Main

ust waiting today. For M. to get home, for the mail to be delivered, until it's time to make dinner. I should be working on projects but I'm at a total loss for how to even start, and my usual tricks aren't working. I don't know what's wrong with me but clearly something is.

Yesterday I received a packet in the mail from my grandmother. I opened it up and a wad of ancient letters spilled out with a post-it note on top reading, "Inventory reduction. Love, Bubby." I got one of these from her before but this time it was the real dregs: nonsensical typed characters on a single sheet, crumbled yellow tape from where it had been attached to the fridge, still in the original envelope my mother had dutifully mailed it in. A scrap of torn notebook paper with nothing on it but a small red marker scribble. A postcard from my mother with a small area marked "message from Satya" in which I had squiggled four lines. The postmark reads 1980, when I was three years old. They all smell like her house.

I don't know how to feel that she's saved them all these years, and I certainly don't know how to feel now that she's sent them all back, preparing for her own death. She's waiting for hers, and some days, like today, I think I might be doing the same.

Posted by Satya at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

ince my experience the other day in traffic, I've been of two minds about work. In one sense I feel the pressure of responsibility and of meeting the expectations and demands of my clients, which represent the expectations and demands of life. And on the other hand I can still remember the freedom of detachment from worldly cares and stress, and yearn to slip back into that state. But I don't know how to reconcile the two. What seems clear is that regardless of how I feel about them, deadlines must still be met. But I'd rather meet them in good cheer, knowing that they are part of my role in life, but not being overtaken by their emotional toll.

The other night I worked late and felt everything was off and that so much pressure was building, I didn't know how to handle it. I got in bed with my favorite book of late, Hazrat Inayat Khan's Mastery, and found this little gem:

Continue reading "Tools of the Trade" »

Posted by Satya at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

ufi meditation practices have a dangerous element to them, I've found. Today I had to drive into the city for a dentist appointment and got stuck in major rush hour traffic on the way home. It's been warm here lately, the kind of warm everyone seems to love except me, because I'm sentimental for the East Coast seasons sometimes and it just feels wrong to be sweating so close to Halloween. I was running out of gas so I turned the air conditioning off and rolled down the window, just sitting there baking on the pavement amongst the grocery trucks with their ridiculous slogans and the Ford Focuses and peoples' lame bumperstickers.

Traffic is really a human equalizer. Admit it: technology and progress only take you so far as the next problem they have yet to solve (I am kind of in love with the Amish at the moment.). Lives are difficult and mundane all over the world, in all times and places. And as I was pondering this and breathing it something melted in me, that I'm special and not special at the same time, that my life could have a purpose and still be no more than one small Civic hatchback in gridlock on 101 North, and there was really no difference between those two things.

I was inching my way up a big hill and the big hot blue sky filled my view, and all of a sudden I was just completely ready to die. I was sitting there worried about my little concerns and at the same time could have just stopped the car and turned it off and walked away. Obviously I didn't, but in that moment there was no distinction between detachment and attachment, and it could have fallen either way.

Now that I'm back in my cool forest house I'm feeling more like usual, but it's still a disconcerting thing to know about oneself. Like it's completely real but completely wrong to have one side of yourself that could just chuck it all at any moment. I'm taking it seriously.

Posted by Satya at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

o I asked M. what he thought about the hotness issue. His reply was somewhat long and involved a donkey, a gourd, and a couple other characters, but I think I got the gist of it. Essentially he works it out by striving to be cool not for the benefit of his own ego, but because he has a higher ideal of cool that cannot really exist, or rather, its existence is beside the point. I know, it's confusing, but suffice it to say it was enough of an answer to give me more to think about. With any such question, I always have intuitive knowledge of the answer, but it takes some nudging and exploring before the answer bubbles up to my consciousness enough for me to articulate it.

Anyway, yesterday I attended a memorial service in Golden Gate Park for someone I didn't know. I met him once but never really got a sense of him, but he was in my peripheral community and M. knew him, so we went. It's interesting to get to know someone by what people say about them when they're dead, and by who shows up. Afterwards M. and I talked about what we would want at our own funeral services. I had thought about it before because we studied death in Suluk earlier this year and did several exercises in preparation for death.

Continue reading "Follow-up to Hotness, Plus Death" »

Posted by Satya at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)