The Zen of Driving

It's been a long week since Monday started it with a funeral for my dear friend's father. My commute takes me for a good long drive into Manhattan where I don't leave until late, late at night, but on yesterday's trip in I decided to try something a little different than my usual listening to French Radio (I'm trying to reteach myself the language), Audible's recorded books, or just letting my mind wander on any ol' subject that happens along, which with the attention span of a knat, can span the universe and back; I decided to 'just drive' this trip. In Zen there is the concept of just doing that which you are doing so that when you are eating, you are just eating. It's practicing mindfulness and being in the moment, so when you are driving you're just driving the car, you're not playing the radio, thinking about your ex or the dead bits of poor wee mousie that your cats thought you would like but you didn't, or that your coffee is probably cool enough to drink now.
So I tried just to drive the car.
It was weird as I suddenly realized all the things I have been doing when driving the car besides actually driving the car. Stopping myself when I started thinking about things has always been a challenge as it is for everyone during Zazen or Meditation, but I figured I'd be more involved with the driving so that it would be a tad easier, but driving is almost an auto-pilot thing that it felt more like just sitting in a seat while the car drives it self so very little was different other than movement from regular meditation.
One of the reasons I tried this is that I find myself quite easily irked by other drivers as I am convinced Long Island and New York City is the home of the most selfish of all humans on the face of the Earth - except for maybe LA, but I didn't have to drive in traffic in LA. When I get on the road, I'm always frustrated by the folks who tail gait, cut you off, won't let you in, won't let you merge, etc. I'm often beyond irked and get my panties in a twist about it and I loathe anger and wish to avoid it if at all possible. There are, after all, times when it is appropriate, but I'd like to be in charge of my emotions not victim to them. As it is now, I do what they tell me and when they say 'jump', I ask how high. I am their bitch; it's true. But at 40 something, this has become tiresome and I'd like to just wave goodbye as they sail off into the sunset so I can then get down to the real business of getting my life back; getting healthy, producing art, help others and finding moments of joy again.
I made it the whole way into work working on 'just driving'. I noticed things I'd not seen before on my previous 3,000 other trips on I-495, buildings I'd not seem and details I'd not noticed. Every time I started thinking about something instead of just driving, I'd bring my mind back to the driving and try again. There is no right or wrong with meditation, but a constant practice to be in the now and return to it when you start focusing on the past and the future. Another interesting discovery was that it made me slightly anxious for some reason and that makes me want to examine it further. I am quite fond of the quiet when it is filled with nature, birds, wind, etc. as those things soothe me, but the quiet of the car was very different. I'll have to do it again on my trip in Tuesday so I can pinpoint what it is a little better.
Most people are afraid of the quiet and where their thoughts go, but I think if we face those things we stand a significant chance of freeing ourselves from them. I've been looking into Zen and meditation because often I feel I've had quite a bit stripped away from me ( except round the waist line :-) ) and that I needed a way to be at peace and to accept where I am in order to deal with it or leave it behind for something better. This is a journey towards recovery and learning to be happy with what you have. Making it an adventure makes it more enjoyable as I have tried the 'simply endure it' method and that one clearly sucked. Now if only I could get it to where I battle real monsters and have clear ideas about what to do, etc. like 'take sword, kill big ugly monster that is trying to kill you and live happily ever after or until next monster.' But things are never that black and white outside of Fairy Tales. Even in math where that might be plausible, given quantum theory and space time bending, parallel lines do eventually meet. Doesn't that blow your mind?

The circle of life.

The older we get the more we see those we know and love grow old as well. Today, I attended the funeral of a dear friend whose father passed away. The open casket thing always weirds me out a little bit as I keep expecting them to move some little tiny bit and their lips are so tightly sewn together that they look as if they are trying hard not to say something. And, of course since I am the world's nosiest person, I want to know what that something is; the answer to life, the universe and everything? Which is 42 for all you Hitchhiker's Guide fans. What he would have liked to have said now that there are no consequences? A summation of the life he lead?
My friend was having a really hard time and did his best to keep his emotions under control, but you could see how intense the grief was for him. I wish there was more I could have done.
There was good turn out of mutual friends and so nice to see some of them I'd not seen in almost 2 years despite the fact a few live only 5-8 miles from me. Working odd hours and their having wives and kids and day jobs makes finding common free time near impossible. They all look the same, but more adult. Myself, I remain remarkably immature despite the shock of gray hair at the hairline of my forehead. It's started there and is slowly working towards the back. If I wear a hair band, it's like I've a black wig over the gray. Gotta find the time to dye the damned thing.

After the funeral, I ran some errands had a coffee with my buddy Jim and an early meal with the folks at a diner. Now I'm completely shot and think a nice cocktail and maybe a movie is a good way to end the day, but there's so much crap that gets left for the days off that when I sleep through the my 1st day off after the work week, I have to cram it all into the next day and there's not enough time to do it all AND try and have any sort of social life.

I used to be a very very social adrenaline junkie. I'd spend my weekends sailing (single handing even when I owned a boat) or scuba diving with the good folk at Captain Mike's Dive Shop in the Bronx, or playing with the 1979 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce' I owned and restored a number of years back or just hanging with friends and going hiking, drinking, what have you. Then I did a wreck dive on the U.S.S San Diego and did not compensate for the steel tank when I put my weight belt on and over weighted myself so that trying to climb up the ladder in very rough seas did something that herniated two discs in my lower back and from then on not only give me lower back pain but pinched some nerves that send pain down the back of my legs (one or the other, sometimes both) that is like the pain of hitting your funny bone or the pain you feel when your leg falls asleep and there is a feeling that comes after the pins and needle part stops that feels like the muscles are constricting or cramping severely for a moment. However, the pain I get in the back of my legs, this constricting of the muscles and cramping feeling isn't quick. It goes on and on and no amount of stretching or Tylenol, Ibuprophen will stop it. It literally drives me mad, bringing me to tears or spending half the night up walking around trying to 'stretch out' this horrendous pain. I've always had a high tolerance to pain, but this one literally bring me to my knees. Then add Lupus and Fibromyalgia to the mix and I bet it would make Arnold Schwarzanegger whimper like a little girly man.
The Lupus started showing signs in blood tests many years ago, but I hadn't had any 'flair ups' of any significance. But shortly after 9/11 I got Epstein Barr from working 50 hours a week and going to school full-time which brought on severe exhaustion and Fibromyalgia started often leaving me looking like I was drunk I was so tired. Having unknowingly herniating my neck (one major herniation that has left a permanent muscles in my neck and shoulder) and two bulges were from the end of 2001 when I tried to go skiing without having a cocktail before hand. I know what you're thinking. You'd have broke your neck if you'd been drinking, but I learned a long time ago, that since skiing kind of scares me a little since I'm super bad at it and my skis were wrong for me, but I was too cheap to get new ones, I do better when I have a drink or two since I loosen up and my fear of being out of control minimizes and I do a lot better. I realize this isn't logical, but of the many times I've gone skiing I've always found it to be so. Therefore when I wiped out and whacked my head so hard on the ground despite having tucked my chin to my chest and tried to break my fall, it still slammed into the earth and I was on my back facing up the mountain! I must have flipped in the air somehow. So feeling like I'd been chewed up and spat out I went into the bar and had a few gin and tonics and went back out to do 10 more runs which were 100% better - faster, more controlled, easier and I felt that I wasn't leaving the mountain with it having beaten me.
When I got up the next day and couldn't move my neck left or right without serious pain, I know that mountain had one and I was never going to be a good skier. It wasn't until years later when I started feeling the effects of the Lupus and Fibromyalgia that I got MRIs and saw all the damage. They had asked me if I was ever in an accident, and I'd said no. I had always thought of an accident as a car accident and was defined by not being able to get up and walk away from it. Having gotten up and walked away from all the horseback riding crashes and skiing ones, I never thought of them as having an accident, just pulling a muscle here and there. I figured I played rough and occasionally I was going feel it, but this was something new, and after the lower back herniations from diving was when the Lupus began showing its what it was capable of: exhaustion and pain like I'd never known before and wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Soon the diving stopped and then later after a year or so the hiking and the even the kayaking slowed down significantly. It was hard to get to work every day (the hellish commute didn't help) and I was just too tired and hurt too much to do very much. And in a year, everything in my life had changed and was turned upside down, and all the things I did to blow off steam, make me happy and gave me something to look forward to - defined me - was gone. Now after 5 years, I'm still not used to no longer being the me I used to be and I continue to try to find a way to find the girl I used to be. This is my adventure. It seems I am to learn how to take crap and use it as fertilizer instead of just being knee deep in stinking filth. It's going to be interesting to see exactly what I can do to give my life meaning and bring back the joy I used to feel in a new and different way. Here we go...

And So IT begins...

It has been suggested that I start a blog. However, for so long the thought of it has filled me with anxiety. What if so and so reads this? What if I say something really stupid, which I am famous for, and it gets me in heaps of trouble? What if I bore myself to death because I don't really have anything to say?
Lots of What-ifs, but I can try it out and see how I feel about it and then I can decide if I wanna tell anyone I know I am finally giving into what is decidedly a very self-centered act. While I am quite self absorbed, I often am not comfortable with being so self-centered as it is significantly louder, and I have become a bit more tempered as I hit my 40's.

So for what it is worth, here I am. I'm in my 40's, as I've mentioned, I share a very tiny apt. in the middle of nowhere with 4 not-so-feral-anymore cats that were dumped on me by their mother before she split town, for apparently the great catnip pasture in the sky the poor dear. I'd tried for so long not to be the 'crazy cat lady' and only had one cat, more of a significant other, often called Sim for short. Sim and I moved into this little tiny spec of an apt on some wet lands after my relationship hit the rocks. I figured it would be a wonderful place to meditate and soak up nature, listen to the birds and lick my wounds of a 'he just ain't that into you' that went on two years longer than the four + years it was in existence- we tend to beat dead horses in my family. Soon a calico feral cat came around talking her head off and asking for a bite to eat here and there explaining that she'd got herself in the 'family way' and was all on her own and just beside herself over it all. Sim and I felt a little sorry for her so we didn't chase her off like we should have and soon she got so round it was a wonder she didn't stagger from the weight shifting! And after she'd suckered us in, she gave birth to 6 kittens. As life is hard and damned unfair, 3 years later there are now 5 cats living of the original 6 and both Maa Preggers (the hussy mother of the brood) and Sim have both passed away - Sim from kidney failure at 18 years of age. Now for roommates I have Kagome', Fleur, Pumpkin and Fuzzbutt; they are beautiful healthy sweet rag doll type cats who are weary of my intentions at times and dumber than a box of rocks! Sim was remarkably intelligent and compared to the Plume-tail Gang, as I refer to them as, a rocket scientist compared to a bunch of sugar amped 3 year olds. Yet, I've grown used to them and they me and each night we get in bed and they hunker up next to me, turn over on their backs and demand tummy rubs. There is no logic here.

So, this is a little bit about me a crazy cat lady of the wetlands.