Saturday, August 15, 2015

"I Walking"--Lessons in Living in the Moment from Jaydee & Santa Fe



Good Morning.  It is Katherine today.

We just returned from Santa Fe.  I learned so much.  Part of the learning process was the six hours of riding in the car on the return trip.  Jim did the driving.  I just rode along and thought about stuff.  This time I made shawls in my head and painted our house in my head and moved paintings from various walls to other walls in my head.  I kept trying to look at the scenery and pay attention to where I was, but my mind kept jumping hither and thither.

 This ride I found myself searching for ways to keep myself in some sort of Zen life "in the moment."  Pretty ironic.  You can't analyze living in the moment.  You just kind of do it.   I still analyzed it anyway while endless New Mexican plains rolled by.

I figured out that Jaydee is a pretty nifty teacher for living in the moment.  All I have to do is keep a one year old around all the time.  Not happening.  The kind of awareness Jaydee uses and takes is exhausting.  That's insight number one.  Living in the moment wears you out.

Jaydee forces me to live in the moment simply because of her age and language abilities and her total lack of concern about her physical being.  Jaydee has no auxiliary verbs.  She talks up a storm in two word sentences that point the way to seeing the world without future or past.  "I scary."  "I running."  "I excited."  "I funny."  "I sorry."  I could go on and on.  She has lots of these sentences and each is executed exactly at a perfect point in time and simply tells you what she feels or what she is doing right at that very moment.

I love  it when she says, "I funny!" the most.  She tells numbers of jokes.  One of Jaydee's favorites involves offering a tidbit of food or a toy to someone she loves and then withdrawing the tidbit with a simultaneous giggle of satisfaction at having pulled off a very funny joke.  Then she says, "I funny."  There is no judgment or concern.  Jaydee is simply reporting the truth.  "I funny."  She is right.  She is funny.  She is truly one of the funniest people I know.

Mostly Jaydee just lives.  She does stuff and reports it and feels stuff and reports it and she moves on.  It's a way of life I've been trying to figure out for most of my life.   That's lesson number two.  I need to report my life and not label my life.  "I funny" can work for me too.

I can capture that same in-the-moment feeling Jaydee models sometimes when I leave home.  When I am away from home, life is newer.  Doing the laundry is rarely new.  Trying to revel in the moment when I'm moving a load of towels from the washer to the dryer is something for a Zen prince--I just can't do it.  Paying attention to a hail storm hitting you sideways as it blows in from a Teton canyon is easy.   Picking out the correct setting on the dryer--not so much.

That's lesson number three.  Living in the moment is easy when the moment is new.

The trip to Santa Fe was a real in-the-moment experience because is was new.  This time Santa Fe kept me awake to reality because walking there became very Jaydee-like and I kept saying "I walking" over all the uneven surfaces.  And then there was the opera.  I don't know how anyone can go to a really fine opera and not be overwhelmed by the moment.

None of the sidewalks or floors are even and flat in Santa Fe and pretty soon "I walking" was my mantra.  Walking from place to place was a balancing act in Santa Fe.  Really.  The streets are made of concrete or bricks, but are not flat.  The wooden floor in our hotel room was uneven.  It rained one day and after the rain, the sidewalks were pocked with water puddles where tree roots or haphazard construction created dimples and dips.  On the stairs to the opera, the rain moved east to west on the stairs and puddled on one edge.  No parking lot, street or sidewalk was even.  There were a few moments walking the Plaza when my mind drifted and I inevitably tripped.  Living in the moment while walking is a real safety necessity in Santa Fe.

The opera is a very in-the-moment experience as well.   The theater itself is gorgeous and worth just looking at.  When the opera begins, there is just so much going on.  The orchestra conductor is a joy by himself.  The fellow who conducted Rigoletto had a left arm that just made me happy whenever he flourished it around.  Then there are costumes and dance and the voices and the music and the set and the actual content of the story.  You hear words and music flow by and you read the script as it flows by on a small screen in front of your seat.  It takes an ability to let your right brain relax and capture the whole aesthetic experience while your left brain makes some attempt to make sense of the experience and classify it in some appropriate spot in your mind.  There is so much that it makes your head explode with awareness.   There is so much that is new that it is impossible to miss the moment.

We spent three days in Santa Fe toddling along the uneven sidewalks and watching opera.  When we returned home, we spent a day watching Willa and Jaydee and I'm full to the brim with lessons about staying in the moment.   At the same time,  the mundane chores of my life are piled high in front of me.  I need to tackle them with joy.  I want to tackle them with joy.

We will see.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Senescence in Santa Fe

J-

The more I travel, the more I realize the ravages of aging.  For example, this was the second four or five hundred mile drive that did me in.  That never used to happen.  K and I could drive straight through to Santa Fe, or Jackson, or Sundance and hop out of the car, get a few drinks at the nearest friendly bar, hang out a bit, and then have a big dinner with a bottle of wine that night.  The next morning?  Nothing.  No big deal.  We'd go off on a hike or something.

But when we drove to Jackson Hole last month, I had to excuse myself from our dinner with David half way through the first course and I didn't fully recover till lunch two days later.  Of course, the bottle of Veuve Cliquot on the porch when we first arrived (a tradition we are not willing to forsake) and the Margarita I had in the lodge before dinner were probably contributing factors.

And then there's these last few days.  We drove to Santa Fe, hydrated constantly, stopped for small bites now and then, and peed at every opportunity.  In other words, all things were pretty much normal.  But then we got to La Posada de Santa Fe and things changed.  We had a couple of Margaritas (they were so good we had to order seconds) at the Staab House, did a little shopping on our way to the Cantina at Coyote Cafe, had some killer apps and, yes, another drink or two.  By the time we got back to the room it was early evening, we hit the sack, exhausted, both to wake sporadically through the night to vomit that day's intake.

And the next day I was on the verge of nausea all the way till the opening chords of RIGOLETTO.

RIGOLETTO, that brings me to the real topic of this post.  The opera was wonderful, but that's not what I want to talk about.  When we got back to the room and I took off my coat, I discovered that my iPhone was missing.  I instantly knew how it happened.  Gilda finally died after a few closing scales, the cast bowed, I stood up, and the lights rose.  Since, the walk back to the car promised to be chilly and damp, I took off my jacket and draped it over the back of my chair so I could put my hoodie on underneath.  The jacket promptly fell off my chair and I, with people impatient to get past, picked it up and threw it on in a hurry.  Unfortunately, my phone was in my inside pocket.  It evidently fell out and was currently resting under seat 103 in the second row of the balcony.

My first reaction was typical, I am told, of me:  "Oh shit, I lost my phone.  Oh well, fuck it."  That reaction never fails to infuriate, or at least frustrate, my long suffering spouse.  She, hopeless idealist that she is, has faith that a person, any person, encountering a lost iPhone would certainly turn it in to lost and found.  Make an effort at least.  In the spirit of full disclosure, her optimism is buoyed by the fact that my phone is so old nobody would want it.

She called the opera, told our (my) plight to some guy in lost and found and let him know that we would be back for that evening's performance of SALOME to see if it had been found.

My second reaction is always a little like Holden Caulfield's would be in a similar situation:  "I guess I just don't care that much about losing my phone.  It's not like anyone ever calls me . . ."

But I do have to admit, I was a little shaken by the idea that some creep could find my phone and start taking credit for my Lumosity scores.

Anyway, Kathie came to the rescue and saved me from my despairing nature.  And then when we got to the opera that night, we checked at the lost and found and there it was at the top of the drawer littered with more phones, a few sets of keys and a couple of jackets.

We walked back to the little food kiosk outside the main gates and I was floating on the largesse of human nature that Katherine always takes for granted, when I discovered that I had lost my debit card!  But again, I knew right where I lost it.  We had lunch at The Inn of the Anasazi just like a couple of boulevardiers because it was the first time our stomachs felt like they could handle it.  I had a great time and evidently left my card behind along with the bill.

My reaction was different this time.  More hopeful.  But when I told Katherine about my second losing incident in as many days, it was her response that ultimately gave me pause:  "Don't worry about it," she assured me.  "I should have been watching you more carefully."

"WATCH ME MORE CAREFULLY?!  Am I really that far along into my dotage?"  I didn't really say that, but I was a thinking it.

As we walked to our seats, I took umbrage in all the old men surrounding me who could barely make it to their seats and I realized it could be worse.  I'll bet their wives carry their check cards for them just in case and don't allow phones.

Friday, August 7, 2015

A Traveling Macho Freak Show

I have a lot of male issues.  I've probably mentioned that before.  About a year ago I admitted I was prejudiced against white males in my age group, especially ones wearing ill-fitting baseball hats. Whenever I see a group of them on the street, I cross over to the other side and avoid eye contact.

That's one of the reasons I don't go to workout as early as I used to.  I'm trying to avoid the gathering of bombastic conservative males who tend to congregate at ridiculously early hours at the Y, standing belly to belly, shaking their collective heads about the latest dreadful thing Fox has told them is looming over this exceptional country of ours.

I've always been more comfortable with females.  I was raised by females (grandmother, mother, aunt, two big sisters, and one absent father), so I suppose that explains it.  There are many "male" things that I just don't get.

I don't choke up when Kevin Costner plays catch with his father at the end of FIELD OF DREAMS.

I don't like special effects debauches like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.  I'd rather watch THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA at home.

The one time I was involved in one of those stereotypical weekly poker nights with the guys, I stopped showing up after the second night.  It was boring and smoky and the table was sticky.

In RIO BRAVO, in any John Wayne movie, when he hits the guy in the bar with his rifle because he lied, I am appalled and wonder why someone doesn't lock him up.

When Tommy Lee Jones says "I don't bargain" to his newly deafened underling in THE FUGITIVE, I don't get some kind of macho thrill.  I can't help but think the guy is a psychopath.

I can't sustain a conversation about football, basketball, investment opportunities, drywalling, fishing, or hunting longer than five minutes.  I'm always amazed at how long men my age can talk to each other about meaningless bullshit.

I don't like competition.  My goal in a tennis match, for instance, is to keep the ball in play as long as possible.  Tennis, for K and I, is an aerobic activity pure and simple.  I don't even know why we bother to keep score.

I hate seeing couples at a restaurant where the men talk to each other about whatever it is that men talk about (see two items above) and the women talk about women stuff.  I think there should only be one conversation per table and it should include everyone.  Of course, part of the reason I say that is that I can't hear well enough to carry on a dueling conversation.

I'm saying all this because it informs my feelings about the upcoming (never ending) political season.  Republicans, if they are true to form, are going to nominate whoever is the TOUGHEST.  Toughest on immigrants.  Toughest on entitlements and welfare queens.  Toughest on Iran.  Republicans are going to nominate whichever member of their traveling macho freak show comes closest to saying "I don't bargain."

And the hell of it is that the whole country seems to be moving in that direction.  According to polls, Americans are against the Iran deal by two to one!  Why is that?  Is it because it is easier to latch on to fear mongering sound bites and calls to get tough than it is to pick up on all the nuances of Kerry's accomplishment?

I guess that's my male issue in a nutshell.  It just seems apparent to me that the get-tough-we-don't-bargain stance is one that requires no brains, only balls.  Unfortunately, all the evidence suggests the electorate prefers the latter.