One of the best sites on the internet is On Being with Krista Tippet--in which she interviews a wide variety of people, including the Dalai Lama, musicians, scholars, writers (including Mary Oliver) and practitioners of various faith traditions. These interviews are often what I listen to at night before bed.
There are also great blog entries on this site, including this one by Omid Safi: "The Disease of Being Busy." He writes about the busy-ness of American families, in which even children are so scheduled that there is little time to just be still--and even a little bored. Americans of all ages, he says, are so attached to our devices that we are often trying to do more than one thing at a time, all the time. And he writes about the "avalanche of emails" that always make him feel like he can't keep up.
Here is a snippet of the essay:
In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal?
What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, “How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?” When I ask, “How are you?” that is really what I want to know.
I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch. Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something about your heart and your soul.
Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.
Monday, March 16, 2015
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Subjunctives
On Feb 16, I heard Mike’s voice on the phone saying, “Oh shit!” then static for a full five minutes. I called his name over and over on the phone. Nothing. I had driven 1100 miles; we were a mile apart when his truck spun in the black ice and stopped just a few feet from a retaining wall.
When his truck finally pulled into the parking lot where I was calling his name into the phone, he got out, walked crookedly to my car, and said, “I think I just had a wreck.” His face was bruised and lumpy, he seemed disoriented, his truck was dented all over, and his exhaust pipe was dragging the ground. He had a headache and couldn't remember what happened--but when we retraced it a few days later, it was amazing that he had survived.
In the next hours, he calculated the cost of repairs (extensive) and refused to go to the doctor insisting that he'd be okay. In those same hours, I thought of all the different moves I might have made that day that could have prevented this disaster. "I should have stopped and spent the night and waited until daylight to come," I said. "I shouldn't have come." And: "Imagine what could have happened! You could be dead!"
Today I heard an interesting segment on Ted Talks (NPR) about the subjunctive mood in English grammar, verbs like "should have" or "would have." Not all languages have this. Because we do, we can talk about what might have happened, could have happened. We can regret what we did and we can imagine what we could do, might do, in the future.
Because of the subjunctive mood, we can muse about other possible outcomes: what would have happened if I'd made a different choice; what could have happened if his truck had gone ten more feet and hit the guardrail and gone into the deep ravine; what we might do differently next time.
But Mike--perpetually optimistic--refuses to "play the what if game." He had driven those twenty miles to keep me from having an accident, and the black ice played its trick on his truck instead of Little Blue. He considers us lucky. Period.
When his truck finally pulled into the parking lot where I was calling his name into the phone, he got out, walked crookedly to my car, and said, “I think I just had a wreck.” His face was bruised and lumpy, he seemed disoriented, his truck was dented all over, and his exhaust pipe was dragging the ground. He had a headache and couldn't remember what happened--but when we retraced it a few days later, it was amazing that he had survived.
In the next hours, he calculated the cost of repairs (extensive) and refused to go to the doctor insisting that he'd be okay. In those same hours, I thought of all the different moves I might have made that day that could have prevented this disaster. "I should have stopped and spent the night and waited until daylight to come," I said. "I shouldn't have come." And: "Imagine what could have happened! You could be dead!"
Today I heard an interesting segment on Ted Talks (NPR) about the subjunctive mood in English grammar, verbs like "should have" or "would have." Not all languages have this. Because we do, we can talk about what might have happened, could have happened. We can regret what we did and we can imagine what we could do, might do, in the future.
Because of the subjunctive mood, we can muse about other possible outcomes: what would have happened if I'd made a different choice; what could have happened if his truck had gone ten more feet and hit the guardrail and gone into the deep ravine; what we might do differently next time.
But Mike--perpetually optimistic--refuses to "play the what if game." He had driven those twenty miles to keep me from having an accident, and the black ice played its trick on his truck instead of Little Blue. He considers us lucky. Period.
Writing a blog
Dear Friends,
I often think: how presumptuous it is of me to write a blog, how strange to assume that anyone would want to read my random acts of pondering. And yet I keep doing it, for over and year and a half, and it's become my daily meditation/rant/reporting/writing practice/therapy/social media alternative.
I so appreciate the emails from those of you who read it and respond from time to time, and I'm going to keep doing it--even though the title "Traveling Solo" is and has always been a bit of a misnomer.
In the sense that life itself is a journey, I'm always traveling. But "solo" I'm not--and don't want to be except for rare times when I need to refresh myself in solitude for a day or two. I love the connections with all of you who tell me you're reading along, and I so enjoy the conversations that ensue.
Mike's response to my post on rules was hilarious and wonderful--but I can't post it because some of his words might break the language blog rules. I will, however, share the last few sentences, about his liking my writing:
"It reminds me of when my dad would ask my mom to play the piano for him. She knew what he liked. Every time he would tell her how beautiful it was, just like it was the first time he heard it. He did the same thing for 30 years ...."
Carlene's response made me laugh:
"For some reason I had enough time this morning to read my Sunday School lesson when it occurred to me you might have posted a new blog! Delightful--both! More intriguing than Zephaniah! Now we will see if the preacher has something interesting to say...."
My writing has never before been compared to Zephaniah. I don't know who Zephaniah is. But I'm taking it as a compliment and going with it!
Thank you to all of you who are my traveling companions on these pages.
Linda
I often think: how presumptuous it is of me to write a blog, how strange to assume that anyone would want to read my random acts of pondering. And yet I keep doing it, for over and year and a half, and it's become my daily meditation/rant/reporting/writing practice/therapy/social media alternative.
I so appreciate the emails from those of you who read it and respond from time to time, and I'm going to keep doing it--even though the title "Traveling Solo" is and has always been a bit of a misnomer.
In the sense that life itself is a journey, I'm always traveling. But "solo" I'm not--and don't want to be except for rare times when I need to refresh myself in solitude for a day or two. I love the connections with all of you who tell me you're reading along, and I so enjoy the conversations that ensue.
Mike's response to my post on rules was hilarious and wonderful--but I can't post it because some of his words might break the language blog rules. I will, however, share the last few sentences, about his liking my writing:
"It reminds me of when my dad would ask my mom to play the piano for him. She knew what he liked. Every time he would tell her how beautiful it was, just like it was the first time he heard it. He did the same thing for 30 years ...."
Carlene's response made me laugh:
"For some reason I had enough time this morning to read my Sunday School lesson when it occurred to me you might have posted a new blog! Delightful--both! More intriguing than Zephaniah! Now we will see if the preacher has something interesting to say...."
My writing has never before been compared to Zephaniah. I don't know who Zephaniah is. But I'm taking it as a compliment and going with it!
Thank you to all of you who are my traveling companions on these pages.
Linda
Rules
I never realized how attached to rules I am--until meeting a true iconoclast in Mike. His motto: "No rules, Baby!"
As an English teacher, I wanted to instill a love for writing in my students--but the Powers That Be insisted on repeated tests for grammar proficiency. I happen to like grammar, and knew it inside out because of diagramming sentences in seventh grade.
But in public education, I often felt strait-jacketed by the number of tests we had to give. Year after year, in every grade, we were required to spend a portion of every class drilling students on rules of grammar--specifically targeted for the upcoming standardized tests.
When I was teaching college English, I spent my weekends grading papers. I circled misspelled words, dangling modifiers, and comma splices, reminding them over and over of the rules they were intent on ignoring: Use objective case here; avoid ending sentences with prepositions; commas go inside quotation marks....
Even in my quasi-hippie days, I followed certain rules for eating. First it was Adele Davis' system of eating tons of protein and no carbs; then it was macrobiotics--brown rice and seaweed and steamed vegetables, no meat. We were true believers--until we weren't anymore.
Once, during our macrobiotic/vegetarian years, I visited a friend's house and had a baloney sandwich on white bread and it was a moment of heaven. From time to time, I'd sneakily visit a burger barn with my children and let them have a taste of meat, or my daughter and I would buy a whole box of Brach's chocolate-covered peanuts and eat them in the car.
Whenever (by force of habit or history) I ask Mike what I "should" do, he reminds me, "No rules, Baby. Do whatever you like."
With the exception of not wearing seat belts unless he feels like it, Mike is a law-abiding guy. He lives his life by principles, not rules. If he hears of cruelty to children or animals, he's enraged. I told him about a skinny, hungry, abandoned cat in my neighborhood and he's planning to catch, feed, and worm the cat on his next trip here. He's indignant that someone would move away and leave a cat behind to fend for himself.
With Mike, I keep coming up against "rules" that I live by without questioning where they came from. Some are so firmly installed in my psyche that I can still hear the voice in my head of the person who put them there--or the punishment for breaking them.
I remember a story in which a Southern novice cook advised all her friends to cut off the ends of the ham before cooking it.
When her friends asked why, she said, "I don't know. You just do it." Soon, all her friends were cutting off the ends of their hams.
Finally, she asked her mother, "Why do we always cut off the ends of the ham?"
"Because," her mother said, "My pan was too small to cook a full-sized ham."
Sometimes we doggedly follow rules that are unattached to logic--or because they are passed down from one generation to another long after anyone remembers why. Sometimes the rules that fit us like winter coats as children are threadbare and need to go the way of all outgrown garments.
Albert Camus said, "Integrity has no need of rules."
Jim Morison said, "The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses that it can hardly move."
George Bernard Shaw wrote, "The golden rule is that there are no golden rules."
And Katharine Hepburn said, "If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun."
As an English teacher, I wanted to instill a love for writing in my students--but the Powers That Be insisted on repeated tests for grammar proficiency. I happen to like grammar, and knew it inside out because of diagramming sentences in seventh grade.
But in public education, I often felt strait-jacketed by the number of tests we had to give. Year after year, in every grade, we were required to spend a portion of every class drilling students on rules of grammar--specifically targeted for the upcoming standardized tests.
When I was teaching college English, I spent my weekends grading papers. I circled misspelled words, dangling modifiers, and comma splices, reminding them over and over of the rules they were intent on ignoring: Use objective case here; avoid ending sentences with prepositions; commas go inside quotation marks....
Even in my quasi-hippie days, I followed certain rules for eating. First it was Adele Davis' system of eating tons of protein and no carbs; then it was macrobiotics--brown rice and seaweed and steamed vegetables, no meat. We were true believers--until we weren't anymore.
Once, during our macrobiotic/vegetarian years, I visited a friend's house and had a baloney sandwich on white bread and it was a moment of heaven. From time to time, I'd sneakily visit a burger barn with my children and let them have a taste of meat, or my daughter and I would buy a whole box of Brach's chocolate-covered peanuts and eat them in the car.
Whenever (by force of habit or history) I ask Mike what I "should" do, he reminds me, "No rules, Baby. Do whatever you like."
With the exception of not wearing seat belts unless he feels like it, Mike is a law-abiding guy. He lives his life by principles, not rules. If he hears of cruelty to children or animals, he's enraged. I told him about a skinny, hungry, abandoned cat in my neighborhood and he's planning to catch, feed, and worm the cat on his next trip here. He's indignant that someone would move away and leave a cat behind to fend for himself.
With Mike, I keep coming up against "rules" that I live by without questioning where they came from. Some are so firmly installed in my psyche that I can still hear the voice in my head of the person who put them there--or the punishment for breaking them.
I remember a story in which a Southern novice cook advised all her friends to cut off the ends of the ham before cooking it.
When her friends asked why, she said, "I don't know. You just do it." Soon, all her friends were cutting off the ends of their hams.
Finally, she asked her mother, "Why do we always cut off the ends of the ham?"
"Because," her mother said, "My pan was too small to cook a full-sized ham."
Sometimes we doggedly follow rules that are unattached to logic--or because they are passed down from one generation to another long after anyone remembers why. Sometimes the rules that fit us like winter coats as children are threadbare and need to go the way of all outgrown garments.
Albert Camus said, "Integrity has no need of rules."
Jim Morison said, "The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses that it can hardly move."
George Bernard Shaw wrote, "The golden rule is that there are no golden rules."
And Katharine Hepburn said, "If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun."
Saturday, March 14, 2015
The distance between fantasies and reality
Once, I was sitting in an airport feeling particularly frumpy when I spotted a woman gliding across the terminal, freshly coifed and fashionably dressed, effortlessly pulling a black and white flowered suitcase. Everything went together so beautifully that I resolved that moment to be a more put-together traveler.
I ordered a black and white flowered suitcase, and I imagined myself transformed from frumpy to fashionable for all future trips.
I thought of that fantasy when Carlene and I were walking down the hall of a Comfort Inn, she with her four bags, one a leftover birthday gift bag, I with my three mismatched and unzipped ones. We looked a bit like traveling clowns.
To keep the trip into the motel room light, we left the large suitcases in the car and took in just what we needed: computer, iPad, magazines, toiletries, and a fresh set of clothes for the next day. It works fine except that it is far from my fantasy of emerging from car or plane all zipped up and glamorous.
When I was younger, I imagined myself as a sleek older woman who wore only white. I would wear my hair in a neat, long braid and silver jewelry would adorn my simple chic attire. My heels would click on marble floors. Since I would do yoga daily, I'd walk with ease and flexibility.
I imagined myself sitting in a comfy chair at home reading magazines, people dropping by, serving something hot from the oven--as I would always have good food in the oven just in case. Maybe I'd stop writing or quilting and sit down and visit all afternoon.
In fact, I prefer guests to call before coming so that I can scoop up the messes around the house. I'm not much of a drop in guest or receiver of drop ins.
I may wear the same jeans two or three days in a row. Since I tend to eat in the car on trips, an all-white wardrobe would be hugely impractical, and my attempt to pull it off would expose peanut butter stains and drips from Diet Cokes.
The distance between fantasies and reality often spans more miles than the miles it takes to get from one place to another. But on my next trip, I'm going to try to get it right!
I ordered a black and white flowered suitcase, and I imagined myself transformed from frumpy to fashionable for all future trips.
I thought of that fantasy when Carlene and I were walking down the hall of a Comfort Inn, she with her four bags, one a leftover birthday gift bag, I with my three mismatched and unzipped ones. We looked a bit like traveling clowns.
To keep the trip into the motel room light, we left the large suitcases in the car and took in just what we needed: computer, iPad, magazines, toiletries, and a fresh set of clothes for the next day. It works fine except that it is far from my fantasy of emerging from car or plane all zipped up and glamorous.
When I was younger, I imagined myself as a sleek older woman who wore only white. I would wear my hair in a neat, long braid and silver jewelry would adorn my simple chic attire. My heels would click on marble floors. Since I would do yoga daily, I'd walk with ease and flexibility.
I imagined myself sitting in a comfy chair at home reading magazines, people dropping by, serving something hot from the oven--as I would always have good food in the oven just in case. Maybe I'd stop writing or quilting and sit down and visit all afternoon.
In fact, I prefer guests to call before coming so that I can scoop up the messes around the house. I'm not much of a drop in guest or receiver of drop ins.
I may wear the same jeans two or three days in a row. Since I tend to eat in the car on trips, an all-white wardrobe would be hugely impractical, and my attempt to pull it off would expose peanut butter stains and drips from Diet Cokes.
The distance between fantasies and reality often spans more miles than the miles it takes to get from one place to another. But on my next trip, I'm going to try to get it right!
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Capping off our visit at Cappy's
Carlene has to head back to Georgia early early in the morning, so we capped off our visit by having crab cakes at Cappy's.
After all our gardening, Carlene had a rare urge to take pictures, so here they are:
After all our gardening, Carlene had a rare urge to take pictures, so here they are:
 |
| Red and green in the yard |
 |
| And here she is--on her way to her 90th birthday in August! |
 |
| Blue and Me |
Rosemary, Begonias, and Snow
Carlene and I have decided that the best movie was watching Jose and Enrique finish the yard and build beds of begonias and rosemary. Enrique smiles every minute, and so does Carlene--as she loves gardening. I've never been good at it, but she was my muse and benefactor in this project and I'm so happy with it!
She says it's for my daddy's birthday--which is March 19th. He would have been 93 this year and we still miss him every day.
While we've been getting spring going in the yard, Will and Veronica and the kids have been in New Mexico playing in the snow for Spring Break--Elena's first. We're watching a string of happy videos of the kids sliding down slopes of white.
Here's a picture I found on Facebook of my next project:
She says it's for my daddy's birthday--which is March 19th. He would have been 93 this year and we still miss him every day.
While we've been getting spring going in the yard, Will and Veronica and the kids have been in New Mexico playing in the snow for Spring Break--Elena's first. We're watching a string of happy videos of the kids sliding down slopes of white.
Here's a picture I found on Facebook of my next project:
Morning Texts From Mike: Exhibit A
Mike gave me permission to quote him here. He does way better in actual speech, I promise!
2 a.m.
My whole childhood was listing to my mother correct my father's grandma he loved it and I am sure that he did it on purpose
Ain't was corrected 40 million times in my house
Double negatives was my father's specialty
I made my best grades in English class
It was like my dad was flirting with my mom. She knew she had to say something because my brother and I were listening
I would laugh every time my mother would catch my dad saying bad grammar
he truly loved her
Later in the morning:
I still have the paper towel sitting on my kitchen counter that you wrote for me smart ass
I don't throw away anything that your hand has been on
never end a sentence with a preposition
my dad dough [dove] out of the window of a German Lutheran school in the fourth grade I think my mother held him in the fourth grade all his life because she didn't want to promote him out of her class
My father spent his whole life in my mother's fourth grade English class and never promoted
I don't think he wanted to be promoted he didn't care about rules anyway
He loved the teacher and didn't want to change.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Mike's mother (like Mike) was a college graduate. His father quit school in fourth grade--but he was a brilliant man (except in grammar) like Mike. I'm starting to think Mike's texts are his way of flirting with the English teacher so he can get extra attention! I told him that if he'd been in my English class, I'd have spent my entire materials budget on red pens, just for him.
2 a.m.
My whole childhood was listing to my mother correct my father's grandma he loved it and I am sure that he did it on purpose
Ain't was corrected 40 million times in my house
Double negatives was my father's specialty
I made my best grades in English class
It was like my dad was flirting with my mom. She knew she had to say something because my brother and I were listening
I would laugh every time my mother would catch my dad saying bad grammar
he truly loved her
Later in the morning:
I still have the paper towel sitting on my kitchen counter that you wrote for me smart ass
I don't throw away anything that your hand has been on
never end a sentence with a preposition
my dad dough [dove] out of the window of a German Lutheran school in the fourth grade I think my mother held him in the fourth grade all his life because she didn't want to promote him out of her class
My father spent his whole life in my mother's fourth grade English class and never promoted
I don't think he wanted to be promoted he didn't care about rules anyway
He loved the teacher and didn't want to change.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Mike's mother (like Mike) was a college graduate. His father quit school in fourth grade--but he was a brilliant man (except in grammar) like Mike. I'm starting to think Mike's texts are his way of flirting with the English teacher so he can get extra attention! I told him that if he'd been in my English class, I'd have spent my entire materials budget on red pens, just for him.
In the middle of the night....
I woke up with leg pains and decided to text Mike and report my discomfort and seek a bit of sympathy. In our hour-long exchange of texts, he displayed his usual creative spelling and grammar, leaving out periods and commas, sometimes to hilarious effects.
"How did I, an English major, wind up with a grammar butcher?" I asked him.
"Just lucky, I guess," he said.
"Reminds me of my mama and daddy. She was always correcting his grandma."
See what I mean? He's hopeless! But so very good at giving me sympathy in the middle of the night!
Books and Movies
The Train to Crystal City, by San Antonio's Jan Jarboe Russell, is the story of Japanese and German citizens who spent years at the Crystal City, Texas, internment camp during World War II. I highly recommend this book--Jan's project for the past five years, now on the New York Times best seller list.
Still Alice, the movie, is brilliantly acted by Julianne Moore--the story of a woman with early-onset Alzheimer's. I read the book when it first came out--a book that was rejected numerous times, then self-published, then finally picked up by a major publisher.
The Second Best Marigold Hotel was not favorably reviewed, but I'm not particular. I liked it. I liked the cast and the beautiful colors of India and found it very entertaining. There were so many good lines in it, one of which (in the turning around of expressions common in non-native speakers of English): "There's no present like the time."
I heard an interview of the author of My Accidental Jihad on NPR and ordered the book and am halfway through it tonight--a well written account of a young American woman who marries an older man from Libya.
Today is mine and Carlene's last day together and we may see McFarland. We're so enjoying watching the yard men repair my long-neglected yard with a weed-eater and new plantings, however, that we may stay home for the final round of that instead.
Still Alice, the movie, is brilliantly acted by Julianne Moore--the story of a woman with early-onset Alzheimer's. I read the book when it first came out--a book that was rejected numerous times, then self-published, then finally picked up by a major publisher.
The Second Best Marigold Hotel was not favorably reviewed, but I'm not particular. I liked it. I liked the cast and the beautiful colors of India and found it very entertaining. There were so many good lines in it, one of which (in the turning around of expressions common in non-native speakers of English): "There's no present like the time."
I heard an interview of the author of My Accidental Jihad on NPR and ordered the book and am halfway through it tonight--a well written account of a young American woman who marries an older man from Libya.
Today is mine and Carlene's last day together and we may see McFarland. We're so enjoying watching the yard men repair my long-neglected yard with a weed-eater and new plantings, however, that we may stay home for the final round of that instead.
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