I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

I have known for some time that some serious renovation work had to be done on the front  outside wall of my condo building.  Part of the work would mean a  plywood wall would be placed inside  in front of my existing dining room wall, blocking the windows.  Once I knew this, I began to mope about how dark my dining room would be without all that lovely light I get.  I dreaded it, this coming darkness.  What a curse.

Fast forward a few weeks....as some of you know, an attack of the shingles virus has affected my eyes, and as a result,  I attempt to live in constant twilight with sunglasses, to protect my eyes from the one thing they cannot stand right now:  light.  During this time the plywood wall went up and covered my windows.  And I am so grateful.

And while we are talking about The Eye (this is The Eye the virus has attacked)..... my left eye has never had very good vision in it.  I had eye surgery when I was four to make some corrections in my vision, but I always say I do "most of my seeing" with my right eye.  Because the vision from the left eye is so poor, my brain essentially surpresses those images to allow me a sense of better vision - only the incoming vision from the right eye is "allowed" in. 

I am very grateful that the virus decided to go after the bad eye.  If it had targeted the right eye, I would be in a real fix.  But as I live week after week with problems in The Eye (which I am told will eventually get better), I realize that this eye that I have disparaged throughout the years has provided me with some depth perception and definitely some peripheral vision.  In fact, it was a lot more important than I realized.  I realize how much I want it back, this miserable eye with poor vision.  Instead of looking into the black depths of this pirate's eye patch as I do now, what a gift it would be to be graced with this eye's imperfect sight again.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  May you cherish the blessings you have, and may you see a blessing in all that is imperfect around you ;) 

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I am under the covers, and as I awaken I realize the sun has risen.  I stick my head out.  Cursed dawn, cursed cursed dawn!!  Even through the closed blinds of my bedroom I see streams of horrid sunlight attempting to invade my shuttered cavern.  I fumble for my sunglasses on the table and put them on and  get out of bed.

I don't turn on any lights.  All the blinds in my apartment are closed, creating a dim "no one's home" look, with the exception of the kitchen and its dreaded skylight.  Oh, cursed skylight!  I shade my eyes with my hands and make my way to the coffee maker to start the day. 

And so the day begins wherein I try to find numerous ways to avoid going out into the daylight. Fiendish daylight.  Abominable daylight.  Bloody atomic daylight. 

This my friends, is the parting gift of my case of shingles.  *Shingles, if you haven't had the pleasure, is a descent into Dantes Inferno. (See last paragraph.  Most people aren't sure what shingles is.)   In my case the affected nerves ran along one side of my forehead, up my scalp, and down my neck.  The first pain (even before the blisters arrived) was bad, but it was babyspit compared to what was to come.  A few days later I was convinced someone had sawed my head open and poured acid into one half of it.  And so I spent the next 3 weeks in a blur of hideous pain and valiant painkillers which struggled mightily to keep the horror down to a dull roar. I decided that shingles is what made people invent morphine.  And just as the acid began to recede somewhat from my brain, I discovered it had invaded my left eye. 

Yes, my friends, I now had shingles in my eye.  The bright light (no pun intended) in all this, is that it was affecting the eye that I have pretty crummy vision in to start with.  (When the eye doctor asked me if I noticed my vision worsening I replied, "I dunno.  How would I tell??" ) Through numerous eye doctor visits I learned, so far, that my vision is not affected, however there is a great deal of pain and light sensitivity.  Daily The Eye dribbles its tears of misery down one cheek. Thus I have become a werewolf.  If someone wants to meet me during the day, I tell them it will have to be in an underground tunnel. I have even bought a pirate's eye patch. 

Finally, around 6pm,  a miracle happens.  Sunset! Oh blessed sunset!  Oh gorgeous descent of night!  Someone suggests meeting for a drink. I suggest the darkest bar in town.  I am amazed when I can sit across from my friend without my sunglasses.  I can open The Eye.  I go to the grocery store, driving in my sunglasses at night (headlights are very bright you know), and slink around the store (which is infernally bright, I might add).  Still, in the car I have both eyes open. It is a miracle.

People look at you strangely when you wear sunglasses at night. They think:

A:  I am a famous celebrity. (People frequently mistake me for Madonna).

B:  I am hiding from the law, an old boyfriend, my creditors,  aliens from another planet, etc.

C:  I am a spy

D:  I am just very peculiar

I look forward to the day where I don't have to do everything at night. Where I can keep both eyes open during the day.  Where people don't think I'm winking at them with my left eye as I struggle to keep it open, and it struggles to close. Where the computer screen doesn't seem like an evil device designed only to torture The Eye.

The Eye will get better, and I will stop lurking in the night.  That will be about the time I need to start shaving all this extra hair growing all over my face, and filing down these new fangs.

(* Shingles is the reactivation of your own case of chickenpox that you had as a child.  The virus remains dormant in your nerves and sometimes "wakes up", travels up the nerves and erupts into blisters on the skin.  You can't catch shingles from someone, but someone who has not had chickenpox can catch chickenpox from someone with shingles.  Shingles creates excruciating pain. Getting on an anti-viral drug within 72 hours of the appearance of blisters can shorten the attack somewhat and help prevent long-term complications.  There is a vaccine for people over 60.)

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I am in touch with young man in Iran, through instant messaging. We have often shared the similiarities and differences of our cultures.  When I told him of my mother's death this weekend, he said, "We have an expression here when someone dies.  We say 'May this be your last sadness'."

I was struck by the sweetness of that sentiment.  Of course, it is a bit on the unlikely side, as we all have more sadnesses to come.  But it certainly is a generous statement, that wishes it were so, if nothing else.  How sweet  to have received such a blessing from Iran.

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In our quest for perfection, whether it is in work performance, or looks, or lifestyle, we sometimes overlook the beauty of brokenness.

I have spent much of this year "broken" physically (while last year I was a veritable paragon of health and wellness.) How quickly things change!  Two out of the three of the maladies I've endured this year are at the top of the pain chart: frozen shoulder and its equally painful treatment, and something that tops even that: shingles.  (The other ailment was a two month long stretch of an allergy attack and sinus infection out of control.)

In spite of my brokenness this year, I have managed to do a lot of wonderful things! That came as a surprise to me when I realized it.  The year was not a complete loss because I wasn't in good shape.  I still travelled (between medical disasters), I managed most of my workload,  I got involved in new projects.  So illness or not, I managed to keep my eye on the ball of joy as much as possible.

But that's not really what this blog is about.  I was speaking the other day to someone who has been going through a hard time and told me feels "broken".  He has had to rely on friends for help, and is embarrassed about that.  For those of us who value independence and self-reliance, this lesson in brokenness comes hard.  We think it is a failure to have to call on others for help.  But we are missing an incredibly beautiful spiritual lesson here if we can only see it through those eyes.

Think how wonderful you have felt when someone called on you in a time of crisis.  For the most part we feel needed and thrilled to provide a kind of sacred service to another.  Giving to others is a gift to us as well.  So, when we are broken, we are allowing others to feel good about what they can do for us.  Brokenness allows us to rediscover that we are indeed not an island, and reminds us of the incredible value of community, something that frequently gets lost in modern times.

There is a verse in the bible that says something like "we are made perfect in weakness."  That sounds absurd on the face of it, but perhaps what it means is we come into the full experience of our humanity when we find ourselves on our knees or on the ground, when life wallops us with a big bat. 

I read once that some antiques are more valuable when they have "distress" marks in them, in other words, when they are not perfect.  Perhaps we should see ourselves in the same way.  Our distress marks make us more valuable, more beautiful, not less.  Individualism, perfection and self-reliance have their place, but falling into the arms of our fellow human beings is an experience that only brokenness can offer.

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I recently drove to Charlottesville, taking Routes 164, 10, 33, and 22.  You'll notice the number 64 doesn't turn up anywhere on that list. My only nod to the interstate was 295 around Richmond, and if I'd had more time, I'd have avoided that too.

Most of these roads take you through beautiful countryside and the occasional small town.  On that particular day, Route 10 also took me around a major traffic stoppage on the HRBT.  This time of year around Charlottesville is like driving through the most beautiful jigsaw puzzle you ever saw, and the country roads are the best way to see it.

In Monpelier, VA I stopped at a country store to get a couple of housewarming gifts and some lunch.  Inside was full of wonderful, colorful Virginia or Valley made foods, Amish treats, etc.  The ladies at the counter were friendly and warm. When I asked for the restroom, they gave me the strangest instructions:

"Go outside to the house next door, around the back, down the stairs, through the laundry room, and you'll find it on the right."  I said, "Is anyone going to mind that I'm there?"  "Oh no," they said, "it's okay."

So that's where I went. I found myself in the bottom of someone's house in a bathroom with a claw-footed tub!  (I later learned this home houses a cabinetry shop too.) 

I ate lunch at a picnic table  amid pastureland, white fences and squirrels.  I'm sure I would have gotten to Charlottesville faster taking I-64, but I would have missed that sweet and funny little lunch interlude. Sure, I could have gotten lunch off the interstate too, but it would have been Wendy's, IHOP or some other completely unremarkable chain.  I'd have gotten food, but no magic.

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If I were to ask you to recall one or more "peak experiences" in your life, what times or events would you pick?  Strangely enough, people often don't say "oh, my marriage", or "my graduation".  These grand moments sometimes do not make the peak experience stage in the way smaller ones do.

I was recently visiting a friend in Charlottesville who lives in a house with several  high functioning brain-injured people, working there as their assistant in day to day affairs.  I was his guest and on the morning that I was to leave, I was upstairs packing while my friend went downstairs to prepare breakfast for his charges.

There was a knock at my door and in the hallway stood one of the housemates, most likely in his 40's,  who I recalled had mild cerebral palsy and a fierce stammer.  Standing there, overcome with shyness and nervousness, and also complete delight, he handed me a breakfast plate.  My friend had cooked me breakfast and sent it up, and before me was this magnificent omlette decorated with tomatoes, avocadoes, cheese and parlsey....along with buttered toast and locally made peach raspberry jam, and a glass of orange juice. I think I gasped with delight!  The fellow at my door blushed and then scampered off, leaving me with this esthetic and culinary masterpiece. 

I could not exactly put into words why this was a peak experience for me, but it was.  It was a small but magical moment that touched my heart (and later my stomach).  There was so much love in and on that plate. They could just as easily called me downstairs for a Poptart and that would have been fine, but instead the two colluded to bring me something exquisite.

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Yesterday, Saturday Sept. 20, was a strange day.  Many people I knew seemed listless.  No one seemed to have the energy for weekend plans.  People seemed out of sorts, hungover without drinking. Even the weather was curiously flat and lifeless.

I don't think we can ever underestimate the emotional and psychological effect of a week like the past one.  In about one week, another American city was turned into a wasteland, obliterated, wiped off the map, by a mammoth hurricane.  In the same week, the stock market discovered it was built on quicksand, and took a flying leap without a net - until one was hastily assembled. 

And those were just the two big stories.  The newspaper was littered with other grim accounts, everything from train wrecks to murders to unsafe bridges on the verge of closure.  We are also teetering on the brink of a presidential election with power changing hands, and this too creates a dance of uneasiness within us.

If there is anything a week like this does to us, it reminds us no matter how strong and steady a country we are in a world full of weak and unsteady countries, terrible things can happen, and very quickly.  Even in those places where we think we are unquestionably strong, invisible cracks are breaking us apart at the foundation. The financial near-catastrophe on Wall Street is such an example.  Beneath all this are the disquieting and draining elements of soaring fuel and food prices, health costs, credit crunches, and crumbling infrastructures. 

In some ways America needs just this kind of slap in the face.  We need to see where we have been naive, misguided, gluttonous, or in denial.  We have gotten away with building on sand, both literally and figuratively, for a long time, and have come to believe there are no consequences to this, because generally we are spared them.  But nature bats last.  And so do financial realities.  We need to come up against the reality that not every day, every year, every generation is going to have it better than the last, that everything can just grow and grow and we can get richer and richer, forever and ever, amen. 

But it doesn't make it easy, and it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It isn't and it does.  But America has had tougher times - MUCH tougher times - and beneath our sometimes lazy and indulgent exteriors, Americans will find they have, or can develop, some inner toughness.  Living in a dreamworld separate and apart from the rest of the world's struggle won't serve us in the long run.  In all their awfulness, these can paradoxically be good times for America, where we can see what we're really made of. 

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I recently took a trip to Alaska, as several of my friends had this summer, and it was as one of them described,  "a great big place full of nothing".  I spent days experiencing its vast nothingness and found it delicious and wonderful. Interspersed between the great nothingness were places of somethingness:   the cities of Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Seward, Anchorage and Fairbanks, all fascinating in their own way.  Most gorgeous of all was the the great vast nothingness of Denali Park.

Of course "nothingness" isn't really the right word, nor is "emptiness".  Those words sound so negative, and I mean them as anything but.  To me, Alaska's great emptiness is the antidote to a life filled with cities and people and noise and dirt.  Whenever the world seems to be "too much with me", I can rest my mind in Alaska.  I can rest it on the glistening blue glaciers of Glacier Bay, on the soft brown velvet mountains and colorful meadowscapes of Denali, I can rest it on the hundreds of miles of untroubled green coastline.  And if I use my imagination, I can use it to rest on the gigantic snow sheet that covers it in winter, which I have yet to see in person. 

In all the noise, television, car traffic, bad news, struggle and chaos of life, it is comforting to know there is a place devoid of all that, that just sits in eternal quiet and stillness, passing through its cycles of dark and light, warmth and bitter cold, growth and rest.  It is a vast quiet space in my mind that I had the privilege to come to know, however briefly.

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In today's Virginian Pilot is an article about people who occasionally define themselves in animal terms - they feel a certain kinship to a specific animal, assume its form with some kind of costume (partial or complete), and meet with other like-minded individuals. 

This might seem very bizarre but in truth it is just a modern day expression of something people have done for a long, long time.  Think of all the Native American names, for example, Running Bear, Dancing Eagle, etc.  How many little children (or older ones) dress up as animals for Halloween?  What about all those people in animal outfits at Disneyworld?  Then there were the Mouseketeers for heaven's sake! 

The concept of the Totem, or an animal expression of a human's energy or personality, is ancient.  In my case, I would have trouble picking just one!  I have about 5 animals that I feel a special kindship or fascination with, as follows:

Dog

Deer

Raccoon

Wolf

Dolphin

I have had close associations with dogs, raccoons and dolphins, I know them well and resonate with their playful, industrious or curious natures.  I love the mystery and quiet of the deer and wolf, their silent observation of the world,  their lives in the snow, and their grace and beauty.

I would be hardpressed to come up with a costume that embodies all of them, or even a one-name Totem that could embody them.  I remember once a supervisor of mine said she thought of me as a chipmunk, because I had small stashes of food everywhere in my office! 

A totem is a way of conceptualizing ourselves in a metaphor, and connecting ourselves to the greater animal kingdom and the planet at large in an archetypal way.  The "furries" are creatures after my own heart.  I don't think I could wear a dolphin suit to a restaurant,  but in ways a little more subtle, it is fun to connect with my "inner raccoon"! 

What critter carries your name?

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We all have to express our good-heartedness to the world in our own way, there is no one right way or wrong way.  There is only the way that only you can do.

My way (and please feel free to emulate it if you like), involves a bicycle and a silly-sounding bike horn.  Any bike will do, it doesn't have to be fancy or expensive.  The horn on my bike sounds like a duck that has just been "goosed" (sorry about the over-abundance of waterfowl associations there.)  When I squeeze the bike horn, a loud protesting "Wheeeeee-errrrr!" comes out, a silly, goofy sound.

When I have a bit of time, or  if I'm just on my way to some bikeable location, I head out and when I see people I squeeze the horn and wave.  Hey, there's a group of college students on that porch over there having a serious discussion... "Wheeeee-eeerrrr!"  They look up, they smile, they laugh, they wave back.

Those kids walking home from school under the crushing weight of backpacks.  "Wheeeee-eeeerrr!"  They giggle, they wave.  That little group of teens that looks somewhat thuggish, bent on seeing how good they are at intimidation....why not?  "Wheeeee-eerrr!"  I go by so fast, and me and my horn and my wave are so suddenly disarming, they smile before they can stop themselves.  "Hi!!!" I yell. The police officer at the end of a long shift, coming out of 7-11 with his coffee, he gets the Indignant Duck call too.

The garbage man, the mail carrier, that lady walking her dog, my next door neighbor, it doesn't matter.  In an age where we avoid contact with strangers, or fear a purse-snatching or pan-handling, biking silliness can fix a lot of what ails us.  We connect, we bring laughter and playfulness, and in a blur we are gone, there is little risk compared to that of walking along a street.  If anyone is up to no good, a bike rolling by is a tough target.

We are all desperate for friendly human contact that does not demand that we do anything but smile and laugh.  It costs nothing to offer this to the world, to our communities....to be human, to connect to the humanity and the inner child in others. Being good to the world, lifting its morale, reminding it that joy, despite all indications to the contrary, hasn't permanently fallen off the radar screen, is the simplest and most beautiful of gifts.

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