Not the rainbow bridge

When Leslee, a mutual friend, and I decided to explore Hemlock Gorge on Sunday, I initially thought I’d ask if they’d mind my bringing Reggie, but I quickly reconsidered. Even if we’d figured out a way to carpool three women and a squirmy dog to the Gorge, there’d be the Echo Bridge steps to navigate.

Reggie has never been fond of steps: even when I adopted him in 1998, he was reluctant to climb stairs. When my then-husband and I owned a two-story house in Hillsboro, NH, Reggie could climb the carpeted steps, but he did so only reluctantly. At my parents’ house, it’s something of a production to get Reggie to climb the slick linoleum stairs to the basement apartment that serves as their guest room, and on the handful of times over the years I’ve tried to lure Reggie up open stairs–the kind with horizontal steps but no vertical step-backs, a style common at motels with outdoor stairways leading from one level to the next–he’s balked and downright refused. At dog-eye level, open steps look like no steps at all, and who but the most enthusiastic dog would actually believe you could climb from one level to another on thin air?

In the past few years, now that Reggie has resolutely aged into the double-digits, stairs have become even more of a problem. Although glucosamine and chondroitin supplements have minimized his overall creakiness, it still takes a while to coax him up the slippery hardwood steps in J’s house, where a dog’s attention is as likely to be distracted by passing cats as it is to be focused on the scary steps at hand. Slowly, slowly, slowly Reggie and I climb the steps after every walk and bathroom outing–and now that Reggie is older, the frequency (and, sometimes, urgency) of bathroom outings has increased. But learning to respond gracefully to an inevitably aging dog offers many lessons in how to respond gracefully to an inevitably aging self, with neither one of us getting any younger. If climbing from one floor to another takes longer than it used to, well then, what really is the rush?

J and I have an ongoing tongue-in-cheek joke about the “Rainbow Bridge,” the otherworldly place where dearly departed pets presumably go to wait for their eventually mortal owners. Although Reggie is my first dog, J’s already weathered the passings of a dog and several cats, so he knows from experience it takes more than a warm and fuzzy poem about heavenly reunions to quiet the sting of pet loss. Reggie’s not ready to cross the Rainbow Bridge, but I have no illusions about his lifespan, either. Already, we’ve crossed the dietary Rubicon toward “Active Maturity” dog food, and once those glucosamine and chondroitin supplements aren’t enough for increasingly creaky joints, I’ll learn how to administer stronger medications: it seems the least I can do. But in the meantime while Reggie and I both have our wits and relative health about us, we’d both prefer to explore actual rather than rainbow bridges, our time together being precious exactly because it is (eventually) finite.

One recent reminder of Reggie’s eventual mortality involved an incontinence scare where several housebreaking accidents had me convinced that Reggie was suffering from diabetes, kidney failure, or worse. A vet visit and subsequent blood-work proved my imagination is more active than Reggie’s bladder. According to test results, Reggie’s kidneys, liver, and other necessary internals are normal and healthy, which means a handful of inside leg-lifts really were the result of an Old Dog being confused by the New Trick of J’s house with its feline distractions (and an Old Owner’s slow realization that a senior dog’s request to go “out” really means “now,” not later).

I know death is a passing we all make eventually, and lifespans suggest Reggie will cross that bridge before I do. But really, what’s the rush? During that vet visit where I described Reggie’s recent housebreaking accidents, the vet’s subsequent questions pointed to how youthful and (relatively) healthy Reggie still is. “Does he still remember where the front door is,” the vet asked, “or does he try to out ‘outside’ through the closet?” Yes, Reggie still has his wits about him; he still knows the sound of my laptop powering down means “Walk!” “Can he see well enough to recognize you across the room,” the vet continued, “and can he hear well enough to respond to his name?” Again, I answered yes, twice: the way I find my car in a crowded parking lot is to look for the bushy tail that starts wagging in the backseat as soon as Reggie spots me across multiple car-lengths, and although he’s in the habit of ignoring my calls when he wants to, Reggie’s sense of hearing is still acute enough to recognize the sound of a treat-bag being opened.

So Reggie, it seems, is as ready to cross the Rainbow Bridge as he is eager to climb a whole story’s steps to get to the top of Echo Bridge, and that’s just fine. Now that Leslee, our mutual friend, and I have done our advance scouting at Hemlock Gorge, I now know the precise parking lot I should head to the next time I want to walk Reggie on that side of the Charles River rather than this: no bridge-crossing or step-climbing necessary. Saving my best four-legged friend from the indignity of having to struggle up steps a boisterous puppy would take in leaps and bounds is a small price to pay for companionship. It seems the least I can do.

Click here for Leslee’s account of our dog-free outing at Hemlock Gorge, or click here for my complete photo-set of images. Enjoy!

 

The leaves of others

This past weekend was sunny, so the trees glowed as if someone had turned them on with a switch.

Leslee has blogged the TVs of others, and Maria has blogged others’ dreams. On a weekend when many New Englanders headed to New Hampshire to peep northern leaves, I was considering the leaves of others in Massachusetts: the neon flashes of foliage seen during my routine weekend morning dog-walks in Newton.

I’ve spend spending my weekends in Newton for several months now, and I’m still not comfortable taking photos of the residential neighborhoods there. In Keene, I’ve been snapping impertinent pictures for over three years, so my neighbors have grown accustomed to that crazy woman who walks her dog with a camera. In Keene, I have no qualms about walking into the middle of a quiet residential street, crouching on my hams, and shooting whatever strikes my fancy; if someone were to question my odd behavior, I’d simply respond that I live here. For good or ill, I haven’t attained that level of comfort in Newton. Although these days I spend more time in Newton than I do in Keene, I still don’t feel like I live there. My mailing address remains in Keene, as do most of my belongings, and Keene is where I pay my own rent, utilities, and other necessities of “Real Life.”

In Newton, I still feel like an interloper, as if at any moment the Propriety Police will come upon me unannounced and escort me from the place: “I’m sorry, but your kind isn’t welcome here.” I’m not sure where or why I’ve gotten this impression: it’s not as if anyone in Newton or elsewhere in Massachusetts has ever treated me like an unwelcome outsider. Perhaps my unease stems from my earliest days in New England, when I was a fresh-faced graduate student at Boston College and couldn’t afford to live in Chestnut Hill, the tony Newton neighborhood near campus. I still can’t afford to live in Newton, even more than a decade (and a completed PhD) later. Profs and professionals abound in Newton, which boasts an inordinate concentration of people with PhDs…and yet when I walk the streets there, I’m acutely aware that my adjunct instructor’s paycheck does not reflect my academic credentials. Although I really am a doctor, I typically feel like I only play one in academe. In a lush and leafy neighborhood where people drive nice cars, live in even nicer homes, and enjoy other accoutrements of financial success, at times I feel like I’m only playing house.

When I first began teaching as a graduate student at Boston College, back when I lived a long subway-ride away in relatively affordable, working-class Malden, my grad student colleagues and I used to discuss our lingering sense of fraudulence. Standing in front of a classroom of freshmen, we felt we were faking it, our knowledge only diploma-deep. Surely if the Real Professors in our midst could detect phoniness like a stench in the breeze, they’d sniff us out for sure. When would our freshmen, we wondered amongst ourselves, figure out that we were clueless students just like they were, only a couple years’ older?

More than a decade (and a completed PhD) later, I still feel like a fraudulent faker: I somehow feel it’s only a matter of time before some intrepid Toto pulls back the curtain and reveals my show as sham. Walking the streets of a lush suburb populated by the Settled and Successful, I feel more like the clueless graduate student I was than the presumed professional I’ve become. At what point, I wonder, will someone figure out I don’t belong in Newton but am simply faking it?

Newton, like other surrounding suburbs, is a bedroom community for Boston, and I’m mindful that most folks don’t like strangers snapping pictures in their bedrooms. On Sunday when I snapped these shots of the turning leaves and neighboring houses I regularly see when I walk Reggie there, I did so semi-surreptitiously. It felt weird to be ogling other people’s leaves, as if leaf-peeping and window-peeping share more than a common gerund. Would people mind if I shot images of “their” houses even if I did so from the public space of a city sidewalk? Would homeowners be rightfully protective of “their” trees? Emerson claimed that poets are the only ones who own the landscape, for “There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts.” But still, the citizens of Newton pay a pretty penny for the privacy their abundantly leafy trees afford; isn’t it somehow criminal–or at least morally suspect–to intrude?

Faced with the ethical question to shoot or not to shoot, I chose the former. Given the number of visiting Massachusetts leaf-peepers I’ve shared New Hampshire roads with over the years, it seemed fitting to return the compliment. There’s plenty of landscape, I think, to satisfy poets, profs, and professionals alike, at least from the suburban safety of Newton’s streets and sidewalks. If we can share the road, presumably we can share the gleaming autumn leaves that right now are screening our sky.

Click here for a photo-set of images from Sunday’s dog-walk. Enjoy!

 

Even wider meadow mind

On Saturday I took a break from weight-lifting to go to the Kwan Um School of Zen’s Dharma teacher retreat at the Providence Zen Center. During a semester where my days are overloaded with the mundane details of college teaching–classes to prep, papers to grade, emails to answer–Zen teaching is a welcome respite, something that requires no preparation, only careful attention. On Saturday morning, my longtime Dharma friend Ji Hyang and I led a workshop on “Zen & the Arts,” which we planned about five minutes before the session began. In college teaching, flying by the seat of your pants is a neglectful thing. In Zen teaching, it’s all but expected.

Although I had to leave before my fellow Dharma teachers started telling jokes, the half-day I spent in the company of other long-time practitioners reminded me why any trip to PZC feels like tapping into a mighty power source. Being prepared is a good thing, but sometimes it’s necessary and proper to drop the reins and trust yourself to the wide open meadow of your own creative mind.

 

Foggy meadow

In the two weeks since I last practiced at the Open Meadow Zen Group in Lexington, MA, the frogs have turned to fog. Yesterday morning had an almost-autumnal bite, and with the cooler temperature came a filmy veil of condensation over the open conservation land that gives Open Meadow its name. Although the fog had burned away by the time morning practice was over, it still wasn’t warm enough for basking frogs. Presumably they’ll wait for afternoon or Indian summer.

One of the things you learn from meditating is how your own mind is like a meadow. Sometimes your meadow-mind is clear and sunny; sometimes your meadow-mind is filmed in fog. Sometimes there are frogs in your meadow-mind, and other times, all you hear is the honk of a lone nuthatch probing for insect larvae in an overarching willow. Regardless of how your meadow-mind appears when you show up to practice, though, you practice anyway. Meditation isn’t about chasing fog or luring frogs: meditation is about simply noticing whatever state your meadow-mind happens to be in at This Particular Moment.

Over time, I’ve seen Lexington’s open meadow in many moods, and as I continue to practice, I’ll see her in many more. Likewise, my own sometimes foggy, sometimes froggy mind remains true to itself even as ever-changing weather blows through like moods. A foggy meadow moves to her own schedule and by her own accord, and so too does a sometimes restless, sometimes restful mind. Meditation is about waking up, taking note of your own mind-weather, and allowing fog and cloud to follow their own rhythm, in their own time.

 

Open meadow mind

This morning, for the first time in about a month, I went to morning practice at the Open Meadow Zen Group in Lexington, MA. Today, I’m under a deadline as I finish grading exams for the summer school class I’ve been teaching in Keene: the very class that kept me from practicing on Monday mornings. Somehow, facing today’s paper pile seems less daunting given how I started the day, with a spot of silence within sight of a lone tree standing like an island in a sea of tall grass while sunrise gleamed off distant clouds.

Enlightenment is just like this: a spot of sun and silence that happens suddenly, will not last, and promises to stay with you, cherished. In my Zen school, we sometimes describe enlightenment as being both clear like space and as sharp as the end of a needle. Enlightenment is clear like space in the same way that looking at an open meadow clears your mind: ahhhh! In the absence of borders or boundaries, your consciousness is open and unfettered, unstressed and at peace.

At the same time, enlightenment mind is as sharp as the end of a needle. Right now, work awaits and a deadline looms: I’d best get busy! One-pointed “needle mind” doesn’t spend the day lounging in an open meadow if there’s work to do or sentient beings to save. Meditation isn’t about zoning out or “unplugging” from the mundane world with its challenges and traumas. Meditation is about cultivating a needle-sharp awareness so when challenges and traumas arise, you can act with a mind that is uncluttered, compassionate, and effective.

The world of business reminds us to “work smarter, not harder.” Perhaps on this manic Monday, I need to be both clear and sharp, tackling my paper-pile with a mind that is as fair as an open meadow and as sharp as the tip of a teacher’s red pen.

 

Vacation

It’s been over a month since I took the ferry from Boston to Provincetown, MA for a few days of R&R. I’ve already shared a handful of pictures from that getaway, but here are some more selections from my photo archive: my contribution to today’s Photo Friday theme, Vacation. Enjoy!

 

What’s the rush?

It says something about how rushed, busy, and unlike a turtle my life has been that I’ve not gone walking with Reggie at Goose Pond since early May. Early May is when the black flies emerge, so it makes sense that I’d avoid the woods during their roughly month-long feeding frenzy. But what happened to the month of June? Between the ASLE conference in Spartanburg and my Red Sox getaway to Atlanta, I was in the air more than on the ground during much of June, it seems.

The second session of summer school started at Keene State last week; at SNHU Online, a new teaching term started yesterday. Teaching two classes–one in-the-flesh, the other online–means I’ll be in New England, mostly, for the months of July and August, reconnecting with Goose Pond and other promising dog-haunts. It seems strange to say that going back to work is allowing me a much-needed rest, but this seems to be the case. Now that I’m home and on a regular teaching schedule–now that I’m back to oatmeal in the morning and dog-walks in the afternoon–I’m rediscovering the luxury of pupating, reconnecting with my Inner Homebody.

Turtles carry their homes with them wherever they go, and they don’t roam far. If you had a place like Goose Pond as your backyard, why would you need to wander?

 

On a quest for the quintessential

Upon hearing that I’d be spending a week in South Carolina, a friend who used to live in Georgia gave me a challenge: shoot a quintessentially “Spartanburg” shot. Having been on my feet here at Wofford College for less than 24 hours, I don’t feel entirely up to that challenge…but that didn’t stop me from taking an early morning walk in search of breakfast and some blog-worthy images.

The photo above gives a sense of the Christian values that surround Wofford, originally established as a Methodist college. On this morning’s brief walk along the main street fringing campus, I quickly realized why Highway 221 is also called “North Church Street.” On this same morning walk I also quickly realized why the Days Inn right across from campus was not recommended by conference organizers: although I’m no hotel snob, I know ugly architecture when I see it.

The Spartanburg county offices aren’t architecturally elegant, but bureaucratic buildings seldom are. I’d say “spare” plus “utilitarian” equals “Spartan Spartansburg.”

My quest for the quintessential Spartanburg shot notwithstanding, my search for this morning’s breakfast was happily satisfied. Although this vintage Krispy Kreme was closed, there was a new one right across the street that was serving glazed goodness hot off the bakery line.

Returning to campus under the influence of a Krispy Kreme sugar rush, I delighted in Wofford College’s well-maintained grounds with plenty of shade trees and soothing fountains.

Not so soothing are Vivian Stockman’s mountaintop removal photos, which are currently on display in Wofford’s Sandor Teszler Library. Not knowing the library’s photography policy, I refrained from shooting any of Stockman’s photos…but you can see and learn more about this particular form of environmental atrocity by revisiting Dave’s post on the topic.

In lieu of mountaintop removal, I shot a single picture of the funky stairwell down to the lower level gallery where Stockman’s photos are on display: not exactly quintessential, but definitely quirky.

If I’d been hired to shoot student recruitment pictures for the Wofford viewbook, I’d certainly offer this tree-shaded shot of the college’s Main Building, complete with lounging students.

But if you want a quintessential shot of the Spartan side of Spartanburg, all you need to do is take a quick peek at my Wofford College dorm room, where I’ll be blogging this week’s conference activities.

 

Out of proportion

When Henry David Thoreau went to Cape Cod, he literally lost all sense of proportion, finding his normally acute sense of space curiously flummoxed by wide expanses of sea and sky. A surveyor by trade, Thoreau was trained at judging distances and was famed among his neighbors for being able to eye the amount of cord-wood that could be harvested from a forested lot. But when Thoreau walked the treeless beaches of Cape Cod, he felt lost in a landscape devoid of familiar landmarks. How can you judge the relative size of objects, Thoreau wondered, if an almost-empty scene lacks objects that give any sense of scale?

At home in Keene, I take few broad landscape shots, focusing instead on small, familiar objects shot at close range. When I visit a stunning seascape, I feel helpless when it comes to shooting the scene: how can I fit that much sea and sky within the frames of a tiny view-screen? Without something finite and frame-able to focus on, I struggle to understand an otherwise picturesque scene: how can something larger-than-life be sliced and segmented into a snapshot?

In the essays that would be collected in his book Cape Cod, Thoreau describes himself as disoriented because he cannot reliably judge visible phenomena such as size and distance. At one point, for example, he describes two men salvaging a “large black object” which was “too far off for us to distinguish.” As Thoreau approaches the object, it “took successively the form of a huge fish, a drowned man, a sail or net, and finally of a mass of tow-cloth.” In the absence of familiar landmarks, Thoreau cannot judge the size of objects: he notes that “Objects on the beach, whether men or inanimate things, look not only exceedingly grotesque, but much larger and more wonderful than they actually are.” Thus, another object which Thoreau estimates to be “bold and rugged cliffs…fifteen feet high” turns out to be “low heaps of rags…scarcely more than a foot in height.”

When you find yourself in a new place, isn’t it natural that your sense of disorientation would swell all out of proportion?

Last week, I took a bus from Boston to Provincetown, the very tip of Cape Cod; today, I took one plane from Manchester, New Hampshire to Newark, New Jersey, then another, delayed plane from Newark to Greenville, South Carolina. As I type these words, I’m sitting in appropriately Spartan dorm room at Wofford College, a group of kind souls from a local philanthropic organization having agreed to shuttle visitors like me from the airport in Greenville to the conference here in Spartanburg. I’d been to Provincetown only once, and one of the things I remembered from my first trip was the colorful assortment of Barbie and Ken dolls, fittingly paired into homosexual couples, that cavort in the fountain outside a bed & breakfast called Romeo’s Holiday. I’ve never been to South Carolina much less Spartanburg, so I have no memories to prepare me for what to expect. Do things down south look bigger, smaller, or pretty much the same as they do up north? Here in South Carolina, where does Romeo holiday?

As I remarked during one of two trips to Ireland last year, it always takes me a while to shake off my initial sense of disorientation when I visit a strange-to-me place. Having accustomed myself to the look and feel of Keene, NH, it takes me a while to figure out what is truly noteworthy in a place where everything seems different. Although Provincetown is a whole lot closer to Keene than Spartanburg is, life on the beach seems more foreign to me than life in a southern city. South Carolina has echoes of Ohio; Spartanburg, of Columbus. But Provincetown is nothing like where I grew up, and it’s like nowhere I’ve actually lived. Yes, Boston is a coastal town, but I lived far enough inland to forget the sea: the waterway that dominates my memories of Boston is the Charles River, not the Atlantic Ocean. Even on an early June weekday, before the carousing parties of late summer weekends have begun, Provincetown is a wilder place than Boston or certainly Ohio ever was: a vacation spot where otherwise upstanding citizens come to let their hair down or to watch other’s wild-hair-days.

Viewed against the backdrop of the expansive sea, even the largest of humans looks doll-like and small. Viewed from the perspective of a holiday party, one’s workaday life looks colorless and mundane. Juliet’s holiday, like Romeo’s, brings the rest of the world into proper proportion: hanging out with their best girlfriends, Juliet and Barbie alike find a spot of serenity that even dour old Thoreau, strolling the beach with one serious-minded companion, missed. When life gets distorted out of proportion, it can be corrective to kick back, focus on the little things, and forget the rest.

Yes, I’ve safely arrived at the ASLE conference in Spartanburg, SC. The conference officially starts with Tuesday night’s opening reception and a keynote speech by author Bill McKibben. You can follow conference updates (and access presentation podcasts) on the conference blog. Enjoy!

 

P(icture)-town

Apologies for the recent lack of substantial posts: I’ve been busy with post-Provincetown chores, several social engagements, and pre-trip details as I prepare to leave tomorrow for the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in Spartanburg, South Carolina. So while I continue to pack and plan, here are some images from picture-perfect P-town: enjoy!

This year’s ASLE conference promises to be a wired one, so after Tuesday’s official opening reception, you can follow conference proceedings via ASLE Connect. Enjoy!