210. Surrender to the Sacred

Link to Table of Contents

Surrender to the Sacred

From The Five Invitations

This is the part of the book that most evokes the transformative aspect of death that makes me think of Dostoevsky. And yes, I do agree that thinking about death can lead you to live better. To think about what is really important, even if you don't go all the way to "surrendering to the sacred" and leaving shallow earthly concerns behind.

And yes, Ostaseski does include some stories where we can see ordinary people making spiritual progress as they "actively die." But I don't recall any tales of already self-aware people gaining essential knowledge as they pass through an elemental death. 

There's no doubt in my mind that Zen Hospice is the best place to die slowly, but is there any reason to believe that a slow, Zen Hospice death is preferable to a quick death like Ficre's in The Light of the World?

Or to put it another way, isn't the ecstatic, spiritual peace people claim to experience in near-death experiences the same -- or very similar to -- the excruciatingly won sense of the sacred people sometimes gain through active dying? 

Or, to put it yet another way, why would anyone opt for a long slow death if given another option?

And that brings to a close the initial reading of this book.



Hospice and morphine are the two great magics reserved for "the end" in our times -- in the past it would probably have been religion in the sense Dostoevsky has in mind. Morphine is not the panacea people (like my mother) imagine -- though, in her case it really was a panacea in that it killed her within the hour. Both my parents were open to the notion of hospice and would have benefited from the experience Ostaseski describes. My dad was even accepted for "hospice," but there was no place he could get to on a weekend, so he received "hospice" care in the hospital which just meant that they gave up trying to cure him and tried to keep him comfortable without having actual hospice training. His final days would have been so much better if he had been at Zen -- or any other -- hospice.

My mother's doctors never accepted that she was dying, so hospice was never on the table. 

But here's the thing, I think my parents experience is actually a better guide to dying than the wonderful accounts in this book. Whatever control you think you have over how you will die is an illusion. Forget "Surrender to the Sacred," dying most often involves Surrender to Fate and very frequently to the Whims of the Hospital Industry. People want to die in their own bed or in a grassy field overlooking the Pacific, but if you're smart you will prepare for the worst death you can imagine. 

And that is actually a reason to read this book. So you can bring your hospice experience with you wherever you are. Frank, after all, is almost certainly going to miss your passing, so you're going to need to be your own spiritual guide.

Henry Ryecroft

I already referenced The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft once in connection with The Five Invitations (the Pascal quote), but I need to do it again. Gissing sometimes went off on tangents, but the core of the Ryecroft book had something in common with Ostaseski's book. Ryecroft, too, was facing the end. (As was Gissing.) Ryecroft left his life, the person he had been, behind and simplified so that he could focus on what was really important to him. In the book, it was the classic Victorian bequest that set him free, but you can imagine someone acting the same way as a response to the ideas in Ostaseski's book or a near brush with death.

The section on the Port Royal writers was as close as he got to talking about the sacred, but his endless walks and reading and gardening were Gissing's path to a life worth living. As I said in that blog, I wish Gissing had described more at the end. We don't get any of the hospice part of the tale, but we do see how Ryecroft's confrontation with death changed him.

Tenants

Our building is once again majority rental. A new resident moved into a previously owner-occupied unit and, in the process, managed to create a long gouge in the low ceiling above the stair landing. (No idea how.) I hesitated to patch and re-paint it as I wasn't confident our new paint was a good match for the older paint in that part of the building. But the landlord of the newly rental unit in question offered to buy more paint if there was a problem, so I took a shot at it. 

My first pass was spectacularly crappy. I had to sand it down a lot and apply a second coat. Looked fine when I left, but we'll see for sure after it dries and I view it in both day and night lighting conditions. Worst case, I'm thinking, is it will be something I might notice but no one else ever will. And I don't go up those stairs that frequently.

Our seismic retrofit is now a year in the past (the re-painting of the retrofitted walls is only six months in the past) and I still get a feeling of overwhelming relief every time I think about that whole experience being safely in the past. And, now I think of it, you could make a few quick find-and-replace changes to Ostaseski's book on death and turn it into a book on surviving a huge building project. Maybe Ostaseski and Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs could get together and co-author a book.

Greening

Starting tomorrow, my life is going to get crazy for a solid week. Like an ass, I signed up for three shifts at Oracle OpenWorld to see how they are going to work around the construction site in the middle of Moscone Center. I'm already regretting this. 

Then HSB starts on Friday. I have no idea if I will be blogging or not. I could have lots to say. I could just want to hide under the covers. The weather looks to be fair and mild -- perfect. We'll see. 

209. Don't Know Mind

Link to Table of Contents

Hef

Hugh Hefner died the other day. When I first saw the notice online I didn't think much of it, but then I kept seeing more. Finally, I read the AP obit by Andrew Dalton (here). I don't think I had known he came from a strict Methodist family (northern persuasion). I didn't know he had been married three times -- and that doesn't even include his years with Barbi Benton, the ultimate Playmate. He claims to have bedded over a thousand women. But the line I found most interesting was, “He acknowledged, at age 85, that 'I never really found my soulmate.' ”

It occurs to me that tossing out a claim to have slept with over a thousand women would be a clever way to force everyone to rethink everything they thought they knew about me when I die.

I was a regular Playboy reader (yes, I read all the articles and fiction) in my teens. By the time I was in college I had too much else on my plate, and the Playboy sense of style was diverging too much from my reality. Also, at some point during my college years the women in the pictorials went from enticing to odd looking. After that I didn't pay much attention to Playboy or Hefner. He represented yet another of those culture shifts in the 1960s that were not all that interesting after the fact.

Whenever some event (or crime) at the Playboy Mansion would be in the news, it was almost like when they trot out the last survivors of the Army of the Potomac, or the last Great War survivors, or here in SF, the last people who remembered the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Cultivate Don't Know Mind

From The Five Invitations
This is the fifth invitation. This is also something I think I'm pretty good at. Reading the passage I'm about to quote got me thinking of something inappropriate for this book, but not so inappropriate when you consider the history of Japanese warrior monks,

p253 We've all had moments when we discovered solutions to our problems without needing to "figure them out." We've said things like, "All of a sudden, it became clear," or "The answer just came to me," or "There was no question in my mind what I had to do." When we slow down enough to listen carefully, we can hear what the Quakers call "the still, small voice within." What we often refer to as our intuition. It is a quality of mind that senses what is needed without relying solely on rational processes.

When we don't know where we are going, we have to remain fully present, carefully feeling our way inch by inch, moment by moment. We have to stay close to our actual experiences. When we don't know, anything is possible because we are not limited by old habits of thinking or others' points of view. We see the bigger picture. Not knowing leaves room for wisdom to arise, for the situation itself to inform us.

I still hope to run into a Zen, Japanese assessment of Admiral Spruance in the Pacific War, but failing that, this will just about do. Don't know mind is central to Clausewitz's notion of battlefield intuition. Hooker's conduct of his Chancellorsville battle was a disaster because he was so sure he knew one thing, that he couldn't recognize the signs that contradicted that belief. And this happens over and over in military history. 

At Midway, Spruance was blessed with Don't know mind when it came to the conduct of carrier operations because he had just assumed command (Halsey was ill) and was never intended to be the force commander (Fletcher had his flagship knocked out of the battle and turned command over to Spruance). And, really, since this was only the second carrier vs carrier battle, no one really knew what they were doing. Yet he was able, with his staff, to come up with an inspired plan and then to stick with it when someone else would have been tempted to respond in the way the Japanese hoped. On the night following the first day of battle, he completely thwarted the Japanese hopes and sent a frustrated Yamamoto steaming back to Japan by simply sailing away from the battle. For the Japanese, there was no possible response to his refusing battle until the following day. Had he known more, or thought he had known more, it could easily have ended very differently.

I'm reminded now of a line I quoted before from My Name is Lucy Barton,

"You will have only one story," she had said. "You'll write your one story many ways. Don't ever worry about story. You have only one."


The way I keep returning to Spruance, or at least to the Pacific War, makes me think that may be my story.

208. Compassion

Link to Table of Contents

Tips

The other day I came to my 2nd favorite pizzeria to have a nice lunch (their uneven crust was great this time) and to work on my computer. By the time I discovered their WiFi was not functioning, my order was already in progress. I was a little snippy with the waitress. Not rude, but snippy. 

A rare but recurring aspect of my greening work is finding money. Sometimes people in back stage areas are impressed by the way we (literally) make their problems go away, and give us a little cash bonus (which I usually share with the crew). More frequently, I find $10 or $20 bills on the ground or, as was the case yesterday, in with the trash. I tend to be honest to a fault -- I returned hundreds of dollars left behind in taxis when I was a starving college student -- but I’m not stupid enough to shout, “Did someone lose a $20 bill!” So my plan coming to lunch was that I would pay for my lunch with the found $20 and leave the balance as a generous tip.

After I was snippy, I decided I would stick to this plan, since the lack of WiFi was certainly not the server’s fault. And that’s what I’ve done, (as I ate, it also occurred to me that I could still do my writing here and post things later). But this got me thinking about the debate on tipping I had with a person on Medium.

Another thing tipping is good for is compensating for when you realize you’ve been dickish. Or, as was my original intention, when you just feel like sharing some good fortune. And the pleasure of receiving a nice tip is nothing to sneeze at. No, people shouldn’t be dependent on gratuities to pay their rent, but as a bonus, tips can be great for all concerned.

To Brain Wash

Walking to Brain Wash today I preferred the shady sidewalk I rarely walk on (it’s in the 80sF). Thus I walked past the fire station and noticed for the first time their Safely Surrendered Baby sign.

Because I’m not a very nice person, I immediately imagined a second image showing a sullen teen being led by the ear. I think a teen surrender program would be more popular than this program that allows parents to surrender their newborns. 

Now reveling in my vileness, I went on to imagine a special white, five minute, parking zone with cars backed up down the street, each car featuring an intense, emotional scene with a parent and teen shouting at each other. There might be benches for curious observers. And a stand selling popcorn.

Comic Sans Swift

The theme of my week seems to be poor or non-functional WiFi. As a result I have been writing into a local Google doc instead of into Blogger. And for some reason I formatted this doc for Comic Sans. 

I often use Comic Sans ironically, or for the display reasons it was originally designed for, but I have to admit that I like the way this looks. (Blogger doesn't seem to offer Comic Sans as an option.) Perhaps my fondness for Taylor Swift’s music is spreading in my brain like a prion disease and affecting other areas of taste? I should probably give Velveeta cheese another try.

Compassion

Still from the Third Invitation

I can't recall precisely, but I think it was this notion of compassion, and how we are all in this together, where I fell out with Buddhism back at the time I became a vegetarian. I think it ought to be true. I think it probably is true in a situation like a hospice. I think it's valuable to at least pretend it's true, most of the time. But there are limits. 

It is worth noting that Zosima and Ostaseski preach a very similar sermon here. The point Ivan made in The Brothers K about the Church not becoming the state, but the state becoming the Church, applies here as well. For everyone to act with wisdom and compassion would be to transcend Maya and for us all to realize out Buddha nature. It would be game over for The World Illusion. Or that may just be a justification for my not wanting to do the work.

DOG is my copilot

Now when it comes to dogs -- and animals in general really, with the exception of pigeons, and tiny dogs -- it's much easier for me to approach this standard of universal compassion. I'm much less likely to judge animals. When I see people begging with pets I would always give something to the pets if it weren't for the humans. 

Samsara

P190 Remember how I was not fond of the Hindu goal of transcending this cruel world of non-enlightenment? Well Samsara is the Buddhist equivalent of moksha (this is not even close to being correct. Samsara is the process of rebirth and moksha is release from this cycle. See here.) Anyway, I have the same issues here. Ostaseski warns us against craving/greed/demand, aversion/hatred/defense, and ignorance/delusion/distract -- you can’t have too many terms to describe these “poisons.”

All this does is bring me back to my conception of “story.” These poisons are merely the necessary plot elements to create interesting stories. Yes, as you near death it probably makes sense to try to see past them. And if your life is a living hell, again, you might want to give it a try. But to oppose “poisons” in general is to oppose life -- and in pantheistic terms, to oppose our collective creation. (Even if you aren’t a pantheist, you are thwarting the “plan” of your creator deity of choice.)

P194 The philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” The deeper we go within ourselves, the more expansive we become. We allow everything to show itself, even what is buried in the unconscious...

This is the ecumenical appeal of the monastic life... the life of silence... or of chanting, depending. Though, to be honest here, I quoted this because Pascal is yet another reference to Port Royal, the Jansenists, and consequently Augustine. I’ve lost count how many times this has come up since Henry Ryecroft.

206. Perception and grieving

Link to Table of Contents

More on fixing

In that last section of The Five Invitations I covered, Ostaseski talked about when he and others helped care for a man dying of AIDS in 24 hour shifts, and I thought those shifts are way too long. What you want are four hour watches, like on a ship. Four hours on, four off, four more on. So I was trying to fix his example of how you can't always fix. I'm fixing special needs.

Perception revealed

At the gym this morning I had another of those experiences that demonstrate that perception is much trickier than we usually imagine. While stretching, I was distinctly aware of a woman walking perpendicular to me at some distance. I only caught a quick glimpse of her from the side and a bit behind as she passed between two obstacles. I didn't think much of it.

Then, while working out in another room, I again saw her pass from the same angle, but for a longer period of time. I still had no idea what she looked like, but I somehow got the message that I shouldn't stare in the direction she was heading. Finally, we passed in the corridor that connects the two ends of the gym at that level. She was absolutely stunning. And that was the last I saw of her.

But what interests me here is how "I" was able to "know" something about her without being able to see her. There's a slight chance she had been on a machine at the periphery of my vision and that some part of my brain processed her image without passing it on to me, but that seems unlikely. I frequent the gym during quiet periods, but still there are many people, of at least two sexes, around, so I can't imagine how the brain could connect pheromones (even if they exist) to a fairly distant figure. Compared to this, people falling in love at first sight across a crowded dance floor is trivial to explain.

Whenever I contemplate the senses and perception, it makes me wonder what is really "out there." But an experience like this just makes me wonder what other information "we" have access to but may not be aware of. And, as usual, this kind of knowledge seems to violate the laws of physics, but is not a problem for a pantheistic view of reality.


And speaking of the gym, while I'm being very cautious about increasing weights, I am back to my pre-February norm on one of the free-weight exercises I had to cut back on through the travails of this year. I'm going to continue being very cautious until after HSB, and in some cases I think I was forcing too heavy weights, so I may not return to what I was lifting across the board. But it is still nice to make some progress. And my wrist is the best it's been in maybe three years -- possibly due to less stress from less weight? -- so maybe this miserable year has been all for the best. Call me Pangloss.

The Raging River

From The Five Invitations
I'm not sure this really belongs here, but if feels like it might. 

In this section... well, I'm not quite sure yet what he's up to, but there's this,

p149 Mindfulness is a de-conditioning. It cultivates a merciful, awake presence of mind that no longer blocks the heart. Then things are free to be as they are. We allow the difficult, dark, and dense. We become intimate with our pain and difficulties, our joy and beauty, embodying our full humanity and discovering an ever-deeper, vast sense of wholeness.

p150 Sometimes what is over there seems more valuable than what is right here. But being who you are can only arise from accepting where you are.

And then he tells a story about walking on a beach in Thailand with his teenage daughter who is obsessed with a boy back home. Over a couple paragraphs, he "fixes" her (I can't help noting) and she is able to Be Here Now.

And here's my problematic contribution to this: Reading this I couldn't help thinking of a particular young woman in my global, online community who is in her mid-twenties but totally acting like an emotional teen. 

Our little community is probably on its last legs. It started out as a retreat from a larger, public, forum. A bunch of us, who got along and shared a common sensibility, left the irritating people behind. I thought it was a bad idea, since what bound us together was the conflict with the "others," but I gave in and joined after all the cool people had left the public forum.

Over the years, more people who stuck out were eliminated, and other people just disappeared. There are not many of us still active. But we do support each other with a fairly wide range of issues. It's more like a private Facebook, at this point, though one where everyone shares a few areas of cultural literacy.

But the young woman I mentioned above only appears now to vomit her feelings and despair. She is tiresome. I've tried to calm her down with my version of Ostaseski's Buddhist world view, but she can only hear her own self-obsessed narrative. I briefly considered quoting some of Ostaseski's wisdom on the forum (we have a thread about what we're reading) but I can't imagine her reading it, much less processing it and applying it to herself. Her unrequited love is the core of her existence at this moment. That and her neediness. 

She does remind me of why I wouldn't want to be in my twenties again.


How to grieve
p161 ...In the first days and weeks after someone you love dies, don't expect yourself to be able to function fully. Ask for help. Let somebody else make the meals and do the laundry. Cancel your appointments. Take time...

Apparently I did this entirely wrong. My mother died on the 21st of the month so I had to empty out her apartment by the end of the month. I had to get rid of many things and ship the remainder across country to a storage unit near me that I also had to rent. I then had to beat the moving truck back home so I would be there to receive it. There was also the funeral home and lawyer and CPA to deal with. It was one of the most hectic periods of my entire life.


Interestingly, this little guide to grieving would seem to apply more to my online friend who has lost an imagined relationship she was actively invested in, than to my situation with my parents -- who I saw once a year. It also applies to another online friend who lost her eye earlier this year. 

Losing a part of yourself (physical or mental), or part of your life (a job or hobby or imagined future), would seem to be subject to the same conventions of grief listed here. There could be an elaborate system of armbands -- I can imagine myself trying to recall if a taupe armband means someone lost her cat or some litigation that had been consuming her life for years.

205. Fixing the inner critic

Link to Table of Contents

Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience

The Third Invitation from The Five Invitations

p116 Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means no part left out.

Here he's talking about the problems with "helping," "fixing," and "care-giving" vs "serving." I know this is advice I should be taking to heart -- I'm the ultimate "fixer" -- but I'm having a hard time understanding the other side of this equation. When I have a problem, health or otherwise, I can't think of an instance when I wanted someone to just "serve" and "be" with me, I want a fix. (That wasn't supposed to sound so druggy.)

If you are having trouble sleeping (if this is one of the facets on which your life experience turns) chances are I will not be able to suggest an alternative you haven't tried or at least heard of, but what if I'm wrong about that? What if weeks later you say, "Small doses of melatonin have changed my life" or "Turns out my mattress was too hard (or soft) and my new Sleep Number bed was the answer to all my problems." And then I say, "You didn't know?... I mean, that's great."

And I have this fantasy of pulling up a chair and sitting with Ostaseski as his house slowly burns down. Trying to contain the fire a bit with a hose until the fire brigade shows up is such "fixing" behavior, after all.

Like I said, this is something I do know I need to work on.

Taming the Inner Critic

Here's another thing I probably need to work on, since I'm having a hard time figuring how it applies to me. There's a particular regret I have from when I was helping my father die. A situation I could have handled better -- and could certainly handle better now having had that experience -- but I know I was just doing the best I could at the time, and this regret has given me the understanding that we all need to forgive each other our failings in similar circumstances. So in a way it's one of those regrets I don't totally regret. 

I think what Ostaseski has in mind is a little different, that part of ourselves that prevents us from doing things we might otherwise do? I can think of several instances of this, but these are very logical criticisms based on actual life experience. (Though I concede they would look bad from a therapist's perspective. Which I guess makes that imagined therapist my inner, outer critic?)

Is it my inner critic that constrains my being snarky on the interwebs? Because that inner critic had a wonderful (for him) "I told you so" moment today. A photo of Jane Fonda showed up on my Facebook feed yesterday because a college friend had commented on it. The original message had to do with how great Fonda looked in her 70s. But most of the comments were Hanoi Jane attacks, which my friend was reacting against by noting the ugliness. Perhaps because the Ken Burns "Vietnam" series is in the news these days, I ignored my "mind your manners" critic and trolled the haters in solidarity with my old war resistance "mate" (she was surprisingly dull when I met her at an event.) This being Facebook, my dad's first cousin responded to my trolling post. At least I hadn't been vulgar.

This particular inner critic still has a valuable role to play, so I'm guessing this isn't what Ostaseski has in mind.

Curiously, Ostaseski mentions Karen Horney -- who I just read a piece about on Medium the other day. He writes,

p143 Karen Horney... wrote about three human coping strategies for dealing with basic anxiety. They are applicable both to how we reacted to criticism as children and to how we continue to respond to the inner critic today:

* Some of us move away by withdrawing, hiding, collapsing, keeping secrets, and silencing ourselves. We avoid conflict. Maybe you went to your room, perhaps you quietly watched TV as you tried to absorb the judgement or simply endure it.
* Some of us move toward by seeking to please and accommodate, negotiate, persuade, and explain. Maybe you did extra schoolwork, tried to be helpful around the house. or always were well behaved in order to earn approval.
*Some of us move against by trying to gain power over others. We rebel or fight back. Maybe you talked back, yelled, acted with hostility, slammed doors, or snuck out the window and did what you wanted.

"Move against" is out, but both "move away" and "move toward" sound like me. "Moving toward" seems to me to be a part of "move away," if you want to get away with it. I did, and still do, act so as to gain approval, but if I feel you're being unreasonable I will slip into conflict avoidance that is "move away" but will look like "move toward" -- though, as an adult, I am usually in a position to call people on their bullshit except in certain employee-role situations. 

Or, now I think of it, friend situations where I would rather not lose the relationship but know the other person can't see another perspective. These are the tricky ones that often result in my subconscious stepping up and doing something (blowing off or turning up unreasonably late for an appointment) that I wouldn't do myself, but that I can't feel bad about when it happens. (Word to the wise: People are not amused when you respond with laughter to being informed that you forgot some date that had been planed for months. Something that is on your calendar and yet you still made a conflicting plan or else are just puttering around the apartment.)

Okay. Now I have a better notion of this inner critic. But I also have a "little friend" to help me deal with that. Do I really want to be totally self-actualized and free of these constraints? Is this something else that is more valuable as you circle the drain then as you live your life in general? Something else that I need to consider some more. Great, a book that should have come with a set of exercises to do on your own. Something else for my inner critic to nag about.

204. Dog love

Link to Table of Contents

Random

And I do mean random. 

I took this picture last week on the posh section of Grant Street. Why are these people sitting in the street in what looks like the smallest, cheapest parklet in the city? Maybe they are planning a new parklet for this location? They look like large children playing in the street. Actually it would be cool if they had constructed a towel shelter with some chairs like we did when I was a kid at the pool.

Rockridge Out & About

Somehow I had never worked this street fair before, but I signed up this year and it's really a nice one. 

I identified this area, with all the tables out, as probably the busiest section, and I was right. I went through two rolls of compost bags. 

I took down all the stations in my area and sorted all the food vendor bags. The morning crew chief was working the last stretch of the street beyond me (and training a new person) and when we shut down our stations we even hauled all the bags to our headquarters (by the dumpsters). I went out again with the evening crew chief and he was so happy to see there was nothing left to pick up in the truck but the actual station material (these steel frames that hold up the bags and the plastic lids that go with them). I ended up leaving an hour early.

While this is all the way over on the hilly side of Oakland, I have history on this stretch of street. I very briefly worked as a programming contractor a few blocks north, and, a block south, I found Molly, the dog I had been sitting, and brought her home to great relief and amazement. I can't think of a good reason not to tell the story...

The last Summer trip my parents made to the California in the mid-90s is the one I most remember. I had learned, because of the preceding trip, just how limited they were in terms of mobility, and I cleverly planned their stay as though they were in a coma. And my plans were thwarted at every turn.

But this is about the prior trip, part of which involved a stay in a lovely home (of friends of friends) in this lovely area of Oakland. My parents would discover, according to the plan,  this charming (and not infernally hot, like Scottsdale) neighborhood, while we would house and dog sit for the people who were on their own vacation. 

All the things that went wrong are not pertinent to this tale, but on the final day I had to drive off with my parents to put them on their plane, before the friends of friends (who were running way late) returned. Molly, the dog, was left safe and sound, but not successfully passed off to her owners. 

When I got home from the airport I learned that, when her owners returned, they found her vanished. They started the usual neighborhood search (she was a sweet but neurotic dog, that's part of the reason I was enlisted as sitter) with posters and the whole family out searching the streets.

The next day I hopped on the train for Rockridge to help. I figure they would be covering the immediate neighborhood, so I went south on College, past the blocks in the photos above, to a sort of mini-mart on a key intersection. I asked the guy behind the counter if he had seen her, and he actually knew someone who had. He sent me less than a block down the side street to where I found Molly. (It's worth mentioning that Molly was a black Lab. This will come back into the conversation when I get back to The Five Invitations and God vs DOG. Molly "lost" was just Molly having doggy fun with new people.)

I took off my belt and beat her to within... no, I don't know where that came from. I used the belt as an improvised leash and took her home to her other family. Who were astonished to see both of us, as I hadn't said I was coming over.  

The friends of these people had a garden party back in May and Molly's owners, still friends I guess, were there and still remembered me as Molly's finder. It's an odd sort of fame.

The tree

We are now on the cusp of autumn. And here's photographic proof from the microcosm of my poor tree in a pot.

This morning.

End of August.

Back in July.

I'm still astonished it's doing as well as it is, given all it suffered last summer. Turns out it's as tough, in its own way, as the jade plants.

Alan Kay

Medium sent an interview with Alan Kay my way. The interview turned out to be more interesting than I expected -- not just him talking about all the cool stuff he did back in the day, and complaining about Millennials crapping on his lawn -- and, even better, I disagree with him to some extent. The interview is HERE.

Before I get to my point (Gresham's Law, again), I have to say a little about the "back in the day" part of the interview. The principle people at Apple's Multimedia Lab, when I was there, were all from the MIT Media Lab. Consequently, they were all over this history. (Many of our support people came from Wesleyan while I represent not just ASU but public universities in general.) In fact Doug Engelbart was almost the Apple Lab mascot, invited to all our big events. I recall a party on a large boat with Engelbart aboard. Unfortunately, all these big events occurred at the end of periods of all-nighters when I was so tired I could hardly stand. I have no idea what this particular celebration was for or where on the Bay we sailed, or what happened. I was at the point where you are too tired to sleep. I have a vague recollection of discovering someone smoked cigarettes that I hadn't known smoked. And that's all.

Almost as soon as I left the Lab, I did a quick contract job at Alan Kay's Vivarium in Beverly Hills. I'm pretty sure I met him when I arrived, but I was working for other people and he wasn't involved in what we were doing. Here's the way I now imagine the introduction going, "This is Ted. He's an expert in a bastardized version of your SmallTalk programming language, and he's here to code something for us in an even more bastardized version of SmallTalk that he's never used before. What could go wrong?" Followed by several minutes of laughter. This may not actually have happened.

Now to his current concern about the end of literacy.

I like his use of "the 10%" to mean the traditionally literate and intellectually influential portion of the population. He could be right about all this, but I'm not sure schools have ever had all that much to do with education, beyond being institutions with libraries and the occasional person worth talking to. 

And I also recognize what he's saying about the downfall of "literacy" and intelligence from reading Albert J. Nock. And Nock's conception of the publishing equivalent of Gresham's Law seems to cover Kay's situation, as well as the state of publishing in the 19th century and on through the 20th.

The thing is, it isn't obvious to me that either of them are totally correct. Yes, publishing in general is dominated by the least common denominator, but aren't there actually more quality small and university presses now than in the past? Yes, few people today can read Latin and Greek, but weren't those skills simply temporarily necessary to access the knowledge passed down in those languages? I may lose some of the pleasure of reading Caesar in the original Latin, but does that detract from my understanding of the political lessons one gains from studying centuries of Roman history?

Even if it's true that nine people our of ten are more likely to gain a repetitive stress injury than any real understanding from their use of today's smart phones, tablets, and even laptops, does that mean that there isn't still a 10% that may go even further with digital media than they could have with the simple print media of the past?

And I say this with full knowledge that Nock, Kay, and the things I've written about the real consequences of the Trump candidacy are all coming from the same place.

DOG

I have to give Ostaseski credit, he saved me the trouble of making my point about how dogs are the model of the approach to life he is advocating in this chapter. I thought I would have to quote his lesson and then let in the dogs to show how they do it better, but here he is doing this for me,

p110 ...I asked Michael to name the one person it was easiest for him to love, or the person who had loved him without hesitation.

p111 He took his time.

Then he said, "My dog Jonesy." His childhood companion, he explained.

"Your dog, huh . . . Why?" I asked.

Michael replied, "Well, no matter what I did, my dog loved me. If I went away for the day or even longer, he was at the door to welcome me when I got home, tail wagging, a big doggy smile. He was full of love for me." Michael went on to say, "It didn't matter whether I was grumpy or happy-go-lucky. He never judged me. He just loved me..."

Now I would add the way dogs tend to just accept what life throws them as another indication that they are masters of the Zen concepts Ostaseski is pitching here. (A guy with a cute little dog just sat next to me here at the Market Street Peet's as I'm typing this.) 

I also have to add that my own dog very much had a life of his own. He didn't just live in his love for me. We were good, but that didn't mean he didn't have other things to do. Now I think of it, this was the sort of relationship "in love" but not of dependence on either side, that I've had trouble finding with people.

I wonder if this isn't yet another of those "one size does not fit all" situations? Also in this chapter, Ostaseski has revealed his personal experience with the wonderful world of Catholic Church child-sex abuse. He was able to recover from that experience through the deep love of Buddhist metta, just as Augustine and Day and Lamott have used Christian love to transcend their personal traumas. Maybe my dog coming up to the fence to say Hi during middle school PE (I was inside the fence, he was outside), wagging his tail, sniffing my fingers, and then going on with his day's business, is more characteristic of my personal standard of love. Not exactly something they write songs about.

To extrapolate on this notion of "the right kind of dog" to express the kind of love you need, Ostaseski has frequently mentioned the value of just silently sitting with, being with a person or even a corpse. Might a retired greyhound, the kind you can see time-lapses of on YouTube hardly moving over the course of a day, be the perfect spirit animal (misuse of term) for some traumatized people. I like the idea of a therapy dog that just sleeps near you, shares your space and time, without imposing or interfering.

203. Welcome everything

Link to Table of Contents

A good day

For me it doesn't get any better than having a tricky problem to solve, and then quickly solving it. The other evening I received the HOA's utility bill and the electricity was 230% of what it normally is. We don't use electricity for that much, so there was no way this made sense. Because we have "Smart" meters, I knew the usage per day, so I could see that the increase started suddenly one day and remained constant after that. My first thought was the work we had done on our sump pumps, but that finished five days before the increase. 

I went down into the laundry room and became familiar with the meter. It turns out it gives the current usage in watts. By playing around with our lights and circuit breakers, I discovered the building is always using about 22 watts, for things like emergency lights and smoke detectors and timers and the washer and dryer while they aren't turned on. But, at that point, there was an additional 777 watts of constant draw that I couldn't explain -- until I tracked it down to the sump pump circuit.

I then got the other set of keys, and a ladder, and went down to the basement and discovered the pump was running. Continuously apparently. I shut off the #1 pump (the one we just replaced) and the #2 pump switched on. I turned that one off too and called the boss at our pump repair contractor. Together (he on the phone), we tested everything we could on the control board and he came to the conclusion that the board itself must have failed. (I suggested the alternate conclusion that the floats were in some impossible-to-imagine tangle, but he pointed out that that would have triggered the alarm that goes off when both pumps are turned on at the same time.)

They are coming on Monday to replace the board. I will have questions about warranties and the condition of that pump that was stuck on for about a month, but at least we should have a functional system again. By luck, the only residents with plumbing that drains to that septic system are out of town this weekend, so the only people inconvenienced are anyone who was planning to use the washer, which is officially out-of-order for the weekend.

I so rock. And while being so modest!

Stanley Saitowitz

I think I've written about Saitowitz before, but I need to write in more depth now. Most of his residential projects are in SOMA -- he can thus be seen as a tool of gentrification for South of the Slot -- but there are exceptions. His earlier work dates from a period when architects had more creative freedom working in SOMA than in other neighborhoods, it was the only place here you could get away with building the kind of projects you might see in Japan, for example. And as both developer and architect he had even more freedom. 

I was originally familiar with him because I happened to work on the little street where he built his home/office and developed two small residential buildings. 

His residence and office on right. Later project on left.

Another project on next street over.

As is so often the case when architects are driving, the buildings were visually interesting but, at least for me, un-livable (very little wall space for books or art). As his reputation grew, so did the size of his projects. The Folsom Lofts, also in SOMA,   

Folsom Lofts.

...and 8 Octavia, just north of Market Street on the corner of Octavia, are both obviously his work.

Corner of Market (on right) and Octavia (curving left.)

But 1080 Sutter is not at all similar to the others. And yet that's the project I want to talk about.

1080 Sutter meets the sidewalk.

1080 Sutter in context.

Even wider context.

I watched that building as it rose from a hole in the ground until it was completed, and never knew quite what to make of it. But today, as I was walking on Sutter on my way to pizza, I was finally struck by how well it fits on that street. On Natoma, in SOMA, he was creating an almost Japanese, anything goes, aesthetic. On Folsom and Octavia that modern look was made more sophisticated. But on Sutter he is, for once, creating a new look that blends with the existing, urban, look of the street.

And the building itself looks like something that could have started out École des Beaux-Arts and then Adolf Loos took a pass at striping it down to the basics. Not only does the fenestration match the granularity of the neighboring buildings, even the use of brick on the facade is consistent with building practices of the Tenderloin's Golden Age. (The brick is non-structural, of course, and I assume they took measures to insure it wont fall into the street during the next earthquake. The structure itself is steel reinforced concrete with the main structure several feet behind this facade.)

Welcome everything, push away nothing

From The Five Invitations
This is a concept I'm completely on board with. Did I learn it while my parents were dying, or did I just fall back on something I already knew? I think of hospitals as a special zone where you have no control over what's happening so you can only say "Yes" and deal with whatever comes your way.

But reading some of this reminds me of something else,

p82 Welcoming what is, as it is, we move toward reality. We may not like or agree with all that we encounter. However, when we argue with reality, we lose every time. We waste our energy and exhaust ourselves with the insistence that life be otherwise. 

p83 In spite of what we have been led to believe, which is that destiny rests firmly in our own hands, we often have little control over the external circumstances of our lives. However, we have a great deal of choice about how we relate to and learn from the cards life deals us. We build resilience by allowing ourselves to experience what we are feeling in any given situation, whether it's good or bad. Until we come to accept life with all its madness and inspiration, we will feel cut off, separate, isolated. We will view the world around us as a dangerous and frightening place.

Clips from the old TV show "Kung Fu" have appeared in my YouTube feed recently, and I've rewatched several of them. The fighting style Caine exemplified was based on this same theory. Caine would often receive or deflect the blows of his foes without counter attacking. He would accept the negative energy and sometimes turn it against the other person.

This was also the secret behind Admiral Spruance's uncanny success in the Pacific War. Especially at Midway, the Japanese counted on him to respond to their night attack, but he just went back to bed. He did respond, unnecessarily, at the very end of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, but by that time his enemy's strength was totally spent and there was no risk -- except of his planes running out of fuel, which did happen.

Even Patton's "Rock Soup" is a variation on this passive approach to warfare, probe until you discover where the enemy is weak and attack his weakness rather than his strength.

202. Elemental death

Link to Table of Contents

Identity & vulnerability

It's hard not to reflect back on the story in The Brothers K of Zosima's brother, when reading what follows,

p39 ...When we relax the clinging to our treasured beliefs and ideas, soften our resistance to the blows of life, stop trying to manage the uncertainty and hold ourselves more lightly, then we become a less solid thing. Less of a fixed identity.

In the months following my heart attack, I realized that the more I allowed my vulnerability to emerge, the less wedded I felt to being somebody. I became less occupied with the full-time job of self-generation. I could feel the exhaustion of propping up my personality... As I accepted the fragility of my life, it opened me. I felt myself a porous thing, more transparent, more permeable.
...

Thanks to our vulnerability, the possibility of knowing our most essential identity is always present. We need not wait for some other time or for perfect conditions or for our death to realize it... 

During my recovery, I felt permeable to everything. The sublime beauty and the horror of the world could enter my consciousness without resistance. I was receptive to it all. I welcomed it. There were no filters between me and any part of myself or the world. I was just Being.
...

p40 The more permeable I became, the more I realized that we humans are just bundles of ever-changing conditions. We ought to hold ourselves more lightly. Taking ourselves too seriously is the cause of much suffering...

My sense of self didn't completely disappear after my heart attack... but my personality was no longer the dominant force it had once been...

Then one day, about six months after the surgery... I felt my sense of self return to my body... My self was reasserting itself with a vengeance. 

p41 "I'm back. Don't worry. I'm in charge again," it said.

Strange as it may sound, I wasn't elated when this happened. It actually felt like a loss. I was afraid that I would slip back into my old habitual ways and lose touch with my newfound sense of my fundamentally limitless nature.
...

When our sense of ourselves shifts toward Being, we move beyond our reactivity to impermanence...

Embracing our own impermanence is a journey, taking us deeper and deeper into contact with the true nature of things. First we accept that things around us change. Then we realize that we, ourselves, are ever changing: our thoughts and feelings, our attitudes and beliefs, even our identities.

p42 The beauty is that our impermanence binds us to every other human being. Empathy arises through an appreciation of our transience and an understanding of our interconnectedness. We are not separate... We are, in fact, deeply connected to everyone and everything.

Zosima would say "Amen" to this.

There's another passage I should record. This is an account of death based on the four traditional elements: earth, water, fire, and air.

p30 Samantha and Jeff had lived in nature... His body was in a very elemental way made up of earth, water, fire, and air. So in dying he was returning to the nature they so loved.

Jeff's body had become very still. This happens as the earth element fades...
...

As the earth element -- form -- dissolves, it gives way to water. The person who is dying may then experience an inability to swallow fluids...
...

Now the water element was dissolving, giving way to fire. When this happens, the body's temperature fluctuates...

As Jeff came closer to death, his hands and feet became cooler, the heat gathered in the center of his body... 
...

The fire element was dissolving, giving way to air. At this final stage of physical death, people frequently exhibit dramatic changes in breathing patterns... sometimes the only thing left in the room is breath. Death is much like birth in that way, with everyone's attention naturally focused on the simplicity of breath.
...

p32 Earth dissolves into water. Water dissolves into fire. Air dissolves into space. Space dissolves into consciousness.

Dying, in many cases, does not happen all of a sudden. It is a gradual process of withdrawing from life in form...

I find that it is often helpful to think about DOG when the subject is supposed to be God. Usually I think of puppies in this context, they are so curious and open to everything and everyone, but as I was thinking about identity and death just now, a man walked past with an elderly, white muzzled dog with a limping gate. For him, a walk is still a biological necessity, but not much of an adventure. But if you need a guide for finding a nice place to nap in the sun, he is ideal. 

But is the old dog really a better guide to life? Is his surrendering of his mature canine identity -- perhaps he was a racer or a bomb sniffer or a guide dog -- something to be envied if you aren't in the same age cohort? Are there even reasons to hope you live that long? (Puppies can appreciate a good snooze in the sun, too.) 

And that account of elemental death (which I radically abbreviated), even before I saw that elderly dog, reminded me of a video I saw recently of the last surviving sniffer dog from the 9/11 WTC site. The old dog limped between lines of first responders into a vets office and came back out in a little coffin. Is there any reason to wish for the full course, elemental death that the dog skipped by being mercifully put-down? Was Ficre, from the last book, robbed of something valuable by dying of a heart attack before he even hit the ground? Can anyone actually imagine someone in that situation looking back at his body on the ground and thinking, "Damn, I so wanted a lingering death in which I could dissolve element by element. And not without pain and discomfort." As always, I'm not asserting the opposite; I'm really asking the question. I want the answer to be no, and even if the answer is Yes, I may still stick with my default approach to life and choose the easier path. I mean why wait for the nasty end to go for maximum experience?