Category Archives: Meditations

Avoiding the plague

Sometime you get absorbed by your job. This is not necessarily bad: jobs are reality, too. But the pressures of working in an office often distract me from their reality: I solve a problem, I answer email, I got to a meeting, and the doing of things seems more important than their being. When I was in sales, alternating boredom and adrenalin-rush distracted me. When I worked for a sculptor, delusions of the importance of art distracted me. When I worked as a carpenter, fatigue or pain or cold distracted me. Maybe it’s not getting distracted, maybe it’s that there are more realities than one but we can usually only pay attention to one.

Today in the office I was absorbed by work. Even when I stopped a meeting so I could show the person I was meeting with the baby hummingbirds in their nest, I was still absorbed by work. Then I walked over to the other building to get water for tea, and the day crashed in on me. You live for moments like that, and you also avoid them like the plague because they are so disruptive.

Hummingbird babies

The Anna’s Hummingbird who is nesting next to our main worship space has hatched two babies:

The photo above is far from perfect — the light level is low necessitating a relatively long exposure, and the babies won’t keep still even when I ask them politely. Nevertheless, you should be able to see the bill of one pointing to the left, and the bill of the other one at the right of the nest pointing toward and above the camera; the bills are quite a bit shorter relative to the body than the bill of a mature hummingbird. The baby on the left has its wing spread out over the top of the nest, and you can see the fine white and black pattern of the developing primary feathers.

Two food memories

Carol and I walked by the fondue restaurant on our way to the supermarket. “I can’t believe people are still into fondue,” said Carol. “I remember when my parents were into fondue.”

“My family was into fondue at one point, too,” I said. “I remember one time — stop me if I’ve told you this a thousand times — when the cheese mixture wasn’t right, or the fondue pot wasn’t hot enough or something, and the cheese got all stringy. Remember my parents’ old house? Well, we stretched this one string of cheese from the dining room all the way to the far kitchen wall.”

“No, you never told me that story,” said Carol

How could I have not told her that story? We talked about it for years afterwards; I still have a vivid memory of that long string of cheese, close to twenty feet long. We got to the supermarket: Carol went off to find yogurt, I went to get paper towels. Another memory came to me unbidden, another one of those little stories that we retold over and over again:

Dad was pouring some coffee for my mother. Mom held her coffee cup over Jean’s bowl of cereal, and Dad started pouring. Why over Jean’s cereal bowl? I guess Mom thought that if a little coffee spilled, at least it wouldn’t drip on the table.

“That’s enough,” said Mom, and quickly pulled her coffee cup away.

Dad didn’t have time to react. He kept pouring. A stream of coffee went into Jean’s cereal bowl.

Jean, needless to say, was surprised, and rightfully indignant. I thought Dad looked sorry for what he had done, though I thought he was not at fault. Mom apologized to Jean, but treated the whole thing lightly. “We’ll get you another bowl of cereal,” she said. It took years before Jean and I got over it; we certainly never let our parents pour coffee, or anything else, over anything we were eating for years thereafter.

Spring watch

The front page of the sports section of the San Mateo County Times features a big picture from the Giants’ exhibition opener in the cactus league, and there’s almost a full page of baseball coverage inside. Spring — real honest-to-goodness spring, not this year-round flower-laden pseudo-springtime we have to put up with in the Bay area — can’t be far behind.

Personal to Ms. M: Don’t worry, I won’t be wearing black and orange just because I’m living on the Peninsula; I’m still an AL guy.

Getting distracted

“It’s four o’clock,” I said, “the train will be here soon.” Carol started to get out of the car, and then said, “Oh look!” and pointed at the rainbow. It was low in the sky, and quite vivid.

She ran off to catch her train. I started driving back to the office, and managed to miss my turn because I was looking at the rainbow, which had faded and had lost the top of its arch.

I drove around in one of those suburban tracts where you can never go in the direction you think you want to go. I was a little bit embarrassed that I had gotten lost because I was looking at a rainbow; rainbows are so wonderful that they’re trite; little kids like rainbows; I’m sure the other adults who driving around didn’t bother looking at the rainbow, although they might have had a little kid in a car seat who pointed at it.

Eventually I got back on the right road again. I came back to the office, and didn’t think about the rainbow until just now.

Nothing better

I’ve got nothing better to do
than stare out the window:
the gray clouds not moving,
the planes landing at SFO,
the cherry blossoms waving in the wind,
the rooftops doing nothing.

I’ve got nothing better to do
than to listen to nothing:
a stereo booming in a car stopped out front,
a clock keeping Eastern Standard Time,
a computer fan whirring,
a crow idly cawing about nothing in particular.

Nothing better to do
than nothing.

Nest

Alan said, “Did you see the hummingbird nest?” I hadn’t seen it, couldn’t go see it right away, but finally after the second worship service went to see. The nest was in a shrub right next to one of the doors to the Main Hall; there was a female Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna) in the nest, sitting on two eggs….

Click on image above for full 2660×1393 pixel image.

Continue reading

Random memory

Somehow I had gotten left off the attendance list for study hall in my freshman year of high school. I took to leaving school during that hour, and slipping off to the public library. But by late winter, a small group of my friends had somehow gotten permission to attend study hall in an unused classroom up on the third floor of our building, with little or no adult supervision. I would slip in and hang out with them. G—— was creating a literary magazine he called “Zeitgeist.” B——, on the other hand, liked making illegal things. He brought in a hash pipe he had made from brass tubing, and from that I learned about taps and dies and how to use them. He brought in a ballpoint pen from which he had removed the spring and the ink reservoir, replacing them with gunpowder; the button at one end was linked to a firing pin inside the pen. B—— clipped the pen bomb to a paper airplane, which he flew out the window. The plane hit the brick wall across the way and the pen bomb exploded, leaving a shower of tiny bits of paper. The janitor walking three stories below looked up in surprise.

Mindlessness as a spiritual practice

I had enough of a cold today that I went around in a kind of haze all day. It’s not that I’m particularly ill; I just feel tired and slow. Did it rain today? I’m sure it did; I do remember having to turn on my windshield wipers as I drove to work; but I can’t remember if it rained later in the day.

But am I feeling hazy just because of the cold, or am I usually this oblivious to what’s going on in the wider world? The Buddhists talk about the spiritual practice of mindfulness; that has never been one of my spiritual practices. Instead of mindfulness, I try to practice mindlessness.