Comparisons Don’t Apply

Sansaku:  Comparisons Don’t Apply

8/21/21

I tended to choose work that occurred in communal settings.  Ones that provided shelter and food, all kinds of belonging, basic needs.  This level of care sounds regressive, a return to the womb, but not according to Maslow and his famous hierarchy of needs.  Once our safety and security needs are met, we progress to social and emotional concerns, which can lead to love and self-esteem.  Being human.

At the top of his developmental pyramid are the meta-needs.  The need to learn and grow in truth and knowledge, beauty and aesthetics, inner development and transcendence.  The sense of self expands.

Describing actualization reads like the index to positive psychology.  Every culture has examples of those who have gone on beyond.  The higher levels.  All kinds of terms.  Zen and Tao.  The unfolding self.

Neither the workplace or culture are currently designed with these needs in mind.  Listen to the news.  Catastrophic change and terror.  A return to the base, safety and security.  Covid’s hard on communal.

Maslow was aware self-actualization depended on basic needs being met.  We stand on many shoulders.  The foundation for the higher is deep belonging and connection, self-esteem and love.

I spend hours with a teacup, pen and journal.  Taking time.  Crows on the line.  I open the door, step outside.  And one of the attributes I most covet, serenity, the sound of the garden.  General and specific.  Gratitude and praise, the debt of love.  Living in the moment.

It might be small, the top of a peak, but the view is large.  The feeling expansive.  It’s not a matter of getting more or having less.  Lower-level measures.  Comparisons don’t apply.

We Can Do Hard Things

Sansaku:  We Can Do Hard Things – One Year Ago Today – Unpublished

8/18/20

Barbara Kingsolver has a slogan she tells herself and her kids, “You can do hard things.”  It’s a good one.  We endeavor.  When I started Sansaku the work wasn’t hard and it hasn’t been hard to continue.  This applies to my role as care-giver.  Chyako’s convalescence.

The convention began last night.  I heard Michelle Obama speak from the heart with emotion.  She’s angry and sad at you-know-who.  “He is what he is.”  Bernie preached before her. “When Rome was burning, Nero fiddled.  Trump plays golf.”

Police exist to keep the law and order, but mostly for property, the powerful and wealthy.  The media convinces the crowd to keep consumption high; it lacks a human heart.  The deity, in which-we-trust, is money.  Take much, give little.  That’s the art of the deal.

I quit my career as an academic economist in grad school.  What I’d learned discouraged me.  The system was rigged.  No conspiracy theory needed; it’s all out in the open.  Capitalists agree it’s deplorable, but there’s a lot of money to be made.

I thought Bush and Cheney were easy screens for shadow and trickster projection.  Nothing like Trump.  Chaos personified.   But there’s a relationship between evil and consciousness.  We should have known.  Bush said, “How do you like me now?”

Trump’s a rough and ugly mirror.  America, take a good look.  What we’re doing, how’s it working?  Better cultures than ours have gone down and the big ones go down in flames.  It’s sad.  Very sad.

Psychology makes a study of suffering.  How much can we bear, what form does it take?  It’s good to know, we can do hard things.

A Second Sister

Sansaku:  A Second Sister

8/16/21

I need to write a card for my brother and sister-in-law.  Chyako listened to a book, The Bird Way, and wanted to send them a copy.  The card is a lovely old juniper a friend of ours drew.  They’d like her.  Garon and Jane are tree-people.  Where there’s trees there’s birds.  Corvids figure prominently in the book and our backyard.

This got me thinking to a trip I took with him to Glacier Park.  Forty-three years ago.  On the day he proposed to Jane, I had never treated him worse.  I rarely got angry at Garon and he rarely got angry at me.  And while I’ve had worse mood attacks, but this was close to the top.

He’d failed to tell me something I really should have known.  He wanted to spend some time with Jane.  Fine with me.  And then he asked if she wanted to go with us to Canada.  Also fine with me, but I had no idea his express purpose was to ask her to marry.  He wanted to show off our friendship.  For a genius mathematician, a serious miscalculation.

I channeled all the emotion that was going unsaid in the car.  There’s a scene in Like Water for Chocolate where Gertrudis catches on fire.  That was me.  Saying “Oh, Wow,” they pointed to clouds and peaks.  I sat in the backseat playing death-rock guitar.  “What have I learned?  We all burn.”  It should have annoyed them.  It didn’t.

By the time Garon noticed I was way beyond consoling.  He offered me Vienna sausages.  I hate those things and shook my head.  He asked, “What do you want?”  Can’t believe what I said, “I’m either going to hurt your feelings or lie.”  I wanted to go into Banff, smoke cigs and drink.

We stopped and I ran away up Paradise Creek.  They had to camp by the side of the road.  I slept in the car and was healed come morning.  I apologized then learned.  I’d be getting a second sister.

Not Just a Dream

Sansaku:  Not Just a Dream

8/5/21

Symbols act as transducers for consciousness.  Converting inner experience and outer event into meaning.  Not what you’d think.  Relationships personify.

In southwest Colorado, Mt. Fuji in the distance.  The dream was clear.  The college a Shinto temple, like the one on Nasu where Ma-chan married.  I watched Naoki sign his name in kanji and then with hanko.  The college, still a college, we were late for class and had to rush.

I don’t prefer change, but quickly adapt and love the color of the house.  I questioned the crabapple red, no longer.  A friend said, “It must work, I can’t remember how it was.”

We take so much for granted.  The painter’s son was here on Saturday.  He likes to draw and Saul had told him, Chyako’s an artist.  I said, “Look through the window, what do you see?”  A Japanese scroll on the wall.

We’re a blend of two cultures.  Omakase.  A way to order food.  “Surprise me.”  It’s what I ask of dreams.  I didn’t see it coming; I never do.  The class at the Shinto temple college, the prof about to read from a fantasy novel; I wanted to hear from the start.  A good story. 

I don’t like to miss beginnings and make a quick association to the marriage I witnessed on Nasu.  A volcano, like Fuji, it’s close to the town where Chyako was born.  I told myself at the time, “This reminds me of a dream.”  The scene outrageously exotic.  We married in Montana.

But what about last night?  What was I thinking and feeling?

Telephones and televisions are transducers.  They take one form of energy and convert into another.  It’s what our eyes and minds do.  When I look in her eyes, what I see.  She’s gone hiking today.

A Good Story

Sansaku:  A Good Story

8/2/21

He wrote me an email.  Incredibly honest and thoughtful.  I’m going to tell his partner.  She can be honored by how much he cares.  He’s taken a scientific interest in how we choose our mate.

First question:  What should give us pause?  I might start with mine.  According to the research, Chyako and I shouldn’t work.  After twenty-seven years, lots of data.  It’s always case by case.

What my friend called evaluation; I call narrative.  What kind of a story are you living?  I know he’s read David Whyte.  When it comes to marriage and relationship, it’s all about forgiving and needing to be forgiven.  I’ve decided to not give up, many times, so has she.

My interest in the subject is both personal and professional.  It’s hard to condense.  This needs to be understood.  Each paragraph took years.  Edgar Cayce said the essence of being a Christian was no one to blame.

If there are warning signs, which often come in dreams, there are signs that point the way.  How did I know that she was the one?  I didn’t and if I knew the secret, I’d make an easy million.

We joked at first, “If it doesn’t work out, we can always divorce.”  But I can’t imagine my life without us.  The you, me and we.  The story is so much better.  This includes the hard times.  Last year.

Fairy tales end with happily ever after, but marriage is about the next chapter.  I thought I knew her well.  And then I went to Japan.  My surprise, she’s a mystery.

Some are ready to marry at twenty, I was forty-two.  Here’s the dream:  The ancestors had gathered, both hers and mine.  Not to judge, to witness.  They agreed we’d make a good story; it’s what they like.