're a Dog

Okay, it's onward in the 37 Days Do Nothing Challenge and I'm finally off to a great start. Turns out I can't see the big magnolia from the sleeping side window of the motorhome, but the tree I can see is even better because it's a deciduous tree of some kind and it has that green on it. I had a grand time just looking at it, and watching the neighbor kiss her husband good-bye as he left in the car (so sweet), and enjoying the birds, and catching the fleeting shadow of a low-flying FedEx plane (imagining it was a chicken hawk and I was the chicken).

A couple of days ago I spent some quality Do Nothing time on the back deck with the dogs and cat. There is no better model for the Do Nothing life than a dog or cat. They don't hold a grudge because you stayed in the motorhome all day and didn't come in to play (poor Trixie cries and cries. Maybe I'll try bringing her out here), and they don't worry about whether or not you'll take them for a walk tomorrow. They live in the NOW, right where I want to be. Just another part of all that is.