Doing Nothing

I call them commercials. It’s PBS, sure, but when the Chuck E. Cheese underwriting “announcement” comes on, it’s a darn commercial.

And I’m offended by the slogan for this “message” – as asserted by the PBS-Pure-Middle-American-Broadcast-Voice-Woman: Because doing something is better than doing nothing.

Excuse me?

an abandoned chair

I know, I can guess, that what that venerable institution of pizza and second-rate mechanical animals means to suggest is that children should be active to avoid obesity (because that’s what every eatery in the land is meaning to suggest, at the same time as pushing their greasy food in our faces) so that instead of passively eating pizza at some other establishment or at home in front of, well, PBS or other TV, kids would be better off gulping pizza while watching large rats play banjos and then play a video game and finish the night off by throwing up in the ball pit. To keep insurance rates down, you know.

However, that phrase lingered in my head as I walked over to the park on a rare morning when it was just me – no kids, no dog – and I was able to sit down and gorgeously, indulgently, do the wonderful act of nothing.

In your face, Chucky!

I don’t want my children to grow up feeling they must be constantly engaged. I don’t want them to need to be entertained or to be producing something or downing something or always something something to be living a meaningful existence. So, no, I disagree with your assertion, Chuck E. Cheese, oh Subsidizer of Sesame Street: it’s not always better to do something better than nothing; sometimes doing nothing is exactly what must be done.

(Or maybe it’s a political statement? As in, do something about poverty or discrimination; maybe the rat is trying to start a revolution?)

Eventually, as I sat there on the rounded nub of the hill, the something vs. nothing debate unseethed itself and I was able to breathe and be. I’m not great at meditating. It’s one of those things I probably will always struggle with, because I’m so mentally frolicking and questioning and reflexive, and I want to do it so well I get caught up in tstriving instead of just relaxing into the moment. But sitting outside in the park, the burdens of my own self-consciousness have less weight. The earth is capacious. I am small. Even my own breath goes on and on without my controlling it. My body and the trees interact with no need of my sanction. We are deeply intimate.

Logically, there is no such thing as doing nothing. But sticking with Lao-Tse’s wu wei concept of doing nothing – the Taoist approach of not-doing or not-interfering, going with the flow – it is still an attentive, active kind of being one might try; it does not look for outcomes, for fulfillment, not because outcomes and fulfillment are not to be had, but because forcing them, trying to make them happen, doesn’t work.

Kind of like taking your oversized kid to a “fun” pizza parlor.

Though, if you do end up at a Chuck E. Cheese, do it wu wei style – do nothing – and have a good time!

The slogan for the park – any park – should be: Come, do nothing. Rest.

the bus

The bus stop is adjacent to the park.

Going on the bus is a social excursion. The nurse next to us smiles at my baby and says to him, “You see this black face? You have a white face!” My son gurgles. I hear her accent – African? She tells me, as if she heard my silent question, pointing at my sling, “In Africa, 1 -2 – 3 months, they go to the back.”

“That would be easier,” I say, “For cooking.” I tell her how dangerous it gets when I’m heating oil. We laugh. I ask her where she is from, and she tells me she is a refugee from Togo.

“Do you miss it?” I ask. “Yes,” she says. “Very much.”

I recall my geography, ask her about the ocean. I feel like I’ve read about ecotourism there; rich people (browning themselves?) on the beaches.

“Yes,” she says. “My father owned a fishing boat.”
She tells me they ate fresh fish and bam, a kind of coconut. (We call our son “Bam,” coincidentally.)
She tells me her five children are all over the world, only her youngest is here with her in the US. One is in Paris. but she says this is a good place for children.
Her mother had nine.
They are planning to return for a trip next year.

“You should go,” she tells me, warmly, extending an invitation for me to come see the place she loves. For a moment, all I want in the world is to do just that; go to Togo, look her up in the phone book. I want to see the blue ocean she’s talking about and feel a different part of the world. I want to see what home looks like to her.

I am also thinking that I’ll never go to Africa. And this feels terrible. I will die having never gone.

I am also thinking of how much I miss my ocean, the Pacific, where I grew up – maybe I am not imagining Togo at all; I’m just remembering a place that used to make my chest cave in when I thought of it, a place I’ll never really return to.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a refugee. But I know what it’s like to be far away from home and to always feel that you are not where you rightly belong. Our oceans mingle in my imagination, become the same missed body.

And then she gets off the bus.

When we return back on the bus three hours later, the woman from Togo is there again. Headache she says, holding her forehead where a bright kerchief is slipping back to reveal gray hair on her brow. And my knees. I go home to rest.

She looks miserable. I don’t know her name. I don’t know really her story, how she ended up here. I felt, on the way, that I’d had this amazing infusion of information; but now I see, as we rattle down the road, that I’ve learned only that there’s so much I don’t know. My imagination made me feel like I was having some kind of poetic experience; reality is, it’s just a bus. We’re not traveling very far together, she and I.

In contrast to the other ebullient woman I meet on this bus ride – I’ll write about her next – the woman from Togo does not say hello to the people on the bus and street corners. She seems lonely. This makes me wonder if refuggees from other countries, though the same “color” as “people of color” born here in America integrate with them, and if so, how.

This question still when I get off the bus, walk along the park towards home, and there’s two boys with backpacks going home from school, speaking to each other in a foreign language. Again, I am wondering where they are from, and suddenly also, how many refugees are in this town, and of those, how many are feeling homesickness? And what do I, what can I do about – think about – that?

What to do With a Pokeberry (Pain in the Butt)

This plant freaks me out. There’s something evil and indignant about its magenta veins – the color sears into high octave pitches the colder it gets, singing, “I’m a weed! And you’ll never get rid of me!” Yes, definitely, if the pokeberry had a voice, it would sound like those cross old women trilling in angry registers in the dusty Episcopalian churches that can’t seem to live without them.

They are both poisonous to humans and apparently of interest to AIDS researchers.

I am not an AIDS researcher. I want other things growing in my garden. I have pokeberry poking a-plenty, and all sorts of digging and yanking and shouting (ok, so I talk to plants) (at least I don’t play music for them) and hacking accomplishes beheadings that only lead to stronger, thicker eruptions.

And people have told me the following about how to deal with them:

1) “Cut that thing down, get it out of there: it’s dangerous!”

2) “Oh, leave it up for the birds; and use it to teach your kids that some things aren’t to be eaten!”

So, there’s two approaches to dealing with something you don’t want.

Now that I know what they are, I see them everywhere.

I scowl at them.

I consider my options.

Nemesis

(On the edges of the park, they flaunt themselves, and it doesn’t matter what I think of them. Are they beautiful?)

Turning Cartwheels

When I was 8, I lived in London with my family; one of our favorite haunts was, of course, Hyde Park.

Grass

Well, one day I was doing cartwheels there, goofily, gaily, galloping head over heels, when smush! one hand landed in the center of a large pile of horse manure.

If you have been to Hyde Park, you know how large it is, how hard it can be to find a place to wash one’s soiled hand. If you’ve seen horse manure, you know how large that is, too. I felt utterly debased.

Such an episode does not bode well for me and the park, does it?

Or does it tell something about the nature of – well, nature? And life?

And then there was the time I was 6 and singing happy birthday to myself, just skipping along in glee, and a bee flew into my wide open mouth and stung the tender roof, flew out, and died.

I can still taste the flavor of that sting.

I am thinking now about all the precautionary measures we are warned to take to avoid pain and hurt and accidental demise with our children, ourselves – every thing posits a possible danger, it seems.

And also a possible treasure – a possible pleasure – a possible delight, no? Can you imagine if the headlines read, “Beware – that seemingly innocuous heap of leaves could mean an hour of thrilling crunching if you’re not careful – walk at your own risk”?

Perhaps the lesson is: Cartwheel and sing your song.

If you land in crap or eat a bee, you will recover.

Take delight where you find it. Scoop it up in big heaping handfulls. Don’t cut back out of fear. You’ll miss the fun – the drama – the story – don’t live a safe, dull life.

That reminds me of how one of my favorite poets, Frank O’Hara, died: In a dune buggy accident at a very young age. My first reaction on reading that was to think, “What an idiot!” (It’s always easier to think someone an idiot and thus make oneself immune to the very same outcome – I, of course, would never subject myself to such a silly expiration escapade, would I?) My second reaction was a sincere desire to go back in time as the Angel of the Future and warn Frank to avoid moving vehicles.

But seriously, he was living his life. Death is not strange. Pain is not aberrant. Poo and bees and dune buggys are part of the experience.

Sometimes, as the bumper sticker, shit happens. But I hate that bumper sticker, and it’s sister, “Life’s a bitch.” Sometimes, I want to say, just like I want to say to the Buddha: Okay, yeah, Life is suffering, sometimes. Maybe more or less depending on where you live and your personal outlook, but yeah, okay, but yeah, no, not totally.

Life includes suffering and joy, and we need to take both lightly, and fully, honoring both, for they make up who and what we are.

I wonder about that noble truth a lot.

The trees, of course, don’t need to wear bumper stickers.

They just extend to the sun, to the clouds, to the lightning. They don’t flinch. They are static cartwheels, grounded in the motion of being.

Branches in sun

An Introduction

Graffiti on the blacktop

The first time I ever went to the park, I found a used, blue condom on the toddler play structure. Gang signs swirled over the arches above the slide, where splayed a red kerchief that made me think of gang colors I’d first learned about in junior high, when I lived near LA and our eighth grade sadie hawkins dance had a shooting incident due to someone wearing a valentine dress.

Ah, memories.

My daughter was about a year and a half, and the place was empty, until a couple little girls, one black, one white, sprang out of the grass to play with us, shouting, as kids do, “Watch me slide! Watch me! Watch!”

I remember the contrast of the noble, arching oak trees to the scraps of plastic drink containers and Bud Light bottles left forlorn and ugly and random across the thick grass.

I fell in love with the park, and when a house went on sale right next to it, a year later, I wanted it, badly.

Something about the park’s scrappiness, it’s disheveled nature under a benevolent composure of trees, made me feel at home the way neater, newer, more straight-laced parks did not.

But I’ve never quite fit into newfab surburbias or fancypants gentrified cityscapes. I’m not claiming any kind of street cred I don’t have; it’s just where I come from. I shop at the Salvation Army because I like the gems and the crap, and I like them mixed together. Rows of mass produced shirts at Sears give me the hives. And I myself usually have an untied shoelace, a hole in the armpit of my shirt, an ignored sauce stain on my sweater. It’s not that I like being unkempt, or that I relish the trash in the park – it’s that I’ll live with rattiness if there’s something else more magnificent and important going on – something muscular and fanatic and unique, if there’s soul.

If there’s spirit, soul, delight, irreverent humor, zinging out of a person, place, or thing, I can overlook – no, I do overlook – I don’t see the spiderwebs, the tears, the zigzags in the part. I don’t see; I don’t care.

This is not genetic, this flaw of mine, to love flaws. My mother and my grandmother exist to scrape away every possible dirt molecule that would take up residence on a kitchen counter; they pursue errant hems with the stubborn rigor of terminators; they forgo the health of their bones and ligaments to ensure that the laundry is done, the stains eradicated, the sheets ironed, shoes shined, the front stoop swept and washed clean and fresh.

Their efforts impress me – shame me – highlight evermore my incipient slovenliness.

But theirs is not my talent.

I’m not good at reforming the dirt; I’m only good at seeing it for its inherent richness; and it feels more real to me to love the uncouth, the crass, the malformed.

To love the park, and its people, even if they don’t know how to use the trashbins properly.

Look at this piece of art! Look at this friggin trash!

How interesting!

Into the Woods/Into the Wild

So, I’m aware that the title of this blog has its possible echoes.

1. Into the Woods, musical by Stephen Sondheim – one of my favorites – fairytales interwoven into one big metaphoric mass about the adventure of living. We go into the woods, the wild and dangerous and dark places, to find danger and magic, solutions and dissolutions.

The show covers multiple themes: growing up, parents and children, accepting responsibility, morality, and finally, wish fulfillment and its consequences.^[14] William A. Henry III wrote that the play’s “basic insight… is at heart, most fairy tales are about the loving yet embattled relationship between parents and children. Almost everything that goes wrong — which is to say, almost everything that can — arises from a failure of parental or filial duty, despite the best intentions.”^[15] Stephen Holden writes that the themes of the show include parent-child relationships and the individual’s responsibility to the community. The witch isn’t just a scowling old hag but a key symbol of moral ambivalence. She is also the only character in the show who always tells the truth. James Lapine said that the most unpleasant person (the witch) would have the truest things to say and the “nicer” people would be less honest. In her words, “I’m not good; I’m not nice; I’m just right.”[

I love the idea that so many fairytales involve a traipse through the woods – where our heroines encounter witches who offer candy, fantasy, escapism – but for Sondheim, they offer truth. I wander our park – do I truth-tell? Will I have my own family dynamics playing out on the jingling swingset?

Maybe not – “the park” is such a domesticated area – landscaped, mowed, conceptualized, planned. It is not a Wild Space. Or is it? Is it a human zoo of sorts? An old-fashioned commons? It is outmoded and unused now that people frequent cafes with wireless, coffee shops, video arcades, or just stay stuck in their homes? What is the point of a park these days? A place to exercise – exercise the dog at the dog park, exercise the kids at the playground – but what is there for us adults?

Why aren’t there more people doing tai chi in them?

2. Into the Wild. The book, the movie, both of which I consumed this past summer. The storyline of a young guy who graduates from college and then disappears to pursue ever more dangerous excursions into raw natural experience – the last of which kills him – what fascinated me about the story (book more than the movie) was the notion that the guy didn’t seek a lot of knowledge before going at his various adventures – he tried to rely on instinct – scrambling – making it up as he went along – meeting the wilds of the desert or of Alaska with just himself, not even the proper maps… foolish, and yet, I understand that sense of – purity?

I take my daily walks into the park without fear of moose, snake, or caribou. The most dangerous animal I’ll come across is someone’s untrained, unleased pitbull; perhaps a rabid squirrel will tempt my dog into a frenzy I can’t contain, and he’ll scamper into the boundaries of brush where I can’t find him.

I am not a mountain climber. Still, there are times when social anxiety kicks in, and I feel an icy precipice intercepts me and the strangers I come across on the green lilting slopes.

Stranger Phobia
More often than not, the stranger is friendly. A woman in a flowery, fiery red dress – “Five bucks at Roses!”; kids who want to pet the dog – “Does he bite?”; a woman also walking a stubborn dog…

If I were the kind of person to believe that We are All One, I would find each encounter an exercise – not of the muscle – but of the spiritual imagination. To identify each person, however hostile or distant he or she seems to be upon my initial appraisal – as not a stranger but another aspect of the same energy/life force / universe/ family that is mine – to treat him as if he were a long-lost brother, a newfound sister, to extend my arms, even if only with my eyes – this is my challenge, because we live in such a large society that is fractured and broken by its very profound size and the nature of our history together -

I read the Bible several times while I was growing up. And though I don’t treat the Bible with the same reverence I once did, I do still have verses that remain important.

“In perfect love there is no fear.” This is one I remember and think of, especially dealing with strangers, with the fear of The Other. To acknowledge our common humanity to love another person is to not fear that person.

In an industrialized society, fear is a survival mechanism imbued into our daily interactions. But is it truly as rational as we might think?

Promises, Promises
When I was 12, I remember I made a solemn promise with myself. I had noticed that adults did not look each other in the eyes when passing by one another. Instead, they deflected notice, they turned glances aside, they squinted. Me, I wasn’t afraid of looking right at another person and smiling – I was 12 years old, I believed I was a good, holy person, and I believed that others were, too. I had the protection of my sincere faith in goodness radiating around me like the fringe of an ecstatic aura. I told myself I would never ever stop looking people in the eyes. No matter how old I got.

But I failed my 12-year-old self. I did start cringing, at least with my lashes. Bending them over. Peeking through. Avoiding the stares and glances and peeks of others as we crossed paths on the sidewalks of the city. Feigning distraction. Looking at the cracks on the ground with intense pretend interest.

Some of this was the fault of people like the guy who wagged his tongue at me out his car window one night when I was going home from a college anthropology course. There are mean and attacking people out there who will take a trusting contact of the eye and turn it into an opportunity to hurt.

But if we are all one – or at least, we are all aspects of the whole – how can we not love, offer compassion, to the ridiculous and sweetness-starved individuals who would try to turn the brief coincidence of passing by into a moment of attrition?

Perfect love is the Buddhist loving-kindness, is the wide-open embrace of the universal mother who will take us all back, eventually.

And you can find this rich accepting stance – those open arms – at the base of any tree – in the metaphoric woods, the mythic wilds, and even in the – in my – city park.

me, heading on in

I didn’t mean to start a new blog.

But this one had to happen.

Sometimes, who we are is about what we do – I was a Cville Working Mom, for instance.

But my life these days is shaped now around place, where I am – which reminds me of the first college class I ever taught, English 101, the theme of which had to do with place and identity. So in some ways I’m coming full circle.

Only, I know enough about life now to know that there are never really true full circles. At least, not for very long. Circles tend to loop on out, or spiral back in. We cover the same territory, over and over, but we never step in the same river twice.

And so it is with my park. THE PARK. The park across the street from our new place of residence, as of a few months ago. I go there every day, sometimes twice or three times, and every time I go I see something new – a new person, a new kind of person, a new tree, a changed leaf, a strange sign. The City is planning to revamp the park (when it has money) – change out the old play structures, remove the leaking wading pools, add a sprinkler area – but I’m discovering that the changes I find on a daily basis, small as they are, require their own consideration, and have their own heft and impact on me, on those of us who wander in and out.

When I was eight, living for a while in Germany, a place thick with green trees choking the sky, I got annoyed with God for his lack of imagination. “Why are they all green?” I remember asking my Dad. “It’s so boring.”

All these years later, I’m starting to understand that the deliciousness of trees isn’t about color; it’s the miracle of so many individual shapes, the amazing variety within the same color scheme that makes you go on looking and looking. It can have a dizzying affect, staring into the lush fringes of the woods.

And then, of course, I didn’t see a deciduous landscape in the fall until I was 16, when I came east from California. I’d never witnessed the crazed frenzy when all these green trees rush out their inner reds, oranges, golds.

But once I did, I bit my tongue on my 8 year old’s impatience.

God knew what she was doing.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!