Death

The kids' grandpa died, and they went to the funeral. They came back sobered somehow, less fluffy.

A friend came into the shop yesterday, and closed with, "My girlfriend died. Three weeks ago. She was climbing into bed, had a massive brain hemmorhage and died right there in front of me."

I don't know what I believe about life after death. I have a pretty clear picture of us up to that point: we are born and start dying from that moment, while we have a life. Or maybe mid-life is the point where we start the trajectory more toward death than toward life? See, even that I don't really know as a certainty. It's pretty certain, however, that at some point, our bodies end. Their existence in the form we know it ceases and these bodies become a form of dirt.

I don't mind this body becoming dirt. It'll be weird to do it all of a sudden. I'm accustomed to taking in cows and plants, and exchanging accidental dirt, eliminating dirt; I'm accustomed to exchanging molecules with the air. But who is the I in all these exchanges? Is it more than my body that is I?

Shadows

I've been thinking about shadows.

What if crossing over to the dark side means sitting in the shade? What if crossing over means only that you have your feet on the ground and connected to those feet are a cartoon replica of your body shooting along the ground to your side?

Actually, don't we all have two shadows? The shady side of our bodies is one dark side, and the cast shadow is another. If you look carefully, the same happens on the light side (the painter's eye sees this): the illuminated side casts a bright "reflection" on the ground. So, there's the body of us, the shady side, and the shadow, along with our bright side and the glow.

Finding the good and bad is never really so easy as black and white, is it? Which leads me to the question: if transcending duality means integrating opposites, what is the higher view of having a light and a dark side? What is the transcendent view of good vs. evil?

So far, I've come up with one answer: change. Change means that we transition, from night to day to night, from shade to light to shadow, turning, moving, changing.

How about that?

ambivalent maxims

I've listed my favorites, so now I'll list a couple of sayings that I'm confused about. The confusion comes from the double-edged nature of these ideas, as well as my ambivalence as to whether I've seen them in action in life.

1. "this too shall pass" While this can be a comforting idea when going through a difficult time, the idea is dangerous for several reasons. It can always get worse. And, even the good times don't last. I don't know that it's much of a comfort to know we will soon be done with something. I'm leaning more these days to finding the life in moments as they come, pain and all (shake out this tired notion that the best is yet to come - per Dave Matthews).
2. "what goes around comes around" Really, how do we know? I've seen more grace and good turns than any of us deserve, and I've seen some pretty lousy things happen to people who were clearly not on anything like a deserving end. Maybe this one is supposed to mean across lifetimes, in the plural opportunities for justice of reincarnation. Even that explanation is a stretch for a saying that's supposed to be about fairness and balance. I think that we do get what we put out there more often than not. I also think we catch some that has nothing to do with us.

I believe that we make sayings like the two listed above to feel like we can predict and control our life events. It is as if we are telling life when it's been bad, then we're due for good (and vice versa). And if we've done bad, we're in for bad. I just haven't seen life making deals like that. What I've seen so far is that there is a definite imbalance in life. Most of the time it's good. It's so good that we expect it to always be good and are surprised by anything bad. When the bad happens, we think we caused it because it's safer to think that we're still in control than to think that bad things just happen here and there.

The deepest counter-quip I can find to these is the old "shit happens". I'm sure that puts me squarely in a school of philosophy named "defeatest" or mysansopht or kluless. It's just what I've seen so far, is all.

More Sayings

Life's a beach.

Life can be a beach, but lucky we live in Hawaii...

more random notes about random knitting

More about free form knitting...

Like stream-of-consciousness writing, I work with two sticks and a ball of string to make a piece of cloth. If I lose my way, so what? If I drop a stitch or start working backwards or try a new way to knit right in the middle of it all, so what?

Oh that life could be more like this. I'd like to change horses mid-stream as often as necessary. I'd like to eat half of dessert first, and then decide if I even want a meal. I'd like to try ideas on for size and see if I can let them go a little later.

But what a mess that would all make. I think it's supposed to be neat, this living thing. The dying gets messy, albeit unavoidable. But to make a mess in my life, when I could control it to tidiness... well, that's an odd idea.

Probably the closest comparison activity to free form knitting that I know of is prayer. Not rote prayer, but the "okay, now I'm stymied" kind of prayer. You just let it all hang out, gather it all together, and try to make something of the pieces. You talk about it along the way, work with it, find new bits of information, search for the missing parts, and tell yourself this is actually fun (because it is.)

Random knitting, as opposed to using a pattern, is akin to taking a 4-wheel drive vehicle off road. There are no maps. Some boulders are too big to tackle. Some washes turn you back. It tests your nerves, your determination, your curiosity, your skills... Sometimes you're sure it's going to be a wreck. But it's all new terrain and there's a silence here because so few are around. And there's wildlife just near if you pause and listen.

Why Freeform Knitting is Bliss

Here it is. The exhaustive list of how to find your way by landing on something so ideal for you to do that no one can tear you away from it. For me, this week, The Thing is freeform knitting. This list explains why I love it:

• it's all about relationships
• each piece can be a small "to go" bag with a project for the spaces in-between in life
• constant variety and change are good for both the mind and body
• it is a way to do product research and development with a wider variety of fibers and tools
• swatches, false starts, attempts at new stitches and yarns all become part of the design
• eliminate waste: remnants combine to produce a useful end result
• there is no "are we there yet?" because the Journey at long last really is the destination
• it's painting -- with yarn!
• it's knitting and crocheting, weaving and designing
• I can use my other arts with it (silver clay formed into buttons...)
  

maxims

These are some of my favorite sayings, in order of relevance to my present life:

1. begun is half done
   
2. life is what you make of it
3. nature wins over nurture every time
   
4. never put off until tomorrow what you can do today, which can lead to:
   

• There's too much to get done in one lifetime. Screw it, I'm going to go knit, OR
  
• Enjoli syndrome (I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never never let you forget you're a man, 'cause I'm a [wonder] woman) = lower back pain and a disgust with the rest of the sloths that call themselves human

Number One: "Begun is half done" This is a magical phrase, that when put to use causes all sorts of insurmountable projects to melt into manageable mounds of mush. Unless, of course, I use it when knitting, in which case it is a rationalization for buying more yarn for yet another just-begun project that will possibly be finished in the time it would take me to conceive, give birth to, and graduate a human being (from graduate school.) Ah but the conception part is such a pleasure...

Number Two: Life is what you make of it. This is a brand new one for me. I am considering it for qualification in my quiver of quips. It verges on dangerous in that it smacks of the new age idea that we create our own reality, aka, blame game says you lose if your life includes any suffering whatsoever. There's something to the idea contained in this expression, however, so I'm mulling it over.

Number Three: Nature wins over nurture every time. I threw this one in the list because I pressed enter after number two above and a three popped up to replace the former #3 (now #4). I felt obligated to fill the space. Maybe this one would be more reasonably labeled, "I am highly suggestable", but I came up with the nature/nurture one after asking David to tell me my favorite quotes and he drew a blank.

Number Four: Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. This one prompted the list. I was bathing and debating whether to wait until tomorrow to shave. I was relieved not to assign myself yet another to-do to the coming day.

My list of favorite adages shows that at present, I have made a very busy life for myself. I'd say that I've just proven #3 (nature wins over nurture). Even if I won a lottery for which I've never bought a ticket, I would get myself over-busy with managing or shuffling funds or volunteering, or more likely: sunbathing, beverage preparations, and event planning.

We are who we are. (Number three, but more to the point.)

freeform knitting

I read a silly little knitting novel and caught a chance comment about freeform knitting.

Then I googled freeform knitting and landed on Prudence Mapstone's website.

If I am to find my way by following my bliss, I think I just stumbled on a big road sign. Freeform knitting (and crochet) is a blast. I am knitting myself silly. My teenage son has his driving permit, and I'm not watching the road because I'm busy creating. I have a tiny project tucked into every corner of my life: in the car, in my bag, in the restroom(s), at my desk, and near the bed (with lighted needles and hooks). In the yarn room I have the mother ship: my first scrumble.

A scrumble is a collection of freeforms put together. I was aiming for leaves and sticks in browns. I ended up with pelts and hides. Oh well! I'm having too much fun to worry over my intended outcome. I am absolutely and completely absorbed by the process.

Look up nirvhana in my dictionary and you'll see a picture of freeform knitting. (well, I'll post one there someday when I get it done.) I love yarn! I love using sticks and strings to make stuff. I love abstraction. This creative vein covers it all.

I'd tell you more about it, but I gotta go knit.

what have I been thinking about?

Capturing thoughts is like catching butterflies.

I have all sorts of wonderful insights and mullings. Most of them occur on the road. I have a small recording device to use when my hands aren't free enough to jot a note. The recorder is in the catacombs of my tote. If I dig for it while driving, I'm risking a coma. My note-jotting books are all in the bag, circling the recorder, bullying it and hiding it from me when I fish for it. If I choose a notebook to jot in while driving, the idea ends up illegible. When I do manage to record an idea, I blurb something like, "Oranges and how peels get under my nails." This surely held perfect, deep meaning when I recorded it, but darn if I know what it's about. Even awake, notes to myself are like taking notes on a dream. When I write the thing out completely, I'm still unsure just what I meant at the time.

No, my ideas must be captured fresh, on the fly. Who would carry a butterfly net in the car and scoop some of the beauties out of the air at a high speed? The odds are against getting anything wholesome, or anything at all. No, catching ideas requires slowing down, making space for them to settle and drink. I really hate that. I want to go go go and have a mind that takes multiple images on the move and makes them clear capturings of events and ideas. I want to hurry up and get it all down.

What is that about, this rush? I'm afraid. I'm afraid that good ideas, or even ideas that hold moisture, will evaporate from me if I slow down. I'm afraid that I'll ultimately have nothing at all to say. And if I have no substance in my writing, who will chew on my ideas long enough to consider them?

And under that fear is the real concern: that without sharing my ideas as they evolve and without getting confirmation that these are indeed ideas worth pondering that I have somehow wasted my life and not done my homework.

How bizarre a way to live. I'd rather play with ideas. I like to take three or so, better if they're conflicting, and toss them into the air. It's fun to do that in front of people. Some folks know how to juggle, so they take the ideas and make them fly in formation. That makes ideas seem less conflicting, less self-contradictory. But the ideas that I toss around are like magnets polarized to oppose. My ideas mix like oil and water. My ideas are that everything both is and is not something else.

How about that?

Was it worth writing down?

Generations and Ideas

The Greatest Generation is one of my favorite groups of people. It is my parents' generation, which is to say that my folks had me late in life, and I'll be an early senior generation at some point. Their generation, out of all the groups I've met (other than aborigines whom I haven't met), have had more preconceptions to dispel and ideas to challenge than any other group of which I am aware.

I had lunch with a friend from this generation, now in her mid-eighties, to find out her key, her secret to youthfulness in old age. She plays tennis daily, skis, and generally gets around. Her mind is sharp, and her heart is clearly glad. How is this possible?

Over lunch, we all talked about a whole lot of nothing. I waited, and listened. She'd tell me, I knew it, by accident or by my design. I was having a bit of trouble forming the question, however. How do you ask someone, "How did you get to be so old and vital at the same time?" Or, "What's the secret to growing old gracefully?" So, until I had it phrased right, I'd see if the answer just presented itself. It did.

In the midst of conversation, she said, "You know, I love being old." My mother nodded in polite agreement, but I could see that she wondered where this Pollyanna was going. My friend added, "People are so nice to you when you get old."

I had recently come to the conclusion that relationships are what it's all about. Maybe relationships aren't the meaning of life, but they are a good slice of living fully. So, it's tempting to see the "people are nicer" aspect of aging as the secret, but I wasn't fooled. The secret, as told by this friend, to aging youthfully is to love being old!

How very here-now of her. If we are constantly trying to be other than what we are, we drain all of the energy from our present selves. We so easily devalue who we are, really are, wrinkles and all. If we embrace who we are at each moment and enjoy it, we regain the vitality of each age.

So, the fountain of youth is simply a sentence away: I love being old.