More Sports Illustrateds and National Geographics

Day 291: More Sports Illustrateds and National Geographics

I have a couple of unwritten rules for the stuff project that make it a challenge. First, I'm not counting getting rid of anything I have come to possess since the start of the project. Second, I'm trying to achieve a net reduction of one object per day. The idea is that I should end the year with 365 fewer objects than at the start. This would be in contrast to getting 365 new things, and getting rid of 365 old things.

For me, this has proved to be the most difficult, and the most habit-changing. I suspect that I've been getting rid of an average of one thing a day for many years - and acquiring two newer, better objects each day. Or at least they seemed newer and better at the time. Whether the exchange has truly increased my happiness is a big question. Rich calls this "Reaching for a shiny object."

I've been fretting about the post I made yesterday, feeling that I didn't quite capture the essence of what I admire so much about Jane and Rich, and why I find it so deeply relaxing to spend time at Jane's house. I believe the habit of not reaching for a shiny object is somehow at the core. Wanting, researching, buying, unloading the car, disposing of packaging, breaking in, breaking out and arranging new stuff - these are all work, and costly, too. By getting rid of a net of one thing a day, I've become much more conscious of the mental effort I'm constantly putting into upgrading.

I was doing it last week, on vacation. My running shoes are several years old. My knees hurt. Better cushioning might help. While we were in St. Augustine, Sam got a great bargain on a new pair of Nikes at the Nike outlet. Cute shoes! Almost half off! Fit great! Great cushioning! After his trip to the outlet store, I'd expend mental energy every day thinking about the outlet mall, trying to decide whether it was worth a trip. In those moments, I wasn't in the vacation zone - long, slow walks on the beach, crossword puzzles, beer on the lanai, a game of cards - I was in acquisition mode. Plotting and planning to get something new.

I'm doing it right now. I've never liked the medicine cabinet, vanity and light fixture in our upstairs bathroom. The medicine cabinet and vanity seem to have a southwestern motif; the light fixture is faux Victorian. They don't go together, and they don't go with the house. I've spent time at Home Depot, checking out the vanities. I've had a plumber out here: the vanity is high quality even if it is ugly. He suggests having it refaced. This morning, I noticed that the vanity's bottom drawer is completely broken off. Is this the excuse I need to replace it?

Honestly, I'm doing this everywhere in the house, all the time: the living room sofa cushions are tamped down and losing stuffing, the lining has come off on the bottom. The paint is scuffed in the kitchen next to the garbage pail. I used to love the red wall in the basement, now I wish it was a more neutral color. The wood floors are getting worn and need to be refinished. The glider rocker we used to rock our kids to sleep is ugly. The futon couch in the attic is uncomfortable.

All these things take mental energy, energy that I'm not using to be a better writer, or a better musician, or more fit. Or more at peace. What if instead of noticing all the flaws in everything I own, I simply accepted it? What if I committed to my stuff in the same way I'm committed to my marriage, to my job, to my kids?

The Dalai Lama gives an image for meditation: a water glass full of sand, the sand stirred up so that it clouds the water. Meditation - sitting, practicing - simply allows the water to become still, and the sand to sink to the bottom. The sand is still there, but resting quietly. The water becomes clear. It seems that stuff stirs the current of my mind, clouding it. At Jane's, these thoughts (mostly) are stilled. My mind is clear. Calm. Peaceful.

Today, I'm breaking my rule about not counting things that I've acquired since the onset of the stuff project. If you'll recall, in the beginning, I get rid of tons of magazines: Tricycle, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic. Already, I've got a huge stack of new magazines, which I'll take to the library free rack yet again. I'm trying to be so very conscious of not bringing new stuff into the house, yet it's so very difficult. I admire the Amish, who consider each thing carefully before acquiring it. They only bring it into their households if the object will bring utility for generations. If you know that not only yourself, but your children and your children's children, will be responsible for each object you acquire, this would undoubtedly raise the acquisition bar.

High enough, perhaps, that our minds would be free of plotting and planning the next purchase. I wonder, what would such an unencumbered mind accomplish?

Monocular

Day 255: Monocular

Today was a food day. A morning spent picking up my eighth of a grass-fed cow with my sister and Joe, a convergence of several aspects of my life: staff members from the Botanical Gardens, from the Bentley and from my extended family. A finger-chilling activity, splitting up 700 pounds of frozen meat.

Next, baking cake. and brownies Cake! Emma turns eighteen (eighteen!) on Wednesday. Her first birthday away from home.

Tonight will be an odd birthday celebration. Cake first at 5 pm, immediately followed by dinner. That's so my brother and sister-in-law can have their dinner date, have Emma as their babysitter, and eat cake in honor of her birthday. The upside is that I get to tell the kids that they can only have brussels sprouts if they eat all their cake. The downside is that the house smells like brussels sprouts instead of cake.

Today I'm getting rid of the  monocular that I bought for my trip to Kenya, over twenty years ago. My brother was living in Kenya at the time, teaching at an American school mostly for embassy kids and other expats. The monocular seemed like a brilliant idea, because I'm blind in one eye. Why carry the extra weight of a pair of binoculars when all I do is close my left eye anyway? Monoculars are hard to come by; I bought this one in a pawn shop in the Tenderloin. I haven't used the monocular since that trip to Kenya, but it still seems like a really good idea. That's why I haven't gotten rid of it. But I'm starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel, and it's causing me to question why I'm holding on to things that represent ideas that are better in concept than in fact. I even carried this monocular around in the side pocket of my car for a few years, thinking it would come in handy on road trips. But I just never used it.

Maybe the monocular is an emblem of the transition of my relationship with my folks, from being a kid asserting my independence to being a grown-up who doesn't mind spending some time hanging out with her parents. I spent a week of my three weeks in Kenya with my parents, on safari in Masai Mara, and it stands out as one of the most outstanding trips of my life. Everything about Kenya was awesome. The animals, of course. Seeing African animals in the wild was beyond anything I'd ever imagined. I'd just spent a few months working in San Diego on a performance audit for the Sheriff's Department, and we'd visited the San Diego Zoo more than one. The San Diego Zoo is lauded for recreating the animals' wild habitat, but of course, the true wild habitat is nothing like the San Diego Zoo.

And the Masai people, with their rheumy eyes, their manure huts, their ringed villages that help keep the lions out. The lack of health care, the lack of vegetables, the lack of clean water. The feeling of lawlessness in Nairobi, with its rampant poverty, people hanging off the outsides of the little private busses, cars running stop signs (and people getting killed because of it), potholes in the roads, police officers pulling you over to demand bribes, children out of school, children out of shoes, and pictures of the president in every establishment. How the whole thing awakened me to government, and how local government is where all the good things happen for us here in the United States. I've never complained about property taxes. Not once.

Anyway, that trip marked my first adult trip with my parents. I was reminded of it today, with Emma in the kitchen, cheerfully helping me bake and ice her own birthday cake. It pleases my sensibilities somehow that Emma will be able to vote in the next election. Tomorrow, she'll pack up the clean clothes she washed herself, and drive herself off to college once again, where she'll celebrate her birthday away from home. On Wednesday. Eighteen.

Asparagus Fern and Cactus

Day 253: Asparagus Fern and Cactus

I stumbled upon this while walking along
the Huron River near the Arb. Lovely.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. Free of commercialism, there's no reason for ambivalence. The food is whole and healthy. With no religious content, it is devoid of divisiveness, and yet every religion on Earth has gratitude at its core. It is a moment to cultivate contentment. It is a deep breath.

I've had to let go of a lot of things these past few months: my bees, my chickens, my daughter. Today, more on that theme: after only four weeks in the house, the asparagus fern and cactus are already starting to die. Happily, my mother has agreed to take them in. Each time I've had to let go of something, someone has taken over for me, happily, cheerfully, gratefully - not at all as if I was passing along a burden, but as if I'm passing along a treasure. Colleagues, family, teachers, friends. What a reason for gratitude.

I made a tapestry a few years ago called "Mother o' Pearl's Blessing and Miracles." There are so many, it was hard to choose. Clean water and central heat. Vaccinations. Food on the table. Night sounds. Spring. Rich's sense of humor. My tall black boots. Hand-me-downs from my sister. My dog, my garden, butterflies and birds. Music, and love, and Rich's sense of humor. A changing moon.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

- Walt Whitman