World’s Strongest Librarian

Josh Hanagarne has written a superb memoir in The World’s Strongest Librarian.  He’s been keeping a fantasticly interesting blog, too.  Same name. http://worldsstrongestlibrarian.com/

I love a book that makes me think, makes me question myself, and makes me look up stuff.

Hanagarne is so refreshingly open and vulnerable throughout the whole book.  This is evidence (hey, writers, pay attention!!) that the more personal and specifically you write, the more likely others are able to identify with you and your book.  Counterintuitive only at a glance; when you think about it, it underlines the universality of the human experience.

He writes, “A mind that no longer questions only fulfills the rudimentary aspects of its function. A mind without wonder is a mere engine, a walking parasympathetic nervous system, seeing without observing, reacting without thinking, a forgotten ghost in a passive machine.”

 

Where does my attention go?

I am at work and cleaning the cup that held my morning “green juice.”  I splashed it on me at the sink.

stain

Now most of my attention is on how messy I look and when can I leave and go buy another shirt and what will others think of the stain.  Pirates obviously leave green slime behind.  Tasty and nutritious, but messy.

The practice now comes from working to shift my point-of-view.  How would I feel if I saw this on another person?  Would I care?  Absolutely not.  Who said, “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”???

So, the mind and the body do the thinking

Days Without Pirate Attack:

Days Without Pirate Attack:

I wasn’t patient enough to deal with a confluence of after-work traffic, over-indulgent parents heading to the “Little Gym,” and my own fatigue to not lose my temper yesterday.  Fortunately, I was on my way to a massage, which helped significantly.  Next day, I read an interesting article in Discover magazine.  The entire article is here, Where do Thoughts Occur? By Christie Aschwanden

The interesting premise is that some research indicates our body is necessary for complex thought.   This is a fascinating concept:

“In one study, Lee and a colleague exposed volunteers to different odors. When they did, they found that getting a whiff of a fishy odor evoked feelings of suspicion; likewise, when research participants were exposed to another person behaving suspiciously, they were better able to detect a fishy scent.

The range of findings demonstrating embodied cognition is impressive. A small sampling: Looking upward nudges people to call to mind others who are more powerful, while looking down prompts thoughts of people we outrank.

People judge a petition to be more consequential if it is handed to them on a heavy clipboard rather than a lightweight one. Baseball players with high batting averages perceive the ball as bigger than poorer hitters. And Botox injections that prevent frowning also slow people’s comprehension of sentences describing angry and sad events.”   (I have to let my sister know about that last one.)

Perhaps a tool I can use is to “Smile until you feel happy.”  Or look for body gestures and positions that I associate with kind a patient people.  Some food for thought today.

Body Archeology

My highest recommendation for body work in the Madison area goes to Gregory at Body Archeology.  This past week I had an amazing session with him.  He spent the time discussing my body history (my words, not his) and needs.  We decided it would be best if he work intuitively during our session, with whichever modality he felt would be right.  Most importantly, I was willing.

He included massage, trigger points, reiki, reflexology, and other techniques I can barely remember.  I surrendered to the experience and opened the door to whatever beliefs would arise.  My most profound ah-ha was that I sometimes used my body to protect others and my self (two words intentional).  I don’t have to do that anymore.  I am safe.   I am tearing up as I remember the experience.

Gregory creates a hugely generous and accepting space from the time you walk in the door until long after you get home.  After leaving the building I wandered about the Capitol Square for a while in the drizzle feeling a rare combination of expansion and wooziness.

He’s very busy, but is definitely worth the wait.

Over a week!

I don’t have a number icon for that long without pirate attack.  What I’ve been doing is:

1.  Deciding to be nice when I get in the car in the driveway each morning.  I have a little OCD about the garage door, so I have to stop in the road, turn back, look at the closed garage door and do a sort-of “jazz hands” and say, “Closed!”  Sometimes I say it two or three times.  (I have to do this, really.  Otherwise, I’ll get blocks away and panic and have to go back and make sure the door is closed.  sigh.)  Now when I turn to go forward, I say, “I’m nice today.”

The most interesting beliefs I’ve found that come up after saying, “I’m nice today,” is that I believe nice people aren’t: cool, sophisticated, intelligent, etc.  How did we get to the cultural beliefs that being a disdainful, snarky, smart-ass is better than being loving and kind?  This feeling makes me want to cry.

2. Write haiku in my head while I’m driving.  Haiku (5/7/5) can be about anything, but traditionally describes nature or uses nature as metaphor.  The great 17th century poet, Basho wrote mostly about natural subjects and I can easily see him (today) driving along an Alabama highway composing “A field of cotton”:

A field of cotton

A field of cotton–
as if the moon
had flowered.

I can also see that he had his own pirate attacks to deal with:

The morning glory also

The morning glory also
turns out
not to be my friend.

A worthy goal, don’t you think — to emulate Basho?

 

 

And I was doing so well!

Over a week of calm, awareness gone in blink.  I want to understand this.

Days Without Pirate Attack:

Days Without Pirate Attack:

Again, the pirate attack came while driving. I was trying to pass a dump truck (that’s reasonable, right?) but couldn’t because the explative** driving the vehicle in front of me (in the left/passing lane) rode alongside the dump truck (la dee dah dee dah). When I flashed my lights she flipped me off. Could have been a man, but the license plate was “IDONAILS” so I probably guessed correctly.

She hit the brakes, though, and her spite gave me enough room to zip around and in front of her and the truck. (Wow. As I read that I see the competitiveness underlying the interaction.) I zoomed off and only then did I catch myself and acknowledge my own behavior. At the same time, though, I was justifying my triumph over someone with obvious neurological damage from all the methyl methacrylate she inhales daily.

Why does this get me so often? I need a way to catch myself before the pirates overrun the ship.

“I’m just trying to show up and be a good worker”

I DVR Charlie Sheen’s new show, Anger Management. I like it. (I keep hoping for hints for my own anger issues.) Watching a show last week, I was pleased to see Brett Butler in a small, supporting role. She discusses her hiatus articulately in a NY Times article. Many parts resonated with me, but especially her self-awareness!

“And now, 15 years later, Ms. Butler is slowly making her return to television. “She’s awesome,” said Mr. Sheen, who shares a manager, Mark Burg, with Ms. Butler. “Seriously, I think she’s forgotten what a comedic genius she is.” Sobriety, finally achieved after some attempts at rehab and what Ms. Butler regards as divine intervention, wasn’t the hardest part, she says now. It was coming to terms with the damage she’d caused, to others certainly, but mostly to herself.

“I don’t recommend journeys of forced enlightenment,” she said. “I spent a long time trying to dig my way out of being unforgiven for how bad I’d been in Hollywood. I would meet people I’d never met before, and they’d say, ‘I hear you’re a monster.’ ”

She spent the first few years after “Grace Under Fire” in what she calls a self-imposed exile, rarely leaving her house, rejecting the few offers of work that came her way.

“I thought maybe by taking myself away from everything I was good at, or punishing myself, it would correct something in the universe,” she said. “But that didn’t help anybody.” ”

It’s enlightening; read the entire article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/arts/television/brett-butler-on-charlie-sheens-anger-management.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Sunshine, daffodils, and awareness

Days Without Pirate Attack:

Days Without Pirate Attack:

“Resistance is the force maintaining the personality you’ve been duped into believing is who you are.” – Cheri Huber

This recent email from Cheri was just too good and too deep to pass up the chance to keep it moving in the universe! She goes on to say, “The danger is that we see the whole process, but we continue to stay in the system. In other words, we fail to recognize that not only have we been wearing lenses, but the process by which we “see” is also part of the system. When we think we see clearly, it is still the ego-identity that is seeing “clearly.” So, yes, the lenses are off, but we have not yet dropped the process that creates and maintains the illusion that we are a “someone” seeing.

We’re meant to believe that “sometimes I’m identified, but most of the time I know what’s going on” That’s the lens—and that’s the process that keeps the lens in place! “You” don’t resist; the ego-identity illusion resists.

Removing that lens positions us to see the immensity of the fiction we’ve been living in. Waking up and ending suffering is the realization that there is no “someone” “doing” any of it, there’s only the process of the illusion of a separate self resisting Life.

This realization dissolves the Great Human Conundrum, the moral, spiritual, ethical puzzle confronting human beings for as long as there have been human beings asking that most profound of all questions: What??? What the heck is going on? How is this happening? How is it that I so consistently do not choose what I value and instead choose what I do not value? I want this and yet consistently do that. How are these decisions made? How is this possible?

You get the picture.

The simple, nearly incomprehensible, deeply unbelievable to conditioned mind answer to all those questions: What you think of as you, what you’re told is you, what you believe is you, what you refer to as you, is not “you.””

For more information, books, and links to Cheri’s work go to http://sanghamarket.org/keepitsimple/

What’s Driving this Attack?

Days Without Pirate Attack:

Days Without Pirate Attack:

I used to say, “I wouldn’t have to drive angry, if you didn’t drive stupid.”

I know that no one else controls my response, but I have a deeply ingrained habit to blame the “didn’t signal – won’t move over – changed lanes onto me – talking on the phone” men and women who impact my drives.

I’ve learned about myself that driving is an activity where I can blame others (shout and cuss angrily) and still feel safe, as I have my car and movement to protect me (belief!). Would I behave the same way in the Qwik-Trip if someone deep in thought walked right up to a clerk when I’d been waiting with my eggs and tortilla chips? No, I wouldn’t. We are more polite to each other with physical presence (belief!). It’s like the space and vehicle take away the human connection (belief!).

I feel like I am a better driver than most others (belief!). Shifting point-of-view, I realize it is possible that others see me the same way as I do them, since I tend to be a very aggressive driver (belief!). As I write this, all I can think of is, “and why does this matter so much to me?”

Read it Out Loud

Days Without Pirate Attack:

Days Without Pirate Attack:

Reading poetry aloud is a great practice.  My preference is ecstatic poetry or any poet who writes about nature.  I really enjoy Hafiz’ poetry.  Hafiz full name is Khwaja Shams ud-Din Hafiz-i Shirazi, d. 1389.  He was a Persian/Iranian poet and the master of the poetic form, ghazal.

Two qualities I love in Hafiz’ poetry:  (1) He addresses himself in the third person and (2) He opens up with complete vulnerability.  It is important to note that, while these poems can be interpreted for human-relationship love, in Sufi poetry “Beloved” is a reference to God.

Even if our world is turned upside down and blown over by the wind,

If you are doubtless, you won’t lose a thing.

 O Hafiz, if it is union with the Beloved that you seek,

Be the dust at the Wise One’s door, and speak!

“School of Truth,” from: Drunk On the Wind of the Beloved – Translated by Thomas Rain Crowe

My own favorite is “I Know The Way You Can Get”.   It’s the best for describing how I feel when the pirates attack.  But when I read him aloud, they’re banished!

You might pull out a ruler to measure

From every angle in your darkness

The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once

Trusted.

“I know the Way You Can Get,” from:  I Heard God Laughing – Renderings of Hafiz – Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

 

Good websites with Hafiz poetry: http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/hafiz.html#anchor_16107 or http://www.thesongsofhafiz.com/hafizpoetry.htm