#52 - Instead of Watching Hitch, I Wrote This
Neighborly Conduct; Slow Your Roll; Seeing is Relieving
Hello, my friends,
Four weeks of coughing seems to be winding down finally. Who invented illnesses anyway? And where are the sold? I’d like to return all of them for a full refund. And for the really bad ones, I don’t even care about the money.
It was Valentine’s Day on Wednesday. I don’t know about you, but I’m neutral on this mini-holiday; I like that there’s a day to celebrate romance, but also have a hard time getting worked up for it since it has no stronger source for me than, say, National Pickle Day (annually celebrated on November 14th). Its a big one for manufacturers of tiny Paw Patrol cards and candy, though, because we sent Michael to school with some for his classmates and he returned home with a binder full of tiny cards and baggies of Skittles and other sweet treats. I don’t think the kids know what Valentine’s Day is even about but I do know that candy makers will profit from it!
Neighborly Conduct
I’m convinced that whenever groups of people live together little bits of culture develops, altruistic and otherwise. Our building of around 40 condos is no exception. We have a long driveway down to our parking gate so when someone is waiting for the gate to open, they can’t see if a car pulls into the other side. This could lead to a stand-off: Who gets their way? But it doesn’t. The unwritten (until now) rule is that if the person on the outside pulls up to the gate and you’re inside, you back up and move to the side so they could drive in once the gate opens. If, on the other hand, an inch of your car is out of the gate and someone pulls into the driveway from the outside, it’s their turn to back out onto the street and let you go. The latter is inconvenient and a little dangerous to those that have a hard time backing up, but them’s the rules.
If what I wrote above has you confused. Don’t worry, the point is that all of us who live here abide by the same common sense policy about our single-lane driveway. When we just moved in, I wondered how it worked with a single entrance and exit and didn’t immediately get the answer since everyone seems to come and go in their own time. Eventually though, the moment came and I passed the test. Both of us got to our destination and were happy to live among such fine folk.
It’s also common courtesy in our parts to ask, when you are getting into the elevator and see someone taking their recycling down to the garage where the bin is, whether you should hold the door while they toss it out. Saves you a moment of waiting for the box to return from it’s 4-story trip. Last time this happened, I was taking a bag and some boxes down to the blue bin and a Korean grandpa was getting into the elevator. “Hold it?” he asked. “No, no,” I answered motioning to the boxes, “I need to break these down.” “Okay, bye!” and he was off. 45 seconds later, the elevator dinged open. Knowing I was there, he had reached his floor and then pressed the G button when exiting. The epitome of etiquette!
Slow Your Roll
A few days ago, the YouTube algorithm, which is essentially my TV remote these days, recommended that I watch a Thich Nhat Hanh video called “Stop Running”. The suggestion was not totally random since I am subscribed to (and recommend) the Plum Village App channel (and app). Anyway, the video is about the Buddhist concept of shamatha. He describes the idea of this reasonably complex term in his most excellent primer The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (Broadway Books, 1998):
“Suppose someone standing alongside a river throws a pebble in the air and it falls down into the river. The pebble allows itself to sink slowly and reach the riverbed without any effort. Once the pebble is at the bottom, it continues to rest, allowing the river to pass by. When we practice sitting meditation, we can allow ourselves to rest just like that pebble” (26).
Shamatha is this calm state, one that it would behoove all of us (especially me) to cultivate regardless of our religious backgrounds. In the video, Thay said “Shamatha and Vipassana are the two wings of a bird.” Vipassana, also known as Insight Meditation, is a form of Buddhist meditation that helps a person explore their mental states (and more). A bird with only one wing can’t fly, he says later. We must have calm before we can have insight and a desire for insight before we can have calm. “…the purpose of Shamatha is to help you to heal.”
This is a reminder to sit quietly for a little while and do nothing. Maybe after you finish reading today’s issue. If you’ve had a long week, take it easy. Heal.
Seeing is Relieving
I’m still slowly making my way through Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry translated by Edith Marcombe Shiffert and Yūki Sawa (Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1972) (see #50), currently going through the free verse. While enjoying the poems, I thought I might expound very very briefly on how to read poetry. I’ve written about that here in the past (I don’t have the issue numbers on me at he moment) so I’ll try not to repeat. I should also note that there are entire books written about how to read poems. No wonder most of the world is like, “Nah, too much work!” That aside, these (mostly) early 20th-century Japanese poems are not difficult to approach.
We benefit from their imagistic nature because nearly all of them immediately give us something distinct to look at — a person, some natural occurrence, an animal. It doesn’t take any special skills to imagine what you are reading. Let the image, sound, or other sensory language be the guide and go beyond that as needed. To one person, a rock is just a rock, to another it is a thousand shadows shifting every instant. Why did the poet use a specific image? Does it arrest you? Does it make you say “Oh, bummer!” Does it make you happy? It doesn’t have to do any of those things, that’s fine. Is it unique? That may be it’s only charm. Sometimes a ho-hum poem is only notable because the writer made an original observation or put two items together unexpectedly.
Conversely, if you are among the images just wandering around blankly, scratching your belly, it may not be the poem for you. Many poetry beginners don’t trust their own judgement; they see a poem that they find boring and think that it must be because they don’t get it. Maybe, but also maybe it’s not the right one for them at that moment. I read some poems in this book and I think, “Cool, got it, on to the next one.” and I read some others and am taken aback, as if I was suddenly flümped down in front of a enormous vertical wall of ice. The best advice for reading poems is trust yourself.
For those curious, flümp (pronounced floomp) is the sound of someone being sucked into a giant space/time vacuum and then spit out somewhere else. It’s also the sound I imagine when I think of the “saved” getting removed from Earth and going to heaven during the rapture. It’s cousin is the sound a baseball makes as it exits the shute at a battling cage. This paragraph is drawing me into another section but this is third one so I’m going to stop. But I may someday write a “Family Tree of Sound.”
The idea of the pebble at the bottom of the river is powerful and immediately resonated with me as a way to approach meditation. Thank you for that!
And I particularly appreciated the last image, given I seem to be in the process of bonding, finally, with Maine, and it's (no real surprise given its insulating, quiet quality) the winter that's making it happen.
As to how to read poetry, I think I'm learning How To Read Oleg -- reading one section at a time, and then coming back to the next one after a bit, rather than all at once, so each section can rest on the bottom of the lake for a bit before moving on to the next.