August 31, 2011 haiku

onions piled high

tomato sauce everywhere

kitchen in August

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a garden of ragweed

fallen tree in the front yard

notice on the door

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gray sky southeast breeze

a few raindrops in the night

Michigan’s Irene

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Monday closed Wednesday

sorry for inconvenience

nobody at work

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 trees on sand dunes slide
 backward toward the setting sun
 end of summer swim

The thin veil of August

While it is still August I must say something about the thin veil, the permeable membrane.

I had not been thinking about it this year so much because my life is very much in the everyday ordinary run of the mill category right now, much more practical than mystic. I am not dreaming. No miracles in sight. Not much evidence of Sprit at work or at play in my neighborhood. And I was not feeling much need for any of that, or so I thought, until I noticed that I have been reading and watching movies incessantly, which, besides being a sign that I have too much time on my hands (what a sinful admission that is in our workaholic culture), is also a sign that I am trying to fill a void, or trying to refuse something.

I just now lay awake thinking about all this reading and movie watching, having spent a Sunday afternoon and evening on it, and felt old, old guilt but something else, too, a longing. Something stirred by the reading I have been doing. First a wonderful memoir called One Day I Will Write aboutThis Place by the Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina. About an incessant reader who finally finds that he really wants to write and writing is the only thing that saves him from his inner void, his chaos. I finished that this afternoon, watched a movie and some bad TV and then started reading an essay by the poet Jane Hirshfield on Basho, the 17^th century Japanese poet who turned haiku from a party game into an art form.

She starts with a quote from Basho’s memoir and here’s the thing. In both this quote and the Kenyan writer’s description of his own shy confusion about the world which he wards off by devouring stories, I felt I was reading about myself:

In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices, there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit, for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another.

And here is the other thing about this passage. He calls this spirit of his “a thin drapery,” which is almost exactly the term I have applied to this time of the year since my mother’s death on August 3, 1989. And events thereafter, in this time period. This is a time when my soul has experienced permeability, when the other world seeps through in events and dreams, when people close to me die and are born and mysteries abound. A time when the veil is thin.

Not this year, nothing like that has happened, it’s been all practical and no mystic until . . . until the reading I am doing to fill the void pierced the thin veil and I was moved, again, to write.

How to waste time productively

For all of us who work at home and have to be self-starting every single day but some days have little to show.

1.     Make a to-do list for the day. Rank the tasks by order of difficulty.

2.     Start with the most difficult task. Try to do it. Fail. Set it aside.

3.     Have a tiny snack to reward yourself for trying.

4.     Go back to the list. Read it over, forwards and backwards. Set it aside.

5.     Check email. Maybe God will send you help via email, you never know.

6.     Read all the listserv mail. Follow the links. Follow more links such as what the Bachelorette is up to or the latest in Nordic cuisine. Follow links until you are sick of following links.

7.     Look at the list for anything that requires a modicum of physical activity. If there’s nothing there, invent something like washing your bike shorts out by hand. Better yet, do a load of laundry and hang it all out to dry, arranged by color or type of clothing.

8.     Eat lunch because it’s probably time. Cook something nutritious and tasty that takes a bit of time and clears out refrigerator space so you don’t have to feel guilty about eating before you are really hungry. How about: fried rice using leftover rice, bits of Sunday’s Greek restaurant chicken, and all the CSA vegetables you can stuff into it. Feed anyone else in the house whom you can impress with your care and creativity. 

9.     Go back to the list. Choose the easiest thing on it. Do that.

10. Reward yourself for doing anything at all on a slow day. Call a friend and chat about something fun.

11. Get the mail. Read a really interesting article in a magazine.

12. Read something you wrote yesterday that was really good. Pat yourself on the back.

13. Go back to the list. Decide when you might be able to do the things you clearly will not get done today.

14. Plan dinner. Get it started.

15. Go out for some real exercise.

16. Eat a really good dinner that uses at least three CSA fruits and vegetables and is pretty. Have a glass of red wine with it.

17. Watch a movie or read until you’re ready to drop.

18. Get up the next morning. Drink your tea or coffee. Go back to the most difficult thing on the list. Do it. (What was so hard about it, anyhow?)

Decision fatigue

I am mulling over my options this morning. Should I go for an early bike ride? Should I, instead, pour my morning energy into a work task? And if so, which one: the foundation report or the cumulative impacts pattern analysis? Or, since all of those options require more willpower than I can muster right now, should I instead blog about the NY Times Magazine article I read a couple of days ago, Do you suffer from decision fatigue?

And thus, in the past 30 minutes, as I have eaten my cereal with fresh peaches and drunk my 3 cups of tea with soymilk, I have already used up a lot of mental energy thinking about these things and then deciding. Bike ride: later. Blog: now. Which work task first? Ah well, push that decision off for a few minutes.

Good thing I didn’t have to decide what to eat for breakfast or I would have used up even more mental energy. Routines like a regular breakfast menu are ways to conserve mental energy because you don’t have to think about them. Besides, breakfast is important for mental energy in another way: it feeds the brain a surge of glucose so you can carry on with the normal decision requirements of the day.

According to the article, scientists are discovering that mental energy is not a metaphor. It is real, that is, a physiological phenomenon that can be measured. Huh. Coulda told them that. When you’re tired you know your brain is tired, too. Can’t think straight, can’t make good decisions, and heaven knows, willpower is down the drain.

Willpower, in fact, is how these scientists are measuring mental energy. What is your biggest temptation? For me, food.  I know that I snack when I’m tired.  I have no willpower about resisting cheese and crackers in the evening. Snacking is also hard to avoid after I’ve done a difficult piece of mental work. However, it’s not really about physical fatigue because exercise can leave me pooped out but I don’t shovel popcorn into my mouth afterward.

Well they now know why that is. For a long time researchers didn’t believe in the phenomenon of mental energy or its inverse, mental fatigue, because they observed that the level of brain activity stayed pretty constant no matter what your physical state or what kind of mental work you were doing. However, when they looked more closely at what parts of the brain were working hardest, as measured by glucose uptake, they saw what was happening.

When you spend too much time making decisions (i.e. carrying on almost any kind of mental activity), after a while the glucose flow to those areas runs down and instead the glucose goes to the parts of the brain that govern survival: those primitive parts that yell, “I want food now!” “I feel bad! Make me feel better now!”

What kind of decisions wear you down? Any kind, apparently. Including the zillion little decisions involved in shopping for groceries in a big supermarket (I coulda told them that, too). Or deciding on the accoutrements for your new computer. Or what cable channel to watch. Or which blog to read.

The lesson is to make the important decisions and do willpower-requiring tasks when you have plenty of energy and set up routines to cut down on the number of decisions you have to make in a given day. Coulda told them that, too.

On being Number Two

I watched the movie The Social Network the other night and found it so infuriating that I almost gave up my Facebook membership. Then, because I thought it was a really good movie, I watched it again and didn’t mind it so much because I understood something. The movie had touched a nerve with me.

I had identified with one of the losers in the movie, Eduardo, Mark Zuckerberg’s second in command. Eduardo was the co-founder of Facebook who was totally eclipsed and eventually thrown over by his genius friend. I was outraged at the callousness of this, at Mark the callow nerd who didn’t understand a thing about loyalty.

The thing is, Eduardo was smart but Mark was a genius. Eduardo worked hard but Mark’s imagination outran both of them and created something way beyond what diligence alone could accomplish. The enterprise got very big, very fast, in ways Eduardo couldn’t fathom. Eduardo got left behind.

I happen to work with a genius who has also been my friend for nearly 30 years. She has not thrown me over, our enterprise has not left me behind, and I always get credit for what I do. But I understand the Eduardos of this world.

I know what it’s like to be Number Two. I know what it’s like to be part of the support network for someone else’s ideas, creativity, and intelligence. I know what it’s like to work in someone else’s shadow. In fact, I believe this represents a good portion of my gifts, my own brand of creativity—that I am the ultimate team player and prefer not to be the center of attention. But every now and then I question my longstanding habits and preferences, which seem to place me firmly and usually comfortably in the Number Two position.

My fury at the movie was a sign of recurring discomfort. I am aware that Number Two signifies “loser” in our culture. Ever hear sports fans chant, “We’re Number Two”? Number Twos are overshadowed. We are constantly in the presence of someone who is smarter, more beautiful, more creative, or more famous than we are and the comparisons are inevitable. We make the comparisons ourselves, other people make them, and, most insidiously, we imagine other people making them. And, in the worst cases, Number Twos get shafted and left behind, like Eduardo was.

Not all cultures are as obsessed as Americans are about being Number One. My genius friend once got us a whole day of conversation with the genius psychologist James Hillman in which he claimed, among much else, that one of the five principles of the Sikh religion is to always come in second. (I have not seen it put this way elsewhere but it sounds good. One tends to accept what geniuses say.) Hillman was suggesting that cheerful Number Twoness could put us in a much better relationship with the Earth.

The biggest error of Number Twos is to depend on the Number Ones for affirmation and identity—hence the fear of getting left behind. Eduardo sued Mark and got his name restored as Facebook co-founder. But Mark’s genius is still the sine qua non of Facebook.

Perhaps an even bigger Number Two error is to forget our own brand of genius, which is that we are capable of setting ego aside in order to make other people’s genius shine bright and for good. When we think too much about our Number Two status we are right smack back in ego territory. We’ll lose there, every time.

Biker chick

Years ago, in my first season of real biking, I had a favorite T-shirt: “Biker chick,” it said, over a picture of a fuzzy yellow chick perched on a bicycle seat. That’s me, an unathletic softie, an unlikely cyclist.

And yet I am training for a century ride just over 5 weeks from now. No guarantees and no promises but I am on schedule. It isn’t easy what with one thing and another. First it’s the weather, all those thunderstorms then heat, then wind. Then it’s my knees. My right knee, to be specific, and my right hip. 

My right leg seems weaker than my left leg. My left leg says what’s the problem? It is fine and sturdy and never aches. My left leg is developing a biker bulge in the muscles above the knee. It’s bigger than the bulge on my right leg. I am trying to encourage the right leg to do its share and not back off for fear of hurting and it is working. My right leg can now go 20 miles without aching. But it’s still not equal to the left. On Monday’s ride a little ache snuck in at a new place, just under the right kneecap. I talked my hamstrings into doing more of the work and it helped. But a day later the hamstrings were complaining. Whatever.

The legs are doing pretty well, though. They are not yet hundred-mile legs but they are 40 milers and this weekend they will be 45 milers and up and up.

It’s the tush that’s giving me fits. This is not a matter to be discussed in mixed company so I will not go into details but I don’t suppose it requires much imagination. The thing is, the tush problems are worse this season than they have been in the past so I’ve had to investigate new measures. Like chamois cream. The name of this substance dates from the days when bike shorts had chamois crotches that you had to soften up. Now you just soften yourself up with products called Assos or UdderlysMOOth or Beljum Budder. More than you need to know? OK. (Oh, here’s one. Century Riding Cream. Rub it on and magically go 100 miles?)

Another problem is boredom. Short rides take you over the same territory you’ve ridden countless times. You have to be content with small pleasures and observations. I see the soybeans are starting to turn colors. My, the corn is tall and smells like sex. On one recent ride we saw two tall birds, a heron and a sandhill crane. That was truly exciting.

Long rides may get you into new territory, with lunch in the middle, but they are lo-o-ng. Especially after lunch.

Yesterday, aching in various places and contemplating yet another 15-mile circuit under the toll road and past the hog farm, golf course, and goose bog, I decided there was only one thing to do.

It was time to buy new clothes.

I went to the friendly bike shop in Niles, the place where the guys had complimented me on my trusty, rusty little hybrid Bianchi when I took it for servicing rather than trying to sell me a new one. They told me she was a “bike-shop quality bike.” They tuned her up and made her sing, at least on the level stretches. I huff and puff up the hills in her low gears.

This time I headed for the small rack of women’s biking shorts. I bought the most expensive pair I could find. Price = padding. And then I treated myself to a jersey with flowers on it and didn’t even look at the price.

And then I went out on that 15-mile ride, smiling all the way. Even my tush was smiling. Bike short technology has improved a lot in recent years.

Death (and resurrection) on the front porch

This is another one you don’t want to read if you’re squeamish.

I am sitting on the porch swing, drinking a cup of tea and eating a bowl of cereal with blueberries, just enough to rev me up for a bike ride. Short today, 15 miles. Every long ride feels like the maximum I can do but they are getting longer. Last Saturday it was 36. Tomorrow is supposed to be at least 40. The forecast is for possible thundershowers Saturday and Sunday. Monday looks fine, high of 77. Could I persuade Vic to go with me on a long ride on Monday instead of the weekend?

I am thinking of this and savoring the blueberries when I see movement on the floor under the wooden bench a few feet away. What looks like a dead leaf is moving. I look closer and see that the leaf is attached to a spider thread and a spider is pulling on the thread, causing the leaf to move.

I am not opposed to spiders. I clear away the cobwebs in the house now and then but I appreciate the place of spiders in the ecosystem, even the ecosystem of this house. They keep down the population of flying and crawling insects. The previous owner of this house told us at the closing that the house belonged to the woods. This is true. The woods and all its creatures claim it. We try to carve out our living space but sometimes it seems easier to let the woods take over. It has taken over most of what used to be a lawn. Several days ago I gave up trying to feed hummingbirds because the raccoons were emptying the juice every night. We’d take the feeders in sometimes but usually we’d forget. Lots of sugar has gone into those young raccoons this summer. The basement, well, we won’t talk about the basement and centipedes.

A few minutes pass and I glance at the spider operation again. The “leaf” has moved. It is no longer on the floor but suspended halfway between the bench seat and the floor. And it is not a leaf. It looks like a miniature carcass of some kind, hung upside down like they hang beef in a meat locker. It is . . . a tiny tree frog. Pale, transparent, dead.

As I watch, horrified and fascinated, the spider continues its work. Hoists. Pauses now and then to dip into the frog’s left leg and, I suppose, suck. A great treasure. A bit much for the spider but what do you do when a bonanza comes your way?

Somehow I hope the frog was already dead when the spider found it. Somehow I suspect it wasn’t.

The process is yucky. Sad. And in its way, beautiful. The spider has cast a tent of threads around its prey. The sun glints on the thread.

What will I do when Hazel arrives in a few hours? At 12 months, she is learning to walk. The porch is prime practice area for her. She also has a keen eye for tiny objects and floor dirt. She will see the dead centipedes on the floor. She will discover the frog hanging under the bench and see it dance, as it is doing now because the spider is tugging again, trying to wind it up in a package and failing, because it is too heavy.

I will leave the operation in place. Hazel will begin to learn about death, right here on Grandma’s front porch. . . .

Wait! Wait! I have posted this but I must change the ending. The spider tugs once too often and the frog escapes! and hops away. Not dead. I open the door and guide it outside. No more spiders for this frog today.