I Love Lucy!

I bobbed to the surface from the depths of a dream, having been roused by a sound like that of distant thunder. Clearing away the mists of tired nature's sweet restorer, I was able to trace this rumbling to its source. It was the current Cat of the Year, Beignet.

Lucy, The Princess of Sweetness and Light

The super-sized Beignet has never seen eye-to-eye with me on the subject of early rising. I like to sleep to the last possible moment and then leap out into the day, taking full advantage of the element of surprise. I'm told Napoleon did the same. But this long-haired, ginger and white is absolutely up and about with the larks every morning.

Having bounded onto the bed, he licked me in the right eye, then curled up and settled in with his head on my arm.

"Isn't that sweet?" said the Wonder who had shimmered into the room. I could not fully subscribe to this point of view. What is sweet about getting out of bed before God wakes, only to go back to sleep again? Silly, it struck me as.

I extricated myself from the cat and brought myself to a fully upright position, the better to slosh a half-cup of tissue restorer into the abyss. It was only then that I realized Ms Wonder was knee-deep in boxes, looking like a sea goddess walking on the rocky shore.

"Unpacking?" I asked.

"Getting the Halloween stuff out. I thought it might help to keep busy today," she said. "Takes my mind off things I don't want on my mind."

I understood her meaning to the core. 

"Then unpack 'till your ribs squeak," I said, "and let me help."

It seems nothing brings more healing balm like anticipation of the holidays and our hearts were sore in need of healing. Lucy, the recently rescued little princess of sweetness and light has been adopted by another and is even now getting used to her new surroundings. 

It's an excellent situation for her, of course, being the absolute center of attention and becoming a member of a permanent family. Still, it leaves a void in our hearts. It seems that when Lucy left, the sunshine and bluebirds followed her.

We love you, Lucy, and we miss you terribly and if history is any indication, we always will.  I will always remember being wakened by your tiny, cold, wet nose.

Be happy, be healthy, be safe my little girl.

Parting the Clouds

Joy cometh in the morning, or so the psalmist tells us. But all things are relative, which I'm sure I don't need to tell you. I have no complaints about how this particular morning began. Before surrendering to the call to be up and about, I lay nestled in the peaceful bliss of a couple of cats still dreaming by my side.

"Poopsie, what's it like out?" I asked and was immediately assured that I was right to assume the sounds of water running nearby meant Ms. Wonder was enjoying a dunk in the Volga tributary running out of the tap in the salle de bain.

"Overcast and blustery," she said and I nodded. It was a useless gesture, of course, as she was in the next room.

Zen Garden at Straw Valley

No, not a bad little morning, but life doesn't loiter underneath the coverlets. It moves fast and eventually one must face the reality of gray skies and coolish breezes. 

I was on tap this morning to lead a meditation class at Straw Valley, and the class was making its last call before raising the curtain on today's performance. It was for me the work of a moment to drape myself in something loose and comfortable and then flash from east to west along the southern corridor of Durham.

Sunday morning meditation cleasses are never expected to be large and today's expectations proved correct. Straw Valley was quiet. I'd been notified by text and voicemail that about half the regular crew would be otherwise engaged. No, not a large class but still, I didn't expect to be the only one there. 

Now, as you know well, I have no sympathy for those who whine. Still, I don't want to mislead you. I hate as much as anyone the cosh behind the ear that Fate delivers when I'm not looking. Reminding myself that the most important gifts in life are Time and Place. And reasoning that I had plenty of Time in the perfect Place, I began to qigong like the dickens.

I entered the Zen garden where I began with Wuji Swimming Dragon. Under the bamboo arbor, I executed Parting the Clouds. In front of the art wall--Embracing Heaven and Earth. It was in the middle of this qigonging that a young man and woman entered the courtyard carrying laptops and coffee.

"Are you with the meditation class?" she said.

I confessed that it was true because she had caught me waving my arms around my head and it seemed futile to deny it.

"Is that 'ki gong you're doing?' she said.

"Chi gung," I said because I always like to get it right.

"We were wondering about that," said the male half of the sketch.

"Wonder no more," I said. "Join me and do what I do."

"Want to?" she said looking at him with eyes that sparkled like fireworks after a Durham Bull's game. I could tell that her smile was to him like the sun and he was her Chanticleer, ready to flap his wings and strut his stuff. 

They joined me and we worked our way around the courtyard until we came to the cabanas where another couple, friends of the first, were invited to join us. They did.

"This isn't what I expected meditation to be," said the new woman.

"Ah," I said, for the Genome is quick and I knew exactly where she was headed with this comment. "We have a few minutes left. Let's go inside and I'll introduce you to Zazen." 

Daybreak by Cathryn Jirlds

No sooner had we entered the back room of Sanderson House than I realized the room was not as empty as I'd left it. Another couple enjoying coffee and scones were surprised to see us. After a few pour parlers, they too joined us seated on the floor in front of one of the abstract photos, Daybreak, by Cathryn Jirlds.'

And so with a little acceptance and with willingness to live life on life's terms, we not only bucked up our immune systems and improved our cognitive abilities, but we also had a great Sunday morning in the Courtyard. 

Every day should be just so. Data, set a course to the Age of Aquarius. Engage!

A Walk on the South Side

Mornings, I walk. After an early caffeine binge with The Enforcer, I pace the south end of the city one step at a time moving as quickly as my back will allow. 

I tell people the walk was recommended by my therapist, and there is that, but I really walk to get a preview of what the day will be like for the Genome. The walk is quick but it's mindful.

I enjoy greeting the people that I see out and about in the early morning. They're people with purpose and I wonder what it would be like to be a purposeful person again. I struggle to find purpose but no matter how hard I try, it seems that I spend my days in Heaven's waiting room. 

Time and Place. That's the stuff I see as important. I'd like to think that what I do is important but, there again, it seems the universe has its own agenda. I'm expected to do something, almost anything I suppose, and that seems to be enough. More than enough really. Doing anything seems to be everything.

I don't expect you to agree. I'm not a fool. Or rather, I may be a fool, but... oh, I don't know. Let's not get derailed by existential philosophy. 

I know most people live with the idea that life has meaning and that they have a purpose. I'm happy for them. I admire them.

I watch a favorite barista from Ethiopia who makes the little faces and hearts and fern leaves in the lattes I drink in Native Grounds and I wonder if it would be possible for someone without purpose in their life to do that.

Even though I don't know what I'm doing, it feels somehow, and this is the salient point, that I have been chosen for the role. I have been chosen by the Enforcers to blunder through life hoping that something meaningful will happen.

This morning, pacing the south side mindfully and feeling the anger--not to mention the pain in the upper back--I began doing a few qigong wudangs. Swimming Dragon, was the first, followed by Parting the Clouds and then finishing with Embracing Heaven and Earth.

I was near a storm drain, and that mundane piece of municipal infrastructure became a metaphor for the neural networks in the shadowy region of my brain that support my depression. 

My qigong moves became fierce--my way of shouting down the storm drain of the mind, "I'm chosen! So don't mess with me, Amy!"

Amy, of course, is that little region of gray cells... No! Sorry, you know all about Princess Amy by now.

When my attention returned to the here and now, I realized that about a dozen people were moving around me doing whatever they were doing at this hour. Upper-dressed young women going to work at Nordstrom's; corporate ID-tag bearers heading to Panera's for coffee and bagels; cargo pant-ed leaf blowers. All looking at me.

"Had to be done," I said.

They all nodded and continued on their way because they all knew what it was like to be messed with. And they instinctively knew that I was yelling in the right direction. Down the storm drain.

Original and Catchy

I arrived at the Den of the Secret Nine before any of the other members of the Organization. I wasn't surprised because traffic can be formidable in the Renaissance during the season of commercial orgy. I sat at the regular table and before I'd disconnected myself from iPhone life support, the Duck Man entered and sat next to me.

"I'll tell you my story," he said. "I'll tell you my story and you will sympathize because I can tell by looking at your face that you're sympathetic. You have a sympathetic face. My story is the story of a man's tragedy. It is the story of a blighted life. It is the story of a woman who could not forgive. It is the story..."

"I have to leave at 8:30," I said, "and if it's the story about the monkey and the coconuts, I've heard it and it's vulgar."

"Sympathy," he said. "A man who has suffered the tragedy that I have asks only for a little sympathy."

"Let your days be full of joy," I said and I was pretty bucked about it too because I'd heard this gag only the night before. The timing was perfect. And it feels good to bewilder someone who is attempting to flummox you. Don't you agree? I continued with the little saying all the way to the punchline.

"Love the child that holds your hand," I said. "Let your wife delight in your embrace. For these alone are the concerns of man." 

I may have paraphrased the little thing but I was confident that I'd non-plussed him anyway. But it was not so. 

"I have no children," he said, "and I've lost the woman who means all the world to me."

I knew he'd led me to the top of the slippery slope and immediate steps were required to avoid disaster. 

"Listen," I said.

"Sure," he said taking a sip of his coffee.

"I walk the face of the earth like an ant walks on the surface of water," I began.

"Do ants walk on water," he asked?

I raised a hand as this was no time for side issues.

"As if the slightest misstep might send me straight through the surface and into the depths below. Not the depths of the ocean but the innermost depths of my mind."

At this point, I paused to look him hard in the eye and tap my finger on the side of my head. 

"It's dark and scary in there," I said.

"What's so scary about it?"

"I'll tell you," I said. "Just yesterday I was thinking about the rising tide of heinous skulduggery and political weasel-osity in the nearby kingdom of the United States. I was thinking about how the people living there are in need of compassion and goodwill."

He nodded and his face wore the expression of someone considering my comments to the fullest extent of consideration.

"And as I mused on those thoughts," I said, "a cargo van of grief and anger came careening around a corner in my mind and plowed through a row of garbage cans. The driver came out swinging and shouting..."

"Hmm," he said, you don't see that every day. But so what?"

"That driver was me," I said.

"Ah," he said. And then placing a hand on my arm, and looking at his phone, he said, "Sorry, gotta go. I have a 9:00 appointment and it's almost 8:30 now."

He walked away and left me wishing that I had closing remarks for situations like this. I used to wish people a nice Mayan apocalypse on such occasions, but that ship sailed and is long forgotten. I need to come up with something original and catchy.

Point of No Return

My story is a simple one and one that’s all too common. The whole thing can be condensed into two words—"I drank." 

What It Was Like

I remember that as a boy, my father and uncle used to give me a small taste of beer, but I didn’t like it. But I did like the feeling it gave me, the feeling of breaking a taboo and doing something that I shouldn’t. 

My story isn’t one of a teenager gone bad. I stayed sober through high school. My downfall began when I joined the hometown boys in college.

I was one of those young men you read about in the Hollywood tabloids. I had no self-confidence. I felt that everyone around me knew something about life that I’d somehow missed in the instruction booklet.

And then I was introduced to the awful power of all-out, uncontrolled ridicule. Young college men are a hard-living lot, wild and reckless. They engaged in keg parties, drunken dances, and X-rated movies, and they laughed at me when I chose to stay in my apartment listening to The Supremes and Simon and Garfunkle.

Eventually, I gave in to their raucous urging. The next time I was offered a drink I accepted. Immediately, they treated me as a member of their club. They initiated me with a complimentary nickname. 

The Jack Daniels and Coca-Cola we drank made me drunk, but the sudden popularity and their wholesale acceptance of me completely intoxicated me.

How vividly I can recall the next morning! Those merry faces that had partied with me the night before, and the slaps on the back convinced me that I was the life and soul of the party. It was too much for me to ignore.

I was addicted to the attention that I found only while drinking.

At first, considerations of health didn’t trouble me. I was young and strong, and my constitution quickly threw off the negative effects. Gradually, I began to feel worse. I was losing my grip. I had trouble concentrating on my work. I became anxious. In what seems like a very short time, I lost everything. My car, my home, my job, my family. 

What Happened

Eventually, I met a man. I’m not sure how it happened but it doesn’t matter. All that does matter is that I met him. He knew something about my problem.

"If I am to help you," he said, "you must tell me everything. Hold no secrets.” He gave me hope and he gave me a long list of instructions. I did everything on that list and I began to be transformed.

I soon found other people who suffered from the problem that plagued me. They had also met someone who gave them a long list of instructions and we joined together to help each other stay on the straight and narrow.

And then, one day, I met Ms. Wonder, the girl who effected my reformation. She was a clergyman's daughter, no not really, I joke about how she was the opposite of me, when in reality she’d earned her amazing wisdom by living a life as difficult as mine, although under different circumstances.

What It’s Like Now

We began to see a lot of each other and, somehow our differences seemed to mesh into something like a musical comedy.

I remember being so overjoyed at the prospect of spending time with her that I often sang, “Oh Joy! Oh Pep!" Maybe not that song. I sang a lot of happy songs that all carried the message of "Oh, Happy Day!" As we spent more time together, our acquaintance ripened, and one night I asked her out to see “Moonstruck.”

I look at that moment as the happiest of my life. We had time to spare before the movie started and we drove round and round Clear Lake talking of this and that. Eventually, we parked and when I couldn’t unbuckle my safety belt, she declared, “And I thought you were a live one!"

Our time together that night began my transformation. I experienced joy for the first time without alcohol.

It was hard at first. Something inside me tried to pull me back to my cravings, but I resisted the impulse. Always with her divinely sympathetic encouragement, and her mysterious ability to work wonders, I gradually acquired a taste for life on life’s terms. 

We’ve been together for a lifetime and the joy increases daily. Someday, I hope to be able to show her how much I appreciate her and how grateful I am for all she's done.