Because I’m an animist (one of the reasons I was so enthusiastic about Dana’s Shinto post) I don’t collect “stuff” so much as welcome new pals to the posse.

Julie and I are minimalists with penchants for toys, books, and outsider art.  (And ground hogs.  Our resident groundhog, the latest of many generations, just passed through the backyard gate on the way to his burrow under the shed.)  Our house is small, so the crew congregates. We don’t get into appliances.  No air fryer or microwave, but one well-loved set of Le Creuset picked up over the years at yard sales, and a stack of Lodge cast iron skillets acquired the same way, except for the ten-inch skillet which I got from my landlady in Deale, Maryland in 1974, an oysterman’s wife and pot grower, who said, as she gave it to me: “I’m gonna give you this skillet since you like to cook, but you ain’t goin’ anywhere with it until I teach you how to season it.)

Oh, we thin books that “didn’t grip”, and take used clothes to CC’s Closet, the local community services store, although I get about 15 to 20 years out of pants and shirts (old clothes know how to drape when you’re standing and envelope when you’re sitting, or better, napping).  But we’d never abandon our tchotchke pals.  We save abandoned tchotchkes who like our looks.  Myristica (the name we’ve given our home, after Myristica fragrans, and its bond of nutmeg and mace) is a safe house and rehab center for others.

Our others have stories.  I use my grandmother’s bread and batter bowls, for baking cookies and bread.  When my mother married my father, my grandmother gave her the wooden spoon I use.

Many years ago, I met a beautiful old woman while waiting in line at a fruit stand.  She was luminous.  Silver hair, glowing skin, wore a honeydew green cotton dress and a thin white, violet print cardigan. We got into a conversation about making biscuits.  Compared shortenings.  I said I liked butter.  She advised lard. (Which I tried but stuck with butter. Crispier crusts.)  Then she gave me a “I’m gonna let you in on a secret” look and said: “Use bowls and utensils that have some baking history.  They know how to bake.”  I told her about my bowls and spoon, and that my friends who dropped over for biscuits on Saturday morning called me Aunt Jo-Mamma.” We laughed, simpatico.

Julie and I know a new recruit when we’re in a shop and hear it say something like “Hey! Get me outta here!”  We also love objects found serendipitously on the street or in the woods.

Julie is a fantabulous artist and craft person.  Look closely at the featured image (the north and west walls of my nest).  She made the dolls lining the top of the woodcarving of three dancing men (which she also painted), made the dolls on the top of the box theater hanging on the wall, and drew the picture of Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus.  Who downsizes love?  Many others in Myristica.

There’s a quality to others that often gets dismissed when they’re only seen as materialistic stuff.  Sometimes when I feel uncertain or vague about what I’m doing, I look at the things I’ve collected, and they remind me of who I was at the time and help me bring into focus qualities I want to maintain, qualities I had when I obtained them, feelings that are still fine, not useful, life is not a utility, no matter bidness jive about “human resources.”

One more look at the picture.  Beneath Sargent’s portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson is a twig wedged on top of the carved white cat face. I found that twig wobbling in water near the bank of a reservoir in Raccoon Twp, PA, in 1969.  That twig, the water, the light, and the buzz, said, “ya know, life is tres groo-vi,” and it’s always helped me remember that.

We’ll all get out of here in a box, but here’s to a long, loving wear out.

I definitely have an issue with stuff magically multiplying.
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We Dance

Shintoism has more followers in Japan than any other religion including Buddhism.   A polytheistic and animistic religion,  Shintoism,  like other Eastern faiths,  includes the practice of meditation and prayer,  and Japan boasts 100,000 Shinto shines.   But Shintoism has no central authority and its practices vary greatly among it adherents.

Although possibly apocryphal,  it is said that Joseph Campbell,  the famous academic who wrote The Power of Myth,  reported the following conversation at an international conference on religion.

An American philosopher told a Shinto priest,   “We’ve been to a good many ceremonies,  and have seen quite a few of your shrines.  But I don’t get your ideology.  I don’t get your theology.”

The Japanese paused as though in deep thought and then slowly shook his head.

”I think we don’t have ideology,”  he said,  ”we don’t have theology.  We dance.”

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

Kevin and Khati covered all my salient thoughts about meditation.  I meditated formally at the Shambala Tibetan Buddhist Sangha in Lexington, KY, and with yoga instructors over the years.

I once visited the Furnace Mountain Zen Center in Clay City, KY.  The Center is gorgeous and located on a thousand acres of stunning foothills at the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest.  But my meditation experience did not go well.

THEY WANTED ME TO EAT KIMCHI AT 5 AM!!  “I said, in these shoes?  I don’t think so.”  (An allusion to Kirsty MacColl’s song.  Well worth meditating.)

https://youtu.be/oW0GK2bVqI0

Harpo Marx is my patriarch, and in his lineage formality is weird, disturbing.

I enjoy informal meditation. The kinds described by Khati and Kevin.  When I managed a book store in the mid-80’s through 90’s, I often drove to a local park for my lunch and dinner breaks and practiced the breathing meditation Khati described.  Through the back window of an old house I rented during the same time, there was a lovely view of a bird feeder near a honeysuckle bush.  I’d meditate and watch sparrows and cardinals come and go like my thoughts.  Bird brained.

During NFL season I keep the chip bag location “fixed firmly in consciousness” to reach it without missing a play.

That’s satisfactory (as Nero Wolfe would say) for me, as far as meditation is concerned. From my experiences with sanghas, centers, and serving “enlightened” diners when I was a waiter in a hippie sprout house restaurant, I feel a focused society would be much like the Star Trek Landru episode.

I prefer freewheeling Crazy Cloud Zen masters and poets, like Li Po, who drowned drunk trying to kiss the moon, or Ikkyu, who preferred playing ball with village kids instead of sitting on a zafu.

One of Ikkyu’s poems is a favorite mantra:

Nature’s Way

The wise heathens have no knowledge,

They just keep their mind continually set on the way.

There are no big-shot Buddhas in nature,

And ten thousand sutras are distilled in a single song.

Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, trans. John Stevens

Another friend had a bumper sticker—“Live simply that others may simply live”—that still seems like good advice.
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In the 1950s high school swimming was neither competitive nor popular.  For the macho man, the game was gymnastics on the bars, football on the field, and baseball on the diamonds.  For women, it was cheerleading and theater.

We did not have fancy or colorful uniforms.

Swimmers had a minimal audience. Our uniforms scantily revealed too much of our bodies:  Just bare legs with female swimsuits and men in speedos.

The frequent practice of swimming the breaststroke taught me to swim without rising up and down in the water which would make waves. As a father, I was able to show off my skill by perching my daughter on her knees on my back while I swam in the pool.  A few times when she was able to balance better, she stood up. For me, this feat was better than winning a race.

For eight years, I had a swimming routine at the university where I was a professor. My office was across the street from the pool, a distance of about 100 yards.  So I could dash between classes or office hours for a thirty-minute half-mile swim.  This was a weekly event, or more.

My effort was to swim as flat as possible with as much speed as possible, I kicked my legs with a small splash to remind me that my feet were not sinking deep in the water raising the level of my head.  And I also did not want them wagging in the air which would not propel me forward in the pool.

I calculated that covering the twenty-five-yard lap would require 14 strokes with one arm or 24 strokes with both. Additionally, I  needed to prevent my arms from diving deep into the water because that would just raise my body and prevent forward motion. Rather I should have my arms sweep across my chest and stomach

After swimming many laps, I developed muscle memory to the extent that I no longer counted my strokes or checked the splashing for my feet.  Sometimes, during the thirty-minute swim, I would shut my eyes falling into a coma-like state thinking of my classes, research, family, and life. I would not be aware of my distance from the edge of the pool. Consequently, my hand would alert me of the boundary by hitting the edge of the pool.  Or I would stop short of the lap’s completion by stopping to breathe on the 22^nd stroke. Occasionally I banged my head into the pool wall. When I did this in the shallow end, I would sink to my knees and swear to myself about my stupidity, but in the deep water, I would be suddenly forced to find the surface with some desperation.

My compulsive swimming habit also led to a precarious social and occupational threat.

I spent a sabbatical spring semester plus a summer off the campus. When I returned to my routine, I quickly dashed off to the pool for my 30-minute swim.  I dashed into the locker room to change and shower.  I had left my towel and speedo in my own locker for nine months.   I ran down the stairs to the pool.  Dashing into the locker room to change and shower. Entering the aisle with great expectations of a long-delayed swim I noticed swimmers preparing for their plunge. One was sitting on the bench looking away from me. I looked at this body with some curiosity. It did not look like a male there were no big shoulders, no tightly skinned muscular back, and just a small waist.  The feet were very small, and the toenails were colored. The silence was broken when the person shouted to a friend who was around the corner.  The noise was feminine, the sound of singing.

I realized I had sped into the wrong locker room. I ran upstairs to the secretary’s office yelling, “Why were there women in  the men’s locker room”

She replied calmly. “During the time you were gone, the locker rooms had been switched. The reason was that the women felt that the outside windows had allowed men to look at them during their changing clothes and showering.”

I asked. “Why did you not label the changes at the door?”

She answered with some amusement.

“We announced the change to the coaches and the swimmers.  We have not yet had time to post signage on the doors “

I left. I did not ask her to go down and get my Speedo and towel. I never retrieved them or picked up my lock.

My Conkeydoodle 

I’ve had many loving family relationships,  and one of them was with Conkeydoodle.   (See Call Me by Their Names)

Conkeydoodle’s father Jack and my father Arthur were first cousins,  so I guess that made me and Conkey second cousins – or maybe first cousins once removed,  we never could quite figure that out.  But Conkey was 11 years my senior and had been my babysitter at times,  and so actually she felt more like a big sister to me.

Of course her name wasn’t really Conkeydoodle but Esther,  and we’d laugh over the fact that neither of us could remember how I gave her that nickname in the first place.   But it stuck and over the years she remained  “my Conkeydoodle”,  and she always signed cards and letters,   and later emails to me as “Conkey”.

But when she started college,  then went to grad school in Massachusetts,  and then married Ed and settled in California,  we saw each other seldom.   But when their daughter Anya came east to Columbia’s journalism school,  and was living in Brooklyn for a few years,  Conkey and Ed visited New York often and we saw them whenever we could.   And over the years we visited them in their beautiful house in Berkeley and celebrated with them there at Anya’s wedding.

Conkey was a therapist and I’m sure was an excellent one –  she was gentle,  wise and empathetic.

Then one day Conkey called with the awful news she’d been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis.  I flew out to see her and spent an afternoon at her bedside,  her devoted dog Ziggy lying on the quilt at her feet.

Soon after I got back to New York we got the tragic news that my cousin had died leaving those of us who loved her bereft.

And now my beloved Conkeydoodle,  your memory will forever be a blessing.

Danny,  Conkey,  Me and Ed  / Berkeley, CA 2013

– Dana Susan Lehrman

Guardian 

I never thought we’d lose touch or become estranged from good friends,   but sadly it happened.   (See The Gs and Malcolm) 

But it seemed inconceivable that in our own family there’d be an estrangement,  but tragically that happened as well.

In the early 1990s my sister Laurie married Andy,  and at the time they seemed a good match – both were post-docs working at the National Institute of Health in Rockville,  Maryland.

We lived in different states and we didn’t see them very often,  but when we did we found Andy a bit strange,  and as time went by we became aware of his dismissive manner and short fuse.

But my sister seemed happy and so I tried not to dwell on my growing unease when around Andy.   And when my nephew Michael was born Laurie and Andy seemed very happy,  and the family rejoiced.   But tragically at age two Michael was diagnosed with autism.

The family rallied with advice and recommendations for professionals who could help,  and offers of our time and energy,  even financial help to pay for special services.   But Andy spurned all our suggestions and offers of help.    Luckily they lived in a county that had a good special needs program in the public schools so at least Michael had that advantage.

Then the double whammy –  my sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis,  her health spiraled down rapidly,  and soon she could no longer work.  And then rather than showing gratitude for our offers of further help and support,  Andy made it clear they were unwelcome.

Then Andy himself had a heart attack,  was hospitalized,  and my sister – by then completely helpless and bedridden –  was taken to the hospital by Adult Protective Services.   With her husband temporarily incapacitated I was able to stand as her medical surrogate.  Then I applied to the court to be appointed as her legal guardian,  and at the trial the judge ruled that Andy’s misguided decision to keep her at home and “treat” her himself was actually an act of negligence bordering on abuse. The court granted me Laurie’s guardianship.

When she was stable enough to leave the hospital we moved her to a wonderful nursing home where for the last two years of her life she was under the care of a competent medical staff and eventually a compassionate hospice team.  (See Take Care of Your Sister and Look for the Helpers – for Laurie)

Since Laurie’s death we visit my nephew Michael in Rockville as often as we can.   He now lives in a wonderfully run group home for special needs adults where he is thriving.

The last time I saw my brother-in-law Andy however was at my sister’s funeral,  and I chose never to see him again.

Laurie

– Dana Susan Lehrman

The buddha smile will follow you.
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