SAVANNOLA!™

AKA, grain-free granola.

So, let me explain.  For many years I have enjoyed a breakfast of granola with plain yoghurt - any kind of granola, with traditional, goat, greek, or some other plainly sour yoghurt, sometimes even buttermilk.  The combination of sweet and tangy was sublime.

A couple years back a friend sent me a link to a TED talk given by a woman with a very debilitating and rapid case of multiple sclerosis, who was able to reverse her symptoms in a matter of months, first with over the counter vitamins and supplements, but then with what she called a savannah based diet.  Fresh vegetables and fruits, some organic or wild-caught meats and fish, but nothing made with flour or grains.  If you haven't seen it (I think I covered it in a blog post maybe a year ago?) you can click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc

Generally my veggie diet was in line with this - except for the meat - but my morning bowl of granola seemed to stick out with its oats and other grains.  So I tried experimenting with various nuts and seeds, such as chia and pine nut, and different dried fruits like currants and goji berries.  Of course also the more traditional walnut, cashew, raisin, banana, blueberries, etc.  But nothing too bizarre or unavailable, or expensive for that matter.  The idea was to use the nuts and fruits more in season - at least in the time zone or geographical boundary that would be reflected in price/availability.

I've toyed with the idea of crowd-sourcing this concept, or patenting it, but have concluded, based on extensive research, that the potential niche market for such a relatively bland (bland sounding, that is, though it is far from bland, just not overly sweetened) and nutritious breakfast/snack food would probably be smaller than the vast readership of this blog.  In addition, the complexities of marketing something that is always changing, and specific to various bioregional seasons across the country, or world, seem pretty foreboding.  More importantly, I find that the process of making this part of what is so good about it.  You can't put that in a box.  And in the unlikely event that somebody else were to produce and market such a thing, bravo, I would be happy to buy it!

The 'recipe' has evolved to mixing the nuts and seeds with a little honey, hemp oil, and molasses then baking for about a half hour at 250/275 degrees, then blending with the dried fruits.  Let me know if you want the detailed recipe, though it may sound kind of vague with items like 'two cups of large nuts.'  This is to accommodate the fluctuations in what is available.  For this reason, each batch is unique - which I find one of its best features.  Because I use very little honey and molasses (mainly as a kind of binder) the result is not too sweet, which most granolas are.  In fact, you can taste the sweetness inherent in, say, a plain pecan.

If you have a difficult time imaging this, I recommend you try a 'nut meditation:'  find a quiet place to sit.  Pick up a whole pecan, shake and hear it rattle, notice the smooth slippery shell - then open it with a nutcracker, picking off the big pieces and small shards, feeling how hard this protective container is, maybe even biting it gently.  Feel the retrieved 'meat' between your fingers, tracing the lines and valleys on the surface with you fingernails, peering down as if taking a heavenly gaze at the grand canyon, or a scientific inquiry into the undulations - or sulci - on the cortex of a brain.  Bring it to your nose and smell its subtle redolence of earth, autumn, and life.  Notice the breath enter and exit your lungs.  Do feelings of hunger arise, even if just a hint?  When ready, place the nut on your tongue, close your mouth, and 'roll' it around.  Does the skin taste bitter?  What do the textures of the 'valleys' feel like to your tongue compared to how they appeared to your eyes?  Allow the feelings of anticipation and slight hunger consummate in a slow and deliberate chew, stopping occasionally to notice the changing textures and subtle flavors as they are released.  Are there olfactory sensations?  Notice as your trachea and esophagus deftly alternate - even when you don't pay attention - so that you do not choke while breathing and swallowing.  What miracle is this body?  Back to the nut, notice as it gets finer and smoother, then flows down your throat.  Follow with some water, and notice with the same caring interest all the similar bodily movements and functions involved in drinking.

Now, you are ready to explore life, all of it, with a reverence and awe for the divinity inherent in your very being...

A closer look at Savannola!™ 

Homeopathic insecticide!

Way back a lifetime and a half ago, picture me with a plastic tank on my back with several gallons of fluid in it - a 'backpack sprayer.'  With my left hand I'd pump pressure into the tank, and my right hand would wave a wand from side to side spraying some form of synthetic herbicide, or very occasionally an insecticide on my parents' Christmas tree farm in Oregon.  Round-up, malathion, 2-4-D - yes one of the ingredients used in 'agent orange' in this nation's war against Vietnam.  The wind would blow it all 'away,' and I'd wear a filter mask . . . usually.  Good times.  Any connection to a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis two and a half decades later?  Honestly I doubt it - not to say I think it was a good thing to expose my body to this, to say nothing of the very earth that sustains all life, song, dance, and poetry.

I certainly feel that such synthetic '-cides' (herbi, pesti, insecti, etceteri . . .) have no proper place in our human ecology.  The flora and fauna on which these toxins are doused - not to mention the streams, rivers, air, land, and ground water - are precious gifts from the good earth.  And if we are to have any 'relationship' with them at all - at least in so far as gaining material and spiritual sustenance from them, or from the rich tilth under our feet or in our spades - then it should be a relationship based on stewardship.

Now, let go of that image of teenage Pete spraying weed-killer in the summer heat, and fast forward to September of 2001, when I was diagnosed with MS.  (I think of this as my own private 911.)  For about ten years I jabbed myself with various hypodermic needles, or sat receiving intravenous elixirs for a few hours, chemo-therapy style.  These chemicals tinkered in various ways with the workings of this body's immune system.  There is a chance that these meds helped to slow the progression of the autoimmune process of MS.  And my doctors have said that the MRI scans I get every so often look 'stable.'  But what I never experienced were any improvements in my 'clinical,' that is, boots on the ground symptom management.  Until about three months ago that is.

As I have mentioned once or twice in these blog pages in the past, I take daily 'metrics' of just how my various symptoms are doing.  Some of these numbers are subjective - like 'mood' or 'energy level' - but some are objective.  For instance, how many steps does it take me - without my cane! - to walk from our door down the hall to the elevator each morning?  (You might imagine, this is not such a graceful picture . . . .  I've even fallen a couple times - two 'penalty strokes' per fall, or one stroke for bumping into the wall!  No worries, the hall is carpeted, no breaks, maybe mild bruising, and the opportunity to practice falling safely.)

So, in February, just about ten days into a new oral medication named 'Aubagio' (pronounced oh-bajio, like in aubergine), some of these metrics actually got better - specifically the counted steps.  Not pre-MS better, I'm not quite jogging down the hall, but my goodness, any improvement had never happened since my diagnosis.  (I must also add that my subjective gait numbers have not changed much, either positively or negatively, that is, my hobbling with the cane, particularly throughout the day, feels more or less unchanged - which means that if not for taking these daily metrics, I might not have caught this.)  Am I going to take an ad out in the newspaper, shout from every rooftop how potentially wonderful this is?  Don't think so.  Am I even going to post this blog entry?  We shall see.  Have I allowed myself to feel any hope that this might be the one?  Ever so cautious optimism, and a few grains of hope.  Am I concerned that this might just be a 'placebo effect?'  Perhaps a little - however, given the very scientific approach I've taken with the metrics all these years, I'm relatively confident that it's not.  Or at least it's not just placebo at work.  Partly because it was a week and a half before any improvement was noted.  And for full disclosure, I've had some side effects to deal with.  But, like I said, this seems to be the very first time I've felt any main effects, which so far definitely outweigh the side ones.  Even if this med should gradually run out of steam, or stop having any positive effect, I have experienced something new:  a medicine that actually had a good result - if this one doesn't continue helping, at least I've seen that something actually can.

But, the careful reader may be wondering, what on earth do the herbicides and insecticides described above have to do with any of this?  And while the sixties' adage that 'everything is everything' is by definition always germane, the relationship I actually intended bears a closer look.  In the 1980s the Hoechst AG chemical company looked at several compounds for potential use as pesticides.  Lo and behold, one of the chemicals was found to 'defend against inflammation.'  (I suppose I could research this further, maybe find out how in the heck they discovered it did such a thing. . . were they spraying it on MS patients?)  At any rate, the compound was eventually developed into a drug to treat rheumatoid arthritis (another autoimmune condition), then eventually to treat MS.  (Which may or may not tie up that loose end for you.  I know, some may find my logic ranging from oblique to opaque.  However, obtuse it most definitely is not!)

However, it is clearer to me than ever that the regular exercise and physical therapy I have been doing all these years is paramount - any improvement in gait or balance ultimately rests on these keeping my muscle tone at a feasibly maximum readiness.  Which is something no drug can provide.  Reminds me, time to go to the gym!

Handicap prophesy

Several months ago the doors in our garage access to the elevators were newly equipped with motors and buttons for ADA compliance.  What I find odd is that the majority of non-handicapped people I see will push the button, even if doing so is no faster, even sometimes slower, than using a few extra calories to turn the handle and push the door open.  When I don't have a bag of groceries for instance - which with my cane in the other hand makes the handicap entrance a definite and useful help - I will normally open the door the 'old-fashioned' way, thankful for the extra tiny bit of exercise, physical therapy, and moment to wake up and be mindful - am I in a hurry, am I stressed about that email?  Or that phone call?

Similarly, back in my 'young and healthy' days, I would often walk the stairs instead of riding the elevator or escalator.  Actually, come to think of it, I would do that as often as not in our old apartment where we lived on the second floor:  cane held under my arm, steadying myself with the handrail.  Again, if I didn't have a bag of groceries.  But now on the 15th floor, the only time I walk it is during a fire alarm, of which we've had two so far.

The stock photo above came with the caption 'only in America,' which sounds like a German or Dutchman, more unctuous and smarmy even, perhaps, than this blog poster.  And though the escalator riding individuals in the picture don't necessarily look headed to the gym - no spandex or sweatpants - they don't look very handicapped either.  Or encumbered with shopping bags.  Perhaps they will go to the gym later.  What is it that keeps us using these labor saving technologies, when obesity is on the rise, and fossil fuel consumption endangers the ability of this planet to sustain life?  Instead, can we revel in the natural wonder and miracle of the movements of our bodies - even a human body afflicted with MS?  As I type, I am sitting on my butt, of course, and thinking about how this week 'got away from me' and I only made it to the gym once.  And perhaps it is a challenging progressive neurological condition that has allowed me to see the beauty of movement, even as my own mobility seems to be gradually diminishing.  You don't know what you've got till it's gone...

I encourage us all to hear the music of our prosaic motions - even at times when they may sound discordant or off-key - and take the stairs or turn the handle and open the door.

Nickel and Dimed

This book was written by Barbara Ehrenreich, and published in 2000.  Her inspiration to try to live off low-wage earnings - waitressing, housekeeping, nursing home help - was the so-called 'welfare reform' that was debated and approved in the 1990s.  One of the talking points for the new 'Temporary Assistance to Needy Families' was the 'uplifting' value that paid labor can bring, even menial tasks for minimum wage.  Ehrenreich put this assertion to the test, working for several months at various locations in the country.

At the end of chapter two, there was quite a rich soliloquy of sorts about the odd need for Ted's (the supervisor's) approbation felt by her coworkers at 'The Maids', a franchised national house cleaning service she worked at.  I will copy it here verbatim, and recommend that you check out the whole book if you get the chance:

"The big question is why Ted's approval means so much.  As far as I can figure, my coworkers' neediness - because that's what it is - stems from chronic deprivation.  The home owners aren't going to thank us for a job ell done, and God knows, people on the street aren't going to hail us as heroines of proletarian labor.  No one will know that the counter on which he slices the evening's baguette only recently supported a fainting woman [who was malnourished and pregnant, and abused by her husband we learn in the story] - and decide to reward her with a medal for bravery.  No one is going to say, after I vacuum ten rooms and still have time to scrub a kitchen floor, 'Godddamn, Barb, you're good!'  Work is supposed to save you from being an 'outcast,' as Pete [a colleague at the nursing home] puts it, but what we do is an outcast's work, invisible and even disgusting [at least the way the are told to do the work].  Janitors, cleaning ladies, ditch diggers, changers of adult diapers - these are the untouchables of a supposedly cast-free and democratic society.  Hence the undeserved charisma of a man like Ted.  He may be greedy and offhandedly cruel, but at The Maids he is the only living representative of that better world where people go to college and wear civilian clothes to work and shop on the weekends for fun.  If for some reason there's a shortage of houses to clean, he'll keep a team busy by sending them out to clean his own home, which, I am told, is 'real nice.'

"Or maybe it's low-age work in general that has the effect of making you feel like a pariah.  When I watch TV over my dinner at night, I see a world in which almost everyone makes $15 an hour or more, and I'm not just thinking of the [news] anchor folks.  The sitcoms and dramas are about fashion designers or schoolteachers or lawyers, so it's easy for a fast-food worker or nurse's aide to conclude that she is an anomaly - the only one, or almost the only one, who hasn't been invited to the party.  And in a sense she would be right:  the poor have disappeared from the culture at large, from its political rhetoric and intellectual endeavors as well as from its daily entertainment.  Even religion seems to have little to say about the plight of the poor, if that tent revival was a fair sample [she'd stepped in on early in her stay in Maine].  The moneylenders have finally gotten Jesus out of the temple.

"On my last afternoon, I try to explain who I am and why I've been working here to the women on my team for the day, a much more spirited group than Holly's usual crew.  My announcement attracts so little attention that I have to repeat it:  'Will you listen to me?  I'm a writer and I'm going to write a book about this place.'  At last Lori leans around from the front seat and hushes the others with 'Hey, this is interesting,' and to me:  'are you like, investigating?'

"Well, not just this place and not exactly 'investigating,' but Lori has latched on to that concept.  She hoots with laughter.  'This place could use some investigating!'  Now everyone seems to get it - not who I am or what I do - but that whatever I'm up to, the joke is on Ted.

"At least now that I'm 'out' I get to ask the question I've wanted to ask all this time:  How do they feel, not about Ted but about the owners, who have so much while others, like themselves, barely get by?  This is the answer from Lori who at twenty-four has a serious [back] problem and an $8,000 credit card debt:  "All I can think of is like, wow, I'd like to have this stuff someday.  It motivates me and I don't feel the slightest resentment because, you know, it's my goal to get to where they are.'

And this is the answer from Colleen, a single mother of two who is usually direct and vivacious but now looks at some spot straight ahead of her, where perhaps the ancestor who escaped from the Great Potato Famine is staring back at her, as intent as I am on what she will say:  'I don't mind, really, because I guess I'm a simple person, and I don't want what they have.  I mean, it's nothing to me.  But what I would like is to be able to take a day off now and then . . . if I had to . . . and still be able to buy groceries the next day.'"

I want to assure the one or two of my legions of followers who might have read this far, that the author is very caring and compassionate in her relations with coworkers, to the extent that her harried and exhausting work schedules - sometimes working two or more jobs - afford her.  The facts of the matter dictate that some jobs will be menial, and difficult.  But they do not have to be compensated with hunger wages, which the author finds is what she is paid, barely to manage rent.  Healthcare and episodic expenses can devastate.  It is high time to raise the federal minimum wage!  And empower unions whenever we can - at a minimum vote out of office charlatans like Wisconsin governor Scott Walker who actively (or should I say reactively?) attempts to undermine teachers' and other public employees' unions.

However, as I believe that labor, the sweat of one's brow, is indeed inherently sacred, I want to end this post with the wise words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  “If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.”

Spa Treatment

In the past few years I have grown less and less interested in massages - at least the ones you have to pay for, and spend 30 to 60 minutes receiving.  Like a gourmet dessert, it's the first bite that is really all you need.  Spontaneous neck or foot massages from a loving spouse or child, however, these are of course still priceless.  But last week I had an experience that seemed just about as rejuvenating.  Maybe more.  Any guesses?  Nope, wrong.

Wednesday morning I went in for an MRI.  After signing in, I was met at the door by a cheery Nigerian man, 'Utibe', with a mustache thin enough to have been painted on in vaudeville style, just not shiny like Groucho's.  Seeing me amble forward with my cane, he asked whether I needed a wheelchair.  "Not unless you're in a hurry," I said, hobbling along.  He chuckled and led me to the men's dressing area, showed me the locker to put my clothes in, and handed me the smocks.  As I got into the toga-like garments, and slippers, it felt somehow new and different - refined even - though I had done this at least a dozen times before.

Apparently in a hurry now, he met me at the dressing room door with a wheelchair.  I took a seat - no, I'm not proud - and remarked that it was quite comfortable.  And I have known a few wheelchairs in my time, I've sat in some real pieces of work.  Upon entering the room with the massive tubular machine, I mentioned that it looked new, and he confirmed it was less than a year old.  I climbed aboard, handed him my cane, and lay back.  "Just one more centimetre," he indicated with his fingers holding an imaginary pencil.  I wiggled northward, as I noticed that it was not just new, but also actually comfortable.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of such an experience, you have to lie with your head in a narrow compartment, and then earplug/spacer thingies (I doubt there is a better word for these) are placed either side of your head between the ears and the side of the opening.  Then like a cavalier's helmet, a rigid plastic cover is placed over your head, with a small tilted mirror positioned so that if you wish, you can observe Utibe where he sits monitoring the control board to make sure the scan is proceeding as it should.  And I am a model patient, with much experience, both in MRI's and stillness, not moving my wedged-in head - which still could be moved if I needed it to - not even a hair's breadth for the entire forty or so minutes.  Unless it moved during one of the two times I fell asleep - but I'm getting ahead of this compelling narrative.

He asks whether I would like to hear music.  The aforementioned and auspiciously named earplug/spacer thingies also seem to have audio speakers in them, further complicating the naming issue.  I answered that today I'd just like to hear, "hammer music."  Another chuckle - this fellow was generous.

In addition to MRI machines getting gradually more comfortable over the past many years, the loud hammering noises they emit - right there next to your head - have gotten more subdued.  Sometimes even sounding like a loud hum, or 'white noise.'  Not that I have needed such white noise to catch up on my z's.  Even back in the day (ten long years ago) I would often fall asleep in the midst of the Hammerklingen Konzert.

Next, as if at a musical bridge, I was awakened by a voice emanating from the twice-aforementioned ear-thingies, as Utibe said it's time for 'the contrast.'  This means that gadolinium, a silver-white rare earth element, in an emulsified form, must be injected into the bloodstream.  The pre-contrast, and post-contrast images show more clearly the areas of active lesions, where the immune system is busily doing its enigmatic chore of eating away at my nerve casing, or myelin.  These active lesions are not what are called 'black holes.'  I'm not kidding, that's actually what some doctors call spots that are 'finished,' or inactive scar tissue.  But unlike black holes in space, nerve impulses don't fall careening at the speed of light into the ones in your brain - they either have to find a way around, or just take the day off, sittin' by the dock of the bay...  Which not coincidentally means that an MS patient will often prefer to just sit by that very same dock...way-ay stin' time.  My doctor, a tall, heavy set, and very sweet natured Columbian, does not use this term, he finds it misleading.  I'd first heard it used eight years ago by a doctor scanning my images, and the hole which subsequently pierced my self-image did indeed feel as dark and scary as the celestial kind.  Some doctors, sheesh...  I suppose, without the chaff, it would be harder to appreciate the wheat.

Anyway, back to the 'bridge,' gadolinium.  Placing my arm on a platform slid out for just such a purpose, Utibe started to prep the area inside my right elbow.  Gloves, alcohol pad, he told me to make a fist.  A prick, some mild pain, but no go.  He tried again on the back of my hand - a bit more pain, but again no luck.  So he went to fetch the guy who would get it first try, definitely, no problem.  I assured him it's no big deal, "my personal 'record' is five tries."  And I have a friend suffering from metastasized ovarian cancer for over ten years.  She's had more than 70 chemotherapy infusions, and her record of failed attempts to hook up the IV - in one sitting, mind you - is eleven!  I've got work to do... at this rate I may never catch up.  (Gallows humor, in part, but perhaps also a way to make it seem less unseemly... which I guess is the whole point of gallows humor?)  So the expert arrived and struck oil first try, as promised, but it was probably the most painful attempt.  A pain that sometimes happens, and sometimes doesn't.  Back in the day when I was giving myself daily injections - not my time on skid row, no, much later than that, injecting boring old MS medicine - I learned that every place on the skin does not necessarily have a nerve ending.  And that by placing the tip of the needle softly on the skin, I could tell whether there was:  if I felt nothing, then it was fair game to penetrate.  Which worked most of the time.  Occasionally there would be a nearby nerve ending that would register only after the pressure of the needle going in affected it.  This is the reason that some nurses seem to be 'good' and some 'bad' at giving shots.  It's a matter of luck, whether they miss the nerve ending.  In my next life, as a nurse, I will ask the patient 'can you feel this?' until they answer no, then I will give the pain-free shot.

But this tangent has drawn out a bit too far by now, time to return to topic, no?  Which was...wait, let me guess, the spa?  Right, remember that?  I'll leave to your own imaginations the process of getting back out of the MRI machine, toga, hospital, etc., though I can imagine you are likely feeling short-changed by this omission.  I used to really dislike having to go to the doctor, clinic, or hospital.  But more and more, I feel the love and care of these medical professionals, and perhaps with a mindful aspect, am able to take it in as if it were all set up for my very own benefit, which of course it is, just like a spa.

One might call my growing disdain for massage 'anhedonia.'  And I don't know what this other stuff about the MRI might be called.  But perhaps it's a sign that slowly I'm opening to the miracle of life in all its splendor - whether a mani/pedi/jacuzzi/massage, or an MRI.  It inspires me to coin a new word: panhedonia...

The Cave

I'm trying to find the exact wording of a Zen - or another spiritual tradition's - parable, but I can't find it, and I have spent over a minute searching the web.  That's my limit.  But what I can do, is make it up, fill in the details that either weren't there to begin with, or that I have forgotten.


So one day the master, sitting where he likes in the afternoon by the pond, receives the recently arrived American novice Jerry-chan.  The novice says, "master-san, each day as I wake, I am overcome by disgust that my day-trading career, once so successful, and yet now in tatters, was a complete waste.  And that I should have listened to my father's advice to 'pursue a career that gives, for this is the only source of true happiness.'  But what did he know, he sold vacuum cleaners for god's sake!  And then there is my ex-wife who constantly harangues me for child support, when I can barely make my condo and boat payments.  And the Beemer.  But the bitc - excuse me - my ex, she got the friggin' house.  It's that brat Gerald, sucking the life-blood out of me at that preppie boarding school, scheiße!"  Jerry-chan is in his early forties, has some gray in an otherwise stylishly coiffed jet-black hairdo. A two-day beard stubble highlights his angular features, and he is greatly admired for his handsome appearance.  Save for the scowl lines that seem to be slowly marking their way down the sides of his mouth.  When he isn't forcing his usual game face smile that is, like just now at the monastery.  He looks down at the still water beneath them, and says, "and look at this," he gestures with his right hand moving in a circle around his face, "I'm starting to go gray - and look at these," he squints and points at the crow's feet either side of his eyes.

Master Jikan, whose name means 'silent one' looks at Jerry-chan with compassion, and the slightest hint of mirth in the curl of his lips.  From his features, he looks like he could be fifty, or a hundred and fifty.  He points up the hillside to where the cave is located, and holds up two fingers.  Jerry-chan begins guessing, "two hours, days, weeks?  What do you mean?"  The master's helpers explain that Jerry-chan would need to spend as long as it takes to receive at least two insights that the cave holds.

Having packed his bundle of provisions for what he thought would be an afternoon - tops - he enters the cave.  As he proceeds into the increasing darkness, holding a small lantern, by turns he beholds and recoils at the gruesome paintings on the walls.  Wild animals, in poses of attack, also take his breath away.

After wandering for many hours, in one large chamber he finds a platform that could serve as a bed.  He sits down to meditate in the fashion of the monastery, but soon finds distractions, and all of his worries come to him in relentless waves.  Repeating a mantra, or 'following the breath' seem to bring no relief.  Within an hour he falls asleep.  He dreams of being gored by the ferocious animals, surrounded by other victims in their agony as they had been depicted on the cave walls.  He wakes in a cold sweat.

The lamp beside him has gone out, and once he manages to find matches he relights it.  Lying on his back, he opens his eyes to behold a mirror on the ceiling of the cave above him.  It is just large enough to make out his general form, illuminated as it casts flickering shadows.  He does not know how long he has slept, but he feels an overwhelming hunger.  He eats a bowl of cold rice with tamari, sips some cool spring water, and packs his satchel.  He retraces his steps to the entrance of the cave, where it is morning.


What insight might he have reached?  If it isn't too obvious (even Jerry-chan got it), his worries and troubles were every bit as 'real' as these paintings - that is to say, they were inventions from a hypersensitive imagination, not happening now in this moment - and he would go back to them over and over, feeling the same emotions of dread and self-loathing.  The insight that took longer to find, was that he alone is responsible for painting these inside the cave of his mind, that there was no source outside his own psyche that tormented him.  This second insight was to take him many subsequent visits to the cave, and years of practice.  And a further insight, namely how to find refuge from the pain these images and ideas and opinions cause, would take him a decade more.

In the case of Peter-chan - though I heard a much shorter (and hence more powerful) version of the parable some years ago - it only recently made any sense to me.  Actually, in the version I heard, the insight - or insights - were not spelled out, but one was left to ponder the idea of a monk, or novice, painting and being frightened by such images, over and over again.

So to further spoil the tale, I'll elaborate:  I have come to see how I will continually cast scary images on the walls of the 'cave' in my mind.  What could she possibly have meant by that?  What if he actually does it, how could I go on living?  What will happen if I lose my sight?  My ability to walk?  To drive?

We can be such masterful painters it seems, scaring ourselves so many many times.



[Bonus question:  in my depiction of Jerry-chan (a completely added-on conceit for this telling of the tale), the typical stereotype of what I might consider an antithesis of myself - or at least of my aspirations - have I painted with too broad a brush?  Thereby denying the fact the he, like all of us, deserves and wishes to be free of suffering?]

Freedom tastes of reality...

There are so many temptations in this world that would have us believe 'if only.'  For instance, 'if only so and so were not my boss, then I would be happy, and free of stress.'  Or, if only I won the lottery, I would be free of worries.'  Or, 'if only I lost 15 pounds, I would feel beautiful, healthy, and be happy.'

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, there are two commandments that warn us not to covet our neighbor's house, or wife.  Theft clearly is verboten in all cultures, but the idea that even to want something not belonging to you, can be problematic, suggests a sophistication that I think is wise to explore.  Why shouldn't I want my neighbor's mansion?  I just dropped Miller off at an end of eighth grade pool party at a very lavish house, it's large yard surrounded by a rock masonry wall.  Why shouldn't I want a house like that?  (Besides the obvious - the ongoing maintenance, etc.)  Let us investigate:

I imagine that many spiritual traditions have some form of these commandments.  In the Buddhist tradition, instead of an explicit stricture, one is invited to watch just what arises when the mind wishes to grasp something or someone deemed good, or positive, or to push away the 'bad'.  When the mind sees clearly, what might emerge first is simply awareness of grasping, or aversion.  And then perhaps, for example, a tightening of the muscles in the shoulders, or viscera.  A quickened breath perhaps.  Maybe the thought forms, 'I sure would like to have a pool in my backyard.'  Or, 'how could she say that to me?'  Does a bodily sensation also arise?  That old furling of the brow, narrowing of the eyes?  What does my breath feel like now?

Does freedom mean none of these thoughts or sensations or emotions occur?  I am as yet a beginner at this - after ten years of meditation practice - but it seems to me that freedom can encompass so much more than just absence.

Sometimes freedom means being able to cry at the loss of a dear one's life.  Or even to sob violently, barking like a coyote, when 'our song' comes on the radio.  Sometimes freedom means noticing the urge to grasp at some exquisite and unreachable pleasure, and then being able to come back to the splendors - or the sorrows - of this very moment.  This unique moment that we so often put in a box called 'the usual,' or 'ennui.'  Maybe I wish I had a manservant to help me dress for my day, bring me a cup of tea.  But instead I can feel the texture of my pants as I step into them, go into the kitchen and watch the honey swirl into the steaming cup.  Freedom isn't just letting go of 'covetousness' so much as allowing our attention to alight on what is right here and now.

Or, getting much closer to my home, sometimes I will tire of this affliction called MS, that progressively slows my gait, impairs my balance, makes my vision flicker like an old TV set.  It is difficult, but there are moments when I can simply notice these phenomena, just notice them.  Or notice a feeling rise up of disdain for this condition.  And then notice my self-judgement: 'why can't I just be with what is? why must I ask why?'  Each new layer of thought, sensation, emotion is yet another opportunity to wake up and see things as they are.  Heavy, difficult...light, simple - what's it like just now?

Who am I to ask who I am?  Is it not enough just to be?