Playing With Blocks

My friend Patti Digh (of the 37 Days blog and the book about what you would do if you knew you only had 37 days to live...I may have mentioned her once or twice) co-hosted a free telecoaching session the other evening entitled "Playing With Blocks." It was about the things that block us from doing the "important things," the life goals that we set for ourselves that are the most meaningful, the things we tend to put off while we are taking care of business. We all have them: the important things and the blocks.

I tried to convince myself that I didn't have to worry about the blocks anymore, now that I'm retired and have all the time I need to accomplish those "important things." I mean, it's just a matter of having enough time, isn't it? You can't do great things if you have a job, or a young family, or a sick dog, or "The Office" is on, or...well, you know. Lucky me, I have the time, no dog and no TV. Problem solved, right?

The blocks fall into three main categories:
1) False comparisons with Others
2) False expectations of Self
3) False investment in "The Story"

I didn't join the teleconference (and I haven't listened to the tape yet) but I know what those three things mean without having heard a word. You do, too, if you have an important thing that you can't seem to get around to doing.

Here's what happened to me today. I read in The Writer's Almanac:
It's the birthday of poet and novelist Vikram Seth, (books by this author) born in Calcutta, India (1952). Seth grew up in India, went to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and moved out to Northern California to study economics in graduate school. One day got fed up of entering numbers into a computer database. He walked into a bookstore and up to the poetry section. He pulled off the shelf Pushkin's novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. Seth was so impressed and obsessed with the book that he decided to quit working on his master's thesis for a while and write his own novel in verse.

He never finished his graduate school economics project, but he did write that novel in verse, published in 1986 as The Golden Gate. Seth's native language is Hindi. He writes in English, and he's fluent in Mandarin and Urdu, Pakistan's national language. He's also studied Welsh, German, and French. He plays the cello and the Indian flute, and he sings German lieder. His most recent book is a work of nonfiction, Two Lives (2005), a love story about his Indian great uncle and German Jewish great aunt.

Now, I never said I wanted to be a great poet, but if I wanted to, let's say, write a novel in verse, reading this would have stopped me cold (see Block #1 above). What's worse is having a friend who wrote a terrific book and is coming out with a new one next year, and who is now teaching a class on how not to get blocked. I'm so bummed.

On to Block #2. If one wanted to, oh, I don't know, commit to writing a poem every day, but one didn't feel like writing a poem on Saturday, one might decide that one was no better than a slug, and therefore, not even try to write a poem on Sunday, or Monday, and then just give it up altogether.

I'm not even going to get into Block #3 because that is a story I'm sure you don't want to hear.

So let's just look at pictures of naked women, shall we? Greg and I went to the Seattle Summer Solstice Parade today and I took about a dozen pictures of painted naked people on bicycles. Some of them are even men. Enjoy.







At least these young ladies remembered to wear their helmets.

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...