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Queued up. Waiting in line. No sheltie collie to nip at our heels. Herding onto the train, anyway. Previous commitments, paychecks, or escape from something worse than the day that awaits in the city, serve as the shepard’s stick – urging us forward.
On a Sunday when I am warming up to tackle the disser or just plain procrastinating my fate for the day, I am sharing some snippets from my old blog about the commuter herd.
On a Monday or a Wednesday at least five months ago…
My Ques-ti-on for the day – - -
Why do we care what others think of us? more precisely
Why do I care what others think of me?
Even more particularly, people I/we don’t even know and may never see again, ever. Like fellow BART riders. More specifically, did that man sitting across from me, facing me, this morning between 8 AM and 8:25 AM, really give a S- -T what I was doing or where I was looking? or for that matter, do I really give a S- -T whether or not my earbuds were too loud for those close to me?
On a Monday or a Wednesday or a Thursday at least six months ago…
My day started out by my whacking (accidentally) another BART passenger with my backpack when I was trying to move by her rather large frame. The whackee then let her displeasure be known (quite loudly) by harrumphing. And then we had to sit side-by-side all the way into the Big City. Lovely.
The trip home wasn’t to be without its own little fun experience. I was excited to catch a train about 8 minutes earlier than I normally do (come on, it’s the little things in life, right?) only to have a woman sit down beside me (never mind that there were oddly many empty seats) who literally reeked of garlic and the odor of warm urine. I kid you NOT. Not like old stale urine but fresh WARM urine AND garlic – not the fresh good smelling kind but the odor of garlic being sweated out through every STINKING pore in her body. HELP.
Oh and I’m not finished. Unbeknownst to me, there had been some kind of major problem with the BART system earlier in the day. So although the train came earlier than usual, we then had the pleasure of sitting in the tunnels, underground while we waited, repeatedly, for the trains in front of us to move on. Me and Miss Odiferous that is. I arrived at my station 5 minutes later than usual.
Back to today and my bid to push off my disser duty…
I am sending out a little prayer of gratitude, right this very moment, that I am Not currently sitting on the BART and that there is no urine odor, fresh or stale, filling my nostrils. Oh yeah, and there are no nose pickers or snot snorting folks of any kind in my vicinity. Some days are just grand.
I commute into the Big City three times a week – there and back – round trip – from my Attic abode to my office door. I travel via public transportation. Well actually I either walk or drive the mile or so to the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) parking lot, get on a BART train, and then catch a municipal (muni) bus, disembark, and walk the rest of the way to the office. In the mornings this is approximately a one hour and 40 minute commute (when I drive to the station). The return trip is about one hour and 15 minutes, door-to-door. When you multiply the daily commute time by three and then by four (or some equivalent of a month), the minutes and hours add up, quickly.
So it’s a good thing that there is always, and I do mean always, something to entertain and occupy one’s mind.
Yesterday morning’s BART train conductor was in a very good upbeat mood and as a result he put some effort into finding fresh ways to say the same message over and over. He kindly reminded passengers to look about their seat in order not to leave any personal belongings behind. His voice was cheerful and he made me smile.
The muni bus drivers have, overall, been okay. Last night’s bus driver was in a bad mood. He lectured one poor customer almost to tears for running after the bus when ‘you know that I cannot stop for you between stops,’ but he did, stop for her. I wondered if she would have rather he’d driven on by than endure his lengthy reprimand. He also seemed to take delight in starting and stopping the bus quickly, causing us all to lurch about, back and forth, in our seats or on our feet. Luckily for me, the ride was only about 25 minutes of jerky stops and starts.
It could be worse. A lot worse. I could be driving my very old car (aka Harvey) who has standard transmission across the bridge and up and down the hills of the Big City, twice a day, three days a week. Yeah, that is a no brainer for me. As much as I love Harvey or Harv as I kindly call him, I know his limitations.
Here’s one of my ongoing curiosities: why do muni riders conform to the requirement of leaving the front seats for seniors and people with disabilities, without having to be asked to get their butts up while BART riders simply bury their faces in their newspapers, pretending not to see the elder who is standing with the aid of their cane?
These and many other curiosities entertain and distract me during my commute. The distracting factor comes in handy when sitting next to someone who is really really odiferous or when sitting down on a big dark stain that looks dry but feels damp or when everywhere you look, someone is picking their nose.
or some days are dog disser (aka dissertation) days. But somehow that combination doesn’t really go together. I love dogs. I love this photo (courtesy of a Flickr photographer) of the swimming dog. Man, does he look like he’s happy and living life in a large way. I do not love my disser. I do not feel like I am happy and living my life large. I do feel like I am largely living my life vis-a-vis my disser. The one shared common factor is the day. It is, indeed, a day. And somewhere in this day there is a dog and there is a disser. I have the disser covered. Now where’s that fun loving dog?
joy ~ full words that trip off my tongue
but not before they bounce around
inside my mouth
au·dac·i·ty (ô-d s -t ) boun·ti·ful (boun t -f l)
doo hick er (not in dictionary)
lu·di·crous (l d -kr s)
I just realized that I never came back to let you know where I went. Here is the link to my current blog http://junemoon.wordpress.com/ I hope that you will stop by as I like visitors! Also, please feel welcome to leave me comments on the new blog as the spirit moves you – I promise to leave a return comment!
Remember that change is not always bad – conjure up the one door closing means another door is opening – a silver or is it a gold lining to every thunder cloud. Or just take my word for it, stop by the new place http://junemoon.wordpress.com/ – you’ll see what I mean.
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wind chimes
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pl. n.
- An arrangement of small suspended pieces, as of glass, metal, or ceramic, hung loosely together so that they tinkle pleasingly when blown by the wind. Also called wind-bells .
This definition according to American Heritage online dictionary (photo by Flickr photographer). Not a bad attempt at describing something as lovely as these works of art. Sometimes the unattractive (not to be confused with ugly) chimes redeem themselves by way of their exceedingly melodic tinkling. And then there are those that embody all the bells and whistles, beauty and grace, combining visual beauty with magnificant tones. All of that is to say that some wind bells are gorgeous, breathtaking, and stunning while others are unsightly, a blight on the eyes, and awkward. Some wind chimes are gorgeous but tin-ny while another one is ugly but musical. Another case of not judging a book by its cover. No rushing to judgment. That is until the breeze comes along and the bells have their way.
In some ways, wind chimes resemble people. pretty plain handsome good looking to someone. their tones like words music to your ears but nails down a chalkboard to me. some with a story worth telling and others just a lot of hot air and no tinkle. Like beauty is in the eye of the beholder but let’s consider the music in the ear of the listener.
Pleasing to the eye or not, wind chimes have saved my butt on more than one occasion.
Re-wind to four years ago…
Walking alone down a broken and uneven sidewalk in a new to me town (big city really) on my way to my weekly hour of therapy. For fifty mintues (it’s the day of managed care), two people would consciously attempt to connect with each other. The sun is shining and it is a warm California October day but it may as well have been a frigid life-less terrain. Nothing was getting in to my senses. I was caught up in loneliness. Homesick. Able to see only the same lonely days ahead of me. When
out of nowhere – ness
came a tinkling the resonance of wind chimes.
For me, that particular moment of hearing is frozen in time. I looked up and around until my seeking eye fell upon a second floor porch. This wooden porch was home to a wind chime. No, not one but a multitude. Some of the wind bells were made of wood others from a variety of metal and glass and shells. My eye spied works of whimsy and artful creations. But mainly my spirit felt resonated with the tones and tinkling that sprang from these chimes.
Immediately, I was brought back to the present moment. Warm sun warm breeze flowering plants, shrubs trees honking car horns people other than me. Me. walking forward my current path a city sidewalk. In that moment, I sent out a prayer of gratitude of spiritual re-connection. A precious moment brought to me by a wind bell.
Present moment…
Try doing an internet search for wind chimes. I did and am astounded at the results. So many folks talking about a bell.
There are days when I yearn for my first mother, my omma. Today is one of those days. Yesterday was too. This elephant mom and her elephant baby (courtesy of a Flickr photographer) are good stand ins for my internal desire to still belong with my own omma.
Historically this yen for mothering is most acute in the month of August. This year there is a bleed over, a seepage of desire. Emotions uncontained. Uh oh. I think, however, that the idea of containable emotions is really an illusion. After all, who ever heard of a rational feeling? No. Reason, cognition, and intellect all work together in our heads. Their common goal is helping us make sense and assign meaning to our experiences. Feelings and emotions dance and otherwise commingle in our body, psyche, and spirit, helping us experience our senses and live our lives, fully.
I began my search for my birth family, particularly my omma, over a decade ago. With little information and lots of dead ends, the journey quest has been at times frustrating, heartbreaking, hopeful, and fruitless. As the years pass, the probability of finding her grow less likely. If still alive, she is aging along with me. I hope she still walks on this Earth. And if not, I hope there is an avenue of connection to her spirit. I want to talk to her and I want to hear her voice talking to me. There are many things I wish to know. Omma, tell me the stories of your life and don’t be stingy with your telling. Unveil the story of my beginning. You know what I do not.
So today it does not matter that I am 50 years-of-age and intensely wanting my mommy. There is no rhyme or reason to intensely wanting. This is not an incongruent picture as seen from my heart.
tipping cows
tilting windmills
tiling roofs
where no floorboards exist,
tiling anyway using
red tiles.
just some examples of what I could
have done
with the hours
days
nights
week.
no cows in sight
mills only of the gin variety
and no foundation to speak of
on which to add a roof or
worry about floorboards
red tiled or no.
excuses.
my own.
@junemoon 2007
Trees talk you know. Talk. In tree talk. I’ve heard them on multiple occasions. The route that my morning and evening BART train takes passes by a stand of trees. Here is what I know about these trees. They are decidous and they are tall. They are also outnumbered by the numerous man made industrial buildings surrounding them. This particular group stands so close to the elevated train tracks that their green faces press close to the train windows. Some of their leaves touch the train’s steel body for seconds at a time.
Overheard tree snippets this afternoon…
Out of all the locations in the world that I could have been planted in, I get rooted here in this concrete jungle. I swear if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. Maybe there really is such a thing as reincarnation. Well, if there is and that’s why I’m planted here with my kisser pressed up against this recurring ugly beast of steel, then I must have been one bad son of an evergreen in my past life.
Okay back to being me and not the tree…
As I sit here now, it crosses my mind that these imagined tree mutterings might well be my very own un-metabolized projections. Lovely.
overhead in the cosmos, some call it heaven. All I know is prayer occupies an important place in my life. My every day life. Blame it on my adoptive family’s ultraconservative fundamentalist religious foundations and my upbringing, if you must assign blame. The cadence of speech reserved just for evangelists and Southern Baptist preachers remains in my psyche along with their words which filled my young head full of dark and fearful images. Over the years I have shed and rejected much, if not most, of the hell-and-brimstone rhetoric. I have, however, held onto the prayer thing.
There were some years in my late-teens and twenties when I even let go of prayer. Actually, it was more like I ousted myself from religious faith before God could. My pre-emptive strike. This ousting stemmed from my ‘coming out.’ My chosen lifestyle included consorting (carnally and in other meaningful ways) with women. At the time, I believed that God put in special earplugs when prayers from sinners such as my lesbian-identified sorry soul floated into His heavenly earshot.
During those years of prayer-less-ness, I felt bereft – alone in the Universe so to speak, or not to speak, in prayers at least. Somewhere along the way, I woke up
grew up
reframed renamed
and reclaimed
my faith. As the saying goes, my newfangled spirituality was not and is not ‘my father’s religion.’ Through the years my faith has grown and receded, swelled and run dry. Prayer, however, remains faithful, not straying far from my center hub.
I pray when things are rough, when I need direction,
when life is going smoothly, when I am happy,
when I am reminded of my love for my familia,
when I catch a glimpse of the shimmery iridescent green of a hummingbird’s tiny bird body,
when the rain drops ping and bounce, hard, off of my west facing skylight,
when I feel grateful for a particular moment in my life, when sadness and grief threaten to sweep me down a river of tears,
when I cannot forgive someone – especially myself,
when I am swirled up and on the hamster-wheel of circular worries and what-if’s, when I crave inner peace and cannot find it on my own,
when I lose faith in my own abilities to cope, when I stand in the reality of needing help,
when I am madder than hell and want to scream so loud that a mountain cracks open,
when I see the depths of human suffering, when I have acted in shameful ways,
when I remember and return to my center, I pray.
Prayer is a constant in my life. Now at the age of 50 I cannot imagine life without prayer - it is a balm and a comfort to me. I am grateful to claim prayer as a touchstone, a cornerstone in my life.
This morning I prayed for the ability to let go of the comparison game of intelligence and for the ability to be positive about my disser. I prayed for the ability to feel how lucky I am.
