Wrestling

All of the possible pasts and futures
Wrestle for sway with the flesh
The way angels once wrestled with men,
Testing them not for the truth, which they can't see,
But for the heart's agility,
Living, as it does, with partial knowledge
Of what could have been,
What is infinitely possible,
And what coherent narrative demands.

The flesh that withstands this inquiry
Inevitably emerges with an injury--
As Jacob limped after the angel touched his hip
And yet rejoiced that he survived,
So we must strive to bear up properly
Under the weight of what we'll never fully see.

Thresholds of Vulnerability

For each of us, our final act in this life will be to step across a threshold into a world of which we know nothing. 

There are many moments during this life in which we give over a part of ourselves to preparing for that final act. Often we do so in moments of reflection, or by helping a loved one to make that journey, or simply noticing how much we have aged, how far we feel from our beginnings on this earth.

One way I find myself unexpectedly preparing for that last leap is in stepping into the unknown in this life, in leaving behind a comfortable but stagnant situation in order to take a risk in embracing a complete unknown.  

Every time we cross a threshold in this life into an uncertain future and embrace it with all of our vulnerability, we are readying our souls for the final journey in which we must do precisely that. 

To Have

We are currently in the process of negotiating a lease agreement with a company that plans to build a cell tower on the far corner of our land, near the highway. I hired a land use attorney to help negotiate fair terms and have stayed engaged in the dialogue between the attorney and the representative of the cell tower company. It has become clear, over the (months long) course of negotiations that what the cell tower companies present to landowners initially as a proffered lease is an incredibly stilted set of terms that will operate in favor of the company and subject the landowner to ridiculous liability in the event of any problems. But apparently a lot of landowners hear that they'll get a check every month from the company as soon as they start building the tower, and just sign on the dotted line without challenging any of the terms. (It *is* a pretty sweet deal; you get paid monthly for doing a whole lot of nothing).

I found it intriguing, too, how we were able to work out some more favorable terms. For certain (really stilted) clauses in the lease, the cell tower company actually had stock alternative clauses that were much more fair and which they were willing to substitute, no questions asked, as soon as we inquired. But we had to ask.

Seeing how these companies operate makes me feel so awful for people who don't know better than to just sign these leases without protecting themselves. And it also made me think about the way that business and legal transactions are often designed to punish those who are uneducated or lack the means to decipher and challenge the potential outcomes of what is being offered. Unless you know how to ask the right questions (or hire someone who does), you get the worst possible terms. Our system gives more to those who already have much and takes away from those who already lack. 

Wild Horses

I have seen life slip its stable
Like a wild-born horse unable
To accommodate its spirit
To the walls bending too near it,
And gallop out beyond the reach
Of human care, and fall asleep
Alone beneath the wordless sky
Whose stars sing ancient lullabies
Composed of something more
Than words, created from the ache
That stirs throughout the world
In all that lives, the trembling thread
Of hope that gives us one more breath
Before our last and lives between,
Beneath, beyond the words we use
To carry on. The song we know
Before we know is all we know
Before we're gone.

Active Patience

When I was a kid I had a poster in my room that was a picture of a cat crouching in front of a fishbowl, ready to pounce. It read, "The real secret to patience is finding something to do in the meantime." My concept of patience ever since has always been that it is a passive activity, a time of waiting for something that you either want (or dread) to happen. It's a time when you have to quiet your nerves, distract yourself, find something else to do, even as a part of your mind remains preoccupied with the awaited event. It's often required when waiting in a doctor's waiting room, a government office, a grocery store line. And many times, that is exactly what patience consists of; that's why magazines populate all of those spaces. But not always.

There is another kind of patience entirely, one that is more active. Patience is a key part of any endurance activity, even as we are busily plugging away at something that we are just as anxious to complete. Only we cannot complete it as quickly as we would like. This is true for distance runners, of course. I also notice myself developing a similar feeling of impatience when doing things like kneading bread, where it's important to continue the physical activity for a certain amount of time. In those cases, it is not a matter of finding something else to do in the meantime, because you are not waiting for something to happen; rather, you are already engaged in an activity and wishing for it to end.

When practicing active patience-- and it is a practice-- I think it's more helpful to lean into the activity and explore its contours that to distract yourself from it. There is no getting out of it, only getting through it. It helps to notice all the aspects of what you're experiencing, to take a survey of your body and what each part is feeling and doing; to try to heighten awareness of your surroundings through each sense; to pay careful attention to our breath and form; to fully inhabit the moment. Often when an endurance activity feels stale and boring it's because our mind has drifted off; we've gone elsewhere.  While we may mentally check out of difficult experiences as a coping tool, on the assumption that it will make the task easier, it is actually counter-productive as we lose our sense of fully participating in the event.

This kind of patience requires strength and builds strength. It is a mental and spiritual practice that is every bit as demanding as the endurance activities themselves.

The Wind at our Backs

This Christmas Eve, I ran the hills around my house. It was bizarrely warm out- 60 degrees- as it has been many days these last two months. It is the warmest, most snowless winter on record for Buffalo, and has been warm enough that the fallow farmland is now sprouting emerald green shoots of grass as far as the eye can see. It looks and smells exactly like a perfect spring day with the glaring exception that the sun is hanging in the wrong corner of the sky and casting far too mellow a glow across the landscape to which it is awkwardly married.

I found myself thinking of friends who had told me in recent months that they could not endure another Buffalo winter. For while most people who live here love something about the snow, even if they tire of it by February's gracefully short end, there are those few who begin to brace themselves against our long white season as soon as fall comes, as if bracing for an assault. On their account, I thought, "This one's for you."

I also found myself surprised yet again by the fact that on my way east down 20A, it felt for all the world like a perfectly windless day, but then when I turned 180 degrees and headed westward and homeward, the wind was quite formidable against me. And how funny it is that the wind gets no credit when it is at our backs, quietly aiding our efforts. We only notice it when it hinders us.


So it is with most things: that which is gracious or harmonious with our efforts and desires, we quickly assimilate into our own sense of efficacy. While we may initially acknowledge it a gift, we somehow begin to credit ourselves with it over time. Only when that assistance is taken away can we see how dramatically it added to what we ourselves produced. Perhaps it helps us to take ownership of all that propels us forward; paying too much tribute to outside helpful forces may strip us of a sense of efficacy that builds on itself until we truly are contributing much more to our own success. But I suspect this is a fallacy, that an abiding awareness of our limitations combined with deep gratitude that we are nevertheless able to do more than we ought, can give us much more.

Anticipation Conflation

The other day I started a round of antibiotics and I keep not being able to remember if I took my last dose. I'm worried about forgetting to take one so it comes to mind often, and I go so far as imagining taking one before I actually do. Then the act of taking one is so quick that somehow the memory of taking a pill gets collapsed into the memory of anticipating taking it, such that I can't remember, five minutes later, whether I took a pill or whether I just imagined I did; I keep having to count how many are left.

That phenomenon, so concrete in the pill example, because the anticipated action is so brief and thus easy to forget, is a fascinating one and makes me wonder how much of our memories of actual events in our history are at least partially conflated with our memory of our anticipation leading up to the event, in which we imagined, perhaps many times, if we were excited or nervous, what the event would be like. It seems like an easy way for details to become shuffled, in retrospect.

I think particularly of the potent memories of childhood Christmases and wonder how much I am remembering those magical mornings themselves, versus the days and weeks leading up to Christmas, which were filled with anticipation and wonder.

When we greatly anticipate a thing, the thing itself becomes the culmination of all our imaginings, is but the top layer adorning a stack of imagined versions of the event itself. But we forget this when we recall it; we remember it as a single thing rather than the many that it is.