Nickel & Diming - Forced Spending

After that rant about unspending I awoke this morning remembering my incredulousness -- almost wordlessness -- yesterday. Another post office experience of enforced helplesnness. [I see I'm into a lot of essences here! Hmm]

I had a letter to Australia which included a few poems that were help together with a paper clip -- I have some neat ones shaped like stars and musical clef and hands and those poems needed a touch of whimsy. The plastic gloved clerk fingered my envelope as if she were a medical technician palpating my breast, pre-mammogram, looking for lumps. She found the paper clip lump and demanding to know "what do you have in there?" Then told me that that made the envelope a package and not a letter and the charge was different [higher, of course]. I protested such a rule was posted nowhere visible and I visit the P.O. often. With great magnanimousness she deigned to "let it go this time." Of course I thanked her profusely. I really wanted to tell her, in case she was wearing those plastic gloves to avoid the threat of anthrax, that the Mad Mailer has been named and committed suicide. But maybe it was some ordinary germs she thought I had included with the paper clip that she was avoiding.

Upon reading the business section of The Times on the subway home, I saw an article about airlines. We all know they are no longer serving food and that on many flights the attendants peddle overpriced snacks and sandwiches. This article said that many American carriers are now viewing passengers as "retailing opportunities" [some consultant came up with that cute concept] and will begin charging also for juice and coffee and of course the little free bags with 15 peanuts in them will disappear and we passengers will be able to purchase for maybe $3, bags with 30 peanuts in them. The once glamourouse job of airline attendant becomes much more like the hotdog seller on the corner -- or his higher pricec colleague at baseball games.

Smart people, of course, will arrive with food in their carry ons [will a charge be instituted for BYO? I wouldn't be surprised] and then there may also be a charge for disposal of your plastic wrap and used water bottles. I'm so old I remember when air travel was something to look forward to -- which rumors and ads tell me it still is if you are rich enough to fly business or first class, especially transcontinentally and most especialy to the Arab Emirates on their new luxury Airbuses.

Un-Spending

A local bank is running an ad which I hear on the radio but it may also be a TV ad, the key word is "UN-SPEND". Instead of paying a gym fee to use a treadmill, run outdoors, drink tap water instead of bottled water, etc. And put the money you save into an account in that bank. When I hear that I think, even Madison Ave. is playing on the overwhelming feeling that ordinarily people have that we are in for an increasingly rough financial period. I've always considered the gym thing a social phenomenon, a place for people to show off their good intentions and their good bodies or good intentions toward their bodies. We know most people don't use their gym memberships enough to get their money's worth and home treadmills are mainly clothes racks. Many people need support in their exercise efforts so they band with friends for weekend walks or runs -- good. Why not? It doesn't cost anything -- until you finish and you all go for brunch feeling righteous about the exercise and free to have that bloody Mary and eggs Benedict -- that's not quite unspending. For my part, I walk, alone but usually with a destination.

The bottled water phenomenon has astonished me since it started and it's permutations seem endless, flavors, vitamins, caffeines. In some cities and towns the tap water doesn't taste very good. If it has a mineral or chlorine scent I understand bottled water or purifiers. Here the tap water is good. I have a couple of plastic bottles that originally had purchased water in them but are regularly refilled from the tap. And why do people suddenly think they must drink all day? What is this constant oral gratification thing, whether water or coffee? Would those people be smoking if they weren't sipping? Then there's the glut of bottles, not only on land but in the oceans. A whale might be carrying 100 pounds of plastic bottles in his stomach, or more. What a horrible thing to do to our noblest sea creature!

The ad world prospered pushing these and endless other extravagances -- like SUVs, like all that hair goop that crowds our drug stores, like all those household cleaners and detergents -- and now one lonely bank is trying to reverse the good old capitalist buy-buy-buy motto. Good luck, buddy. Yes, we need to save but people are losing faith in banks and don't have the money to save anyway.

I don't think that campaign is going to get very far with the younger set -- my definition of younger is under 50. It's we older ones, some of whom remember that hair doesn't have to be conditioned and gelled and sprayed after every shampoo, that family can all fit into a sedan, that coffee and tea can be brewed at home, cookies and even pizza can be made a home -- yes, and jam and hamburgers and blueberry pies. Not all gardens have to be organic. I grew up eating the beans, corn, tomatoes and potatoes from a garden that was sprayed occasionally to kill the bad bgs. Those poisons didn't poison me or anyone I know. Some of us remember a lot of "unspending" -- like making our own clothes, knitting scarves and even hanging clothes on a line in the backyard to dry in the sun. Maybe a little recession and a lot of global warming will teach us a few values -- but I really hope it won't be the big recession I hear rumbllings about and that the climate changes we already see will prompt creativity and thoughtfulness in solving the problems facing us. It's a lot to ask of several million people who lemming-like flock to the Disney parks for "fun" while turning inward to the iPod in their ears, and the cell phone to talk and text.

The Gap, defined by Pema Chodron

Breaking through our constant ego involvement is like a tiny bird, all cramped and twisted inside an egg, beginning to peak at the egg shell that he's feeling claustrophobic in. The situation could be better but it's SO hard. Of all the Tibetan Buddhists who write about meditation Pema Chodron is the clearest voice, the one I find mosst inspiring and understanding. In the current Shambhala Sun, the quarterly from Canada, she has a teaching that makes it SO easy. She writes of a GAP -- just three breaths, any time, any place, just THREE breaths during which you pause in your thought, pause and be where you are. Period. Simple. Pause. She says:

Any moment you could just listen ...you could put your full attention on the immediacy of your experience. ... You could just be here. Instead of being not here, instead of being absorbed in thinking, planning and worrying, instead of being caught up in the cocoon, cut off from our sense perceptions, cut off from the power and magic of the moment, you could be here... As soon as you do, you realize how big the sky is how big your mind is.

Why do we need/want to make gaps in our routine? Don't we need every waking second just to get along? Don't we need to plan and worry and dream and get on with life? Or do we waste a lot of time in mental static? From insight, I know I have an awful lot of mental static, reverie that some yoga books call"the chattering monkey." I think I've got a family of monkeys chattering in there. When I realized that was when the idea of meditation began to be appealing. But those old mental habits -- the cocoon, she talks about, which I think of more as an egg shell -- is hellishly hard to break out of. THREE BREATHS! I can do that sitting on the subway, drinking coffee, in a bathtub, doing yoga, whatever. As Pema says at the beginning of the article, "you know you will die but you really don't know how long you have to fulfill the potential of your precious human birth."

Shambhala Sun is a quarterly magazine, I find it is more down to earth than most others. This issue, September 2008, has an excellent article about dealing with climate change, offering new ways of thinking -- and if any problem needs new ways of thinking that is it. I'm savoring this magazine as I rarely savor the several I read, I imagine I'll be quoting a few other articles soon. Meanwhile I am trying to make gaps -- pecking away at what seems an enormous task of making a little hole in that egg shell.

Tibet-China Solution

On the op-ed page of today's NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff, a writer whose scope and values I have admired for a long time, presents his answer to the problem of Tibet and the Chinese occupation. He talked at length to the Dalai Lama who allowed him to write of compromises that HH is willing now to make. Kristoff offers his own version of what both sides would, in his view, need to agree about. It's sweeping on both sides.

I read it with wonder -- first of all at the chutzpah of a columnist, albeit a very involved and respected man -- to propose that two parties make such an agreement. Then at the naivete of thinking they would sit down and talk at all [the Chinese have been unwilling to do anything positive] and then the deeper naivete to think that if such an agreement were made between two heads of state that the terms would actually be carried out.

Yet -- how could a sincere and well meaning man as I am certain Kristoff is, NOT write this column? He has a far reaching proposal and if it lights even a small fire in the minds of the Chinese powers it might make a difference. Perhaps they will be receptive -- if not on the very eve of their Olympics, at least a bit later since Bush IS mouthing criticisms -- although also attending the Olympics. But for Bush to talk about human rights violations is laughable - what moral credibility the US used to have has been destroyed by Bush's administration.

Most of all, I'm glad the subject of Tibet is brought up again and again in the public discourse. If anything can staunch the bleeding wounds of that culture it has to be tried.

Comfort zone

One of the buzz words I hear often when I transcribe business people doing motivational talks is the term "comfort zone." Fear of leaving one's comfort zone is why we are resistant to change. Change implies we will probably be uncomfortable -- at least until we become comfortable with it. But only the very timid can be happy in the same old, same old famliar rut. Most of us want to try new things, if we don't we get bored. Strangely those business motivational types never utter the word "bored" and yet bored is a fairly pervasive state in most workplaces.

I'm not a motivaional speaker and I don't read self-help books, but I think, once we escape the tyranny of our school years, we become responsible for avoiding boredom. The world doesn't promise us rose gardens or freedom from boredom. If we want a rose garden, we'd better plant it and if we don't want to be bored, we'd better find out what interests us, and get involved even if that means rolling out of that comfort zone just as we've got to throw off the comfy blankets when the alark clock rings. Get up and get on with the day -- get on with our lives. Is that what those overpaid business consultants tell people to do when they say to step outside your comfort zone? Actually it seems they often mean try a new business approach that might fail but the current one is failing so try something new.

I might note, if anyone wonders why such a subject should be on my mind -- my job means I listen to a lot of people talk about a lot of subjects and some of it gnaws away at the edge of my mind. Today it was a woman exec telling others that to be successful they must sometimes give up their comfort zones. In that case it usually meant taking a different job, often a higher paying one in a somewhat different field.

The picture above is an elderly Chinese couple from Lijiang who asked to have their photo taken [then wanted, and got, a tip] -- I've lived through what seems like many changes in my comfort zones. When I think of this couple, I suspect they have lived through so many DIScomfort zones, we in our much more stable country can't even imagine. For me it is valuable to have seen people in many parts of the world who have had very different lives than I ... it gives perspective on "comfort" and much else.

Someone who is not a traveler, once read a poem I wrote about traveling in India The poem mentioned various uncomfortable situations. "Why go to someplace you'll be so uncomfortable?" she asked. I don't know what I said; I can't imagine not traveling somewhere interesting just because I will not have the familiar comforts. Isn't that how we understand the world and ourselves in a broader context?

A Few More Trees I Have Known and Loved

Tess's note [on the previous post] set me ruminating again about trees I have known well -- we could do the same with foods, houses, clothes, cars ... and of course people. I wonder if young people today with their regulated "play dates" and school pressures and hours on Facebook or My Space and TV and fairly constant input of music via Ipod or boombox or their own guitars -- doesn't every house with a teenager have at least one guitar? -- do they have a feeling for the trees in their life?

The picture above is a willow. We had a big willow by the driveway. I thought it was the most graceful tree in the world. I was told willows originally came from China and I saw them in the designs of the plates and saucers in Blue Willow pattern that we had.

Mainly Tess's writing note reminded me that neighbors had a quince tree and my mother once made quince jelly. I didn't like the quince very much, it seemed tasteless and a bit coarse compared to apples. But I was not then a fruit gourmet because there was a huge [or so it seemed] pear tree in our yard which I climbed often. I ate the green pears, not because I was hungry, and not because they were delicious, simply because they were there -- and sometimes I got stomach aches because of it. We did not have an apple tree but I do remember apples with worms in them, it always seemed more of a tragedy for the worm than for me when I found one in an apple.

Not a tree but a berry experience -- there were patches of wild blackberries and raspberries in out woods which my mother used to go pick and I sometimes went along. We always made sure to take whatever dog we had at the time because we were both afraid of snakes in the thick brambles and the dog's crashing about usually following a rabbit's scent would scare the snakes away. It must have been true for I don't remember ever actually seeing a snake in the brambles. Those berries were SO good! The cobblers Mom made with them were my favorite summer dessert.

There's a great temptation to wish children today could have such experiences and I'm sure thare are still many rural places where they do. Rural kids generally feel they are missing the excitement in the world. I suppose we have to get older to count these experiences among the fine things of life. Then, too, some people are attuned to nature and some not. Lots of young people are interested in ecology, biology and the like ... tree hugging, mentally or physically is a fine thing. Oh, and Treebeard, the Ent, was one of my favorite creatures in The Lord of the Rings.

Trees I have known

A couple weekends ago when I was visiting upstate, as I wrote on my my other blog we went to the Saugerties lighthouse which has a deck behind it that is virtually over the Hudson. Growing at one end of the deck is a mulberry tree. A. picked some of the ripe berries and shared them with me. "Are these blackberries?" he asked [a city-boy born and bred]. "No, mulberries. My grandmother had a tree. I remember eating them, staining my hands and bare feet because so many had fallen on the ground, and my clothes too. I made 'ink' from their juice." The words just popped out, all facts that came back to me in a rush. I thought also about seeing a mulberry tree on 91st Street near Columbus and another in Central Park near the skating rink. "They look like blackberries," he said. "Yes, but blackberries grow on brambles."

I've been thinking about mulberries which I've just read are spread throughout the US and grow prolifically. Why aren't the berries used in jam or pie or eaten with cream? Why aren't they a cultivated crop? They're very delicious when ripe. I've been thinking too about the validity of my memory. I cannot place that "remembered" tree. Which grandmother's house? I trust the spontaneity of my memory but most of my memories have a very vivid place-picture.

For instance I remember gathering black walnuts in a specific pasture. My father was there with a milk bucket and I think my mother also. The walnuts had a rough green covering with icky "fruit" between it and the nut. I was told one could use the outer part for dying fabric brown It dyed bare hands brown too and did not wash off for some time. We let the nuts dry for a while and ate them usually on quiet Sunday afternoons. My father had a flat stone, perhaps six inches across. He would lay the nut on it and hit it with a hammer to open it. The shells were thick, sometime it took several hammer blows to get all the meat. I thought these were much more delicious than the hickory nuts we also collected. Black walnuts are another food that seems to have disappeared. They've been replaced by the dull, uninteresting English walnuts.

That same afternoon we spoke of mulberries, we passed another familiar tree. "That's a plane tree," my companion said. "In Indiana we called it a syacamore," I said. "You can tell by how the bark peels off," he said.

Again I agreed and said, "For a long time I read about plane trees in writing about central Asia and wondered what they looked like, I was happy to find out that plane trees and sycamores are the same." There's a row of them in Central Park west of the boat basin at the upper 70s along the drive in the park. I always get a warm, slightly nostalgic feeling when I see them.

We seemed to be stuck on trees for a while. "People say they don't like ginkgos because they stink," he said. "They stink like vomit -- but only for a couple of weeks," I said. "Ginkgos have male and female and the famale has berries with pits inside that are used by the Chinese for medicine." "For memory," he said. "Ginkgo biloba." The berries fall of and I've seen Chinese women in Central Park with plastic gloves on as they gather the berries into buckets." "They have beautiful leaves," he said. "Yes. But the ones in my neighborhood are not pretty trees, they are very awkward with branches going every which way. They are among the oldest trees in the world -- before the dinosaurs.'

Trees -- we who are not desert people take them for granted. We glance at them and forget that they were wonderful when we were small. Maybe remember climbing a favorite one, maybe even having a tree house -- or wishing we had a tree house. Naybe we remember falling out of one and getting hurt. Sometimes, it's good to stop and think about trees. I could write, easily, at least 10,000 words about "trees I have known and loved" It's good, on a Sunday afternoon, to let the mind drift over those strong, silent parts of our world, they remain wonder-full to this day.