The Sound of Rain

The early days: arugula sprouts in the pot; the tray is half arugula, half flowers. In the windowbox, the peas have just sprouted.

I live in Brooklyn now, and once again have a one bedroom apartment all to myself (halleluiah!). Money’s tight, but I’ve been building up an assortment of plants again. In San Francisco I had lots of plants, and even got a couple of them to flower. It helps my mood to have plants around.

This time, I’ve added a few food-source plants, as an experiment. I’m interested in urban farming and the idea that cities and towns, and even households, can become more self-sufficient. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could grow something edible in spite of that. Keep reading »

So, how are your New Year’s resolutions going?

New Year’s resolutions are bullshit, mostly. Everyone goes to the gym for a few weeks, if that, and by February we’re all back to our same old selves. It’s one of the many things I hate about the holidays, that all that stress and expense and schlepping ends with the renewed knowledge that I suck at my own life.

I’ve made the same resolutions every year for close to a decade. Some have been with me since high school. I no longer make formal resolutions, but every new year that rolls around finds me pondering that same old list, that same old self’s desire for a new self. The old, the new. The familiar, the possible.

Alan Watts pointed out that the phrase “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” originally referred to an action that is obviously, ridiculously impossible. I just googled it, and found an article that traces it back to an old story about Davy Crockett, legendary King of the Wild Frontier, pulling himself over a fence by his bootstraps. Only the America of the 20^th century could change the meaning of the phrase into something everyone is supposed to be able to do, or else feel ashamed.

Watts’ point is that self-improvement is like trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. How do you improve yourself, when all you have to work with is … the self that needs improvement?

Yet people do change. It’s not impossible; it’s just really, really hard.  I’ve changed over the years, and I’ve achieved at least some of that change by just chipping away at that crusty old self.

The old patterns that helped us when we needed help, we now have trouble letting go. Some part of us is scared and doesn’t think that change is a good idea. To change the self, to do those things we know are to our long-term benefit, those things we want to have done, those changes in habit that we know will help us be who we want to be – that effort is worth making. But it’s hard.

Most of us are familiar with this struggle. It makes me think of words like resolve. And persistence. And resilience.

That last one is important. You have to be able to fail, and then try again. Over. And over. And over.

This isn’t one of those “Fail better” articles. This is just a cry into the internet wilderness:

It’s hard. I know. Hang in there.

As part of my quest to read every apocalyptic novel ever published, I’ve just finished Riddley Walker by John Russell Hoban (1980). It was recommended to me by a co-worker, and I can’t believe I’d never heard of it before. In case you don’t know it either, it takes place in England roughly two thousand years after planet-wide nuclear holocaust, and the whole thing is written in a dialect Hoban invented, a guess at what the people of Kent might sound like at such time. Keep reading »

There are two ways to lose your mother. Actually there are many more than that, but let’s assume that she’s a good woman and you love her and want her around. You can lose her when you’re very young, and never know an adult relationship with her, and have very few, precious memories that you hardly dare think about for fear of wearing them out – that’s where I am. Or, you can lose her when you’re both older, when you’ve had way more history with her, and maybe conflicts and complications, and way more opportunity than I ever had to get to know her and love her.  Keep reading »

When I was a child, I made a conscious decision never to lie to myself. No matter how forbidden or unwelcome the thought, I would never try to hide from myself that I had thought it.

All kinds of things occur to a person. You can’t help what thoughts occur to you; all you can do is keep yourself from acting on thoughts that are unacceptable, such as, the desire to kill someone who’s hurt you in a relationship. The thoughts themselves are not under your conscious control. That I recognized this early in life made it easier, in a way, for me to do zazen or sitting meditation. I know I can’t stop the thoughts from coming; what I can do is stop myself from grabbing onto them.

All of this effort to be honest, though, may very well be a contributing factor in my lifelong, chronic depression.  Keep reading »

There’s a famous zen story that you may have heard before. It’s a very old story. I’ll put a woman in it instead of a man, just because.

A woman is running from a tiger that’s chasing her. She runs through the woods until she gets to the edge of a cliff. The tiger is still behind her, so she climbs down a vine. The tiger reaches the top of the cliff and paces back and forth, licking its chops. Midway down the cliff, hanging onto the vine, she sees another tiger below her, pacing back and forth, licking its chops. As she’s hanging there, two mice come out and start gnawing on the vine. She tries to shoo them away, but they won’t go.  Keep reading »

Today is my birthday, March 1, which makes me a Pisces if you’re into that kind of thing. I’m not doing much, just took the day off from work and plan to go shoot some pool with friends later tonight.

I kind of hate birthdays, but not for the reasons you might think. I don’t even much like other people’s birthdays, and can never remember the dates. I don’t think anyone in my family has ever received a birthday card from me on time, and I seldom buy them for friends. I feel guilty about this, because I know other people do like birthdays. I just really, really don’t.

Keep reading »

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m obsessed with the apocalypse. It’s hard not to think about it these days, what with all the apocalyptic movies out – The Road, 2012, The Book of Eli, Legion, etc. – and all the books and media interest in the Mayan calendar ending in 2012, not to mention large-scale disasters, which used to come along once in a lifetime, now happening every few years.

History is thick with cultures and religions that believed in apocalypse, and not just us wacky westerners (google Hopi Prophecy if you’re into that kind of thing). Doesn’t that make it something ingrained in us, perhaps something genetic?

Keep reading »

I simply cannot resist a bad food pun.

Seitan is vital wheat gluten (so poison for those with gluten intolerance), as unappetizing a phrase as it is a concept. It’s pretty unappetizing for most of the preparation, too. But oh my god, it totally rocks!

I am so excited about this. At last, a protein that acts like meat (but isn’t), and is really easy to make! If I can do it, I swear, anybody can. I present the following for seitan newbies who might be wondering if this is hard to do, or for those who’ve started and are now wondering if something’s gone horribly wrong.

Keep reading »

I finally know what I want to be when I grow up.

I’ve had an epiphany. I’m going back to school for Environmental Studies, and I want to be involved in sustainability planning for communities. Ta da!

Only took me twenty years to figure that out. I’ve never been particularly interested in anything specific as a job, except writing novels. And I certainly don’t give a crap about a career just for the sake of a career. Associate manager to manager to senior manager to associate director to director to senior director – who cares? Do any of those people actually enjoy what they do every day?

Keep reading »