I live alone, and there are many days when I have very little interaction with other human beings.  There are times when this is a great gift, a liberation from the tedium of too many surface interactions and the usual laundry list of "to do's" we all are faced with.  And then there are times when this solitary rhythm wears me down, makes me sad, and I'd give anything to hear the voice of a good friend on the phone, or see my grandchildren experience exuberance, or hear my daughters say "I love you."    I have paused from time to time to see if I could discern just what is lurking in this weary brain of mine. Despair for the suffering I believe will fall upon many of our citizens who blindly put their faith in an unbalanced egomaniac.

Gnawing grief at the loss, or withering, of some of my old friendships.  The sense that my world is shrinking day by day, month by month.  And the accompanying confusion about how to navigate the new landscape.

Fear that I won't be able to "sell" my memoir that I poured two years of heart and soul into and came to love.  A lurking apprehension that there is no audience for this very personal and thought-provoking book.

Dissatisfaction with myself that I haven't found the discipline to sustain my meditation practice or my piano practice very well lately.  That I am reluctant to act in my own best interests somehow...

A perverse desire to borrow down and escape in a variety of good books, and watch yet another series of well-worn, well-watched episodes of West Wing, or Hercule Poirot -- all this instead of picking myself up and entering the world ... going to see a good film or lecture.

Lest those who are following this think I'm drowning in the whining and sorrowful 2017 blues, I want to conjure some beautiful pieces that live amidst the dark ones.  I have a loving little dog called Peaches who expresses joy at being with me on a daily basis.  I have a grown up granddaughter who is busy forging her career and life and who wants to go on a travel adventure with me, the grandmother who turned away from her when she was growing up.  I have two beautiful, quite different daughters who I'm willing to work very hard to communicate my love to, to be authentic with.  I have a dear friend I've known since I was four years old who shows up at some of the best times to have a long lunch with me and share stories and laugh like crazy.  She has shown me that laughter is good medicine indeed.  I felt stinging tears of sadness and gratitude as I listened to Michelle Obama talk to educators in her last speech as First Lady and lay out the call to continue to carry hope, have courage, and never feel marginalized.  The sadness came from knowing she was walking out the door of course, and the gratitude was for her presence in our world these past eight years.  She blessed the society she has served with her bravery, intelligence, and large heart. And finally I see that I have a mind that still lives and breathes and wonders about life, a mind that appears to be in relatively good form - and that is something I should bow in gratitude for.  No kidding!  And there's just one more thing...

On Monday I get to go up to Marin County and sit in silence with fellow meditators and attend to the essential practice of lovingkindness, or "metta."  If ever there was a time when the cultivation of lovingkindness was called for, it seems to me it is now.   Our harshly divided culture, with its mistrust and hatred and fear, is like a wounded animal reeling about in confusion with no clue about how to save itself.  The Buddha knew all those thousands of years ago that healing never came about through malice and hatred and contention, but through love.  And that starts with ourselves.  We must tend our broken hearts and wounded egos first and then bring them into the world.  We must bring that to everyone, from the postman and the homeless person on the street to our daughters and sons and grandchildren, to our friends and even those we feel abandoned by.  No one should be left out.

I hear it is going to be raining for this week I sit in silence, and that feels fitting somehow, for rain cleanses, and it causes us to pull inward, hunker down, and live inside - in that dark confused realm of heart and mind.  This January there will be no sauntering on the hillside paths looking for deer and wild turkeys, but rather a mass of beings under multi-shaped multi-colored umbrellas moving ever so slowly into the vast meditation hall to sit on cushions and under shawls and discover their own inherent goodness of heart.  And in all their earnestness find the common ground that is fed by love.

And then magically it will come to an end, and they will march down the hill and get in their cars, and will ultimately have the great opportunity to spread the love around.  Not a bad way to spend some days in the grayness of winter, at the beginning of a new year of so many uncertainties.

During this time of the darkness of winter and the sparkling Christmas lights, forgiveness comes to mind.  Why?  Because forgiveness heals the one who asks and the one being asked.  It is the only way we can be as one.

I listened to Handel’s Messiah at Grace Cathedral last night and as always it brought forth my tears.  The story of Christ’s sacrifice and his heart and greatness is beautiful.  Handel’s music doesn’t hurt either!  Exquisite, as it fills your body with its warmth and  eloquence.  In this grand gothic cathedral hundreds of us sat in rapt attention, following the lines we’ve heard so many times before…  We were all there in community with one other.  And then, before you know it, we walked out of the church and into the wild rainstorm that buffeted the city … we marched out and away from each other.

I never have like walking away from people, and am reminded of my mother’s eccentric habit of requiring us to write a note in our family’s blank book each time we left the house, so that at least one of us would know where we were.  These were my last high school years, and I was certainly more interested in being away from home with my friends and away from my divided family, but I always wrote the note.  “Gone to the movies … back home by 7…”   This dance we did with the book was something that sort of kept us connected to each other.  It made our family seem solid and normal and loving.

But under the surface lurked a weird secret darkness that suggested we didn’t really love one another very much, we didn’t feel bonded … we were just pretending.  And so I was conditioned by a world of subterfuge and camouflage.  So many things we didn’t talk about, except when I stubbornly tried to peel away another layer of the onion, as I asked yet another pointed question.  My mother didn’t take too kindly to me then, of course, because she didn’t understand that telling the truth made you less afraid and more who you are.

I have tucked things away in my life as my mother did – it’s what I grew up with.  And then later I dug down into the layers of the past to unearth and reflect on the strange, unsettling stories of dysfunction, deceit, and fear.   Writing my memoir forced me to see that I wasn’t as free from fabrication as I had thought.  Happily my Buddhist practice now reminds me that honesty and clarity and lovingkindness are necessary pieces of the path to freedom from suffering.

I want to ask forgiveness of a few people:  my confused and beautiful mother for whom I harbored such disdain and disgust when I was young, my husband whom I could never dedicate myself to because I couldn’t trust love, my oldest daughter whom I abandoned briefly at a very young age, myself, whom I disrespected in so many ways over the years (I was too fat, too homely, I was too clumsy, too greedy, too sad), a dear friend who finds my presence unsettling and disturbing, all the homeless people of my city whom I ignored for too many years, the person whose car I recently bumped into and didn’t tell, my granddaughter whose college tuition I wouldn’t pay because she was going to a Christian school, all the young men I tried to seduce in my neediness as I moved through young adulthood, and so on…

I believe that asking forgiveness will help set me free from the dark stories I have told  myself about being unreliable, sneaky, not moral or good.  We all make mistakes. We must forgive ourselves for the suffering we have brought on ourselves and on others, or we simply can’t offer our gifts to the world — such a necessary choice during these fraught times.  Thinking back on the story of Christ, I believe he would look at the multiplicity of my errors with charity and would would lift the burden of blame.  We are not our own fault.  We just make mistakes, we are temporarily unconscious  — but, we witness this and then we pick ourselves up and forge ahead.  Because we must.

With love and forgiveness for my fellow beings and for myself during this bittersweet holiday season…

Here are some profoundly wise words from Toni Morrison:  “This is precisely the time when artists go to work (talking of times of brokenness in our world).  There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.  We speak, we write, we do language.  That is how civilizations heal …  Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge – even wisdom.  Like art.”

In the midst of a Thanksgiving family gathering as we feasted on Bodega Bay crab, I continued to speak my observations, my pain, and my struggles so I could understand how we go forward in a world that feels upended and sad.  There are some sitting around the table that don’t want to hear those words and be reminded once more that America took a very dark turn on November 8. But I have always refused to silence my observations and questions, especially when I see that exploring them gets me closer to understanding the answer to “what next?”  I’ve no wish to be combative, vindictive, or mean spirited, but I do wish to understand.

I was far away, traveling in Japan, when the American people voted to elect Donald Trump, and I felt some solace in the fact that I was at a remove from the massive grief and outbursts of violence that ensued following the election.  This gave me a chance to process in my own way just what had happened, as well as learn what I could from the seemingly gentle, very civilized Japanese culture.  Since coming home I have been reading the editorials and the news and slowly putting the pieces together in my mind.  Thank god for a free press — although I tend to think our media landscape has been tainted to some degree by much of the shallow and untruthful offerings on social media. So I say again, thank god for the authenticity and longevity of the New York Times!

Beyond reading and digesting news, there is more to be done, as Toni suggests.  There is work to be done, and for each of us, the work looks different.  It might look like working on our story or book, or learning Bach – so as to offer up more beauty to the world, or it might look like joining community organizations to promote fair and reasonable ordinances or laws, or returning to teaching young people to write, or writing letters to our senators and congresspeople, taking your meditation practice into the prisons, deciding to become involved in human rights groups, or joining school boards to support a healthy and fair educational system.  Or maybe, it simply involves starting a new painting or writing a poem each morning about one’s direct experience.  Or making a new book of photographic images…  Anything that forces us to be consciously in the moment, with our compassionate, creative brains activated, is what Toni refers to when she talks about “going to work.”

Many people, myself included, who slept comfortably in their self-satisfied bubble before November 8, are now being forced to wake up.  Some will resist, they will continue to rant and grumble and boycott the news, but others of us will try to go to work in our unique way, to make this world we love a better place and to stand up forcefully and bravely for our ideals.  This is where possibility lies.  Throughout human history, people who have been tortured and jailed and made to feel invisible have nevertheless rallied and written or spoken their truth.  Their spirit has prevailed despite horrific circumstances.  Pablo Neruda wrote:  “You can pick all the flowers, but you can’t stop the Spring.”  Yes.

We must look inside and see our spirit, our ideals, our powerful love for fellow beings and this country, and we must be brave enough to let that energy come forth.  No waiting, no wallowing allowed.  Believe in the power of the human heart to effect change.  Please.

I’m about to leave this country after being here almost three weeks, and I am full of gratitude for the gifts of people and place.

We came here to photograph, to travel the territory, and incidentally we learned about the gentle supremely polite society we entered.  I think being here makes us gentler and kinder ourselves.  Sometimes a shopkeeper will bow to you as he or she gives you your credit card receipt and your package, and immediately your instinct is to bow back to them.  Or at least, it is my instinct.  Everything here is incredibly clean and tidy, and yet when you listen to them speak to one another, the dialogue is all over the place in terms of intonation and rhythm, sometimes sounding sort of crazed.  They are a peaceful AND an animated people.  They don’t wave their hands like the Italians, but they speak in a wild variable series of sounds.  I love listening to these conversations.

I love taking off shoes when I enter a restaurant or a temple or someone’s home.  Why?  Because it gives me pause before I take the next step and enter the new environment.  Again, it is about respect and a gentility that we lack in our daily lives in America.  We were in a museum on Naoshima Island and about to enter a room with Monet’s water lilies displayed, and they required us to take off our shoes to enter.  I did so happily.  I walked in and breathed more fully in the space where Monet’s art lived.  Someone on our trip asked me why we had to take off the shoes here for Monet but not for another room of paintings, and I said that the Japanese had a love affair with Monet and it was an act of respect, of reverence, to take off  your shoes before entering, much the way you shed them when you enter a Buddhist temple.

I have been here only three weeks and there’s a lot I don’t understand, but I know that there is a peace of mind when you go out into the countryside and sit with farmers and people who make exquisite buckwheat soba noodles, and you eat at their table, and know that life can be a lot simpler than you thought.  Because it is about being in the moment.  Living close to your experience and giving your best effort in doing what you are driven to do.  Taking photographs here was a pleasure because you were always in the moment, and all the sensations were right there in front of you:  the cedars dripping with soft rain, the red maples shouting out in the gray landscape, perfumed incense at the shrine, the sound of water lapping up on a little beach near your hotel, and a mother and child staring at a koi filled pond, oblivious to the crowds around her…

There is so much beauty in this country, it seems, or is it that I’ve been made to exist so much in present time that everything appears curious, interesting, and beautiful? The visual gifts are here, the gentle civilized society is here, the earthy and nourishing food is offered, and all we need to do is be in our moment.

I think I know why people from the West who come here want to stay.  They want that opportunity to find gentle mindfulness and the freedom that is born from that.  They want to be nourished by a civilized society, and feel the weight of centuries of mysterious Buddhist and Shinto practices.  And then, there is always the breathtaking beauty of the misty deep Iya Valley, the rich lineage of serious art handed down over generations, or the lyrical Inland Sea, all of which are enough to keep you enchanted.

The following words came spilling out of my head recently as I was thinking about re-connecting with a dear one in my life.  It all started with:  “there are a lot of things I don’t know”  —

There are a lot of things that I “don’t know”:  

Is anyone but me ever going to read my book?

Will my daughter finally find her own path and freedom from sadness?

Why do we have a maniac running for president in this country?

How can I be comfortable with the profound ignorance and greed in our world?

Why don’t the hummingbirds ever come to my rooftop?

Why can’t I be a good baseball fan?

When is my ankle going to stop hurting?

Why don’t I remember my dreams?

How much longer will I have the loving companionship of Jackson the cat?

Will I ever find the peace that Buddhism promises?

Why do I hate the Blue Angels so?

How is it that loving someone doesn’t guarantee being loved?

There are so many other questions that I don’t have answers for, and during these darker days of fall I hear them echo in my head:

Will I die alone?

Will I ever learn another Goldberg Variation?

Will my book ever be published?

When will I make peace with my body?

Will I ever re-read Anna Karenina?

Will I get to Tibet?

Will I ever fall in love again?

What about craving?

Will I ever sit another month in silence?

Will I ever taste perfect porcini mushrooms again in Italy?

Once you accept the unanswerable nature of our journey through life, you can actually move forward more freely and thoughtfully, because you’re not tripping over the questions you think you should answer.  “Don’t know mind” is one of the great gifts of Buddhism, I think, and after all the decades of striving to figure things out I am SO grateful to simply say, “I don’t know.”  And it’s o.k.  Because life goes on.

People are born, grow up, fall in love, get sick, and ultimately die.  Politicians lust after power, get elected to office, then lose their way, or lose their ideals, and then they are gone.  Animals come into our world to teach us and offer us beauty, and they too grow, get sick and die.  Ideas are born into our consciousness, worked on in solitary, and then come together as a painting, a book, a sonata … they are gazed at, read, and listened to … and then, like everything else, it all goes quiet, because we are impermanent.

I’m off to my little house by the beach to gaze at the ocean during these gray and stormy days, and marvel at its mutability, at our ever changing, watery nature.  Alive for now – just this moment.

When I sat the Creativity Retreat at Spirit Rock, our writing teacher posed this question to our writing group, and I wasn’t able to answer it then.  There were members of our group who found the topic exploitative and off-putting, then there were those that in a quasi smart-ass way said things like, well when you’re dead you’re gone and so there’s no possibility for feeling (or missing) anything.  I saw then that it was a deep and interesting query into what we value about our lives.  Here are some of my treasures:

Hummingbirds …their brilliant and speedy perseverance in life, they’re a “flash of lightening in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream…”  They are pure beauty and heart and joy.

And speaking of beauty and heart — my children & my grandchildren … These  beautiful young women have been my teachers, my truth tellers, and beloved and feisty companions on this journey, and five grandchildren (and one “great” grandson) have reminded me that we can be ageless, timeless, and that there’s play in our life until we decide that there’s not.

My Cats, whose slinky graceful furred bodies remind me they are little wild animals; they grace my home with their beauty, inscrutability, and intelligence.  They have been with me in this life since the very beginning – green and golden eyes flashing, paws playing, and cries in the night that tell me they’re looking for safety.

Elephants … the gray behemoths that march softly across the land in Africa try relentlessly to keep their families together … they are wise and loving animals carrying a vast memory, whose lives are threatened by greed and hatred, and somehow they just keep marching on.  Looking into the feathered eyes of an elephant changed my life forever some years ago, made me realize I was being seen.

The Ocean … waves roll in forever, as the shimmering ocean changes from shades of gray to brilliant blue in the sun, and the pelicans and gulls and plovers celebrate the bounty of life the ocean delivers.  The ocean makes me think of dire adventures at sea, of great love stories, journeys to faraway places, and of our terrible human vulnerability.  When I inhale the ocean’s salt air, I think of my sad mother who also was in love with the sea, and remember that eons of time ago I came from the sea.

Buddhas – I have many Buddhas in many sizes in my home, and they are all smiling at me, and reminding me that I am safe, I am present, that I have the capacity to be free from suffering.   Buddhas from Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, China, and Japan… they seem to stand as witnesses and places for me to rest in peace.

Italy – I grew from a child to a young woman here, and the warm, chaotic, and stunning culture that is Italy still tugs at my heart.  What they do, mostly they do it beautifully.  I am grateful.  As I am for Florence’s Carmine church, or Venice’s Accademia Bridge when the sun is setting, or the Cinqueterre’s cozy villages that smell of fresh seafood and suntan oil.  There’s the music of the the language that rolls off my tongue with delight when they call me “signora.”  And then .. there’s the pasta with perfect parmigiano.

JS Bach – My fingers have been striving to play his music all my life, and I am happiest when I listen to Glenn Gould’s piano, the choir singing the St. Matthew Passion, or my own awkward attempts to render the tricky Goldberg Variations.  Bach has reminded me of a divine order, of the fact that one can spin out into space with  infinite variations only to be able to find the way home easily.  When I started to get to know Bach, I knew he’d be in my life for the duration, laying down the order and safety of his beautiful notes.

Friends – Ah, how do you talk about friends?  It’s sort of like talking about God.  Where are the words?  I’ve had one friend for over 60 years and she and I dream each other back to ourselves, other friends who have rescued me when I was hurt, who have laughed when I told a story, who have been able to just be a loving witness to this strange adventure we’re all on.  Friends are the jewels that sparkle in our lives, who remind us how rich the journey is.

Artichokes – My favorite food, with its perfect pointed thistle shape and nasty thorns, and nutty heart that doesn’t even need the melted butter.  I have eaten these all my life, have taught people how to eat them, and I keep wanting to know just who figured out they were actually a food?  They are green and perfect.

Another perfect green:  the San Francisco wild parrot, who is a local hero that streaks over the city screeching with joy at life.  They were once tended by a guy who was homeless and who then became the St. Francis of parrots; they spread their wings to settle in different neighborhoods in the city and captivate people’s hearts.  Their wild green splashed with crimson red on the face remind us of wildness and endurance.  Hooray for the parrots!

Standing by the water’s edge with my dog … I will miss this.  Peaches and I have become comrades in this life, pals, and for both of us the smell of the salt air fills us with pleasure, we want to laugh and twirl around.  She is my little white and tan best friend.  She prances, she dances, I just walk slowly, feeling the placement of my feet on the ground, and my wild heart beating.

There are old books I love to hold, and my mother’s crazy and messy abstract paintings I never tire of looking at…  There are lit candles by the Buddha and on the dining room table, a generous glass of blood red Pinot Noir waiting for me, and there are the pages of my stories trying to find their place in the world, and my Venetian glass necklaces that sparkle and wink.  There is the Bodega house by the beach that faces the sunset every night and holds me safe, and a glossy and very old black baby grand piano on White Street that my grandmother gave me long ago.  Treasures all…

Yes, there have been many along the way, and the more I stop and look and listen, the more of them I expect to see.  It is the holding of these treasures that helps us with the dark anger and suffering we all face every day.  I have a hunch we are supposed to witness rather than just glide through this life with blinders on.  What do you think?