Right now I have arrived back from Alpena, Michigan. It is a small city with no easy was to get there located in the northeastern portion of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. My eldest son, Primus had a hockey tournament and we went.
My major feeling from the tournament was exhaustion. Four games in less than 36 hours took a toll on players and parents. The team did not prevail but they did become what appears to be a team. Probably the moment I realized this was happening was when they had taken the pool balls and cues and began playing mini golf using pool equipment. It was sight to see six foot tall man children lying upon their bellies lining up shots into an indoor putt-putt hole with a cue stick.
When I find the adapter necessary to put a photo with this entry I will. Right now I have a ton of work and so this entry must be short. I will offer this, our lives are shot and everyone has a story. Listen to those stories, it will tell you a great deal of what the person next to you is made of.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
Weight Watchers, Dharma and the Avoidance of Suffering
Breaking the chains that bind us to suffering
One way to handle the impulses that bind us to suffering is through cognitive intervention. If we’re behind the wheel and another driver cuts us off, leans on his horn, or otherwise drives provocatively, we can construct a narrative to explain his aggressiveness: “He’s late for something, and probably not for the first time. He’s desperate to get there, and you know yourself what that’s like!” The same line of creative speculation works in the face of any form of hostility: “She may have just lost her job,” or “He just had a fight with his wife.” These kinds of stories, even if fanciful, offer us some breathing room, interrupting the reaction chain that binds us to suffering.
- Bodhin Kjolhede, "Pain, Passion, and the Precepts"
Lately I have been dabbling with an American distillation of Buddhism. Input on this comes to me through places like Tricycle Magazine and various English language translations of Buddhist texts. As of yet I am not a Buddhist however I find things in Buddhism that are congruent with my innermost belief system. How is that for a confusedly enigmatic viewpoint?
On a daily basis I get a blurb from Tricycle called The Daily Dharma. A simplified Anglophone definition of dharma would be “the truth about the way things are and will always be in the universe or in nature.” For years I have read Thomas Merton most mornings. Occasionally I will go out to a site run by hard line old school Catholic monks on an island off the Irish coast. Most days of late I have liked The Daily Dharma most of all.
For years I have battled with the American disease of borderline obesity. I am inert, inactive and snack constantly. My metabolism slowed down long ago.
At one time I went to Weight Watchers for a year it was effective. I shed fifty pounds or so. It wasn’t hard going to Weight Watchers for me. I was about the only guy there and well I have never liked really skinny women. (Chuckling would be appropriate not ewwwwhs.) Anyway Weight Watcher eventually stopped working for me. I think what happened is that WW does not do a good job of reinforcing maintenance of a health weight. When you lose weight you get lots of applause. Once you hit your goal weight you tend to slack off going because it just isn’t the same to have the person at the scale say no weight loss as opposed to congrats you are 2 ½ pounds down. There are no hurrahs for stability. I have found a great number of areas of life where there are no hurrahs for stability.
In one version of Weight Watchers (and the programs are always evolving) they were big on 8 Techniques to Address Food Challenges. The two I remember were storyboarding and reframing.
Storyboarding was thinking about food challenges you would be facing in the next day or so and working out mental flow charts of what you would do to avoid the challenges. An example would be if it was a holiday gathering and cousin Bob gave you a plate of meatballs (because he always gives you unhealthy food) while someone else handed you a beer what you would do. One storyboad strategy would be to add healthy things to the plate and just nibble on them. Another would be to put the plate in the kitchen and walk into the living room declining food offers because you already had a plate waiting back in the kitchen (which was out of sight and thus not tempting you). The beer would be set by the plate and you would get some ice water “because I am really thirsty”.
Sometimes reframing worked better. In such a case you would have to work up a story about the meaning of the interaction, diet sabotage or misdirected love on the part of cousin Bob. Using reframing you could construct an inner rationale to abandon the plate. Reframing would leave you with a rationale that would not leave you with cognitive dissonance. Ah cousin Bob loves me but if I give in to this misguided attempt at showing love (in American food is always love) I won’t be around much longer to share the warm familial affection with Bob and others. Be polite but do the right thing. Hey it isn’t the best example but you get my drift.
Looking at the dharma today it seems to me that the piece is urging a regular use of reframing of situations where we could allow negative emotions and impulses overcome us. I liked the thought that a story even if fanciful might be enough to avoid negative emotions that would bind us to suffering, especially in situations where there is no need to know the whole back-story of events. The clearly negative grunt of another coworker in response to your morning greeting can be cast in an understanding light based on assumptions that their ride in today was unduly rough. You don’t really need to know what the cause is; you just have to be able to avoid being sucked in to the negative emotion they have shared that if you internalize will lead you to suffering.
Yeah reframing moments consciously knowing that reframing is what you are doing, can give personal spiritual growth some breathing room. It can allow your spirit access to a space where it will not be overwhelmed by unneeded and unnecessary suffering.
One way to handle the impulses that bind us to suffering is through cognitive intervention. If we’re behind the wheel and another driver cuts us off, leans on his horn, or otherwise drives provocatively, we can construct a narrative to explain his aggressiveness: “He’s late for something, and probably not for the first time. He’s desperate to get there, and you know yourself what that’s like!” The same line of creative speculation works in the face of any form of hostility: “She may have just lost her job,” or “He just had a fight with his wife.” These kinds of stories, even if fanciful, offer us some breathing room, interrupting the reaction chain that binds us to suffering.
- Bodhin Kjolhede, "Pain, Passion, and the Precepts"
Lately I have been dabbling with an American distillation of Buddhism. Input on this comes to me through places like Tricycle Magazine and various English language translations of Buddhist texts. As of yet I am not a Buddhist however I find things in Buddhism that are congruent with my innermost belief system. How is that for a confusedly enigmatic viewpoint?
On a daily basis I get a blurb from Tricycle called The Daily Dharma. A simplified Anglophone definition of dharma would be “the truth about the way things are and will always be in the universe or in nature.” For years I have read Thomas Merton most mornings. Occasionally I will go out to a site run by hard line old school Catholic monks on an island off the Irish coast. Most days of late I have liked The Daily Dharma most of all.
For years I have battled with the American disease of borderline obesity. I am inert, inactive and snack constantly. My metabolism slowed down long ago.
At one time I went to Weight Watchers for a year it was effective. I shed fifty pounds or so. It wasn’t hard going to Weight Watchers for me. I was about the only guy there and well I have never liked really skinny women. (Chuckling would be appropriate not ewwwwhs.) Anyway Weight Watcher eventually stopped working for me. I think what happened is that WW does not do a good job of reinforcing maintenance of a health weight. When you lose weight you get lots of applause. Once you hit your goal weight you tend to slack off going because it just isn’t the same to have the person at the scale say no weight loss as opposed to congrats you are 2 ½ pounds down. There are no hurrahs for stability. I have found a great number of areas of life where there are no hurrahs for stability.
In one version of Weight Watchers (and the programs are always evolving) they were big on 8 Techniques to Address Food Challenges. The two I remember were storyboarding and reframing.
Storyboarding was thinking about food challenges you would be facing in the next day or so and working out mental flow charts of what you would do to avoid the challenges. An example would be if it was a holiday gathering and cousin Bob gave you a plate of meatballs (because he always gives you unhealthy food) while someone else handed you a beer what you would do. One storyboad strategy would be to add healthy things to the plate and just nibble on them. Another would be to put the plate in the kitchen and walk into the living room declining food offers because you already had a plate waiting back in the kitchen (which was out of sight and thus not tempting you). The beer would be set by the plate and you would get some ice water “because I am really thirsty”.
Sometimes reframing worked better. In such a case you would have to work up a story about the meaning of the interaction, diet sabotage or misdirected love on the part of cousin Bob. Using reframing you could construct an inner rationale to abandon the plate. Reframing would leave you with a rationale that would not leave you with cognitive dissonance. Ah cousin Bob loves me but if I give in to this misguided attempt at showing love (in American food is always love) I won’t be around much longer to share the warm familial affection with Bob and others. Be polite but do the right thing. Hey it isn’t the best example but you get my drift.
Looking at the dharma today it seems to me that the piece is urging a regular use of reframing of situations where we could allow negative emotions and impulses overcome us. I liked the thought that a story even if fanciful might be enough to avoid negative emotions that would bind us to suffering, especially in situations where there is no need to know the whole back-story of events. The clearly negative grunt of another coworker in response to your morning greeting can be cast in an understanding light based on assumptions that their ride in today was unduly rough. You don’t really need to know what the cause is; you just have to be able to avoid being sucked in to the negative emotion they have shared that if you internalize will lead you to suffering.
Yeah reframing moments consciously knowing that reframing is what you are doing, can give personal spiritual growth some breathing room. It can allow your spirit access to a space where it will not be overwhelmed by unneeded and unnecessary suffering.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Feeling Better Now
A winter most welcome is viewed from this silent sunlit room. So far this season the snows have held back. One day we had six inches of snow fall suddenly and then it was gone. Today the temperature is set to reach 45 F (7 C) in early January. Within the past eleven years we have had 30+ inches (76 cm) on the ground that would remain close to the whole winter through. At my age I do a mental calculation. It runs like this. In some years it has snowed as early as late November and at the latest I remember measureable snow on May 4. I have thus cut my exposure to snow imperiousness by 2/7ths. Yeah.
Last night almost made up for yesterday morning. Secundus came home with a list of homework and did seem to work on it. I will send off a note to several teachers to find out if the work made its way in. He ripped into Empire Falls with a passion. He pointed out literary and historical allusions that I had missed. The allusions were real. His attitude in general seemed improved. Primus worked on his homework too. He was able to identify the work clearly and articulately. Yeah.
I did not get to read much last night. I have a Buddhist work buried in my brief case. Maybe tonight. This morning I forced myself to revisit Merton. Dipping into his thoughts was as always quite refreshing. The monk in talking about the mundane of winter’s cold communicated an emphasis on his joy at just warming by a fire. It wasn’t a cracking wood stove he spoke of but rather the blue flame of an old freestanding propane heater that used to be some common in southern cabins. Sometimes just coming in on a cold sunlit winter day can bring an awareness of the wonder and joy of life.
Last night almost made up for yesterday morning. Secundus came home with a list of homework and did seem to work on it. I will send off a note to several teachers to find out if the work made its way in. He ripped into Empire Falls with a passion. He pointed out literary and historical allusions that I had missed. The allusions were real. His attitude in general seemed improved. Primus worked on his homework too. He was able to identify the work clearly and articulately. Yeah.
I did not get to read much last night. I have a Buddhist work buried in my brief case. Maybe tonight. This morning I forced myself to revisit Merton. Dipping into his thoughts was as always quite refreshing. The monk in talking about the mundane of winter’s cold communicated an emphasis on his joy at just warming by a fire. It wasn’t a cracking wood stove he spoke of but rather the blue flame of an old freestanding propane heater that used to be some common in southern cabins. Sometimes just coming in on a cold sunlit winter day can bring an awareness of the wonder and joy of life.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Ah the Morning has Not Lived Up to My Expectations
I blew it this morning. My tinnitus was bothering me and I awoke at 5:30 a.m. about half an hour early. I lay in bed trying to decide whether to get up or not. In the end I just lay there and waited for the radio to come on. Sometimes the only news I get is from the first 3-4 minutes of National Public Radio’s morning edition. No real news today, just more of the same.
When I got home last night I spent the entire evening cleaning. Pine needles in the arch of your foot suck. All the Christmas decorations went to the basement, the floor was swept and the furniture was put back into place. The kitchen was organized. We have shifted to a closer to vegetarian than not diet and I was looking for something, I am not sure what but I could not find it. An hour and half later and the cabinets were organized. After all this and after the first full day back at work I was tired.
Foolish me, later on last night I had made Secundus recount his grades to me. Abysmal would be putting it mildly. A child with immense talent, a child who used to have spark has changed. His sole purpose now it seems is escaping into his computer. He was sent off to read a novel.
Next Secundus came down to assert I was tormenting him because the main character in the novel had no backbone and was filled with vacillation and ambivalence, Secundus’s words. He then accused me of making him read the book to torment him with a character that was his double. I told him I asked him to read simple to show he still possessed that skill and that all of his mental function hadn’t been shifted to allowing his fingers to tap, tap, tap on the arrow keys of his computer not to confront him with a possible future like one of Dickens’s Christmas ghosts. Oh the book is Richard Russo’s Empire Falls.
When he came down for breakfast he didn’t want what was being served so I made him his druthers, toast, jam and egg over easy. But then it became a confrontation over the minor things and that grew into a confrontation over bigger issues.
My cool was lost very quickly. The lunch bag ripped not his fault, nor mine either. Also there is a plumbing problem and due to my external hard drive having died I don’t have my good plumber’s number. Finally both of my kids who had all of Christmas to do some remedial work on their plummeting grades did nothing. This of course resulted in a communication from school yesterday about where some assignments were.
Weekly counseling, constant questions about assignments, nothing seems to bring about a change. Yes I want to be accepting. Yes I want to be compassionate. But dammit there is such a thing as personal responsibility.
Sorry to vent but I am only human. I am one with the universe. I am one with the universe. I guess this means I am the proud parent of teenage boys.
When I got home last night I spent the entire evening cleaning. Pine needles in the arch of your foot suck. All the Christmas decorations went to the basement, the floor was swept and the furniture was put back into place. The kitchen was organized. We have shifted to a closer to vegetarian than not diet and I was looking for something, I am not sure what but I could not find it. An hour and half later and the cabinets were organized. After all this and after the first full day back at work I was tired.
Foolish me, later on last night I had made Secundus recount his grades to me. Abysmal would be putting it mildly. A child with immense talent, a child who used to have spark has changed. His sole purpose now it seems is escaping into his computer. He was sent off to read a novel.
Next Secundus came down to assert I was tormenting him because the main character in the novel had no backbone and was filled with vacillation and ambivalence, Secundus’s words. He then accused me of making him read the book to torment him with a character that was his double. I told him I asked him to read simple to show he still possessed that skill and that all of his mental function hadn’t been shifted to allowing his fingers to tap, tap, tap on the arrow keys of his computer not to confront him with a possible future like one of Dickens’s Christmas ghosts. Oh the book is Richard Russo’s Empire Falls.
When he came down for breakfast he didn’t want what was being served so I made him his druthers, toast, jam and egg over easy. But then it became a confrontation over the minor things and that grew into a confrontation over bigger issues.
My cool was lost very quickly. The lunch bag ripped not his fault, nor mine either. Also there is a plumbing problem and due to my external hard drive having died I don’t have my good plumber’s number. Finally both of my kids who had all of Christmas to do some remedial work on their plummeting grades did nothing. This of course resulted in a communication from school yesterday about where some assignments were.
Weekly counseling, constant questions about assignments, nothing seems to bring about a change. Yes I want to be accepting. Yes I want to be compassionate. But dammit there is such a thing as personal responsibility.
Sorry to vent but I am only human. I am one with the universe. I am one with the universe. I guess this means I am the proud parent of teenage boys.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
There Tearing Old Grove Street Down
Sometimes just hearing a song can open up an empty space in your heart. There is not a song on Steely Dan’s Katy Lied that doesn’t bring a little bit of a tear to my eye. Once there was talent and a raw life force that carried us all along onward and upward. I lost track and with the exception of one conversation in a parking lot rushing to or from some meaningless urgency I never saw him again. And then he was gone. This is a memory in song to somebody who changed the course of two lives and probably many more.
Get Slow Today for a Reason
Last night I finished devouring a Sookie Stackhouse mystery. It was called Dead…in Dallas. These books are popcorn reading. Starting at page 1 it took me about four hours to read the entire book.. Sookie Stackhouse stories are soft core porn and almost Harlequin in their very nature. True Blood on HBO is based on these tales. Still a tale of vampires versus shape shifters and the pluck of a frequently naked blond bombshell can be fun. The metaphor focused on today’s political climate using fundamentalists versus the vampires made me chuckle. There is nothing like a nude heroine humping a vampire talking about the politics of the undead to give rise to a good laugh.
Yes I could have been writing a story to post on the blog based on memory, or based on my interactions with my children, but this licentious escape was nice. Sometimes your mind just has to get to a state of emptiness. Giggly emptiness.
Time wise it was January 2nd and a college bowl football game was one; my team versus some other team. But I couldn’t watch it. If I had the Green and White would have lost. It is a superstition I hold most sacred. It can be stated very succinctly. If I care about a team in a sporting event they will lose. This is more that doubly true if I watch the game. With triple overtime involved for a final outcome my eyes on a single play would have doomed them. Better I be immersed in vampire going ons than watch.
Well this brief time before I have to work has elapsed and now to face the proverbial music. I am listening as I am always listening to Gregorian chants as I work. It drowns out the tinnitus. Ah if only I had seen that Iggy Pop, Clash and Who concert. I think that was the one that did it to me.
In the morning I check my non-work e-mail before the clock starts at 8 a.m. This was in my inbox. I liked it so I will share.
The Value of Slowing Down
We can afford to drop our defensiveness and listen to our colleagues; we can afford to be imaginative and open. If we slow down and drop our resistance to work’s unpleasantness, we discover that we are resourceful enough to be daring, free from fear and arrogance. Such confidence enables us to know instinctively which situations need to be confronted, which should be nourished, and which can be disregarded. Mahakala (a Tibetan deity-please use your own source of divinity or spiritual strength here--JTT) reminds us to sharpen up during times of conflict, to be mindful and pay attention. With such alertness we can in fact preserve the sanity of our workplace even during extreme discord.
- Michael Carroll, "Mahakala at Work"
Yes I could have been writing a story to post on the blog based on memory, or based on my interactions with my children, but this licentious escape was nice. Sometimes your mind just has to get to a state of emptiness. Giggly emptiness.
Time wise it was January 2nd and a college bowl football game was one; my team versus some other team. But I couldn’t watch it. If I had the Green and White would have lost. It is a superstition I hold most sacred. It can be stated very succinctly. If I care about a team in a sporting event they will lose. This is more that doubly true if I watch the game. With triple overtime involved for a final outcome my eyes on a single play would have doomed them. Better I be immersed in vampire going ons than watch.
Well this brief time before I have to work has elapsed and now to face the proverbial music. I am listening as I am always listening to Gregorian chants as I work. It drowns out the tinnitus. Ah if only I had seen that Iggy Pop, Clash and Who concert. I think that was the one that did it to me.
In the morning I check my non-work e-mail before the clock starts at 8 a.m. This was in my inbox. I liked it so I will share.
The Value of Slowing Down
We can afford to drop our defensiveness and listen to our colleagues; we can afford to be imaginative and open. If we slow down and drop our resistance to work’s unpleasantness, we discover that we are resourceful enough to be daring, free from fear and arrogance. Such confidence enables us to know instinctively which situations need to be confronted, which should be nourished, and which can be disregarded. Mahakala (a Tibetan deity-please use your own source of divinity or spiritual strength here--JTT) reminds us to sharpen up during times of conflict, to be mindful and pay attention. With such alertness we can in fact preserve the sanity of our workplace even during extreme discord.
- Michael Carroll, "Mahakala at Work"
Monday, January 2, 2012
Happy New Year Y'all
No resolutions here, just a goal. My plan is to post on a regular basis, not less than weekly, to A Space True and North. To do this I will have to maintain a focus that has eluded me over the past several months. However I think it is possible to do such a thing. Sit down, put fingers on keys and write. Grab the time early in the day or late an night.
In recent days I have engaged with people from my old home town on Facebook(FB). It has been kind of odd for me to do this. When I left my home I was in full fledged flight. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want any thread of my being to be tied to the place. I wanted pure and simple to be gone.
The departure from one’s home is not pure and simple; it is anything but. Every bit of your being is infused with the zeitgeist of the time and the emotions, the rituals, the fears and the hopes of the place you are departing. In my youth I spent 18 years in one house with a stable two parent family. No matter how I have tried to deny it I am made up of their genetic predispositions. Molded by their hopes and their fears based on their life experiences I still opted to go into the world.
When I was younger I really believed in behaviorism. B.F. Skinner was an idol. Everything about a person was environmental. Now that I am a parent I am pretty sure I was as close to totally wrong as I could be on this point. Watching my children from their earliest days they have had familial behavioral traits that I have and that my father and mother before me had. My wife sees behaviors that mimic her family. These behaviors came too early to have been from the environment of living with us. The behaviors came so strongly that they had to be hard wired.
Somewhere I heard that phrase, “No matter where you go, there you are.” I think in reality it is something like no matter where you go there go the genetic patterns you are predisposed to live out. I have digressed.
In approaching my old hometown mates I decided to share one of the seminal experiences in my life. I had posted it on this site a long time ago but that raw form wasn’t right for the hometown audience. In my redraft for the hometown crowd I took out some names, dealt with some nuances that might be hurtful and just generally cleaned up the writing. I took out a bunch of epithets and toned down the drug use. But given the era of the piece the drug use could not go away in any significant manner. When only one word would do I left it in. Sometimes you just have to say fuck or shit. They just work.
I decided providing a link to this site was a bit risky. I mean the Buddhist ramblings, the depraved talk over the years and you lot who make comments, well it just didn’t seem a good match. I am at 300+ posts and some of them are quite tawdry. I actually had to create a new blog just for the hometown FB crowd. But it was fun. However A Space True and North is still my first love when it comes to writing. I promise (to Chris especially) I will try and say something meaningful as this New Year progresses. My love to all of you who read me on this 2nd day of January 2012 in this my 317th post.
In recent days I have engaged with people from my old home town on Facebook(FB). It has been kind of odd for me to do this. When I left my home I was in full fledged flight. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want any thread of my being to be tied to the place. I wanted pure and simple to be gone.
The departure from one’s home is not pure and simple; it is anything but. Every bit of your being is infused with the zeitgeist of the time and the emotions, the rituals, the fears and the hopes of the place you are departing. In my youth I spent 18 years in one house with a stable two parent family. No matter how I have tried to deny it I am made up of their genetic predispositions. Molded by their hopes and their fears based on their life experiences I still opted to go into the world.
When I was younger I really believed in behaviorism. B.F. Skinner was an idol. Everything about a person was environmental. Now that I am a parent I am pretty sure I was as close to totally wrong as I could be on this point. Watching my children from their earliest days they have had familial behavioral traits that I have and that my father and mother before me had. My wife sees behaviors that mimic her family. These behaviors came too early to have been from the environment of living with us. The behaviors came so strongly that they had to be hard wired.
Somewhere I heard that phrase, “No matter where you go, there you are.” I think in reality it is something like no matter where you go there go the genetic patterns you are predisposed to live out. I have digressed.
In approaching my old hometown mates I decided to share one of the seminal experiences in my life. I had posted it on this site a long time ago but that raw form wasn’t right for the hometown audience. In my redraft for the hometown crowd I took out some names, dealt with some nuances that might be hurtful and just generally cleaned up the writing. I took out a bunch of epithets and toned down the drug use. But given the era of the piece the drug use could not go away in any significant manner. When only one word would do I left it in. Sometimes you just have to say fuck or shit. They just work.
I decided providing a link to this site was a bit risky. I mean the Buddhist ramblings, the depraved talk over the years and you lot who make comments, well it just didn’t seem a good match. I am at 300+ posts and some of them are quite tawdry. I actually had to create a new blog just for the hometown FB crowd. But it was fun. However A Space True and North is still my first love when it comes to writing. I promise (to Chris especially) I will try and say something meaningful as this New Year progresses. My love to all of you who read me on this 2nd day of January 2012 in this my 317th post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)