Report 35

Seven-day report

(Sorry about the length! No need to read any further!)

Preliminary notes:  Stim is asking for a 7 day report on the day of and the week following Thanksgiving -- I wonder if he knows what he's in for.  At least from me, he'll be getting stories about weird weather patterns, bad mother-daughter relationships, turkey fires, and so forth. But since I didn't read the homework assignment until today, I'll save (some of the) pain by starting with today.

Sat Nov 28:  No relatives, no stress today -- just a lovely bike ride around Central Park in the bright low-slanting winter sun. Came home and read through WoK transcripts that I missed and wrote a few notes for myself about the last three days. I realized that for me, being around my mom is a lot like suffering from car-sickness.  By being very careful, I can stave off the bad symptoms and sometimes I get lucky, but once it starts, every tiny turn or bump in the road makes the car-sickness so much worse, and even after I get out of the car, it can continue on for quite a while. (I'm thinking of Katherine's car ride to the beach.  The paper monster story works too but lacks sufficient nausea factor.)  Gave my sis and her husband a ride home after they borrowed our car -- they found this a very apt analogy and we blew off a little steam trying to articulate exactly what it is that drives us so batty; that was very relieving!  

Sun Nov 29:  Dreams seem to have too much work in them lately -- this one about being in the main meditation hall at Tenzin Wangyal's retreat, beautiful flowers, gold and red, with all the statuary and tankas around.  But Mits is standing up in the middle hall arguing loudly with Tenzin Wangyal and I'm tugging at him a little, reminding him that this is Tenzin Wangyal and really he has much more experience to draw upon.  When I told Mits this dream later, he called it a "dream memory fail" -- he wanted to hear about the great arguments he was delivering.  But actually he did spend some of the wee hours of the morning writing emails so perhaps he knows exactly what the discussion was about :).   Plus we got up early for a condo board meeting. 

Homework session was really wonderful today, we discussed notions of unconditional love and Eliza reminded us of groundlessness as a basis.  Took a nice long afternoon nap.  Mits and I saw the Fantastic Mr. Fox with Nadia, which is quite a good story about how we really are wild animals (Nadia really liked the color scheme -- just the right appeal  to middle class bourgeois she said!).  New York is a very quiet town tonight; we both noted the dilated sense of time that can happen sometimes. 

Monday Nov 30:  While sitting, I found myself trying to get back to the kind of sitting I was doing last week, and it became clear what a very funny, very doomed project that would be.  The realization did not prevent me from dragging my feet back into work after the long break.  Our house guest gave us a yoga mat so I tried it out (warmups only) -- had a good effect on sleep.

Tuesday Dec 1:   A very peaceful sit followed by an argument over the telephone -- I am still such a sucker for "getting things done" argh.  Note to self: stop getting obssessed with getting things done, stop getting mad at people who interfere with getting things done.  (Sorry, I'm having a hard time "following" this one, any advice welcome.)  Oh, the dream this morning was about flipping through a book of photos of myself with my high school friends -- some from the old days, some from the present -- we're all arranged as if in a flower vase, spiraling petals and leaves. 

Wednesday Dec 2:  Still thinking about anger this morning, which turned into thoughts about yesterday, which turned into thoughts about... amazingly embarassing!  The whole morning wasted!  The only thing that worked was to ask for help from the deities, and remember the way prostrations had been explained (sealing out the poisons by touching 5 points to the ground).  It surprises me that such a gesture could work (of course it works better than trying to use my ego to squash things, and maybe more gentle prods like acceptance and allowing were turning into more stuff for "me" to do... but no, the deities out there really did helped me).  Anyway, a little confused but quite grateful to my teachers, the deities, etc -- I'm pretty sure I created the mess and don't think I did anything to deserve help.