Tag Archives: philosophy
Too Darn Hot
I have been given the day off from my job at Old World Wisconsin. When the heat index is over 100 degrees, we expect few visitors to the outdoor living history museum. With my time, I imagine accomplishing all kinds of things, but in truth, I am simply sitting in front of a fan in the living room, drinking cold water. I am surrounded by books. “Savor” by Thich Nhat Hahn is right at hand, bringing mindfulness into my view, but what I am mindful of is the sun beating down on the roof next door, angling through the windows despite the mini-blinds, heating the air so that any breeze coming in feels like the blow-dryer set on High. I imagine all the sweet corn that I want to be eating next month shriveling up in the fields. The loss of that treat – roasted in the husk, dripping in fresh butter and seasoned with salt and pepper – is probably not as devastating as the loss of an entire crop to a farmer. Dust Bowl conditions may be just around the corner at this rate. We are all connected to the changes and conditions on this planet. How can we be mindful and act compassionately as a community? How can we become “solid, peaceful, whole, and well” and improve the well-being of the world through collective compassion? And can we cause a sea change on the planet before our brains are so baked that we can’t think at all? I retreat into distraction and immediately think of this song…
Drops of sweat tap dance down my trunk…
Conscientiousness melts into individual survival…
When will the healing rain fall?
Pointing Your Canoe
Who do you want to be? How do you want to live? What do you want to do with your life? Where do you want to point your canoe?
Doesn’t matter where your canoe came from…Steve found this one at a garage sale
Strap it down and get ready to roll…
Set a course for your adventure and enjoy the ride!
Interesting Inconsistency vs. Efficiency
People are inconsistent. We must be; we’re alive, living, responding, changing. Funny thing is, in the West we’re often taught that this is a bad thing. It isn’t efficient. It isn’t dependable. It goes against all kinds of Protestant ethics of order and purpose and such. But in Eastern cultures, it’s often celebrated. “If you see the Buddha in the road, kill him.” When the Buddha becomes a monolith, a never-changing dogma, it is no longer a life-giving source. I look to historical information and try to understand why people did what they did for a living now; I’m a historic interpreter. I keep fighting this penchant for landing on the “right answer”, the one that describes order and purpose and makes sense. I’m learning more that the joy of interpreting history is found in saying “we don’t know why”. We’re quirky; isn’t that marvelous? We change, we evolve, we digress, we’re capricious. In many cultures, gods were like that, too. It was acceptable, maybe expected. But in Western theology, that became a bad characteristic for a god, and immutability became important. We want something dependable, something stable, so much that we’re willing to construct it and enshrine it. Why? Because it allows us to stop trying to be responsible in the world? The effort of responding is perhaps a constant drain, and we are lazy by nature? I think of cultures that are resilient, flexible, responsive to the environment, and I think that consistency is maybe not that important or beneficial after all.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance, 1830
What made me think about this? I was looking into Wisconsin history, and the history of the Upper Peninsula, and came across the story of Henry Schoolcraft. His first wife was half Ojibwa and helped him in his scholarship of Native American cultures. His second wife wrote a popular anti-Tom novel in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous book and disapproved of mixed-race unions, thereby alienating her stepchildren completely. Why would the same man be married to both of these women? “I don’t know why.”
Bookshelf at the Raspberry School, Old World Wisconsin
I recognize in myself a tendency to try to put my partner in a box, to figure out the consistent rules that will help me predict his behavior. There aren’t any, really. But he is hardly a sociopath. He simply wants to be allowed to communicate his thoughts and feelings as they arise, to be understood in the moment, known intimately for the authentic and complicated man he is. He is more than willing to talk and reason and explain honestly and even to make promises and act on them in order to gain my trust. Perhaps it is simply my natural laziness that wants to put labels on him and save myself the trouble of paying attention. Truly caring about a person requires great effort. It is hardly efficient. It necessitates all kinds of little adjustments. And that is a valuable process, a craftsmanship of sorts. Which reminds me of this clip my brother-in-law sent me which he titled: Precision East German manufacturing in the workers paradise. I’m not sure if he was trying to be cynical. I think it illustrates a very authentic part of human process.
Happy Interdependence!
We survived the festivities at Old World Wisconsin in 104 degree heat! I wore a very special costume that had only been worn once before. It was silk and “tropical weight” wool with beautiful accents of military buttons and lapels and florets.
I was interviewed by Fox 6 News about my experience wearing 19th century clothing in the heat. I relayed information about what I was wearing and how it felt and then said that I thought people in the 19th century lived more closely in harmony with their environment instead of trying to manipulate or change it. Therefore, they get used to variations in temperature and become more resilient….or something like that. Then I went into the church and played a few hymns on the pump organ while the assembly sang. Then another interpreter took over and I sang descants along to some more hymns. When that concluded, we closed the building and got ready for the parade. I was part of the Temperance Society and marched singing a song to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic urging the whiskey shops to close! Steve carried the banner of the Democratic candidate who lost to Rutherford B. Hayes. There were stirring speeches, but we omitted the reading of the Declaration of Independence in order to keep the program short. It was, after all, about 95 degrees in the shade. After that program, I got to go take my lunch in the air-conditioned break room and sample the potluck goodies (including root beer floats!) that the staff had contributed. The afternoon visitors were few and far between, so I spent the time doing some sewing and mopping my head and neck with a handkerchief dipped in cold pump water.
After work, I dropped my costume off and changed into 21st century clothes. Now I’m home sipping a cold Wisconsin beer and lying nearly naked in front of a fan. It’s 90 degrees in the house, but that’s still cooler than it is outside! No matter how independent we think we are, we are still part of the environment, still interconnected to life, still dwellers in a habitat, trying to survive. That teaches me to respect the planet and everything on it and to strive to become happily interdependent in the world.
Going With the Flow
Change and the movement of life – flow and motion – energy passing through places and phases. Here I sit in an old house with the shades drawn and the ceiling fans going fast, aware that the heat index is at a level that prompted my employer to call most of the staff and direct them to stay at home. It’s hot and humid…but only for now. This is what my street looked like in February:
I have been reading through some letters and journal entries that I wrote in the year 2007, the year before my husband died, when my teenaged girls were in serious distress and the entire family was in deep pain. Here’s a list of feelings I wrote about:
depression, disappointment, hurt, shame, guilt, disgust, loneliness, despair, anger/frustration, regret/sorrow, fatigue, pain, inadequacy, fear, fragility, helplessness
Here’s a list of feelings that I decorated with a jagged black boundary and labeled “Off Limits, Not Allowed”:
Beauty, Happiness, Joy, Love, Health, Excitement, Passion, Rest, Pleasure, Peace
I wrote: “What do you do with feelings? They’re supposed to have ‘a beginning, a middle, and an end’, but when you’ve had the same feelings swirling around you for a half a year, a year, several years — they aren’t just feelings anymore. They become a way of life. I feel like Job — afflicted with boils. These hives on my legs itch like crazy, and I have no clue why I have them. I just keep hoping they’ll just go away.”
When you attempt to stop the flow of energy and movement and turn your present feelings or thoughts into a way of life, it may seem like you’re taking control and choosing something you want. It may turn out to be something that mires you in suffering, however. That’s something of which to be aware. You could apply that to the physical environment: attempting to regulate the temperature and keep it at a constant 72 degrees Fahrenheit as a chosen way of life may cause you to suffer inordinately whenever the temperature is much lower or higher than that. Aversion and attachment causes suffering. Letting go of them allows the dance of life to swirl you into new places. If you find joy in the movement and change of life, you will not be disappointed. If you insist on sitting in the same pile of ashes for years, you will inevitably feel itchy and uncomfortable. You can hope that changes miraculously, or you can get up and move. As Jesus said to the man sitting at the Sheep’s Gate Pool complaining and making excuses, “Wilt thou be made whole?” (John 5:6) Do you want to enter the flow of life? It’s your choice…
Here endeth my sermon to myself.
Enigmatic and Ethereal
The land is parched. It hasn’t rained for more than two weeks, and that was just a shower, really. Clouds gather and pass, rain pummels areas just to the north or south or west, but not here. Water vapor hangs in the air; the humidity makes the evenings sticky. The ceiling fan keeps up a tinny hum, the slight breeze causing a cooling evaporation on the surface of my exposed skin as I try not to move. Oh, but if I inch over the cotton sheet, I might find a cooler surface…just there…maybe?
I glance out the window to see if the maple leaves are moving, quivering, even a little bit. They are still, and the moon is full. It looks so cool and pale in the dark sea above. I have to go outside and stand under it. Perhaps its snow white radiance will bring an icy wind from space. I invite Steve to join me for a night walk. I put on just a sheer sundress, slip into sneakers, and grab my camera. The neighborhood is quiet. Televisions and air-conditioners keep the people shut up inside their suburban catacombs while we explore the world above…above the rooftops, above the concrete, above the tangible, above and beyond comprehension. Where we are is no longer “Milwaukee”, it is in space, outside of time, anywhere and everywhere. We are moving through existence. We are.
The Root of the Issue
I love this fence. It’s made from the roots of trees that were cleared to make farms. It’s in the Finnish area of Old World Wisconsin. I wish I had photographed it earlier in the season before the roadside weeds grew so tall.
Tomorrow, I have a day off, and I’m looking forward to being able to spend some time with some issues that have surfaced (again) in my inner life. Grief is always there; I had another dream with Jim in it that made me wake in tears. Existential angst is there; today, I found myself embroidering “Alle Menschen ist der Grasse” on my sample cloth. And the differences between me and my partner Steve are always there. I had a vision of this a few days ago where I saw him as an archaeologist in a deep quest for something, sweeping away at an artifact to remove bits of dust and reveal some very important discovery. I saw myself as a widow who had lost everything, sitting among shards of broken glass, saying, “Oooh, sparkly!” to whichever bit caught her attention. To be honest, I attribute some of this mood to the hormonal cycle that still influences every month. However, cycles are natural, and to be brought back to a place of regular introspection is a good thing, I think. Anyway, I may have something more poetic and cohesive to say about the meaning of life….later.
Pondering Ponds
Gazing into the pond, pondering its many levels. What lurks in the depths? What ripples the surface? What is reflected from far above? Can you catch the sun dancing across it on a breeze? Does any creature understand all the dimensions of his environment at once?
Wishing you cool, green, dappled quiet pondering!
Growing Up Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Life never ceases to enthrall me. The will to take hold and thrive is powerful. Poor soil can take its toll on some plants, but others seem to do just fine clinging to nothing but rock. I admire the adaptability and tenacity of plant life. No excuses. Grow where you are, or become soil for someone else.
But even tough cedars get sappy sometimes.
scillagrace 