Meditation Aid

There is a small dog bed on the floor next to my meditation cushion, and every morning when I fold myself into a half lotus my gray cat, Telemann, jumps into the bed and regresses to earliest kittenhood. Not that there is anything kittenish about Telemann. He is in his prime, an avid (indoor) hunter, agile and well-muscled, with a tom’s wide skull and thick neck. 

The dog bed where he stages his regressions is covered in fuzzy fabric, and its back and sides are stuffed to form a softly convex wall. Telemann hops in, spreads his ten white fingers as wide as they will go, and begins to push rhythmically, first the right hand and then the left, against the side of the bed. His scimitar claws make a popping sound as they dig into and out of the cloth. His purring grows louder; the kneading speeds up; his eyes closed in ecstasy, he presses his nose and lips into the fabric. I can’t tell whether he’s actually sucking on the fuzz or whether it’s the accumulated moisture from his breath that makes his favorite spot damp and frayed. Either way, Telemann pretends he’s nursing. 

By the time the twenty minutes of observing-but-not-judging my monkey mind are up, the purring and kneading have stopped, and Telemann is fast asleep, one white paw still pressed against the curved side of the bed. Perhaps this pretend nursing is a way of making up for his deprived infancy, when his mother was so undernourished that when the family was rescued the kittens had to be bottle fed. Or perhaps the nursing is a way to soothe his anxieties, if he has any anxieties, which is doubtful. 

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem to embarrass this otherwise dignified cat to be seen indulging in baby behavior, and I envy Telemann his nonchalance, which we humans are taught to overcome at an early age. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, waking up in the dark of a winter night, gasping with virus- and Trump-induced  angst, one could take comfort in a well-sucked thumb? 

Telemann doesn’t think about what I think of him. Oddly enough, when he’s settled in my arms I often stop thinking myself. He looks into my eyes, I look into his eyes, our breathing slows, our eyelids droop, and I subside into a blissful no-mind state that I hardly ever achieve on my meditation cushion.

You could tear out my fingernails one by one and you wouldn’t get me to say that I love Telemann more than my little dog, Bisou. But Bisou doesn’t induce that serene blankness in me the way he does. It may be that her face is too expressive—dogs have a special set of muscles around their eyes that gives them an almost-human repertoire of expressions—and when she looks at me I react by thinking: does she want food? Does she need to go out? Is she bored? Is she worried? 

Cats do not have those cunning little muscles around the eyes, so their faces appear somewhat mask-like to us. Looking at Telemann’s face when he’s relaxed is like gazing into a still lake, its surface broken only by his slow periodic blinks. There is no thought there, no demand, no hurry, no worry--only presence. And in response my mind slows way down, and I get a blessed respite from being human, and a fleeting taste of what it’s like to be a cat.

The Mule, the Plow, and the Pen

In the menagerie that usually crowds my dreams—lions and tigers starving in the basement, neglected goats and chickens multiplying in filthy outbuildings, a German Shepherd whom no one’s remembered to feed—mules had never appeared. But the other night, as the first serious snow of the year fell outside my window, there she was, my first dream mule. 

I spent my childhood summers around mules. In the Catalan countryside, before the arrival of tractors, people worked the land with horses, mules, and plows that were almost identical to the ones introduced by the Romans two millennia ago. Since my grandfather was a vet, mules were often brought to him for injections and minor surgeries, which I was allowed to watch from the safety of the dining room window. Mules were popular with the local peasants, who found them to be sturdier than horses, less flighty, and better able to navigate difficult terrain. According to my grandmother, in past centuries the pope himself rode around Vatican City on a white mule—the first pope-mobile.

But I didn’t much like mules. I preferred the little gray donkeys, with their velvety faces and enormous eyes, that trotted daintily on the dusty roads, carrying a load of grass for the rabbits and, often, a black-clad peasant grandmother as well. And even the humblest cart horse was more elegantly proportioned than a mule, whose skinny tail and long ears seemed all wrong for its big, sleek body. 

Not having thought about mules for years, I was surprised when one showed up in my dream. She was brought to me by an old Vermonter who announced that he was going to plow the lawn in front of my cottage so I could make a vegetable garden. The plow to which he had hitched the mule was like the ones I remembered from my childhood. It had wooden handles, and the share—the part that digs into the earth—had a sharp metal point and flaring sides. 

I could barely contain my glee. Not only was I going to have a garden again, but one made by a mule! I didn’t care that she was a dull brown, run-of-the-mill mule. I found her charming, and the archaic plow she dragged connected me to the generations of peasants lurking in my DNA. I was going to grow kale and chard and garlic and those slender Japanese eggplants, and cook and eat them the way God intended. And who knew--once I had a garden, could chickens and goats be far behind? 

That was obviously the wish-fulfillment aspect of the dream, in which I got to have my old close-to-the-earth life back. But if, according to Jung, both the old Vermonter and the mule represent parts of me, the meaning becomes less clear. I can easily see myself as an old Vermonter wanting to make a garden, but as a mule? Mules are neither dashing nor adorable. They are strong, hard-working, reliable and mostly boring. 

The dream mule, however, had come not only on a delightful mission, but a subversive one: tearing up the sterile expanse of grass in front of my cottage and replacing it with something nourishing and meaningful. In real life, of course, this would not be allowed in the retirement community in which I live, even if it is a Vermont retirement community. But the dream mule and the old Vermonter clearly believed that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. (That is totally not the waking me, who tends to get permission and then ask forgiveness just in case.) 

If I am both the old Vermonter and the mule, though, am I also the lawn? I ask because the mule’s job is to plow under all that boring conventional grass and make possible the growth of vitamin-rich, life-enhancing veggies. Did I mention that the Roman plow has a sharp point and flaring sides, not unlike the nib of a pen? Not that I actually write with a pen….

 

Why I Read Biographies

 “I don’t read biographies of musical geniuses,” my father used to say. “The music may be sublime, but the composer usually isn’t.” He was probably thinking of Beethoven, who was notoriously difficult, Schumann, who went insane, or Mozart, who never really grew up (remember Amadeus?). Even the celestial J.S. Bach whined disappointingly about money in his letters—although with twenty children and a wife to support that may be understandable.

Unlike my father, I do sometimes read bios, mostly of writers. I read them in search of inspiration, consolation, and for entertainment not unmixed with  Schadenfreude. Clicking the page-turn on my Kindle, I remind myself that what I’m reading is just one fallible human being’s opinion of another fallible human being, that memory is unreliable, that language obscures rather than reveals the truth, and so on. 

Still, reading about the lives of writers shines a beam, however faint, on that nebulous interface between character and creativity. And one thing stands out in all these bios: no matter how diverse the writers, their temperaments, and their circumstances, they all worked astoundingly hard at their writing, which they found arduous, draining, frustrating, and only occasionally exhilarating. 

Their personal lives are often awe-inspiring in their disarray. The fifty-year-old Colette seduced her seventeen-year-old stepson. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, two of the most exalted philosophical minds of the last century, were emotional dunces, and nasty ones at that, when it came to managing their mutual love affair as well as their entanglements with the many “contingent” others. (See Tête- à-Tête, the lives and loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, by Hazel Rowley.) 

For the last week I’ve been knee-deep in Margot Peters’ biography of May Sarton. The feminist and lesbian icon comes off as a sometimes dangerous lunatic, careening from one disastrous love affair to another, alternately drowning in tears and alcohol, and never able to reconcile her thirst for solitude with the need to surround herself with admirers. 

What emerges for me out of this welter of dramas, disappointments, insecurities, envies, and betrayals? For one, I learn again what my father discovered in the composer bios: that one can be both a creative genius and emotionally challenged. As a writer, I find consolation in confronting how hard the craft is and how much discipline it demands of even the greatest. If Colette found it necessary to turn her desk to the wall to avoid being distracted by the view of the Mediterranean, shouldn’t I save my internet surfing for after I’m done writing? 

Another useful reminder: once the poem/novel/essay is finished, even gargantuan talent and effort don’t guarantee success. André Gide said non to Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Madeleine L’Engle had to submit A Wrinkle in Time to twenty-seven publishers before one accepted it. The stories of rejected masterpieces could fill a book. 

Reading about May Sarton’s lifelong failure to balance solitude and society, I am more inclined to forgive myself for my own minor version of the dilemma. If she, with her talent, ambition, and dedication couldn’t figure it out, then maybe I shouldn’t beat myself up for longing to be with people and longing to get away from them, sometimes both at the same time. 

Alas, none of the writers I've read about, from the merely talented to the great geniuses, was particularly happy. In fact, many of them were mostly miserable. Critics scoffed; lovers betrayed or were betrayed; money was scarce; the Muse absconded; self-doubt persisted despite public acclaim. 

Yet it wasn’t all darkness and gnashing of teeth. Even the least happy of these geniuses experienced flashes of, if not unclouded joy, at least temporary ease—that blessed moment when, having toiled and agonized (Flaubert: “Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.”) one lays down the pen or turns off the computer and enjoys the inexpressible relief of having written. 

In this respect, I’m there with the best—nothing smooths my brow or makes me feel more at peace than having written. The feeling reminds me of the endorphin rush that used to engulf me after a five-mile run. Of course, the lovely sensation doesn’t last, and tomorrow I’ll have to do the equivalent of one of those runs again. But what is life if not an endless run around the same old track?

For those us who write, paint, sculpt, or make music amid the tragedies and absurdities of human existence, the guarantee of solace that comes from having written, painted, sculpted, or composed is not a trivial blessing. It is an echo of the Creator’s cosmic sigh of relief (“and He saw that it was good”) at the end of each day’s work.

Masked in Winter

 As in early childhood, after a certain age the differences between the sexes become less pronounced. Seen from the back, men and women in their golden years are often indistinguishable. Baggy jeans and oversized t-shirts minimize differences in body proportions. Once-glorious heads of red, blond, and black hair have thinned and disappeared beneath a flood of white, and most women, weary of decades of blow-drying, have embraced the convenience of short hair. 

In the retirement community where I live this homogeneity has sometimes caused me embarrassment, such as the day when I caroled “Hi Dave!” to a fellow resident, only to realize too late that I was addressing a woman—and one I knew well, at that. 

The problem of figuring out who is who worsens in winter, when no one steps out the door without wearing a quilted, hooded coat, snow-worthy boots, mittens, a scarf, a hat (yes, under the hood), and sunglasses to protect from the glare. Add to this the blurring effect of snow, sleet, and freezing rain, and you can see why the merest stroll becomes a social challenge. Luckily the voice remains a fairly reliable gender give-away, so you can always shout “Hellooo!” into the gale, and listen for the answer. 

Now, in this pandemic winter, the mask and distancing mandates have made recognizing passers-by, let alone chatting with them, almost impossible. Even if something, such as a pink hat, hints at the gender of the person I am approaching, I still have no idea whether she is a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. So like most others I have adopted the non-committal but enthusiastic wave, which signals friendliness without presuming friendship. 

Often, however, the wavee feels obliged to respond with a remark of some sort. This, due to the combined effects of distance, mask, and wind, usually comes out something like “mwah-hee?” to which I, assuming that it is an allusion to the weather, usually answer “yes, isn’t it!” If she interprets this as meaning, “good to see you!” no harm done. 

If she has a dog, on the other hand, things go more smoothly. I am acquainted with almost all the dogs in the community, and although some have developed white muzzles, unlike humans they have retained their distinctive coat colors. I may not be sure of the name of the masked figure before me—Susan? Mary? Nancy?—but I know without a shadow of a doubt that her tiny terrier is Trixie.

So when I, out walking Bisou, meet Susan/Mary/Nancy with Trixie, we stop and, standing leash-distance apart while the dogs wag their tails and sniff each other, we too have a conversation of sorts, through our masks. “Waaa hm-hm!” she exclaims, arching her eyebrows behind her glasses. “Um woo!!” I respond, nodding emphatically. 

When the dogs have finished chatting, we wave good-bye and turn towards home—two dogs and their humans, each warmed by the chance to commune with a member of their species on this dark, lonely winter day.

Chickadees in Stick Season

Between leaf season and snow season comes what Vermonters call stick season, when the landscape is reduced to endless vistas of bare trunks and branches, all in shades of gray. The skies are mostly gray, too, as are the squirrels and the rabbits. The chipmunks in their little orange coats would add some color, but they disappeared weeks ago into their hygge holes. 

The birds that, like me, scorn to flee Vermont winters for places like Florida, also wear basic gray, enhanced with bits of white, black, and slate blue. The only spot of bright color outside my window is the red dot on the back of the head of the hairy woodpecker, and on his smaller cousin, the downy. 

I’ve been watching chickadees feed, and worrying about how they keep body and soul together. They swoop to the feeder, pick up a single sunflower seed, and dash off to a tree that, in chickadee terms, is the equivalent of a hundred miles away. There, clamping the seed onto the branch with their claws, they attack it with the force of a miniature jackhammer. When they are done with that seed, they shoot back to the feeder, get another seed, zoom to a distant perch, and repeat the process. 

How many calories are in a single sunflower seed--two? And how many calories does a chickadee use in those mad dashes to and from the feeder, plus all that hammering to break the shell? If I had to travel as far and work as hard for every morsel of food I would be a living skeleton—or more likely a dead one. 

(Nuthatches, I’m told, can’t grasp a seed with their feet, so instead they jam it into a crevice in the tree bark to hold it steady while they go at it with their beak.) 

I put a heater in the bird bath to keep it from freezing, and, after two years of ignoring it, the birds have fallen in love with it.  But again, as with feeding, drinking looks like more trouble than it’s worth. A chickadee lands on the edge of the bath, looks up for hawks and owls, looks down for snakes and cats, fluffs its feathers, peers right, then left. Takes a sip. Looks down, looks up, fluffs feathers, etc. Takes sip, then whooshes off. Again, how much water can that teensy beak hold? Three molecules? 

With the exception of certain squirrels, all the small critters outside my window seem to live with endless panic in their breasties. Like Robert Burns, who empathized so tenderly with the plight of a field mouse, I worry about what it must be like to live in a constant state of fear. Do the field mice and the titmice ever feel safe enough to relax? Or are they under constant stress, wondering when, if ever, it’s o.k. to venture out of their homes? 

Maybe the reason that I’m thinking so much about the stress levels of these tiny folk is that I, along with most of humanity, am also feeling endangered this autumn. Like the chickadees and their fellows, I think twice before leaving my place of safety, save my outings for food shopping, and don’t congregate in flocks. Peering nervously through my mask-fogged glasses as I push my cart down the aisle, I keep to myself, alert to invisible dangers. I do not linger at the checkout counter, but dash back to the house with my little bag of sustenance, there to eat in safety. 

I remember from Catholic school that reassuring phrase about God (Goddess/Ground of Being/The Universe) being somehow aware, and caring, about every sparrow (chickadee/nuthatch/titmouse) that falls. My hope in this bleak season is that She or He is mindful of those little birds, and of me and mine as well.