“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.” —Buddha

Apologies ahead of time for the rambling philosophization that gushed out. If you want to play along in the comments, skip over my bit and write your own 10 Things first, then come back and read mine. So, the first 10 Things that come to mind after reading that quote…

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1. I’m slicing up the three pieces of the quote and considering the value of love in all its forms as the foundation for all of our choices and actions. Quantity is implied here, but not the quantity of people or things we love but the amount we love, the amount we give love or put love into the world.

2. One aphorism leads to another. The more you give, the more you get.

3. I was thinking of the different ways we can love, and the marbles that started rolling around in my head were the Greek forms. I thought of eros and communitas, but then I couldn’t help myself and looked them up (I liked to get things right; I have a hard time letting go of accuracy). Agape, eros, philia, storge. We are capable of loving in many ways. The deep, true love we hold rare and precious; desire and aesthetic and physical love; the love of friends and family and community that requires virtue, equality and familiarity; and, of course, tolerance (also with many forms). 

4. None of the three statements is explicit about their antitheses. Anger, hate, abhorrence, intolerance, contempt, etc. Is the first phrase — how much you loved — or the judgment implied in the opening, like a bucket that gets filled up by love and emptied by the detrimental emotions? Is it that simple/complex?

5. Gentle living reminds me of parenting babies and toddlers and preschoolers. Gently when you pet the cat. Gently when you hug your brother. Gently when you touch Gramma’s face so you don’t poke her eyes out. Gently. I don’t say that word out loud to the Sonars very much anymore. They have pretty decent self control, which is what we monitored with the word ‘gentle’ in their wee years. But perhaps I should still use it. Gently with your words to your peers who are entering an age of sharp-tongued anxiety. Gently with your brothers who will likely be your longest friends and fiercest allies, even though they may always know how to push your buttons. Gently on the earth. Don’t waste the water or the paper or the electricity. Gently with your mama who is both proud to watch you grow and gain your independence and fearful of seeing you stumble along the way. 

6. How gently you live can then be kindness or conservation or through word or action it can mean minimizing the damage that we inevitably do to the people and the world around us. So that if loving much is maximizing what we give, then living gently is minimizing the harm we cause. 

7. How gracefully we let go of what is not meant for us. In my clumsy understanding of Buddhism, letting go gracefully seems like the ultimate goal. Not allowing material goods to weigh you down. Not allowing negative thoughts or experiences or people to weigh you down. To release the weight of everything. Though in pragmatic terms for the normal human who feels angry and jealous and slighted and loves things and people and feels sentimental and attached, then letting go gracefully is challenging and requires a strong hold on the first two concepts. Maximize what we give, minimize what we take or harm. 

8. My hand is tired and far more minutes have slipped by than a traditional 10 Things exercise usually occupies. I suppose that is the nature of philosophical contemplation. It takes time and might hurt. 

9. The sky just turned much more dim and the wind is gusting. An imaginary line on a weather map is manifesting as a line of force in the sky that blusters across the coastal plains like a dust squeegee pulling cold air behind it. 

10. That dust-squeegee metaphor is both hilarious and terrible. I love it and I give it to you with love, letting go of any embarrassment I feel about it as I release it into a gust of wind and into your eyeballs. Gently, I hope, for the sake of your eyeballs. 

I remembered days like this, years ago, when he would be awake so early, making coffee and reading in the semi-dark. I remembered those days when he’d lean over the bed and kiss me goodbye before wrapping the scarf around and around and around his neck against the frigid temperatures for his walk to work. But mostly I remembered those mornings when I could hear him, in the kitchen, making coffee, with mumbles of radio weaving in and out of his moving sounds. Remembering when the mumbles would stop and he would climb back in bed, careful not to let too much cold air under the blankets, and settle back next to me, whispering, “Snow day.”

Or they could have been my students, a sibling. She may have smiled that beautiful smile over my lunch. He wanted to serve and protect. He wanted us to stop hurting people. She came here to learn. 

These people, living and dead, cause me pain. So yes, I want to know them. Not to exploit, or glorify, or justify, or apologize, or excuse. No. I want to know because I want to understand. I want to know why. I want to know if something could have been done to help angry young men with hate in their hearts to see a different path. Because I have the imagination of a mother. And the rage, and the heartbreak, and the ache. They are children. They have mothers. No mother looks at her baby’s face and imagines she will suffer in this particular way. No mother looks at her baby’s face and imagines he will unleash pain and death and torment. So how does that capacity for hatred grow? Where does it begin? I tell myself — the way we do — that my boys are different. But in this way or in that way, they are the same. And I have the imagination of a mother. And the guilt, and the worry.  

If we try to understand, if we seek to know, could we identify other children on a path that could be redirected, could be supported, be SEEN and treated as human and valuable, so they could see and treat others as human and valuable? So that our children will grow — whole, and alive — and without hate in their hearts. 

And still I’m talking about a bomb and a gunfight that killed four people and maimed so many others. For hate, yes. Which is terrible. No doubt. 

But what about the bomb that killed fourteen and destroyed so much in a tiny town? That bomb that people prefer to call a factory or business. That bomb that exploded not for malice but for what? Negligence or profit? That bomb that was not set by radicalization but is so much more eminently preventable if we give it the attention it deserves. So much more readily mitigated. But strangely not causing the same level of anger. I look out at the stacks of refineries and factories within my horizon, and I imagine possibilities. 

So many questions here and there and elsewhere. I can imagine something different. I can imagine something better. But first we have to be willing to value those lives, to look at them, ALL of them, to see them, to ask questions, and at every step to be humane and just.

Thao says, “Rest and Be Strong / Wash and Be Clean / Start a New Year / Whenever You Need,” and you know I’m a fan of Reset. 

I can’t help but wonder if we know each other. Jump up and down in the comments if we do. Though the search for “things that don’t exist” seems somehow more appropriate lately. For the thirteen subscribers who have stuck around while I’ve been off Not-Blogging, I’m quite certain that we know each other. You should jump up and down in the comments section too.  

Or do you need a new hobby?

And this week I’m reading Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed. Strayed talks about the moment in which she realizes that losing her mother at a young age will never be ok. In spite of having a good life and being happy, she has lost her mother, the most essential figure in her life. “And yet the unadorned truth of what she said — it will never be okay — entirely unzipped me.”

Strayed’s writing is amazing. Honest and poetic, and flowing with grit and compassion and love. I love to read her writing. When I read her words I am often overwhelmed with emotion. Surprised to find sentences that feel like they were written only for me and my experiences and my feelings. How could she do that? And how much does a bibliophile long to find those sentences, the ones that are written just for me? It doesn’t happen for me as much as I’d wish. And as much as it aches sometimes to read her sentences, Strayed’s words often do that to me. The same thing happened when I read her memoir, Wild. 

Her words prompt feelings of old pain flowing over me, but in a sort of orderly way, as if old scars have been reopened. The opening isn’t as messy as it used to be. I can look at the pain, I can feel it, I can know it is there, but I can also close it again when it isn’t serving me, when it is standing in my way. I do not have to wallow in that pain. 

Yesterday, when I came across that Rose Kennedy quote in the same hour I read the Dear Sugar letter “The Black Arc of It,” in which Stayed is unzipped, those two pieces clicked together. My scars are there, but they aren’t hard tissue or soft. My scars are closed with the sturdy zippers I have built from my pain. They open sometimes, but the power is always within me to close then again. 

This is not denial. My zippers are always there for me to see. The dangly bit often jangles for my attention, clamoring to be opened. In a certain turn of weather, or a certain season, the scars ache underneath. Some words, some phrases, some actions, some memories, careless people, well-meaning people unzip the zippers, letting out some pain, some emotion, some tears. I can feel these feelings and know that I am alive and human and imperfect. I can accept that some things will never be ok. But those feelings, these scars do not have to stop me. I can grasp the little jangly bit that I have built with my own healing and my time and my understanding and I can close the zipper, closing the scar back over the part that will always be there, covering over the part that will never be ok. Closing the zipper to save my sanity. 

My scars are closed with the sturdy zippers I have built from my pain. They open sometimes, but the power is always within me to close then again.

And, oh, yeah, HI! Distractable summer, blah blah blah. Throw open the windows and let in some air and sunshine. Sweep out the crickets and we’ll get on with SOMEthing, shall we? xo

Makihige

Back in January (during the few weeks it was chilly here in Coastal Texas) I was keen to knit a pretty, stylish something that could do double-duty as a scarf and small shoulder wrap. While trolling that knitter’s opium den (Ravelry) I came across the Shizuku Scarf by Angela Tong (try here for a Shizuku link off the Rav). The original design is striking, with little teardrops forming the fringe on one edge of a triangular shawlette knit in Noro Kureyon, a progressively-dyed yarn. According to the pattern, “Shizuku” means “drops or teardrop shape” in Japanese. I wasn’t sure how I felt about those droplets. They looked fascinating, but would they be fun to make? Further down the rabbit-hole I found a mod that banked on the brilliance of Cat Bordhi (clever knitter extraordinaire). Ms. Bordhi has a You Tube video in which she explains how to make Tendrils—sort of fringy twists—all over a hat, suggestive of cartoonish dreadlocky hair. While the substitution of tendrils for teardrops neutralizes the original name of the pattern, the result is lovely. And those tendrils are FUN to make. I want to put tendrils on everything now. I used a little more than a single skein of Lion Brand Amazing (wool and acrylic blend) in the Glacier Bay color way.

Eglentyne’s Shizuku with Tendrils Scarf (Photo by Sonar X11, Click to embiggen)Ear Bud Sweaters

My ear buds needed a sweater. Less to keep them warm than to make them look cool. Plus, I cannot resist whimsy, and who wants tangled rubbery cords? I covered my cords with South West Trading Company’s Tofutsies yarn (Superwash wool, Soysilk fibers, Cotton, and Chitin). I used US Size 1 (2.25mm) needles to make a four-stitch I-cord over the main wire, then a three-stitch cord after the split up to the ears. I didn’t cover the mic, and stopped short of covering the ear end of the cords because I didn’t want yarn in my ears. Bonnie Pruitt has a video tutorial if you want to try this one. 

Tofutsies Ear Bud Sweater (photo courtesy of Eglentyne and a sunny day. Click to embiggen.)

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, Alfred A. Knopf 2012 (library copy)

I don’t read much memoir and biography. I don’t read much (wo)man versus wilderness. And I don’t usually read advice columns. But I love love love Sugar. I found Dear Sugar at The Rumpus when she told one of her readers to “Write Like a Motherfucker.” Sugar delivers a kind of gritty, tender, nonjudgmental, pragmatic, tough love, interspersed with bits and pieces of her own real, raw, regular life. I love her. I love being called one of her sweet peas. 

So when Sugar’s real identity was revealed to be Cheryl Strayed, and that Strayed had a new memoir about her extraordinary hike of the Pacific Crest Trail from Southern California to the Oregon/Washington border, I didn’t hesitate. I knew I had to read it and I was not disappointed.

Suffering from the consequences of grief over the loss of her mother to cancer, Strayed set out on a solo hike across California. On the hike she hoped to have a lot of time to contemplate her feelings and her troubles and to sort out the worst tangles. Inexperienced and ill-prepared, the struggle to even stand upright under the weight of her enormous backpack (“Hunching in a remotely upright position”), among other physical challenges, left little time for direct contemplation.

Strayed’s relationship with her mother was positive, but in loss, her grief turned to self-destruction. Her family drifted apart and her marriage fell apart and she found herself seeking solace and sensation and numbness in sex and drugs. Strayed was not responsible for her mother’s death, and did everything she could to care for her mother in her final weeks. Yet Strayed’s grief was so overwhelming, so heavy, that she could not seem to move forward under its weight.  

Her hike was a primal grab for a cure. In her memoir, she speaks in an intimate voice, honest and unflinching. It is not faith or religion that guides her, but the strength she finds inside herself, and support from favorite books, memories, and strangers. I could feel her physical pain. She has created a picture that allows readers to inhabit her sore and blistered body fully. As the story progresses, readers can feel her body getting harder, her emotions shifting as she walks each difficult step.

Wild thumped a drum inside me. Tapped one tender, calloused finger against a scarred place. At the end I was left with a proud, happy, throbbing, shattered, feeling — emotionally like Strayed’s blistered toes. I could not help but contemplate my own relationship with my mother reading this book, could not help contrasting my experience with Strayed’s. My emotional scars still hurt sometimes, the feelings still get heavy. But Cheryl Strayed’s story has been cathartic for me, opening channels for grief and understanding that had waited behind latched gates. On her hike, Strayed learned that she could bear that weight, and she writes about it in the same way she dishes advice as Sugar. Patiently, honestly, with pain and joy and complexity. Plus a little happy sex and ice cream.