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Chloe enters my life

March 19th, 2008

I didn’t get the brain-damaged cat. I got, instead, a tiny perfect ten-month-old spayed female Abyssinian who was given the name Chloe by her former owner. She looks like this (link comes from the website of the woman from whom I got her and is Chloe herself just a couple of months ago). I had planned to name my new cat Sati, which is the Pali word for awareness–but Chloe already knows her name, and I’m quite happy to live with that name, with its Virginia Woolf associations. I will not be a bore and talk endlessly about my animal companion, but I will say that her presence nourishes me, makes me laugh, and brings me back to this moment in the body. Who doesn’t need all of that? And now, on with the new book.

Posted in Cats, Oregon | 1 Comment »

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Human stupidity

March 18th, 2008

One of the things I decided when I was on the retreat is that I’m ready to have an animal companion in my life again. I spent some time online and found one that really called to me, a cat who appears to be what is called “Chartreux.” I did some research on Chartreux, and given my recent love of the film Into Great Silence (about the Carthusian brothers in Chartreuse, France)–and the connection (if only apocryphal) of these cats with that monastery, I drove out to the cat shelter today, where I learned that the cat I had chosen was not, as it says on the internet, abandoned by her former custodians. Would that were all there is to her story! When the police busted a meth house and hauled off its residents, they found this little gray cat, dazed and confused. The residents told the cops her name was “Meth Cat” and that they had kept her “high” on meth. They thought it was funny. When the vet at the cat shelter examined her, she found the little cat has permanent brain damage and occasionally gets seizures. The people at the shelter say she is “perpetually confused” and her eyes look like she is always “very surprised by everything.” The little gray cat is in a foster home right now, and so far I haven’t been able to contact the foster care-giver. I’ve left her a message. Maybe living with one quiet writer who is always very surprised by everything, in a little studio apartment with a view of the Fremont Bridge, is just what that little cat needs. Or maybe she is too badly damaged. I’ll wait and see. But the unbearable stupidity of the meth-heads who did this to that little animal keeps making my eyes water.

Posted in Cats, Oregon | 2 Comments »

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S.N. Goenka’s excellent system

March 17th, 2008

Home from the ten-day vipassana course, I recompose my molecules and begin again.  For ten days I was intimate with fifty strangers, sleeping from 10 p.m. till 4 a.m. in chilly dorms, standing in line to pee, jostling before dawn with toothbrushes in our mouths, staggering back to the meditation hall as if back into the mouth of hell.  Intimate as our circumstances were, each of us was engrossed in our own inner filmscape, what Yeats called the rag and bone shop of the heart. Full of memories and secrets, we sat knee to thigh with each other, absolutely still for thirteen hours a day. Sitting times were punctuated by breaks for breakfast and lunch (no dinner), a little time for walking in a spectacular meadow, a little time for personal hygiene, and by occasional five-minute pee-breaks. We sought equanimity, acknowledged impermanence, and watched our minds do what they do. Wander, obsess, fantasize, remember, hash things over and over. Occasionally we left our inner drama long enough to follow instructions. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Buddhism, What does it mean? | 4 Comments »

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Great compassion

March 4th, 2008

My apartment smells like a new car: fresh paint, glue, and fabric sizing. No spaghetti stains or soup spills stain the carpet; no animal has vomited or left muddy paw prints on the chair. There are no rings on the tables left by coffee mugs or wine glasses, and the bookcases have no scrapes, gouges, or cigarette burns. No one has rested a tired, greasy head on the back of the sofa; no one has had sex or peed on the bed. No endearments have been whispered here, no blame hurled, and if a betrayal has occurred within these walls, it was before my time. It’s all pristine, virginal, untried and un-lived in. This is Paradise. I’ve been in Portland, Oregon for twenty days. For eighteen of those days, it did not rain in this place where they say it rains every day. Everything is in perfect order. My life in this place is as clean, cold, and sterile as a vacant cubicle in a city morgue. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in What does it mean? | 4 Comments »

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Writing, Language, Ralph Fiennes

March 3rd, 2008

This email from Alberto Greenberg, who gave me permission to put it in the blog: “I WROTE MANY SHORT STORIES IN MY LIFE. AND ONE OR TWO LONGER ONES. I WROTE IN SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE. I WAS FILLING MANY NOTEBOOKS WITH THEM. BUT NEVER PUBLISHED. I FEEL HAPPY WHEN I WRITE AND THEN READ IT AGAIN. IT ALL MAKES SENSE. DIFFERENT FROM LIFE ITSELF!!!” We feel happy when we write and then read it again. I love that. It’s a little like gazing at our reflection, but it’s also about what Kripalu’s displaced guru once said: “The most important book you will ever read is the story of your own life.” Big emphasis in Asian cultures on “knowing yourself.” What’s written down, fictional though it may be, since each of us sees everything through individual lenses, is a little less ephemeral. The patterns are a bit clearer (even if distorted) when they’re on the paper, and it’s a chance, as Alberto says, to see sense in it. Different from life itself. M’e Mpho Nthunya once said of her book, “It’s my way to hold my whole life in my two hands.” I’ve been enjoying emails with Alberto, reading his blog, and (completely unrelated) watching Ralph Fiennes films. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Books and Movies, What does it mean? | No Comments »

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Making commitments

March 1st, 2008

OK, the newness has worn off. I live in Portland now. It’s time to clean the bathroom, do laundry, buy groceries, and get on with it. I did the new-girl-in-town thing, pushing past my native shyness to thrust myself into social situations (Chinese aerobics, the UU church, a writing workshop, a reading, a writer’s group, meetings with some splendid local women I found online, a kindly tax man, and a playful and worldly barber who cut my hair). I’ve met a fascinating array of people, some of whom may become real friends, given time and circumstance, so I feel I can now back off, quit pushing myself, and wait to see what comes. I’m a little more than halfway through the second volume of Proust, and because Proust’s angst-ridden introspection is so much like my own that when it doesn’t make me laugh it wears me out, I’ve also picked up Snow, by Orhan Pamuk. I rekindled my Netflix subscription and have a few good films to look at. But what do I want to commit to, other than my own writing and the self-indulgent pleasures of life beyond employment? Now that I have no excuse NOT to walk my talk, how do I want to contribute to the world in this place? That is the question. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Oregon, What does it mean? | 6 Comments »

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Prisons

February 28th, 2008

This hot news item got my attention. It points to the execrably stupid fact that the USA incarcerates more people per capita than anywhere else in the world. This is an invitation to my friends John Speer (who is on the verge of gigantic life changes and may not have time) and Stephen Brody to chime in on this topic, about which they are quite knowledgable. Anyone else with strong feelings, opinions, knowledge, or experience of the subject is welcome to have their say, too.

Posted in Politics, Prisons and Prisoners | 4 Comments »

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Reading(s)

February 28th, 2008

 This comes from Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, which I enjoyed watching last night: “The best moments in reading are when you come across something–a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things–that you’d thought special–particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met. Maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” I can’t agree that those are the best moments in reading (there is also much to be said for the pleasure of encountering inner and outer realms one has never seen or imagined, for knowledge of the unknown, and for ideas one has never had), but I do relish that hand Bennett speaks of, and it seems to have been the theme of the day yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books and Movies, Oregon | 2 Comments »

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A book, Chinese aerobics, a garden

February 26th, 2008

 Portland continues to uncurl to me. I’m discovering what it’s like to be free of wage-earning employment, moving forward on my current writing project. Yesterday I received a copy of a book of poetry written by homeless women in Seattle. Monday and Tuesday I attended the Chinese Aerobics, and this afternoon a new friend took me to the Japanese Gardens. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books and Movies, Oregon | 3 Comments »

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Calming down

February 22nd, 2008

This dumb-slap from Stephen: “Oh for heaven’s sake Kendall, calm down, you’re having one of your spells, you’ve just changed addresses again, nothing so remarkable for you, and this saccharine-tinged mania will end in tears I warn you.” So while I am calming down (and calm is good, I agree) I want to examine (not just for Stephen) why I’m having this spell I seem to be having. It’s much more than a change of address. It’s a change of life as profound as marriage, having a child, divorce…moving to a different continent…but I’ve done all those things, and none of them was so disorienting and so promising as this. This makes a complete change from everything I have ever known before. How? Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in What does it mean? | 4 Comments »

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