Pause

In our family it was almost considered a sign of intelligence: the lightning-quick flare of temper, the instant reaction to a perceived slight or irritation, followed by a gush of eloquence recapitulating the offender’s past misdeeds and setting out principles of moral philosophy for her future improvement. The quick-temper gene came from my mother’s father, a usually mild-mannered man who would unpredictably erupt at minor annoyances and who passed the gift on to my mother, at whose knees I learned the art of venting wrath promptly and with panache.

I am talking here about strictly verbal expressions of anger, as at our house even the slamming of doors was forbidden. Still, anger is anger, however it is expressed, and though manifesting it feels as good as scratching a mosquito bite, to its recipient it feels like an attack by a horsefly. 

My meditation practice is outstanding in its sloppiness. I go through periods when I meditate occasionally, and periods when I meditate every day. But sloppy or rigorous, in some thirty years of sitting, the twenty minutes on my cushion have hardly changed at all. Unlike me, the monkeys in my mind have neither aged nor slowed down, but continue to leap and race through the forest of my neurons until the bell dings and the session is over. 

This so discouraged me that at one point I was ready to give up. Didn’t Einstein (or somebody) say that doing the same thing over and over in hopes of obtaining different results is the definition of insanity? But then I learned that one should not expect to enjoy the fruits of meditation while meditating. Rather, they are most likely to make themselves felt during the times when we are simply going about our daily life. If we notice that we are less quick to anger, if we pause before we jump to slap away an irritant, that is a sign that meditation is working. 

Here is what Viktor Frankl, whose wisdom was forged in the terror and suffering of Auschwitz, says about that pause: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” (Man’s Search for Meaning). 

That space is what I am looking for, the blessed nanosecond in which on good days the effect of my sloppy meditations comes into play, and I choose to forego belting out an angry aria in favor of a more moderate response, or simply silence. True, that tiny pause doesn’t feel nearly as good as letting fly a tirade, but at the same time I can say that, although I often regret the tirade, I have never regretted the pause. 

The pause does not feel especially difficult or unpleasant. It feels like a little nudge, something inside gently reminding me to please just wait a second before I react. But it does feel strange. It doesn’t feel quite like the real me, the me that is quick to put things into words, especially if they are angry things. 

Sometimes the urge to scratch the itch is too strong. It drowns out the soft inner voice, and I lash out in the old way. But that’s o.k., because the universe is sure to send me lots more chances to practice the pause, to dive beneath the current and sink to where there is stillness and, for this one moment, peace. 

In The Grip Of The Goddess

I've been trying my best not to write about this, but it has blotted everything else out of my mind today, so here goes.

My housekeeper/house sitter, whom I'll call Z, has acquired a small-breed puppy. The animal is male, five months old, un-neutered. Because she doesn't want to leave her dog in his crate at home while she cleans our house, she brings him along. I have mentioned to her before (when in fact I should have stated firmly) that the dog is a distraction and needs to be kept in the crate while she cleans.

Today I was at Wolfie's herding lesson when Z arrived. Prior to leaving, I had instructed my husband that Bisou was in standing heat and that Z was to keep her dog crated at all times.

How do I know that she is in standing heat, you ask? By Wolfie's behavior. Instead of sniffing and licking he has been determinedly grasping her hindquarters and making those distressing-looking motions...It takes a bit of agility on his part to do this, given how close to the floor she is, but he manages many, many times a day. Is she actually standing? Is she holding her tail to one side, as the books describe? I can't tell, because she is completely hidden by his bulk. But his actions tell me that things have come to the crisis point.

When I arrived home, Z's dog was in his crate. A while later, however, going to my bedroom to change shoes, I found the door closed and, inside, Z vacuuming and Bisou and Z's dog all over each other. Who was on top of and doing what to whom? I couldn't tell, they were moving so fast. I scooped up Bisou and put her in her downstairs crate, went back upstairs and told Z that I understood her need to bring the puppy along until he could be given the run of her house, but that while he was here he was supposed to be in his crate--especially with Bisou in raging heat; that three dogs in the house was all that I could handle; and, again, that Z's dog was proving a distraction in her work.

I kept my remarks brief and to the point, my voice as even as I could manage. But eight hours later my inner voice is still screaming, "What was she thinking? How could she so brazenly ignore our instructions? Z has had dogs before, and even goats. Doesn't she know that males in their infancy are perfectly capable of becoming fathers? And what, for crying out loud, am I doing allowing a fourth dog into the house at all?"

If this seems a little extreme, remember that it comes on top of three weeks of ceaseless and obsessive sexual behaviors by Wolfie and Bisou. Ceaseless. And all of it, except for one weekend we went away, has happened right at my side. My life has been an endless round of spreading towels on furniture, yelling "leave it!" to Wolfie, drying his drool off Bisou, giving her refuge between my feet or on my lap (and then having to wash my jeans in cold water).

As I write, Wolfie is asleep at my feet, Bisou at my side. They are exhausted. They have lost weight. Aphrodite is a cruel goddess, and when she grabs hold of you, you'd better watch out. But it will, I am told, soon be over. Mercifully, Bisou is a dog, not a teenage girl. A couple of months after her heat she will be ready for spaying, and we will all breathe a sigh of relief.