Surviving the Workday

Sabbaths 1998, VII
(For John Haines)

There is a place you can go where you are quiet,
a place of water and the light on the water.
Trees are there, leaves, and the light on leaves moved by air.
Birds, singing, move among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come to no thought of these,
but they are themselves your thoughts.
There seems to be little to say, less and less.
Here they are.
Here you are.
Here as though gone.
None of us stays,
but in the hush where each leaf in the speech of leaves is a sufficient syllable
the passing light finds out surpassing freedom of its way.

– Wendell Berry
from Gratefulness’s Poetry Page

The Daily Om touches on an interesting issue today: depression v. seclusion. I often feel the need to be alone, especially away from modern devices of communication. But seclusion is difficult to achieve in the workplace, while depression seems fairly common:

There are times in our lives when withdrawing from our social obligations and taking some time to be alone is necessary to rejuvenate our energy and renew our connection to ourselves. However, there are also times when withdrawal is a red flag, indicating an underlying sense of depression or some other problem. We may not even have consciously decided to isolate ourselves but wake up one day to find that we have been spending most of our time alone.

These days I actually wish I had more alone time, but I’ve always felt that things at work run in cycles and that soon enough, I’ll have plenty of alone time.

If you’ve ever tried to meditate, you may have experienced all sorts of thoughts scurrying around in your head. According to one school of Buddhist meditation, five general categories exist:
1. Sensual desire (abhidya)
2. Ill will, hatred, or anger (pradosha)
3. Laziness and sluggishness (styana and middha)
4. Restlessness and worry (anuddhatya and kaukritya)
5. Doubt (vichikitsa) — doubt, skepticism, indecisiveness, or vacillation, without the wish to cure it, more like the common idea of cynicism or pessimism than open-mindedness or desire for evidence.

Interestingly, I think these sorts of thoughts arise often during the workday. I’m partial to Doubt as a distracting thought during the day, but also entertain Restlessness and Worry on a regular basis.

In any case, one of the first things that you can do when you meditate or when you sit down at your desk to begin your workday is begin to pay attention to the thoughts that flitter across your brain. Are you worrying about money? Concerned about your spouse? Anticipating a phone call from your daughter?

Rather than trying to resolve each of these questions, you can identify it, which, oddly enough, allows you to move on into your work. Ah, yes, another thought worrying about money. All right. Yes, I know I’m worried. And another thought worrying about fires and dry brush. Yes, I know I’m concerned about that, but there’s little to do except keep my property free of brush.

How to Meditate

Do you have summer vacation plans?

Many of us don’t.

I can’t actually remember the last time I had a vacation, but I fear it might have been in February. And that was technically a long ski weekend. Tin House was last month, and while that was fun, it was hardly a vacation.

Here are some statistics from the New York Times The Rise of Shrinking Vacation:

40% of you may have no plans to take a vacation in the next six months;
43% of you may have no summer vacation plans at all; and
25% of you have no paid vacation time at all.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: from whence shall my help come?
My help cometh from HaShem, who made heaven and earth.

- Psalms 121: 1-2

Photo from Jay Arraich

On Monday, the phone rang. In order to get the phone, I stepped on a swivel chair, which swiveled, taking part of my leg with it, which dislocated my knee. Screaming in pain, I fell on my back onto our hardwood floors, much like that, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercial on TV.

Tuesday involved a lot of Advil.

Wednesday I was on the phone for six hours during four different conference calls. More Advil.

Thursday I worked until 10 p.m. for a lovely 15 hour workday.

And today I’m tired. I can’t imagine why.

I’m willing to entertain exhausting stories from others now. Anyone willing to share?

At some point, I killed the front lawn, lay landscaping fabric down, covered it with mulch, and planted cacti at small holes in the landscaping fabric. And, at some later point, the lawn decided that it would send out runners over the landscaping fabric so the entire thing looks sloppy and gross. I’d love to kill that grass but most herbicides are really pretty nasty, particularly those by Ortho, part of Monsanto. Of 30 known herbicides, 19 are carcinogens or linked to cancer. And kill fish, birds, and bees.

These products were recommended by Ideal Byte for gardening and particularly weed-issues:
Deadeye - made from vinegar, it’s non-toxic to humans but will put weeds (and grass, so watch out) in their place ($10).

WOW! (With Out Weeds) - made from a corn syrup byproduct, corn gluten, it’ll kill weeds and release nitrogen for your lawn at the same time ($9).

Weed-Aside - applied directly to weeds it really hits the spot - and leaves the rest of your plants alone ($13).

Ideal Bite’s Fabric Groundcover Tip - reduce weeds by laying down old pieces of fabric and placing mulch on top.

In this world
the living grow fewer
the dead increase–
how much longer must I carry this body of grief?

Ono No Komachi
Japanese (b. 834?) from The Soul of the World: A modern Book of Hours

Photo from Jay Arraich

Excerpted from the Human Rights Campaign:

Today, federal legislation called the Pension Protection Act was signed into law and it includes two provisions that extend important financial protections to more Americans - including same-sex couples. This is an incredibly exciting victory that will be helpful to millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender families.

The first provision, called “Non-Spousal Rollover”

Allows the transfer of an individual’s retirement plan benefits, like a 401(k), to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) for a non-spouse beneficiary like a domestic partner, sibling, parent, cousin or anyone else when the individual dies.

In the past, unless you were the legally recognized spouse of the deceased, you were forced to withdraw the amount as a lump sum and you faced immediate tax penalties which would eat away at the savings amount intended for retirement.

The second provision, known as “Hardship Distribution”:

Allows individuals who list their same-sex partner or other non-spouse beneficiary under a 401(k) plan the ability to tap into their retirement funds in the case of certain medical or financial emergencies of the beneficiary.

In the past, the federal law only permitted such withdrawals for employees’ legally recognized spouses or dependents.

For more information, consult the Human Rights Campaign.

11,000+ soldiers who are willing to serve the United States have been dismissed under a law that lacks intellectual integrity, “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” This includes 800 soldiers with critical skills in languages and medicine.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) is 13-year-old government-sanctioned discrimination. Signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, it bans openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from enlisting in the armed forces or continuing to serve if they are outed based on their sexual orientation. This fall openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender young adults who are willing to serve will attempt to enlist in the military in thirty cities across the country. When their desire to serve is rejected, young adults will sit-in at the recruitment centers.

I offer that this is valuable work and that policies encouraging discrimination are disgusting.

History of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

I had been refraining from taking on Shmuley Boteach’s column Moms, Don’t Forget to Feed Your Marriages out of some weird sense of professional politeness. As in, I wouldn’t want him to critique my blog, so I shouldn’t critique his column on Beliefnet. This is actually my own absurd sense of self that believes that he reads my blog. Let’s chortle at me briefly.

That done, I’m now willing to offer a critique because one began on feministing, and now it feels like fair game for me as well.

One of the things that us humans seem drawn to is making large generalizations about how women are and how men are. Often we then look for research to back up our generalizations. It’s the scientific method in reverse. So women are holy, men are sinners. Women are nurturers, men are hunters. Women are good at english, men are good at math.

The bottom line is that the only thing that 10,000 years of “civilization” has demonstrated is that human beings are flexible with gender roles, with what work they choose to do, and with sexuality. We can be and do many different things. Generalizations don’t do any good. They certainly don’t help make sense of the world. Yet, again, and again, we’re drawn to them, like flies to a fly trap. We just can’t stop making them because they seem to make the world make sense, albeit temporarily. And then we can’t stop applying them to others, albeit permanently.

That, I fear, is my problem with Rabbi Boteach’s column. He has assumptions about how women should be and how men should be, drawn from his own preconceptions, his own understanding of Torah, his own observations of his marriage, and now he’s flinging them at others:

In the end, there are two effects of breast-feeding that we often refuse to acknowledge. One is the de-eroticization of a woman’s body, as her husband witnesses one of the most attractive parts of her body serving a utilitarian rather than romantic purpose. This is not to say that breast-feeding isn’t sexy. Indeed, the maternal dimension is a central part of womanliness. But public breast-feeding is profoundly de-eroticizing, and I believe that wives should cover up, even when they nurse their babies in their husband’s presence.

I believe this same problem comes up when men witness childbirth up close. There are certain poses in which a husband should not see his wife. By all means, be there for the entire labor, as I have been for the births of each of my eight children. But I strongly agree with the advice of the ancient rabbis that husbands should not be staring at the actual delivery. That is just too erotic a part of a wife’s anatomy for it to become a mere birth canal.

I’m sorry if the biological functions of women’s bodies are too much for Rabbi Boteach, but just because he can’t handle it, doesn’t mean that 51% of the world should operate differently. He seems to think that the first step to kill your marriage is to watch a child being born. The second step is to see your wife breast feed. People in relationships can work this sort of thing out. They talk about what they’re comfortable with, and what makes them squeamish. That’s what human beings do. They communicate.

More on Pandagon with Boobie! Mine! and Broadsheet with Breast-feeding: Bad for Marriages.

Some nights, stay up till dawn.
As the moon sometimes does for the sun.
Be a full bucket pulled up the dark way
of a well, then lifted out into light.

Something opens out wings. Something
makes bordom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us.
We taste only sacredness.

Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi
(c. 1207-1273) excerpted from The Soul of the World: A Modern Book of Hours.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

From Gratefulness’s Poetry page.

Art from the Clip Art site.

I know weddings are supposed to be sacred ceremonies of joining amid community, but they always seem like a pain in the ass to plan (we won’t get into how much of a pain in the ass they can be to attend).

So many decisions, and so many places you might not normally deal with (like caterers who serve veal, for example, florists who use flowers covered in pesticides from South America where some very scary pesticides are legal).

Ethical weddings seems like the perfect solution (provided you’re in the UK!). But there’s also a forum here to discuss issues that come up. And since I enjoy stories of how businesses began, here’s a link to that.

Moved by An Inconvenient Truth?

You can apply to train to give presentations on Global Climate change through The Climate Project.

Apply here.

Bernie Siegel has a guided meditation on Beliefnet on releasing fear.

Let me know how it goes….

I’m not a journalist and I don’t really pretend to be one (Witness unedited drunken sleepless reportage.)

It does seem to me that as a writer, I have my own sense of what is right and wrong. And, after working in publishing for ten years, I’ve come to see that I don’t often get the opportunity to write about many things that are important to me: ethical choices, poor people, tragedies, environmental racism, religion, theology.

But journalists seem to have a much larger sense of ethics, even at smaller papers, like the Santa Barbara News Press. The Santa Barbara News Press is the sort of paper that you might read for fun. It’s where you can catch up on who married whom, who got a DUI, and what celebrity bought which plot in Montecito. It’s even published my own fluff. Which is not to say it’s entirely fluffy. It also reports on international and national news.

Recently the Santa Barbara News Press has come under criticism. In 2000, it was bought by a private owner, Wendy McCaw, but she apparently thought that she could control some of the content. And lord knows you don’t want to try to control content. That pisses journalists off big time. (See Good Night and Good Luck for more on corporate interests and editorial content in news.) So Wendy censored the paper for printing Rob Lowe’s future address at which he wants to build a mega-mansion. And she squashed the publication of the details of a DUI of one of her cronies.

With these actions and a lot of behind the scene shenanigans, she set in motion the resignation of much of the staff, including Barney Brantingham, one of the long-time columnists, who moved to the Santa Barbara Independent:
In a bizarre Kafkaesque/Castro twist, a story about suppression of the news was suppressed. Last Friday, a news account written for that day’s paper describing the biggest story in town, the resignation of five editors (now seven, including myself), was killed.
To read more, click here.

In fact, at least thirteen journalists resigned, including my friend, Ann. Many of those who resigned will recieve an Ethics in Journalism award.

Now, in publishing companies, content has long been controlled, not by editorial, but by corporate. And corporate management listens to marketing and finance above all else. Publishing companies publish things that they think will sell well. Period. It’s not journalism, which seemed different, but now I’m thinking it may be exactly the same.

You see, the past is past and the future is yet to come. That means the future is in your hands-the future entirely depends on the present. That realization gives you a great responsibility.

from Beliefnet

I keep getting hits through Jamie Ford, Myfanwy Collins, Katrina Denza, Linera Lucas, Anne Elliott, and others looking for my drunken reportage on Tin House….must be my former Zoetrope connection, no?

In any case, Tin House posts are in the side column. I force you to scroll through Ms. Theologian’s Mail Bag before you see them. I favor Tin House Reports 6, 10, and Final, but people seem to be linking to 3. Perhaps it’s all because of Kirsten Menger-Anderson, the-about-to-be-published-big-time-sexy-thing. Take me along for the ride.

But, of course, I can’t mention one publishing deal without mentioning others. So let me say that meeting Ms. Pia Ehrhardt was truly a pleasure and I look forward to reading her book as well. Not to mention Ellen Meister (Why haven’t I met Ellen? Oh, probably because she’s busy on TV.) and Robin Slick (ditto! double ditto because Ellen and Robin has two books each coming out). And then Jordan Rosenfeld has a non-fiction book, which I’ve taken a sneak peek at because she printed my manuscript on its pages. Nice work on p. 74, Jordan!