HOW TO MISS OUT ON THE JOY OF LIFE; OR HOW TO CREATE YOUR HELL

How much of joy depends upon our ability to let our thoughts and intentions go when they are no longer working! How much of it on spontaneity, knowing when to do something and when not. Only an example can clarify this.

Even though I was tired yesterday and I didn’t think I could work on the essay on the relationship between Guru Nanak and Mardana that Geetanjali Chadha suggested I write for Sikh Formations (Routledge) I sat down and wrote the introduction and two whole single-spaced pages. I was pleased and thought and intended that I would do the same today. I was all geared up for it and when I sat down to do it, it simply wasn’t happening. By ‘happening’ I mean being in that wonderful, that rare space where the writing happens not just as ideas and notes but the word by word weaving of sentences and ideas into that one braid that will make the stay of the sail. It is continuous, unfolding like the unfolding of flowers, spontaneously, organically, almost mindlessly. Today that space was not present. Fortunately, I realized it, shut down the computer, and made us a nice salmon scramble for breakfast, cleaned up the few dishes that Payson hadn’t done (he does them most of the time), cleaned the counters, mopped the floor because it was sticky, all in the greatest happiness.

It wasn’t always like this. I have suffered my whole life from the disease of self-will. I have wanted control of my day, and imposed my own agendas on it. In my prioritizing my time thus – writing, writing, writing first – I have missed out on the joy of my life. When my agenda was not successful, I spent my entire day grumbling, unhappy with myself, the day, the sunshine, the flowers, and God herself for not fulfilling my desires and wants. For over fifty years I have lived like this, believe it or not, because human nature can be so persistently blind and get into vortexes from which they cannot extricate themselves. They keep going round and round and round in it endlessly without even realizing that something is wrong, or something is being done wrong which is the cause of your suffering. We can get used to anything, even hell. 

The sages would call this attachment. That is the thing about attachment – that it doesn’t only refer to people, to possession to ideas and dreams – but also, or perhaps specially, to those states that keep us fettered and suffering. If we don’t even realize we are suffering, that things can be some other way, then there is no hope of getting out of that state. The first stage is to see it. But then, I who consider myself more aware than most people, took over 50 years to realize it. How can I blame or accuse anyone of blindness and stupidity when I have been the blindest of all? 

I have to admit that left to myself I would have gone on suffering. Today could have also been a hell instead of a heaven, if the rain of grace hadn’t fallen on me like manna. Did I deserve it? Probably not, but then Guru Nanak says, it is not because we deserve it but because suddenly the willful Giver has been kind and merciful. 

THE MOTH OF TIME

Yesterday, while clearing out the Library which we use as a dumping site for all the overflow of our house, Payson discovered that the rugs we had folded up and shoved into a closet were coated with moth larvae that had eaten up large chunks of the wool pile. They were so many that they had changed the design and landscape of the rugs, which now had white dashes on their designs and bald patches on them where they had consumed an entire area of pile.

It was upsetting. These wonderful, expensive, hand-knotted, woolen rugs dyed in vegetable dyes had to be thrown out. I dare not take them back into the house from where they lay scattered in the sunlight, pupating, and hatching prematurely in the sunlight and heat. Last week I had discovered my favorite black Cashmere sweater had ten large holes in it. Now I had discovered the source of the damage, and I was going to get rid of it.

Like these material, literal moths, the Moth of Time has been at work inside and outside my body, too. It leaped up and flew at my face when I brought out, at Payson’s request, a copy of my book of poems, RADHA SPEAKS, and looked at my photograph on the back cover. Here it is. It speaks for itself. 

THOUGHTS ON RETURNING FROM THE BIG APPLE

Our last morning in New York I was filled with joy at the thought of returning home. Nothing like going away, and absolutely nothing like returning. I had had a great time, and let me define what I mean by ‘great time,’ before I go on to other, related things. The brain wants to work in a meandering sort of way, like a river this morning, and I have unharnessed it and let it go its way.

Great. Ironically, I loved being warm inside in cold, cold New York. While it was 26 degrees outside, the apartment was 80 degrees inside. There was no way to turn down the temperature inside because the thermostat was set at 60. Payson informed me the warmth filtered in from the entire apartment complex. My experience of New York in terms of temperature: too cold outside, too warm, if not hot, inside. Can’t understand why energy cannot be better conserved. However, on really cold days, when the temperature inside fell, we turned on our fake electric fireplace. I have never liked them, but loved this one when I remembered how it saved me the labor of chopping wood, carrying it in, lighting and stoking the fire, the way we do in our Indian home, though there our wonderful staff does the work. 

My great vacation is as much indoors as out, as much indulging the old and comfortable, as the new and strange. I do not like to exhaust myself on my vacation by sight seeing, and the cold prevented me from doing this even if I had wanted to. So, I got to have the perfect vacation where I planned to be out only for a few hours a day, five at the most. I had lazy mornings followed by two to three hours of work (made great headway!).

When I got cabin fever I looked outside the three windows we were privileged to have – when Payson told me we wouldn’t have a view, I had prepared myself for bricked windows and was pleasantly surprised. Just proves my conviction that to under expect is better than over expect. Though the few trees on the streets were bare of leaves, there were tons of people to watch, hurrying to work with their briefcases, mothers with strollers, people walking their dogs, poor people (the bottom feeders) collecting tin cans from garbage bags, and even a black man surreptitiously trying the handles of the parked cars on the street to see if any were open. And the day it snowed . . . I felt like a child watching it for the first time.

By the way, I do not mention bottom feeders with disdain. On the contrary, I think they perform a vital function in society. I am grateful to them for recycling that which unconscious people throw away to the detriment of our planet.

The cold outdoors: my experience reminded me of the winters at Kent State University during my college days, and I loved it.  Because I knew I was only in it for brief spells, no more than a three or four block walk to the subway or bus, I enjoyed it after I figured out to button up my down jacket and unbutton it when I got on the subway or indoors. We walked to the Metropolitan Museum of Art – twice; to the Museum of Natural History – twice (only because a fire alarm chased us out the first time); we went to see a dance performance by Meredith Monk, a delightful play by Bread and Puppet Theatre (that Payson worked in and with for three years in his youth) called NOTHING IS NOT READY CIRCUS; ate sweet and sour pork chops (with other dishes) at China Town, drove to Riverdale with friends, had lunch with the writer Thomas Hoover and his partner, Karen Sunde (theatre personality) in the village, dinner at the Candle with friends, among other things. All in all, I would return to NY again, though not in the winter.   

SHOPPING IN NEW YORK, OR SHOPPING AS AN EXPRESSION OF ENGAGEMENT IN THE WORLD

I know I wrote a post on how shopping has lost its glamor for me, and it is true, in a way it has. I used to be a shopper, and shopping was always on my agenda when I traveled. Now I feel I have altogether too much, and have everything I could possibly need. You could call it old age. Besides, I like to see space, empty space when I look inside a closet, not things piled up and spilling out. I have come to adore space. Take this tiny 600 square foot apartment. It feels big to me because our 3,500 square foot home in So Cal is full and this is empty. The dressers have nothing in them here and the closets, too. This place feels huge because I have time. Let me explain in my twisted way how space equals time. Because this apartment has only the necessary things plus two small suitcases – Payson and mine – I wake up in the morning and write for hours. It is a psychological thing. I am not tied into any schedule. I could become addicted to traveling like this.

But I was speaking of shopping. One doesn’t want to own more, and shopping always makes you accumulate things. And yet . . . isn’t shopping one of the things we were made to do? Isn’t it an expression of our engagement with the material world, the world out there? My mother at 93 is thinking of getting new curtains for the room that has become her world, though she still takes care of the entire house, and had it painted recently; she makes sure the silver and brass is polished regularly; she delights in buying annual winter flowers for her garden, and gives me a report of the stage of the pansies (they have buds on them now) and all of this keeps her plugged into life as we humans know it.

What would happen to the world if we stopped shopping? I recently visited my nephew who is captain in the Merchant Navy in a shipyard in Long Beach, LA. The paths in the shipyard were made by containers from China piled one on top of each other to New York skyscraper heights. This was the place where China comes to America, and carries back America in the form of garbage to its factories to process it again for our shopping bags.  

Shopping is sometimes a worthy goal for getting out of the house, and when Payson suggested he take me to Bloomingdales a few days ago (no doubt to make up for his Gollum remark), I was thrilled. This is a rarity, you understand, because Payson hates to shop. 

So, to Bloomingdales with Payson to find fleece-lined leggings. Streets were lit up in a wonderland way, and being outside was exciting after a day indoors, doing my favorite thing: scribbling. The underworld morphed into heaven! All those sorry faces in the subway were smiling and happy (there is no doubt, none, that what we see is a reflection of our own states of mind). Bloomingdales was a Maya Bazaar, full of all sorts of expensive, lovely things. Payson even waited patiently while I tried on my leggings. He even bought me a hat in addition to the leggings that I love.

We walked back to our apartment instead of taking a bus, shopped some more on the way back, and I came back quite in love with New York. And the few things in my shopping bag were not the only reason.