Full Lotus

Every so often, someone runs a story titled "(Choose your number) steps to a happier life," or "X things you can do to improve your attitude," etc., etc. They usually say the same things, so I skim over them, searching for anything that seems especially true that I might be able to apply to my life.
MSN Health and Fitness ran such a story this week, promoted on my home page because, face it, they've been watching what I click. They know.
The 5 Paths to Happiness by Steven Melemis, contained the usual stuff: Expect change, prepare for change, identify things to change. All predictable advice in this layoff-crazy era.
But there, embedded in the section about "making room for change" was an something that struck me. Melemis said learning to relax was perhaps the most important coping technique.

When you’re tense, you tend to do what’s familiar and wrong instead of what’s new and right. Stress is an obstacle to change because when you are tense, your ego and fears get in the way....
There are many coping skills you need to be happy. If you learn them all but don’t learn how to relax, you will still find it hard to change, because when you’re tense you will continue to repeat what’s familiar and wrong.

On the other hand, if you learn only one new coping skill—how to relax—you’ll still be happier, because everything is easier when you’re relaxed. If there is anything else you need to change, you’ll see it more easily and deal with it more effectively when you’re more relaxed.

And it's true, as any musician who's ever dealt with stage fright knows. Once the nerves kick in, it's like white noise in your brain. Muscles knot up, you can't hear yourself and back you go, straight to the very thing you've worked months to correct.
So it's true, yes. But the trouble is, what do you do about it.
How do you fix something like this? When your life resembles a series of 40-foot waves and you're riding an inner-tube, how do you not feel panic? Panic, I'd say, is the only reasonable reaction.
Sadly, the article doesn't provide an answer to that.The author just trots out all the usual things we've read before about retraining yourself to think positively, letting go of the past, using breathing techniques, yoga and meditation. Sigh.

So what can I use out of all that? I do yoga. I try hard to be positive and not dwell on bad things. I meditate. But hmmmm. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong.
Usually, when you listen to a yoga instructor or meditation tapes, there's a huge emphasis on calm, quiet images to quiet your breathing and heart rate. Maybe that's backwards. Maybe what I really need to do is imagine something dreadful and then try to breathe and relax to it. That way I can practice how to relax under pressure.
So all right. This week, I'm going to imagine myself in full lotus on the tracks, with a six-engine Union Pacific coal train bearing down on me. And I'm going to breath in...breathe out.....

Beat up little seagull...

What is it about the Randy Newman song, Baltimore? Is it that relentlessly descending inner voice, the heavy minor sigh of those first four chords? Is it the piano fill that keeps repeating, obsessively treading water in the same three notes, going nowhere? What is it about this song that gets in my ear and stays and stays and stays?
Baltimore and I go way back. In fact, I think of it as my own personal meme. Hearing it instantly transports me back to my first job out of college, at a daily newspaper in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
That alone should tell you all you need to know about my life back then. But for those unfamiliar with that corner of journalism, I'll elaborate. My typical morning went thus:
Wake up in my new apartment, which was a former motel (a 1940s cabin-style, furnished). It was winter. Since this was a morning-deadline newspaper, I got up hours before daylight.
Drive through the empty streets in the town, which had fallen on hard times.
Snap on the lights in the newsroom and sort through the piles of girly pictures the overnight wire guys amused themselves by sending. Then begin a job I was in no way sure I was suited for.
Nine mornings out of ten, Baltimore would be on the radio at some point. And...it would always cheer me up.
Because, come on. I was already stressed out and depressed. Hearing Baltimore just pushed it way over the top. It was like a joke, like someone at the radio station was mocking me. Suddenly it all seemed silly. Maybe Randy Newman should visit Council Bluffs, I thought at the time. Give him something to sing about.
I only bring this up because after years of not thinking about it or playing it, Baltimore has come back into my life. Lately it's playing in my head before I'm awake in the morning. It comes back during moments of idleness. Today, I found myself wanting those dark chords even as I was listening to the upbeat pop I run with.
What is my subconscious trying to tell me?
Who knows. So I've decided the only appropriate thing to do is share it. Here's a version from a 2006 concert in Germany.




As a bonus, here's Laura Nyro singing Stoney End. For no other reason than I like her music and this song was a crossword answer a couple of days ago.

An Earth Day Bit of Fun

I wanted to do a different post today, but instead I'm rerunning the one from Mike & Roxie's Vegetable Paradise. Why? Because it's raining and I'm tired and the piano tuner is here plinking the same keys obsessively as raindrops (hey, it's his job and I'd never complain about a much-needed piano tune. But it's hard to think.) And also, because this Eco Elvis guy is a hoot. So, sorry if you saw the other post. I'll try not to do this in the future.


Here's a little something fanciful for Earth Day. Mike and I were invited out to the JC Penney Logistics Center with our garden book as part of an early Earth Day promotion for its employees. Toward the end of the session, as things began to wind down, we went downstairs in the cavernous warehouse to check out someone called "Eco Elvis."

At stage center, amid energy-efficient cars and a bicycle display, was a guy in a green spangly Elvis suit and completely over-the-top wig. He played his own guitar (hey, and he was pretty good, too) and sang Elvis tunes that had been "repurposed" with environmental lyrics. It was all the usual environmental urgings (recycle, install fluorescent bulbs, save water) but in a lighthearted, un-preachy totally hilarious way.

Other web sites have identified Eco Elvis as Matt Riggs from Bridging the Gap, a group promoting sustainability in Kansas City. (And Matt, if that was your real hair--sorry dude. Apologies.)

He did "Burnin' Love" retitled as "Burnin' Globe" and laced it with global climate change lyrics. I couldn't find a video of this particular song, but here's one called "Let's Go Organic" from a performance in Parkville. Enjoy. And Happy Earth Day.

Dream weaving

Ahh, Microsoft. How you make my life better. Dare I count the ways?
Last week, for instance, I was in danger of being overwrought with earnestness, when along you came with the "Dream Dictionary," advertised on my home page.
The Dream Dictionary is an offshoot of the "Dream Central" folder. It's alongside horoscopes, fortune telling games, numerology, Chinese astrology and tarot on a site called "MSN Astrology."
Which proves two things: 1. MSN will one day rule the world and 2. There's no end of interesting ways to waste time on the Internet.
Now my dreams are legendary for being fantastic and complicated. Some are like old friends, I've been dreaming variations of them so long. But I also have a bad habit of waking up the family with shouts during some of the more intense dreams. If I find out what some of them mean, could it help me settle down and stop screaming?
I don't know. But let's open up the Dream Dictionary and see if it's any help.

First up, the UFO dream. My typical UFO dreams are not scary. They're awesome. Usually, I am outside and look up to see a kind of sky circus of weird and brightly colored craft of all kinds of fun and nonthreatening shapes. They're always flying crazily, zig-zagging, hopping. In my most recent one, a yellow UFO put its nose down in a parking lot and did a graceful pirouette before flying off.
I usually yell out for people to come see, but of course they're all inside and can't hear me.
So what does that mean, Dream Dictionary?
Let's see...alien, no entry; UFO, no entry. Spaceship? Ah, here it is. "Dreaming of a UFO acting strangely is a warning that events lie ahead that will require caution, clear-headedness and stealth."
Well, yesssss....I suppose that's true enough. In fact, I can't think of a time in my life that didn't require caution, clear-headedness and stealth. Thanks, Dream Dictionary.
OK, let's try another. The crazy travel dream. I must get to a destination, which involves travel on every conceivable thing. A plane trip of at least 20 hours (or, sometimes, I must fly a little Cessna that keeps sinking dangerously close to power lines) on top of a train, on an ice-breaking ferry over a frozen channel. That kind of thing. When I get there, I will be someplace very remote but beautiful because it's so snowy.
Hmmm. Airplane is in there as a search for higher existence or freedom from the mundane. OK, but that doesn't convey the anxiety that goes with it. As for snow, that's good, good, good. It means success in business, unexpected happiness or something "wonderful and surprising." I should be looking out the window for the people with the Publisher's Clearinghouse check, apparently.
So far, so good. But I was disappointed that I couldn't find an explanation of my weird physical ailments dreams--like when I needed surgery because my head was literally on crooked, or when I woke up in one dream with legs a different color than the rest of me. What heading do you look under for something like that?
It doesn't matter. Maybe if I can figure out what some of these things are about, it will help the dream of my family members, who would like me to stop dreaming so much and shut the heck up so they can get some sleep.

A Green Kind of Day

Maybe what I need is a little indicator light above this blog, as a quick way to show the mood swing du jour. Gray could be for a depressed day, vibrant green for optimism and maybe blinking fuschia for a crazy episode.
If I had that, today would be pretty close to a bright green. Maybe it's the beautiful warm weather, the green grass and trees in bloom, the half-planted garden.
Then again, it could be the steady trickle of good news that's been coming over the wires. Retail sales--improving. Unemployment rates--improving. Just a couple of days ago, New York Times columnist Andrew Sorkin asked, what if the bailouts are working? Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal says Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke predicts, with caution, a moderate economic recovery.
Whatever the reason, things just seem better. There seem to be a few more jobs out there. As a result, I'm beginning to feel some of my fear melt away. A year ago, I felt the need to squeeze hard on the "bridge payment" money we got after the downsizing, knowing it was all the cash we had for financial emergencies--the only thing separating us from bankruptcy, should there be further downsizing or a medical problem.
But the emergencies never came. And we've cut our spending even further to the bone. The result is we still have all of that money, plus a little more I've managed to save from teaching.
So maybe it's time to spend. This week we started on a long list of overdue projects. A new bathroom vanity to replace the decrepit one upstairs (it has to be stained and varnished, but still, it's new.) Flea medicine for the dog, which we've been putting off until outdoor season. I even went out to see a movie (Alice in Wonderland, 3-D. It was great.)
We're a long way from Easy Street. But just spending a little made me feel great.
If repeating things helps you believe, then I guess I'll keep repeating: The worst is behind us. The worst is behind us. Forward to a better tomorrow.

Now...how do I bottle that up for use on one of those gray or flashing fuschia days?

It may be time for a change

I've been at this self-improvement plan for a year and to be honest, I don't feel all that much more optimistic. At least not in the long-term, change-your-life feel-good-movie-of-the-year way that I was hoping for.
The most hopeful signs for me, so far, have been occasional bursts of good moods, wedged between long spells of ennui (see last week's posts).
Clearly, it's time to step up my game. It's time for something of a world-outlook overhaul.
As luck (or maybe something more?) would have it, PBS came to the rescue last week with a special on Buddhism, which I taped.
Much of it was a history of the life of Buddhism's founder, Siddhartha Guatama. But the brief rundown of Buddhism's tenets struck me as appealing. (Watch the special here, if you're curious.)
Mainly, I like the idea that this is a religion (philosophy?) that doesn't dwell on blaming yourself for every bad thing that ever happens. In the religions I'm most familiar with, there's a constant drumbeat of blame. Why aren't we living in happy harmony with each other and with nature? Because we're bad, bad, bad. Women especially.
I don't know about you, but most women I know don't need anyone teaching them how to blame themselves. It's something we do very nicely all on our own. If you take it too far--as I've sometimes done--it makes your life unbearable. In fact, blaming myself for every misfortune that's befallen us is one of the top things that occasionally makes me miserable.
The usual Christian way of dealing with this is to pray more and think more about Jesus dying for us and about a rewards in heaven. I've gone along with this most of my life.
It isn't doing much for me now, though. When I look at what's been happening in Christianity (religion as power in The Family; the scandal in the Roman Catholic church) the religion of my youth seems more like a weapon to control people with. As a way of dealing with life's hardships...not so much.
So here's Buddhism, and after looking at an overview of it's central ideas, I think right away this is going to be something that might help me. I'm not so sure I can go along with rebirth or vegetarianism--even Buddhists disagree on that, apparently--but as a philosophy, it bears investigation.
And so I shall.

Some things are better

There are days when exercise and busy-ness just doesn't do the trick.
Yesterday was one. I did my morning 3-miler. I completed a list of chores before my work afternoon began. Still, I couldn't quite keep the dark thoughts from coming.
And come they did. It started the night before, when for some reason, I couldn't turn off my brain at bedtime. Instead, I sat in the review stands for a parade of the worst moments of my life. The embarrassments. The betrayals. The stupid remarks that cost me friendships. The remorse.
I did my best to make the daytime hours better. (Even to the point of planning a dinner that starred gravy!) But it didn't make much difference.
Today is off to a better start. But clouds and cold weather aren't helping.
So it seems like a good idea to meditate for a bit on some good things.
The college loans, for instance.
I've been worrying for the year since the cutback about college loans that we put on forbearance. Forbearance means you get a limited time off from paying on the loan (either you pay nothing or just the interest. If you pay nothing, the interest accrues and your loan becomes larger.) Forbearance is not the same thing as deferment. Deferment is just for people who are laid off completely. Not part-timers.
Our forbearances were over last month. Yet our financial situation is still very strained. Would the banks insist on returning us to full payment? If so, would we have to default? I held my breath.
But the story has a happy ending. We were able to work out a new payment plan that--though we're still strapped--will at least start decreasing the capital.
And, as long as we're on the subject, the federal health care bill may make things better for our daughter, who goes to college in three years. Instead of letting banks siphon off loans, the government will begin making them directly. Direct loans and grants were what put me through college, and the debts were easy to pay off, even for an entry-level worker.
There's the most recent Labor Department report, which shows the country added 162,000 jobs. While there are still plenty of caveats about that, it is at least some encouragement that maybe the worst really is behind us.
Here's another good thing: We will be able to replace our daughter's stolen cell phone with no extra cost to us except the activation fee because we can transfer the upgrade credits from other, older phones. So no more whining.
And then, there's the fact that we're still above water. It's been a crazy year, with plenty of late-night tears and deep-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach fear. But we've been able to make it thus far, so maybe we can hold out a little bit longer.
As long as the car and appliances hold up and gas stays low and we don't slip on a banana peel...

Adventures in Capitalism

As I may have mentioned, one of the emotions I've had the most trouble dealing with in the Big Recession is the feeling of helplessness. Bad things happen to big companies hundreds of miles away and--through no fault of our own--we suffer.
It's not just the financial industry, though, that makes me feel helpless. We also have recurring issues with the large and expanding church that is now our next-door neighbor.
So today's story is about my journey from nice person to someone who would charge people for parking on Easter Sunday.
First, the background.
We live next to a large church/school that has been in expansion mode. Before we moved here, the church had already torn down much of the neighborhood to put in a new building and parking lot. So yes, we went in with eyes open. But it seemed that there were adequate landscaping and traffic rules in place to protect us for however long we choose to stay here.
And they largely have. We never minded the noise from the school kids and the playground, when it was next door. Church chimes and bells don't bother us. The increased traffic flow at school beginning and end is a pain, sure, but we put up with it as long as no one blocks our driveway.
Lately, though, things have deteriorated. Despite the economy, the church embarked on another building plan--one that temporarily does away with a large amount of its parking space. It purchased and knocked down a couple more houses (again, we didn't mind. One was an uninhabited eyesore). It tore out several mature trees at 30-50 feet tall. Our understanding was that this would be open to parking. However, the lot remains muddy grass.
So parking has become a crisis. Every Sunday morning, cars line both sides of the streets around our corner house (this despite the church asking for and getting "no parking" on both sides of one of the streets). Cars pack the unoccupied gas station lot across from us (they got permission from the new owner who's trying to fix it up, didn't they?). Here are a few pictures from yesterday. Despite it being Easter, this is not in the least unusual.


Bottom line: If we have a heart attack or a fire at our house on a Sunday morning, we are SOL because there's no way an emergency vehicle can get through.

I'm sure there isn't any malice in this. It's just general thoughtlessness. Just like the large canvas portrait that went up in the window of the new building next door. It seems to be a picture of a Bible character glowering out over our back yard, dominating our view. We've gone inside to reposition it from time to time, but someone always moves it back. If you click on the pic below, you might be able to make him out. He's quite visible to us, I assure you.

For years, I've been largely tolerant of this, only complaining when things got really bad (garage full of garbage in yet-to-be-torn-down house; rowdy wedding reception guests littering our lawn with cups). And no, we've never complained about the angry Jesus picture.
I guess the turning point came a couple of weeks ago, when I looked outside and saw someone had parked in our driveway. Not just halfway across, like people have done in the past (including one evening when we all had to be somewhere) but in the driveway. Like she lives here.
She was parked politely to one side. Not blocking us in. I was so amazed I waited around to make sure it wasn't someone I knew.
But no. She came running out at the end of the service, admitted she didn't know us and then offered the time-honored excuse of countless churchgoers before her. "Oh...Was this your driveway?"
Really? I guess she couldn't see it because the dog ate her glasses.
And then I heard a voice in my head. It said, "You chump! People are doing this kind of thing and all you're getting is angry? Obviously you have something they want. Why not put capitalism to work and make up some of your losses for the year at the same time? People pay for close-in parking at sporting events, don't they?"
The idea's occurred to me before. When you watch five, six, seven in a row use your drive for turn-arounds (once, while our kids were playing hackey-sack there) you begin to think it should be a toll driveway. But up until this month, it was just passing whimsy. When someone puts her car there and goes away for an hour...well, I just lost my sense of humor. Time for a new approach.
So out went the sign. "Parking $5. Honor system." We left a little box out, beginning with Maundy Thursday. The drive is big enough for several cars. I figured we could make enough money to pay for our recent trip to see my mom in Des Moines. And honestly, wouldn't it also be good to get some of those cars off the street?
I didn't do this without some serious thought. There's always that chance someone will be insulted and accuse me of carrying on some kind of war against religion. But in the end, I figured it had to be done.
We waited. Cars lined both sides of the street, risking tickets. They packed in the gas station lot. But not a one wanted to pay us to use the driveway.
That's okay. People passing by saw the signs. They'll think twice about violating our driveway in the future.
I made my point. And I didn't have to be the ogre who calls in parking violations on Christendom's holiest of days.
For once, I wasn't angry.