Ibsit Invidia

Once upon a time, there was a king who sought to banish all pain, sickness, and death from his kingdom. Now this story, though old, is not alien. It defines the consciousness of all ages, a very human quest for an impossible utopia. This story illuminates, like few others, the importance and inevitability of all that Pandora let loose on the mortal world.

I do not remember the first time I read this story; as long as I can remember, I could rattle it by rote. So this story is not new to me. Yet every time I have been brought before it, it has affected me. It is an ancient tale, the definition of happiness very superficial, yet amazingly, it resonates with undiluted power. Our mythologies have sharpened and shaped our fears, our pain in so many forms, some sacred, some obscene, yet others that are neither. Systems of belief insist on logical connections between the profane and the ills our flesh is heir to, even provide methodologies to keep ailment at bay.

The Gita points out that what causes fear is the imagination of a circumstance rather than the circumstance itself, and so what needs to be addressed is one's imagination, not avoidance of a circumstance. The Ramayana counsels to embrace all circumstances with equanimity, presenting as role model a prince who accepts crown and banishment with the same smile. However, I find it impossible to live up to these very simple, very wise ideas. I find it impossible to react in the same way to the birth of my daughter and the loss of my son; the only similarity in those reactions is the intensity of almost exactly opposite feelings. My nightmares abound with imagined horrors that I am unable to control.

I suppose this is the reason why the old story speaks so clearly. This morning episode of Buddha addressed this part of the story. I had never thought what it would mean to banish all suffering from a city. It was a horrifying picture. Old age, sickness, pain are woven in the fabric of life, along with youth and good health. Ripping the two apart would loosen unimaginable hells, rob all that makes sense in organized civilizations. Children would languish for grandmothers' tales; sons and daughters would worry about their infirm parents; families would not be allowed to care for sick loved ones; young children, missing grandparents, could be reunited with them only if they were diseased enough. Flourishing households, torn apart, would wither away, like a city of insects deprived of their shade of a felled tree. The episode ended with the image of the infant prince weeping helplessly in his sleep at this heavy loss to his land.

 I find myself blaming the king for his short sightedness. However, upon reflection, I am guilty of something similar: I too have wanted to banish all suffering from my child's life. In fact, I count my failures in terms of horrors, disappointments, heartaches, and illnesses I have been unable to keep away from her. Today, I ask if I have done her any favors by trying to protect her; I, too, want her to be a feared and respected conqueror of lands, rather than a wise ascetic her peers jeer at.

This post goes out as a prayer to the universe, for strength to accept (if not welcome) whatever awaits. I am counting on old stories to hold my hand and light my household when evening insists on advancing, when night seems unending. I pray for eyes enough to discern the twilight of dawn from dusk and remember the importance of both in a fully lived day.

Well-Watered

There is a tree in the center of some of my stories. This tree stands near a well. All around these two swirl the many tales that need to be told, that once told, perch on a branch, like wish-threads, anchored, yet weaving in the passing breeze. Even though I have fastened a few, my basket of untold stories seems to be just as full as it was when I first began telling of the tree and the well.

Sometimes, this defeats me. I cannot imagine how I am to get words enough for these tales, if my life time, with its too, too many demands, will be long enough. Somehow that worries me more than availability of a receptive audience for the stories. The beings that live in, around, before and away from the tree nag me, haunt me, insist that I tell, though I don't know to what end. I don't think that these tales have any edifying value, or provide an insight about how one may improve oneself or enrich one's life. In fact, the stories are more dusky twilight than golden dawn. Worse, they offer no apologies for their dark hues.

I make a deliberate effort to help each story to stand on its own, a valid entity irrespective of the larger tapestry it helps weave. I explain to the tales that they all should be independent, as though they were my girl children and I, their concerned parent, were trying to impress upon them the importance of good grades that they may support themselves and their offspring instead of relying on their future wife-selves. However, they wish for nothing more than to gather near the well, sit cross legged beneath the spreading shade of their tree. No matter how far I have them wander, when I look behind, I find them clustered around their well, like Grimms' Twelve Months.

I hope to pass muster as I seek their guidance. I shall make an effort to be polite and offer them what poor nourishment my pockets hold. Most of all, I shall try to listen very closely to their riddles. After all, I could scarcely hope for a better map, no matter how dark or labyrinthine my wooded path!
 

Unkindness of Hope

The thing of feathers has been playing unkind games. The idea of hope has no connotations of cruelty, except when it is accompanied by border less, undefined waiting. The greatest challenge of this month has been to escape this thing of feathers. But how does one keep it from alighting, from digging its claws into the very soul?

The electrician working on my burnt house has very kind eyes that urged me to believe when he said that they'd begin working on the walls in a week, so I'd better hurry up and buy the water heater and kitchen lights. That was three weeks ago and the cold debris in my demolished house remains undisturbed. In spite of numerous calls, no one seems to know anything about the house. I remain amazed at the unconcern my stars have for the being whose lot they decide as they whirl and spin about their celestial play grounds. Maybe there IS no design to their playing and dancing; maybe my perception of a design was my own hubris, my own need to believe in the kindness the universe must extend to me.

The hardest lesson this month has foisted on me has been the questions my mirror poses, questions to which, I find that I can fathom no position or response for. The most difficult of these questions are about all the emotional and moral frameworks I have tried to impress upon my child through nearly two decades of parenting: the importance of a long term vision, the reliable nature of a sound work ethic, the extent to which logic and planning reduce and control frightening variables. I have believed in these virtues but upon reflection, have been defeated by forces beyond imagination, and lately, by my very human nature with its tendency to give in to meaningless hopes, a false sense of control over circumstances.

So I wait still and resist the roots I tend to grow. I buy no more spoons, or safety pins, or slippers. I ration my victuals sparsely. I visit home improvement stores all over town, chase down each recommendation, each hint dropped in casual conversations, make elaborate, meticulous notes of all I see, but I buy nothing; it is too soon and these notes and researches might very well prove to be a colossal waste.

My patient reader must think of me in terms of the worst epithet my child can conceive of, a whiner, and I must confess I, too, lose patience with me. Complaining of loss can get old really fast, especially if there is no new disaster or interesting dimensions to the same loss.

The only apology I offer is my agreement of this and an acknowledgment of my awareness of how pathetic complaining sounds; however, I plead that I have been in the same limbo, stuck in the same mire that just sucks in larger parts of me, trapped under the same blinding sky whose clouds and rains bring no relief or change, in the same twilight clutching my unchanging horizon. I am unable to move on, and so, inevitably, my thoughts chase each other on an endless carousel.

My child gears up for one of the most drastic and memorable changes of her life, but I stand on the brink with her, unable to promise her anything, shaking my head at her plans for prom, graduation, and dorm visits.

I am afraid to share in her excitement and I am afraid that I concentrate too hard on maintaining a shifty status quo, that we be surrounded by the recognizable.

But most of all, I fear that thing with feathers, always fluttering and worrying the air around my head, always threatening to settle in my being and I shall find all devoured when it inevitably flies off.