Puppies Don’t Hold In Their Bellies

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

This is Buddy. He came home with me yesterday. Almost immediately, Buddy started working like medicine on my soul, a kind of spiritual Propofol (and that’s some good shit, trust me, as in hash-tag-can-I-please-have-another-colonoscopy-this-year level of good).

I’ve always had dogs.  I know the singular nature of their effect on the human psyche.  But I have been dogless for the last year-and-a-half and thought I was doing just fine.  I had Shasti, the tortoise-shell cat-dog who both greets me at the door and selectively ignores me in that schizophrenic feline way.  And I had a busy life.  Cats can handle your busy life.  Dogs are permanent toddlers in constant need of attention.

In the last five (six?  oh, crap) years of being single, I’ve dated quite a bit.  Okay, a few people.  Okay, two.  Two people.  One might think a good relationship would replace the lack of canine companionship, but frankly, it’s easier to get a dog.

Besides, even the best relationship doesn’t do what a dog can.  A dog lives in the moment and reminds us to do the same.  A dog is both mindful and playful, a combination that is perhaps the best definition of the divine.  A dog lives and thrives in love; we do, too, but it’s a dog that can remind us that we actually should.  A dog can nibble your ear and cause the oxytocin to move down your spine like a rushing shiver.

Dogs don’t look in the mirror and worry that they might be getting fat. They don’t spend Sunday night worrying about that thing they didn’t do on Friday which will cause Monday to start already behind. They don’t give up sleep to nibble on mental bones like wondering if Jessie really knew you were joking or how Kenneth actually feels about you or if you’re truly a good teacher or your students are just blowing smoke up your ass.

It took just that first look in my eyes for Buddy to remind me that none of that matters one  minuscule, microscopic, itty-bitty bit. The worries and frets and obsessions are puffs of smoke that I could walk right through as if they don’t exist, but I treat them like stone barriers to goodness and peace.  Buddy is the breeze that blows them away.  He knows they’re only smoke, just as he knows he is the mirror to my truest self — the self that loves and lives in the moment and engages in mindful play.

I’m grateful for my Shasti-cat.  She is a good pal and has been a loving presence in my life.  But, cats, . . . well, cats are just different. Cats know they’re God.  Dogs remind us that we are.  And I thank the heavens that I have one in my life again.  Welcome home, Buddy.

Shhhh . . . Start Talking

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

I used to think I had a whole lot to say.  A friend joked that I must have had a daily word quota.  I was, well, verbose.  Teaching seemed a perfect fit for me with all that strutting and crowing  I was able to do at the front of a classroom.

Perhaps the most obvious change I’ve noticed in myself as I’ve gotten older is the attraction that silence holds for me.  Some who know me might contend I can still hit my quota now and then, but generally speaking, I prefer listening or even the absence of that – just being.

I find that I’m not as certain of what I think these days. That will quiet a person down. The impassioned, assertive, and sometimes obnoxious speechifying of my youth seems somehow . . . dangerous . . . scary . . . unnecessary.  It has been said that wisdom begins at the place where you realize how little you know.  Well, I must be getting wiser, because some days I don’t know my ass from my elbow.

I also no longer feel compelled to engage in the energy drain — oh, god, the energy drain — that comes from the dogmatic pedantry of head-driven conversation.  Some days even the very lectures I’m paid to give my students leave me with, at best, a feeling of exhausted detachment, and at worst, a particular sort of soul weariness caused by over-analysis or maybe just by the verbalization itself.  It’s as if the thoughts are creatures of mayhem made immensely more powerful in the act of speaking them into existence.

As mayhemly powerful as my spoken words might be, however, I have learned they are but cowering and skittering field mice when compared to the elephantine magic of my silent intention.  More is accomplished through my silence than I can ever wrangle into being through circumlocution.  Some problems actually solve themselves without me controlling them.  Who knew?

I still love words.  I still love teaching and speaking and writing.  But, the silence speaks, too.  In fact, silence, it would appear, actually has a few things it would like to get off its chest.

The words that spring forth from the place of stillness are words that contain the essence of silence even in their audible form.   They come from a completely different place, and they have a completely different impact.  Those are the messages that energize me when I allow them to come through.  I also believe those who hear them are somehow enriched or at least a little more aware of being alive, and they may not even know why.  I’m sure I don’t know why.  I just know that the message is somehow less important than the place from whence it sprang.  And the words that are born in silence have so, so much more to say than I could pack into a thousand days.

I love me some ‘Murica

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

img_0099

I am deeply in love with this schizophrenic country I call home.

Land of the free.  Home of the firm and fast opinions on subjects one knows absolutely nothing about.

Of thee I sing with a courage of convictions completely unencumbered by contemplative thought.

Our rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of a government of, by, and for all the right people.

I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death my right to vote for the other side.

Election day’s a-comin’.

Let freedom ring.

Food for Future Years

~ Deb ~ 4 Comments

(A poem inspired by William Wordsworth’s

“Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”)

Today I lectured on Wordsworth.

“Lectured” – pshaw!

I strutted and crowed and danced on the balls of my feet.

I pathetically attempted to convey the ebullience

that eddied through my softened heart

in much the same way that the poet seemed to reach beyond his reach

to corral with words that moment when we

“see into the life of things.”

I spoke of nature and meditation

and the place of wisdom that lives beyond consciousness.

I stretched synonyms and cajoled imagery

to see if any words were worth

the moment of experience

when soul touches soul,

mind touches nature,

all that is touches all I am.

I lifted my arms, my eyes, my voice,

as I tried to carry a roomful

of baby scholars

to the banks of the River Wye.

I engaged every descriptive power

I have ever possessed

to give them just a whisper of an idea

about the presence, the sense, the spirit

which lives in the blissful moment of

pure connection,

and which the poet

dared to attempt to explain

though he knew better than all of us

how futile that effort would surely be.

I tried.  Oh, how I tried.

And then I looked at the rows of faces,

some blank and unreadable,

but some smiling, some nodding,

some radiating the knowing,

and I knew.

I had not transported them to Tintern Abbey.

We had traveled together to this moment,

a moment of pure connection,

that the poet would reach beyond reach

to dare to attempt to explain.