What Would You Do for a Football Game?

Since Papa and I swore off Comcast, we have had some pretty funny experiences being "intentional" about the shows we watch. These shows include exactly two: Sunday Morning, and the Denver Broncos football.

We have gone to hick bars, country club bars, sports bars, rented hotel rooms, begged friends, all to experience the holy grail. We've met fun and funny people, had some great food, learned about the "fantasy" culture, and had a laugh at the youngbloods and their laptops during the games. We've learned who the Bronco fans are in Seattle, Tucson, and Dallas, and figured out where the quietest corners are to tune in our game. 

This Sunday the game is in the evening, so fearing that the game would impinge on tired children's sleep, we had to develop a Plan B other than our kids' home. Papa figured it out- there is a TV on the console of the treadmills in our apartment complex exercise room. We just have to walk to keep it on. The visual: Two Geezers, like a couple of dried up old hamsters, running the treadmill so they can watch the Broncos (one of them yelling). Am I really here doing this?

Being With Dallas

Roshi Joan Halifax gives training in "Being with Dying" to professionals who deal with end-of-life issues. She teaches the buddhist approach to death- a path of non-resistance to experience. I am thinking about this, because my current task is "Being with Dallas."

It is very hard for me to be in this environment, but it is necessary and inevitable so I am applying my zen skills to this experience as if it were my job. Second, I am getting up each day, and nipping in the bud my tendency to evaluate the pervasive retail culture negatively. I don't have to participate in it if I don't want to, so there is no reason for me to evaluate it at all. I just have to be with it.

I am putting into practice living-in-the-moment as I run through the days. I experience the youngbloods, drive back and forth from stores, set up our "camp-out" apartment, implement our new fitness program, made easier by the many materialistic opportunities of these surroundings (like an exercise room on every corner and more fitness centers per square mile than I have ever seen anywhere).

I'm just being with it. Dropping in bed exhausted at the end of each day, but having a surprising amount of energy for it all. And today, I took a break from the retail culture by spending the day in front of my sewing maching, praying with my hands, working mindfully to make something for someone else. To my delight someone else had done the same! 

 I made a little flannel outfit for the cutest baby anyone will ever see, and her mother had made a huge batch of the gluten-free chocolate chip cookies for me! 

In the Constants We Gather Strength

Norman Mailer in an interview about his quasi-fictional account of Hitler's early life: Life is such an enormous entity, that the kindness of his mother, though consistent and focused, could not influence the eventual outcome (or words to that effect- have not done justice to the comment).

Cannot get this image out of my mind- the enormity of life's endeavor.  Mailer's words in that interview portrayed both the all-out struggle we each have in living it, and the collective grinding and groaning of life as it lurches forward in fits and starts, each of us contributing miniscule but perceptible energy to the whole. 

I reflect on the lives of my family members one year after that moment of utter grace when we were all together in Hawaii. It was a diamond moment. Life is lurching forward, grinding and groaning, and will not be stopped by even the most fervent effort on any of our parts. I took twenty minutes to sit in the sun yesterday, recovering from the very painful shock to my body of wind chill 2 degrees. At least the sun is a constant.  In the constants we gather strength.

Junebug the Christmas Kitty

Hope in a World Gone to Seed

A tree of limbs bent heavy with ripe and falling lemons. One branch                              opens a blossom toward the sky. 

Junebug Gets a Cake

Back in the sun, and just now back from a very very fun holiday party with the artgirls and their S.O.'s. The highlight for me- Jeannie made a kitty litter cake just for Junebug, complete with Tootsie Roll poops. When we are done licking the pan, we will fill it with REAL kitty litter, and it will be here when Junebug arrives. Yummmm..