10 Things: Loving, living, and letting go

By popular demand, I bring you 10 Things inspired by this quote/meme, shared on Facebook this morning:

“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.” —Buddha

Apologies ahead of time for the rambling philosophization that gushed out. If you want to play along in the comments, skip over my bit and write your own 10 Things first, then come back and read mine. So, the first 10 Things that come to mind after reading that quote…

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1. I’m slicing up the three pieces of the quote and considering the value of love in all its forms as the foundation for all of our choices and actions. Quantity is implied here, but not the quantity of people or things we love but the amount we love, the amount we give love or put love into the world.

2. One aphorism leads to another. The more you give, the more you get.

3. I was thinking of the different ways we can love, and the marbles that started rolling around in my head were the Greek forms. I thought of eros and communitas, but then I couldn’t help myself and looked them up (I like to get things right; I have a hard time letting go of accuracy). Agape, eros, philia, storge. We are capable of loving in many ways. The deep, true love we hold rare and precious; desire and aesthetic and physical love; the love of friends and family and community that requires virtue, equality and familiarity; and, of course, tolerance (also with many forms). 

4. None of the three statements is explicit about their antitheses. Anger, hate, abhorrence, intolerance, contempt, etc. Is the first phrase — how much you loved — or the judgment implied in the opening, like a bucket that gets filled up by love and emptied by the detrimental emotions? Is it that simple/complex?

5. Gentle living reminds me of parenting babies and toddlers and preschoolers. Gently when you pet the cat. Gently when you hug your brother. Gently when you touch Gramma’s face so you don’t poke her eyes out. Gently. I don’t say that word out loud to the Sonars very much anymore. They have pretty decent self control, which is what we monitored with the word ‘gentle’ in their wee years. But perhaps I should still use it. Gently with your words to your peers who are entering an age of sharp-tongued anxiety. Gently with your brothers who will likely be your longest friends and fiercest allies, even though they may always know how to push your buttons. Gently on the earth. Don’t waste the water or the paper or the electricity. Gently with your mama who is both proud to watch you grow and gain your independence and fearful of seeing you stumble along the way. 

6. How gently you live can then be kindness or conservation or through word or action it can mean minimizing the damage that we inevitably do to the people and the world around us. So that if loving much is maximizing what we give, then living gently is minimizing the harm we cause. 

7. How gracefully we let go of what is not meant for us. In my clumsy understanding of Buddhism, letting go gracefully seems like the ultimate goal. Not allowing material goods to weigh you down. Not allowing negative thoughts or experiences or people to weigh you down. To release the weight of everything. Though in pragmatic terms for the normal human who feels angry and jealous and slighted and loves things and people and feels sentimental and attached, then letting go gracefully is challenging and requires a strong hold on the first two concepts. Maximize what we give, minimize what we take or harm. 

8. My hand is tired and far more minutes have slipped by than a traditional 10 Things exercise usually occupies. I suppose that is the nature of philosophical contemplation. It takes time and might hurt. 

9. The sky just turned much more dim and the wind is gusting. An imaginary line on a weather map is manifesting as a line of force in the sky that blusters across the coastal plains like a dust squeegee pulling cold air behind it. 

10. That dust-squeegee metaphor is both hilarious and terrible. I love it and I give it to you with love, letting go of any embarrassment I feel about it as I release it into a gust of wind and into your eyeballs. Gently, I hope, for the sake of your eyeballs. 

10 Things: Witch

It’s Writer Wednesday (#WW) over in Twitterdom, so let’s do 10 Things to get our writer cells working. I say a thing. You say 10 Things that pop into your head or out the end of your pen. Ready? Set?

WITCH

Go!

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These are my 10 Things. Your mileage may vary.

1. Wicked Witch. For L. Frank Baum, she was a cackling, green-skinned thing, out for vengeance for her sister against Dorothy and for power against the Wizard of Oz. Gregory Maguire complicates her, building a biology and psychology for her in which wickedness is only one interpretation. Rhetorical and political only.

2. Amy is the name of the witch that haunts my stories, but I don’t really know who she is or what makes her unique. Should I make her a knitter? Or perhaps more like Nancy Drew, sleuthing and meddling?

3. Witchy Woman. Is that The Eagles? What is that song even about? Does the point of view LIKE her witchiness? Fear it? Hang on, I have to go listen. 

4. Hermione Granger. My favorite witch. Bookish, awkward, brilliant. The most loyal friend. And aside from one jealous meltdown, she does not crumble from her responsibilities even when upset. 

5. Which witch? A grammatical conundrum. A question in which we wonder what the correct use of the word is in a particular written context.

6. Witchy Poo. She was a costumed cartoon of a witch who looked just like the cartoon Helga. Orange hair, striped socks and vultures. Oh, and warts. What did she even want from Pufenstuf? I don’t know, except that he was afraid of her and I want some socks like hers. 

7. Bewitched. The domestic witch who used her powers not for the improvement of society but for domestic bliss, against the wishes of her wilder and more sexual mother. Conservative shift? Then her daughter is wilder as well?

8. Sabrina the teenage witch. Which I never watched. Not once. But somehow my brain knows the actress’s name is Melissa Joan Hart. Why do I know that?

9. Willow. Nerdy to evil. Hetero to lesbian. Shy to invidious. My other favorite witch. Both she and Hermione relied heavily on books for their power and craft.

10. A Discovery of Witches was the last witch book I read.

And now, you see, I’ve come to the end of my 10 Things and only talked about pop culture witches. What about historical witches? Religious witches? Multi-cultural witches?  

10 Things: Mac

A stuffy head and creaky fingers are making my words flow like molasses today. What I need is a little writing EXERCISE. Join me? Let’s do 10 Things. I say a thing and you share the first 10 Things you think of when you think of that thing. It’s easy. Find my things after a polite pixel partition. Anyone can play!

10 Things: MAC.

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My MAC things? Certainly.

1. Hi. I’m a Mac and I’m a PC. Actually I’m a Mac. Or rather, THIS is a Mac.

2. Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Big Mac. Why do they call it that?

3. Mac. A nickname for my step-father. A frequent nickname for people with a “Mc” or “Mac” surname or more generally for anyone of Irish or Scottish descent.

4. A generic epithet, like ‘buddy.’ Hey mac, can you spare a dime?

5. Mac, a Scottish Terrier from a Disney movie. Which one though? Lady and the Tramp? Can anyone confirm or deny this correlation?

6. Mac… Mack… macintosh rain coat. Splish splash.

7. Mac. Macadam. McAdam, the person credited with the use of macadame, a type of paving that I associate with black top parking lots. I learned this word from Janet Evanovich. True story.

8. macmacmaccamcamcam A backwards camera? Yes, reaching now. Can. I. Pull. Out. Ten???

9. Mac. Macademia nuts! From Hawaii. My grandma Flora brought these to me sometimes when she came to visit. I thought she had such weird snacks. I realize now that she was excited to share exotic foods with me. 

10. macmacmacmac HEYYY Macarena! Sonar X6 can dance the Macarena (though he knows it as the calendar song from school. Try it. Sing the months of the year—in English or Spanish—to the Macrena tune. I’ll wait.). But he doens’t know how to Hustle. A parenting lapse. I’ll fix that this weekend. 

10 Things: Mailbox Cushion

I noticed it the other day. Other family members insist that it’s been there for a few weeks. I struggled to come up with a reasonable explanation. What does it MEAN?! And then I pulled out a pen and made up a list of 10 Things that could explain this scenario. But that’s not enough. I want to hear your 10 Things too. So get your writing tools, number 1 through 10, and when you see the photo, write down the first 10 Things you think of to explain why, WHY?! there is a plush, velvety, red cushion tied to the top of this mailbox with a blue cord.

Ready? My 10 Things will follow below. Click to embiggen the photo if you like.

GO!

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The mailbox of one of my neighbors

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My 10 Things: 

1. The cushion adds directional stability to keep the mailbox from falling off its post.

2. The cushion protects the sensitive mailbox from falling branches or acorns.

3. The cushion provides a place for the mail carrier to lean out of his truck to rest his head.

4. Once a week the neighborhood cats gather around the mailbox with the king or queen cat perched on the cushion throne.

5. The red cushion with blue straps is an alternative to tree streamers for demonstrating school pride. Go blue red!

6. The cushion is a teleporter. The mail carrier places packages upon the cushion and they are instantly zapped into the house. (This one courtesy of Sonar X11)

7. The cushion is the signal for a secret underground network, or perhaps the sign of the meeting place of a secret organization. (If cushion is red we meet at the library. If cushion is blue we meet at the Dairy Queen.)

8. Enclosed within the cushion is surveillance equipment that monitors traffic speeds or tries to catch kids who get stoned in the arroyo across the street.

9. This cushion is part of a new trend in front yard decor. Soon all the mailboxes will have plush adornments.

10. This is a showcase cushion. Periodically the homeowner displays his prize __________ to passersby.

Don’t forget to put your speculation, wild or otherwise, into the comments for all of us to enjoy. 

Etude: Accident, First grade fear

Another expansion of an entry in last Wednesday’s episode of 10 Things: 

In the first grade, I changed schools part way through the year. I was small and quiet normally, and on the first day in my new school, I was terrified of everything and everyone. The classroom was bigger, the desks were different and bigger, the other students seemed bigger than my former classmates. My new teacher seemed nice enough (she did, after all, have a Dorothy Hamill haircut like mine), but she had giant owl-eyed glasses.

The boy who sat in front of me that day was named Marc Soto.  On that day, Marc Soto seemed a little bit mean, or at least brashly confident — and why not, *he* wasn’t the new kid. He knew where the pencil sharpener was and how to get to the bathroom.

In my old classroom, if we needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of class, we knew to look for the pass — a big block of wood with “Mrs. Jaramillo’s bathroom pass” painted on it in red fingernail polish. If the pass was in the chalk tray, we could take it, walk two doors down the hall from our classroom, do our business, and come right back. In this new classroom, I didn’t see a big block of wood with “Miss Jackson’s bathroom pass” painted on it in any color of nail polish, or anything at all resembling a bathroom pass. So when I needed to pee, I had no idea what to do. Was there some sort of hand-raising protocol? Was the pass hidden somewhere and I had to find it?

I suppose I must have pondered the possibilities — all except for the obvious, ASK the teacher — for some time. For so long in fact that not only could I not pay any attention at all to what Miss Jackson (who was later confirmed to be very nice and who changed to Mrs. Reynolds the next summer, prompting me to wonder if she was actually the same person and if she’d remember *my* name if hers had changed) was saying, but also could not hold it anymore. So I peed quietly, hoping no one would hear it, thinking that if I peed just a little, maybe no one would notice and maybe I’d be able to hold it long enough to figure out where the pass might be (not to mention where the actual bathroom might be).

Unfortunately once I started peeing, quiet or not, I could not stop.

In spite of sitting as still as a statue, the pee didn’t stay in the chair with me. It spilled out onto the floor in a silent puddle that spread out around me. And of course Marc Soto was the first person to notice. He half stood in his chair and pointed and said something very loud to draw the attention of Miss Jackson.

I don’t remember what happened next, but I know that I survived. I also know that Marc Soto also sat in front of me in second grade and sometimes I thought he was mean and sometimes I thought he was not mean, and once he confused me a lot because he and his family didn’t celebrate birthdays. Mostly I thought that Marc Soto was ok because he ran faster than most of the kids, and, though he once called me four-eyes, he didn’t seem to care that he’d once caught me peeing in the first grade.