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Took a vacation day today and felt the apprehension of not doing what I normally do every day as soon as I got out of bed, so I checked my blackberry and then I tried to relax. I went to lunch with a friend and that proved to be therapeutic because she has a stressful job and we were talking about how to find balance in a world where everything is take take take and we just need a moment here to receive – but from who, what, where?

At the end of lunch, my friend said that she was canceling her therapy and having lunch with me once a month – which was a great way of saying she found it rewarding as well.

Cherish our friends – where would we be without them?

I went to a Tai Chi class last night and again realized just how much difficulty I have being rather still and breathing deeply into my stomach – it’s almost as if it makes me feel like I’m in a straight jacket. But after the class I did feel as if I had moved something, whether it was chi or me, hard to say.

My Tao te Ching meditation is about overvaluing people or things and letting nonaction be the guide.

#3

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal

The Master leads
by emptying people’s minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.

Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.

The late Ernie K Doe wrote the song of all songs, Mother in Law, forever sealing the stereotype in sound. I was having lunch with a friend and she asked how things were going with my mother in law in the house and I said, actually this is the easiest mother in law I’ve known and the reason is there is no competition for the beloved son.

My friend went on to tell me how her mother in law has her husband’s baby teeth, lock of hair, and all of his precious baby moments tattooed to her forehead and reminds her of their special relationship on a daily basis. NO ONE IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER BABY. I said, don’t I know it, I was married to Jesus Christ or at least that is what his parents called him; he was like the second coming. But that was only one of three husbands.

I was speaking about this subject to another friend and she said chock up one more good thing about being a lesbian – you don’t have to compete with the mother.

I think about this often because actually I’d love to have a son but I worry about the overbearing mother-son relationship that insinuates itself into the adult son’s relationships. Why do mothers not let go of their sons? Isn’t it silly to compete with your son’s wife? Like my friend said at lunch, there is no competition, he left you and is living with me.

A friend lost her grown child in a sudden tragic accident. You try to find words to say for this occasion. I came up short when my friend’s two year old was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease, I kept trying to give her examples of how this wasn’t so bad when she kept telling me how fucked her daughter was – and in the end she didn’t speak to me for six months, her anger roiled over anything I tried to say. I can give you no comfort, my housekeeper wrote me one time in Marin County about not being able to find my comforter – yes, I can give you no comfort I finally told my friend, and you’re right, your daughter is fucked.

Today as I contemplate another friend, another child gone, I have again, nothing to say of any value.

To an Athlete Dying Young
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

I was coming out of yoga today, feeling like I was cramming in what is good for me into a day jammed with things to do and I saw that my mother had called. I listened to her message which had an urgency that has the same effect on me like the boy who cried wolf. “Rachel! Call me right as soon as you get this message.”

I called mom, and she said in an altered voice, “The photograph of you and Steve is missing! The one that was in Sunset Magazine.”

I said well it probably fell. I’ll look for it when I come by.

“No, I looked, and I tell you I am sick to death of this.”

“Of what?” I asked.

“Of people thieving.”

I asked her who would want to take that photo since both of us look so fat in it.

“Well, I’m tired of this I tell you!”

Again I said, tired of what? Of picture thieves?”

“No I’m sick to death of my fucking children taking advantage of me.”

Pause.

Then a scream and a howl and then crying in huge degrees. I waited, on the side of the road, for her to come back to the phone.

“I found it. It fell behind the basket on the floor.”

Call me later, I said knowing that dementia does not discriminate – it’s not her children who have taken advantage of her, it’s some glitch in her brain that says she is the victim and this is all happening to her unwillingly.

Deep breath. Yoga style.

Today, I was racing from one point to another in my truck when I saw a funeral procession going by on the opposite side of the street. In the town my mother grew up, Franklinton, Louisiana, if a funeral is going by every car pulls over to show their respect for the dead. Here in the “city”, we keep racing on by. It put me in mind of Emily Dickinson:

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

My friends made the last entry into the online journal they have kept while their young daughter was dying. I still remember going to the hospital that day when the baby was born. I remember her red red face. I remember seeing my friends happy to have been through the delivery and ready to start their new life. The reality came at them in micro adjustments so that by the time two years had come and gone, this little girl had changed their and other lives completely.

In the wink of an eye, another friend wakes to greet the day, a day where everything is coming together for her after many years of struggles. And in one second, in the groggy clarity of the morning, her life changes irrevocably with sad news of her son. As if the elephant gods had stepped carelessly on her chest and mashed her heart down to the ground.

I sent a note to my friends after the dedication of a swing set they had installed in their daughter’s memory and said I am reminded again and again that the meaning of life is to live it. And grace under pressure sometimes looks like a high wire act while juggling, and some fall off the wire to no net below, and some sprout wings and fly and this circus act is our shifting reality.

Inside of me live two separate identities, one is the baby of six kids, the aunt of 11 nieces and nephews, the great aunt to seven children and from a large family who thrives in groups with all the cacophony and action and interaction. The other person inside of me relishes solitude, quiet, and reflection. I need both to survive. Why is it that the longing to be with someone is such a strong pull, but find yourself surrounded by all those loved ones and you are suddenly remembering the walk you wanted to take.

T is always talking about my American optimism, but since I know so many American pessimists, I wonder if it is an American trait at all. At the same time, I covet her Eastern European Living (eel) ways of appreciation, relaxation, and pragmatism. Yet, even though I find T immensely hilarious at times, there is a humor barrier between the Americans and EELs. Take this joke her mother told me:

A little bird was sitting high on a wire in the freezing cold, it was shivering and shivering, until it keeled over and fell to the ground.
A cow came along and shit on the bird. And the warmth of it revived the bird and the bird began to sing. Then a cat spied it and ate it.
The moral of the story, when someone shits on you, they aren’t necessarily your enemy, when you are deep in shit, you shouldn’t sing, and the one who pulls you out of shit is not necessarily your friend.

Hilarious, no?

No, I say. As hilarious as Borat was – NOT.

So today when I spied these poems by a Serb, I had to shake my head because we were just speaking about the stars in Lastovo, a remote island of Croatia, where the stars are so numerous they are building an observatory there for scientists from all over, yet for some reason all the romance that those stars held for me, for us, for anyone I would assume, are lost in the translation below:

While You Count the Stars

While you count the stars, some woman next to you
tells you that the world is full of hatred,
gasps of love and sawdust. Not long ago, she left
her husband who ditched her in the forest.

The rabbit is in the pot, the broom is behind the door.

When you cross her threshold, you’ll see your shadow,
her god, her many gods.
You’ll be again a stupid man
who bullies and torments.

You’ll be perplexed, have no idea where you are.
You’ll follow the burning river, descending even lower.
Evil spirits will rise out of the palm of your hand.

****

A Bird Started to Sing

A bird started to sing
on a clear day
over the gallows

A branch stirred
in a small grove
next to a smoldering fire

A stream babbled
over the bodies
of the ones struck down

Wind lifted the ashes
and spread them
over other ashes

Novica Tadic
translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic

5:30pm – 7:00pm – WorldWalk Peace Tour Presentation

Two Hungarian brothers walk around the world and stop here tonight. Looking for the world’s best coffee? Not exactly, though we hope they find it here. No they are promoting Peace through co-living – Brotherhood and friendship. 25,000 miles and 5 continents, they walk to deliver this message.

Learn more about them at Worldwalk, and don’t miss this opportunity to meet and greet these adventurers. FREE