Serendipity

Ah, aptitude for stumbling upon a happy discovery quite by accident. My sister and I have been using this word frequently of late, an inside joke that was born from a moment when an esteemed professor used it with boyish giddiness to describe a chance encounter he had experienced. It's a bright, cheery concept and as long as I'm open and flexible I begin to have more of these uncanny near misses, chance meetings, and pleasant surprises. Now, I'm a skeptic. Really. OK, prone to fits of magical thinking from time to time, but usually I try to step back to take a more naturalistic view of events and coincidences. So I don't know what to make of serendipity except to laugh with delight and enjoy the little joke without expecting much more from it.


On Sunday my sis and I had plans to drive to Metropolis with friends. We would visit a Zen center there, then head to a local pub before making our way up a hillside to catch some soundwaves of a concert that rise up the slope above the heads of the ticket-buying crowd below.  D was late making it to my house and we were picking up a friend on the way. I got chatting and missed the exit, had to turn around to pick up friend S before we could really get moving toward our destination. I noticed a not-so-subtle current of anxiety rise: would we be on time? I didn't want to enter the center after everyone had begun to sit. My eyes would flit from the road in front of me to the clock on the dash. I'd make mental calculations. My clock is six minutes fast, so subtract that, guess how many miles we had to go, figure in miles per minute. We might just make it in the nick of time. Meanwhile, D's friend L calls while we're on the road. She thinks she's made it to the center, which in reality is hard to tell because it's tucked inside a renovated Art Space building. She'll wait outside until we arrive. I take the offramp into the city with five minutes before the Buddhists will begin meditating. I hang a left, then a left, then a right, hoping it's the right street, discover I've undershot by a block. No worries, I can just hang a left ahead and we're right there. Nope. It's right turn only, so I make a U-turn and drive back to the previous street. As we're driving back, S,  from the backseat, says, "Isn't that L?" We look back, and there sits L, texting away in the shade in front of the wrong building--the building that is exactly one block east of the Zen center. We stop, holler at her to get in, then get to the center, a little late, but there. It's quiet. A handful of meditators sit. I'm sheepish as I gingerly lift the velcro strap of my Tevas, but we tiptoe our barefoot way to some cushions and settle in barely detected.


What's the big deal, you say? No big deal, but there I was thinking I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, only to find out I was right were I was. Had we gone straight to the Zen center and not found L there the time spent tracking her down would have thrown us embarrassingly behind schedule and we might have simply slunk off to the pub with our tails between our legs earlier than planned to wash down our veggie burgers with a 25 oz. Hefeweizen, and we would have missed one of the most beneficial Dharma talks I've had the pleasure to hear. 

New Day

Watched the Harry Potter grand finale with my Bellatrix LeStrange daughter last night. It was OK. Gave me, how you say, closure? Anyway, the sun is shining and the weather is sweet. Makes me wanna move my dancing feet, only I'm going to a teacher's conference instead. Two days of listening to the same speaker. Better be good. No, better be spectacular. Well, it could be, right?

Things look bright this morning. Feel right, you know? I'm in a good place. Hope you all are, too.

White Blank Page

Stealing the title from a song by my newest musical fascination Mumford and Sons feels right enough now a full month since my last blog post. The computer screen presents its own version of a white, blank page as does my mind, all but for a bit of longing I feel for a quiet, clean slate with no intrusive words or thoughts. Now what would Mr. Freud have to say about that? But the words they do intrude and I'm here again on a slow July afternoon ticking away at the keys with nothing more exciting on my mind than the thought of weeding a garden.

The large plot my sisters and I have cultivated is growing. The potatoes, squash, beans and corn are thriving, as are their fiercest competitors, weeds. Now in the thick of the season I go to the garden to commit a slew of murders on the bindweeds (we called them morning glory when I was a kid) and the red roots my grandpa says can be used to fatten pigs. It's tedious, but only as tedious as meditation. Once I'm there and in a groove, I rather enjoy it. I've unintentionally chased mother spiders carrying egg sacks into nearby holes and left beetles scurrying for the next patch of overgrowth, only to be disrupted again my my pink gloved hands of the goddess. If the earth is soft, the roots slide out with satisfying ease. Similarly to beginning a bike ride or working through sun salutations, I start out with my mind chatter racing on an on about pretty much nothing: imaginary conversations I'll never have, plans, lists, sentences I think I might write. Chit, chit, chit, chit. I can get pretty worked up emotionally. It's a hoot, really. So I'm constantly reeling my attention back in to my breath, the the next stem I'll pinch just below the soil, the feel of a bead of sweat making its way down the funnel of my spine. After 20 minutes or so I can look back and see the cleared space behind me with only the foliage of potato plants. Mmm. That's nice. On a good day I can slow the monkey mind down, too, or at least recognize it for the biological functioning of the organ we call a brain and not Ultimate Reality. That's nice, too. I get a little less worked up then.

Yesterday I spent two and a half hours in that weeding dynamic, feeling good about clearing, erasing, creating some white blank page.  I began to see myself there on the edge between cleared space on the left hand and rampant jungle on the right, sensing the next generation of jungle was waiting to burst into the empty spaces the moment I turned my back. As nice as the quiet is, I also saw in me something that likes noise, disturbance, passion. I wrote before about this thick, comforting, human mess that is life and poetry. A part of me wouldn't trade in the mess for all the equanimity in China, and I have to be honest about that. Well, that is until I see the wreckage left in the wake of passion fueled by fantasy and mis-viewing the world as it is. Maybe there's right passion, a fierce kind of love that's based in reality. Where would be the fault in loving life, as it is, with one's whole heart? (Even if life doesn't appear to return the affection.) But right view first, I think. You have to really see it to love it. I doubt I do, at least fully. So I turn to the right and start picking at the unnecessary grasses and vines that would choke the life out of plants that will nourish me later. And so it goes.

Like I said, nothing more exciting than just this. My summer break has been all about weeding. This morning I ravaged my bookshelves and let go of most titles crowding the space on my shelves. I also turned in a letter of resignation to the fitness center where I teach yoga, opening the space for my own practice. I need more room to breathe when I get back to the daily ins and outs of teaching school. I've weeded most TV out of my system, too. I watched a few shows at the beginning of summer, but now I like not watching someone else's drama or hearing someone else tell me how the world is. I'm functioning on minimal plans which keeps me from feeling disappointed when they don't work out anyway. I've been frequently, pleasantly surprised by serendipity and have relished the company of the living, breathing people around me more. Summer vacations are a luxury, a perk of my job, I guess. Can I maintain some white blank page when I'm back in the thick of the game playing my role in this fast, modern culture? Time will tell.