The Orchid Teacher (An Update)

Back in the Time of Quarantine (TOQ), in March 2020, I wrote about the notion that Mother Nature teaches us, not vice versa. Thus, "my" orchids have taught me they bloom and blossom, live and die, in their own time, if at all. Despite my ministrations and proddings, they rebloom when they say so. (Incidentally, are we not still in the TOQ? Some are; most aren't.)

All four of "my" orchids had thus far refrained from expressing themselves via white, yellow, pink, or purple blossoms of the sort they were arrayed with when I received them. 

Fair enough. Have it your way.

I was undaunted. Correction: I was content with who and what they were. I appreciated an applauded the new green leaves that kept on sprouting from the delta of the existing foliage. I had been obeying the most common dictum of successful orchid growers: Benign Neglect. Bowing to the orchids as my teachers, I let them do what they would do, absent resentment, rancor, or expectation.

Or so I say.

Recently, one of the little plants slowly burst forth a shoot that differed from the roots that float into the air or burrow into the matrix like lazy tentacles of a small octopus. This shoot was thinner than the meandering roots and of a different shade of green, less pale. Most surprising of all, it sported buds! No question, those were buds. A half dozen nascent nodules of exuberant blossomitude. This was the secular, natural miracle I was unpraying for.

I was like a kid (secular or religious, Santa Clausified or capitalismified) the week before Christmas.

And then . . . 

And, um, then . . . 

[I can barely bring myself to admit it.]

And then, last evening, I figured I would attach the pregnant branch to the vacant and mournful solitary chopstick the plant came with, the slender sentinel that allows one to clip a branch onto it so it grows upward, according to an unspoken, if vain, aesthetic. Why not? Let's celebrate this vernal renascence with upward mobility! Who needs droopy doldrums perilously inching downward away from the mother-ship green leaves?

As I was gently and delicately trying to curl the tiny fleible clasp embracing the stalk onto the stick, it snapped. Without a sound, but palpable and visible nevertheless. I had grievously injured the vindication and triumph of my do-nothingness. (I was brought up on the Confiteor, during the recitation of which we would beat our breasts over the words "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.") The budding branch was not quite severed, but I suspect it is done for. Kaput. For good measure (really, as a quixotic gesture if ever there was one), as a palliative I curled some plastic tape around the trauma site. Perhaps it would allow some sort of mysterious recovery. This was like putting masking tape around a broken arm.  

I was so distraught I could not tell anyone until the next day, when I confessed to my beloved a "crime against Nature, possibly unforgivable."

Maybe it will survive and prevail. Most likely not. There are other fish in the sea, other orchids in the jungle, blah blah blah.

Right.

The orchid teacher is teaching me a painfully obvious lesson:

LEAVE WELL ENOUGH THE FUCK ALONE.

supply chain (poem 021-2021)

We supply the want

Who the chains?

And who the need

Most unchained?

Supply chain disruptions

Meaning heart attacks?

Meditation mantras?

Falling in love

Or out of

Fasting or slowing

Tugging or pulling

Most of all

Waiting

To

Wait

Let

Wait

Go

mental pencil sharpening

I say I am awake. I got up around 10:15; late for many, but when do The Many go to sleep? I am awake, but it's not the prime hours of the day for me, the starter minutes, the limbering up orally, visually, aurally, et ceterally. I strive to be awake, to back up my claim of same.

But am I?

Who is?

I look around. Glance and browse with my eyes. If I were to close my eyes right now, could I name five objects in this room at this coffee shop, name five smells, five sounds, five textures? Could I describe colors, voices, fixtures, flavors, tastes, walls, floors, doors, customers, lighting, ceiling, temperature, odors, fragrances, air flow?

But who could? Who does such a thing?

To be fair to myself, and to anyone reading this (all 18 people), if I knew I'd be queried as queried above, I'd be able to practice my observation skills. I'd be able to sharpen my mental pencil, or mentally sharpen my metaphorical pencil. Something like that. I am confident I would achieve better results, as would anyone else.

Is it an acquired skill or a discipline, this acute awareness? Can anyone do it with practice over time? Are some people born with talents and powers and skills that aid and abet this adventure?

Detectives and priests. Writers and car salesmen (not gender-specific). Hustlers and thieves. Politicians and pontiffs. Pitchers and batters. Poets and magicians. Who among them exceeds at seeing/hearing/tasting/touching/smelling/thinking/feeling? Again, is it practice or innate talent, or a hybrid of all those things?

Are females or males better at this? I suspect babies and toddlers are the most advanced in this arena; they simply lack the ability to articulate it. Are some cultures better than others at it? Has technology dulled the knife of perception, the blade that cuts through the cloud?

So, you're reading this, and you say, So what? Who cares? What's the point? What's the big deal?

The big deal is the small deal. The small deal is the only game in town. It doesn't take a meteorologist to know which way the rain is falling.  

I want to know enough to get away from the train on the tracks. But I don't want to know so much that I can't tell the difference between a train and a titmouse.

swinger

Driving down Maplewood Avenue, off to the right, just missing the windshield's blind spot, she thought she saw a swing sweep upward, a swing suspended from an unseen branch, its sight muffled by branches and leaves, the apogee a flickered flash in the afternoon's blaze. A rider not discerned: male or female, young or old. A white dress? Impossible to say. Too quick. The light turned green. The insistent beeping horn of the car in back.

sometimes I wonder

do you
ever
think of me
sometimes I wonder
what if
what if not
and everything in between
sometimes I wonder
that I wonder
which is wonder aplenty
sometimes I suppose
I wonder
which is just as good
sometimes I forget
to wonder about wonder
which is my loss
though wonder
still awaits
me there
fresh and fierce
patient and planted
mountain solid
and the trickling stream
the chickadee
and snow spilling off the branch

you talkin' to me?

pardon me
you heard me
no, really, I didn't
I said, "to be or not to be"
that's what I thought
so you did hear me
point taken
I'll say it again
I dare you
"to be or not to be"
let's face it, that's pretty fuckn grandiose
how
c'mon
it ain't grandiose, it's basic
like "back to basics"
I've never understood what that meant
it's elemental, fundamental, mental, unsentimental
now you sound like early Dylan
nothing wrong with that
it's alright, ma
elementary, my dear Watson
he never said that
not exactly
anyway, where were we
right here
right here is where we always are
nowhere, man
now here
clever
slow down, you better slow down
break it down
when you said, "to be or not to be" were you serious
of course I was
serious as in suicidal
what, where do you get that
well, you're standing alone all serious and shit
it's a fecking play, I'm a character, on a stage
all the world's a stage
bingo
the play's the thing
how 'bout "play's the thing"
as in juggling, like the king's Fool
not that kind of juggling, more like thi
jousting
joisting
James Joyceting
ca-ching
bada-bing
to be
or
not to be
sproing
back to Square One
exactly
approximately
approximately King Hamlet
that's rich, even royal
royal manna
give that man a cigar
he she it them
that, too
 

neural urban renewal

I take a different route. For each day's walk, I go a different way. I go my own way, to paraphrase Fleetwood Mac. Sometimes spontaneous, other times quasi-premeditated. Best is when I embark on a different compass point from the day before. How long can I maintain this variation? The array of streets, avenues, places, drives, boulevards, circles, and lanes is finite. Both the thoroughfares and each day's combination, however haphazard, are finite. The possibilities are not endless, but are they inexhaustible, given the number of days and scenarios available to me? 

Walking out the door, I have a choice. Before walking out the door, I have a choice: Which door? Exiting the Harbor Street side, I obey the sidewalk invitation and refrain from walking on the grass, the grass cancering yellow on its verges. Or I walk out the basement door, near the playground on Emerson, climbing up its steps, a sheet of wind rippling me. Less often, I proceed out via the main lobby; less often in the Age of Coronavirus because of too many chances to encounter fellow residents and other humans, masked or unmasked. 

Which direction?

Toward Tipp Hill? Downtown by way of West Genesee? Downtown by West Fayette Street? Or toward Solvay, on Milton, toward the post office, the paperboard plant, 690, or steep hills hiding munificent mansions in a blue-collar, our-own-electricity town? Maybe industrial, treatment plant-bounded Hiawatha Boulevard slouching toward Destiny? Possibly toward Camillus, zigzagging into suburbia with its mulched gardens, 5 p.m. IPAs, and lace-curtain lonelinesses? 

I suppose I could inspect a map and plot out the precise scenarios left to me. I could chart all the itineraries untrammeled, navigable, and still available. That's not me. What a buzzkill that would be. Add this to your algorithm: Walking to the other side of the street (any street or part of a street) to break up the sequence, to foster the illusion of newness.

Is that it, is that why I insist on these new pathways?

Behold, I make all things new. (Book of Revelation)

Or is it something to do with rebooting, rewiring, overwriting, reframing, and recasting? 

History is a nightmare from which I am tring to awake. (James Joyce)

Don't stroke victims need to embark upon fresh nerve patterns, new neural pathways, to accomplish tasks formerly taken as a given?

Rinse, recalculate, recalibrate.

If it wasn't a stroke, what was the cerebral/spiritual upheaval? Where was (is) its seismic epicenter?  

We are told: Do not leave the teahouse by the same path upon which you entered it.

The journey of a thousand miles . . . . etc., etc., that cliche.

The road not taken?

Take them all. All of them. Individually and collectively.

Walk them all, every which way. And back again.

Then tell us about it.

 

Broken Windows and Silver Doorknobs

Bad neighborhood. Sketchy. Rough area. Borderline. Ghetto. Have you heard any of these descriptions, however offensive they may strike you? Have you heard either more negative terms or their euphemistic replacements?

Come, take a walk with me.

No. Right now. Don't be afraid.

Observe this block. Schuyler Street. Take in the parade of two-story, two-family houses, built in the 1920s and '30s. Lawns manicured, adorned with daffodils, mulch, shrubs, trees. No litter. Structures not thirsting for paint or carpentry. Across the street, much the same: different architectural styles, smaller, more modest. Up the block, historic Myrtle Hill Cemetery. Graves dating to the 1800s, including that of a Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. Several blocks distant, over on Milton Avenue, a house overrun by fallen maple limbs and uncut grass, by weeds, a house choked by its longtime neglect, its metal fence interweaved by sprawling hedge branches, an empty pack of Newport 100s, a discarded Brisk ice tea, a crumpled invoice for car repair, a lone latex glove. An official notice of condemnation posted on a window and door. Blue recycle bins, tires, broken trikes, and split-open trash bags on Herkimer and Emerson. And up the hill, on Pharis Street, overlooking city and suburbs, a pristine lawn with a sign warning against having your dog use the lawn as a private bathroom, in front of a pristine Arts and Crafts bungalow freshly painted yellow, brown, and black, with a shock of red on the door.

Care and neglect coexisting. Pride and privation. Gain and loss. A fabric of multicolored threads and textures, sewn and patched, stitched and shored up. Some more than others, some less, some not at all.

Let's walk some more, keep pace, stretch your stride, down the hill, toward the creek. Oh, you'd rather not, this is a "bad neighborhood"? Be brave. Suck it up. Trust me. Really.

True, that broken, rusted pickup in the driveway looks unsavory, so does the mosaic of tossed Burger King wrappers and soda cups. An eyesore. It makes my eyes sore.

But look across the street, that Victorian painted lady, emerald and cream with surprises of vermilion. Do you see its new siding, every storm window sparkling new, the shiny metal roof? The rebuilt porch? That house could pass for brand-new if you didn't know better.

I am sure this is obvious, but I can't help noting it: we are not dodging bullets, street-corner hustlers do not catch our eye, wondering if we covet their gaze and proffered wares.

Form your own conclusions, as you will. 

In my Age of Coronavirus walks, the gods and goddesses of surprise have been my tour guides.

Surprise, surprise.

If we look for broken windows, they appear. If we search for silver doorknobs, we find them.

p.s. Ever hear the expression "my mind is a bad neighborhood"? (It's popular in wellness and recovery circles and can possibly be traced to an Anne Lamott quotation, but its provenance is uncertain.) As with the physical neighborhoods described above, be careful what you look for. As Leonard Cohen suggested, "look among the garbage and the flowers." You never know what you will find.

PC: post-coronavirus

Me: Hey, Alfredo, you know what? Things just aren't going to be the same after this. They're really not going to be the same.

Alfredo: They never are.

And here I was the one pretending to be a Buddhist.
 

The Orchid Teacher

No, no, no, not someone to teach the arts of nurturing orchids. No, no. The orchid is the teacher. She gives the lessons. He tells the tale. It sends the message. The orchid. It's the seer, guru, professor, maestro.

The orchid's the teacher.

The blossoms wilted. They died. They fell. The big green leaves stayed around all winter after the flower spikes were cut down near the bottom. Watered once a week in the time of hibernation, a time before The Quarantines. Faithfully. Months passed. And in the spring two, possibly three or four, minuscule shoots, bright dots, green-yellow eyes peering from the sphagnum. It is said these are flower spikes. Nascent. 

Hope. After the endless winter.

Hope was not abandoned, all ye who entered here.

Hope in the Age of Coronavirus.

I am the orchid.

You are the orchid.

No human heart or voice ever scolded the orchid, never inserted a sideways "should" in any shape, color, or form. Never remonstrated the orchid for its tardiness, its barrenness, its playing dead. No human name murmured "what if" or "if only you had" or "but." The orchid wouldn't listen anyway. She knew her secrets, he guarded his destiny, it surrendered to its fate. The orchid endured not a single "told you so" or "could have" or "would have."

Her patience with our impatience was our homework, quiz, and test. Everyone passed. His lesson was for all to see all along. Speaking not a word, the orchid spoke volumes.

You are the orchid.

I am the orchid.

We sing hymns to the orchid teacher. The orchid is the teacher, we the pupils.

The orchid is the message and the messenger.
 

merry merry merry

If I say "merry" and ask you what immediately comes to mind, I'd bet good money that "Christmas" would be your reply. Right? I can't think of many other constructions in English that are so consistently paired. (Paired. There's a term used ad nauseam.) Yeah, "happy" followed by "birthday." No others come to mind. Help me out. Is it the same with "joyeux noel" in French?

Why "merry"? It could have gone myriad other ways: happy, joyous, pleasing, blessed, fine, cheerful, glad, sweet, exciting, holy. Okay, not quite myriad. But you get the point.

"Merry" itself has a fascinating history and evolution. The wonderful ("wonderful" instead of "merry"; there's another one) Online Etymology Dictionary traces merry to "short duration," as in "time passes quickly; enjoy it now while it lasts." I like that Zen element thrown in there. Impermanence. Transitory. Have you ever heard a Christmas sermon focus on that angle? Neither have I. It'd be a rewarding hybrid of notions and traditions. (No, not me. I'll spare you my attempt at such a homily.)

Not surprisingly, "merry" also has seedier (see below for the innuendo) senses. The Online Etymology Dictionary cites "merry-bout -- an incident of sexual intercourse." Fun! Following the same line of carnal logic, or passion, "merry-begot" was a way of describing "illegitimate" or "bastard."

Merry, merry, merry Christmas, or anything else.

biopsy epiphany

I expected the worst. I'm not even referring to the results. Worst, as in bend over to be probed, inserted, navigated, manhandled. A conjured image of discomfort, humiliation, breathe-through-it pain, tension, and fear. I was given a needle in each butt cheek: an antibiotic as a preventive measure. The left needle was barely felt; the right one hurt. I was escorted to the room for the euphemistically called procedure. Lie on your left side, facing the wall. So that was better than the on-your-elbows position I had pictured. Plus, they "numbed me up" down there. Another aspect better than I had envisioned. (In 2002, I was not given an anesthetic.) Before you know it, during my rambling dialogue with the doctor, they're in there. Ultrasound images on a screen. Colorful computer simulations, like you see in the movies. Numeric designations on the screens. To the left, or the right, up or down, closer or farther. Lunar landscape. Gentle landing. Inner clenchings like staplings but duller, internal pings -- except for one of twenty, not painful, more like an annoyance, a tangible split-second thump within-the-inner-of-the-inner inwardness. To harpoon and retrieve the tissue samples. The conversation and the screens distractions. The doctor said I'd probably want to watch. I said I rarely do, such as during a colonoscopy, which I wouldn't remember anyway because of the Versed anesthesia. He said, oh, you'll watch. And I did. An observer of my innermost self, physically. Not afraid or anxious. Almost amused. A detachment as if it were somebody else being represented up there on the screens. A curiosity, an observation, an objective assessment. Oh, that. Watching some kind of sci fi episode, without the popcorn. A metaphysical shrug of the shoulders.

Would that such detachment were granted to me for any day's probings, any day's pricks and prods, any day's pleasures or pains.

anonymous

Literally without a name. Or without a literal name. How about a metaphorical name. Nameless. Not "name known but unspoken." No, not that. No name at all. Was there ever a name. Was a prior name shorn and shucked, offering a new self. Or was the anonymity there from birth. Did the anonymity serve as a blank canvas to paint on, to create an identity, a self. Dead to me. They say this or that one is "dead to me." A phrase nurturing either resentment or detachment. Take your pick. But who are "you"? Who is "me"? The power of anonymity. What exactly is that power. The unheralded secret, random kindness. The so-called selfless act that is never truly selfless despite what they say. Who are "they"? Anonymity as a shield, a shelter. Anonymity as a brandishing (surely not a brand name). "Anonymous" being the author. "Anonymous" being the donor. Handy for purposes of humility. Purposeful for adoptions. Anonymous the voyeur. Anonymous the spy. Anonymous the unknowable divinity, the unspeakable divine, as the ancient chosen tribe resorted to an acronym rather than utter the Sacred Name of No Name. That power of anonymity. Protector. Refuge. Savior. No name. Before name. Beyond name. Beyond noun or pronoun. Beyond adjective.

Just verb.

'just the facts, ma'am'

just the facts, sir or ma'am
just the facts, hun or son
only the true facts, witness or suspect
(as opposed to the false facts)
only provable statements, girls
what fun is that
immovable nouns
unembroidered with adjectives or adverbs
unadorned with editorials, sly or overt
unanviled by history or expectation
threaded by truth
as we know it 
not as we don't know it
imagine
the naked facts
the skeletal stance
raw bone
blunt instrument
fact finding
search
in the dark
bright noon
just the fact
the fact
of this

hole in the donut

Waiting to board an Adirondack Trailways bus bound for New York from Syracuse, I spied a sign in the distance at the Dunkin' Donuts in the regional transportation center. 

The sign read, "DO A DOZEN."

Or did it?

Now picture a doughnut, or donut, if you will, in place of each letter "O."

"D A D ZEN." 

I pointed out this oddity, coincidence, novelty, or providential message to the prospective passenger sitting in front of me on a metal bench.

"I've never been on a bus," she felt compelled to confess.

"Never? How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"How about a train?"

"No."

"Plane."

"No." Self-conscious chuckle.

"A school bus?"

"Yes."

What Dad Zen wisdom could I impart to this brave-new-worlding daughter of her dad?

A smile, a reassuring voice.

"I wonder if it's late. I'll check," Zendad offered.

What is Dad Zen? you might ask.

If there is no self, wouldn't that rule out Dad Zen, as well as Mom, Son, Daughter, Brother, or Sister Zen?

Having no self, do we become the hole in the doughnut? 

But in doing so, are we made whole?

In Step Three of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill Wilson observed that someone, especially a fledgling seeker, might be afraid of taking a leap of faith, a surrender to Somebody or Something. Such a BraveNewUniverser might be afraid of becoming "the whole in the doughnut."  

Becoming a doughnut hole isn't just a clever Dunkin' marketing ploy.

Willing to risk becoming the hole in the doughnut takes a leap of faith, as Soren Kierkegaard put it.

Who wouldn't be afraid to take a leap of faith? Where do we fall to? Who or what catches us? Are we bruised? 

And what or who are we after The Fall?

There you have it.

It?

Alan Watts says, "This is It."

So be it.

Later, having arrived in NYC, I see In front of La Mode cleaners on Broadway near 109th Street, an Asian man wearing a black baseball cap emblazoned with the word "DAD."  

Was he practicing Dad Zen? 

(Or subliminally advertising DO A DOZEN?)

I've been staying with friends on 108th Street.

There are 108 mala beads.

A baseball has 108 stitches.

It's Opening Day.

I'll have a bagel with a schmear.
 

particulate matters

before the next step pavement sparkles a starry day constellation advancing with each footfall between tire tracks imprinting transit blaring snow islanded coal wet dry wet trumpeting clarion sun white melt Rorschachs but you roadway glitter diamonds pixels pinpricks flame pinnacles piercing into my eyes where have you been all my life

The Tell-Tale Clock

In the sunlit hallway, walking to what was hours earlier her room, I felt a coat of grief draped over my shoulders. This is going to be hard. Keep walking. Through the doorway, into the familiar room, where her stray molecules lingered and danced. Be quick. Jesus to his disciples, 'Let the dead bury the dead.' Scant days after the vigil, our shared presence and prayers, the mottled hands, her painted nails, the dry gulch, the vacant room.

A worker on the clock, I placed into a cardboard box artifacts curated from the nightstand's three drawers: greeting cards, hotel-sample-size packets of shampoo, sugar packets, a broken rosary, empty purses, photo postcards, 'rake' combs, hairbrushes, single mints in cellophane, toothpaste, skin creams, shoes, slippers, a keychain, crucifixes, an outdated page of monthly activities, an empty wooden box with ribbon and broken-seal sealing wax.

Do not tarry. The walls closing in. Trudge onward. Keep or toss. Toss or keep. Atop the nightstand, take and keep the plaster Jesus that silently kept watch with us, a family relic hearkening back to Dad and his holy rituals. Toss the shoes and slippers. Leave for donation the ones gifted at Christmas days earlier. Not as hard as I thought. Keep the exquisitely framed July portrait with her and the kids and me. 

From the closet, take a black and white sweater, a green patterned blouse, two vases, five plastic hangers. Leave the nightgowns, sweaters, pants, blouses to be cleaned and donated. Leave the incontinence underwear. Back to the nightstand: toss the dessicated red cyclamen and Christmas bouquet of cut bright flowers.

After a rapid-fire mental Ping-Pong, I grabbed the bedside alarm clock, hesitated in mid-air, and placed it in the carton. Take it. Keep it. The white still-ticking clock I bought so she could see the time, the hour and the minute, to face her as she lay in bed, sleeping, so much sleeping, or awake and awaiting a call, a visit. The alarm never used unless by accident. Why set it. And was it day or night. She barely knew. Black readable numbers. The relentless red second-hand stuttering its staccato circuit. Tick-tock-tick-tock.

From the bed, let's not forget the Creamsicle-colored luxuriantly soft blanket, a gift she cherished to no end, at the end; and the similarly velvet-soft gray pillow I got her for Christmas, which she may not have ever lain her head on. 

That clock. Why keep it. To what end. Take it out of the box and toss it. Toss it in the trash and walk out, carry the box to the car, put it in the trunk, and drive away. 

Which I did. 

Mostly. 

The box in the trunk. Drive around for 20 days. Open the trunk. Lift out the box, ride the elevator to the top, open the door. Open the box, retrieve old greeting cards to get addresses.

And the clock.

Tender time bomb tolling, o sole mio, stoic sentinel.

Tell-tale heart.

Hello, Mr. or Ms. Clock, you new resident on the Formica faux-marble countertop, the peninsula between my kitchen and living room. No man-woman-person is an island but is a peninsula, it has been said and sung. 

Which way to face it, where to place it. Do I muffle the roar of its ticking, wrapping it in a towel in a closet or in a bureau. Or under the floorboards. Or remove the battery. 

Smother it. Smash it to smithereens with a sledgehammer. 

What then.

What then. 

A silence, hollow or fulsome. A stillness saturating the sacred hours. Unsaid, unspoken. 

Inhaled, exhaled.

Hallowed.

Then sifted and settled. 

Into gentle spring rain.

Or, for now, perched on the peninsula, a presence a few yards from the ashes, across from the red-blossomed amaryllis, pattering.
 

Twelve Commandments of So What - Do Nothing

I once heard someone say: “So what. Do nothing.”

The “so what” was said to mean: whether you are addled, rattled, depressed, ecstatic, thrilled, terrified, despairing, or discontented, you are not the leading actor in your idiosyncratic, spotlighted melodrama. It’ll pass. You’re a speck of dust on an orbiting pebble in the cosmos. This reminded me of an off-the-cuff bit of wisdom a mentor breezily passed on to me decades ago: “Nothing matters very much; most things not at all.”

The “do nothing” part was said to mean: face it, feel it, suffer it, humor it, ride it out, don’t escape it. Otherwise, it will sneak up on you anyway when you least expect it. What is “it”? Any tide of emotion. Anything.

With all that in mind, here are my Twelve Commandments of So What - Do Nothing:

1. You shall pause, reflect, and shrug your shoulders.
2. You shall look at where your feet are.
3. You shall look up into the sky at midnight on a cloudless night in a deep forest.
4. You shall follow your breath, in and out, in a quiet space.
5. You shall accept and honor your self, with all your diamonds and all your rust.
6. Remember this day as holy, fleeting, and precious.
7. Restrain your tongue, pen, and Send button. 
8. Don't do the next right thing — not yet.
9. You shall let it come.
10. You shall let it be.
11. You shall let it go.
12. You shall smile.

dream lover

At the stoplight, he glanced into the rearview mirror. It framed a vision. She was looking down, obviously at her phone, at a text or a message, who knows perhaps a YouTube video. She was young, with dark hair, dark eyes, dark eyebrows, long, dark hair. Time stopped before the light changed. What a dream, he thought, relieved the light was turning green, relieved she never locked eyes, as can happen in those mirrored exchanges. "Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream" floated into his head as he put his left foot on the clutch, pressed the gas, and turned left.

you turn

At the intersection of Lowel and Whittier (Syracuse streets named after authors), the driver in the SUV slowed, stopped, and began a U-turn. (A woman in her fifties, she was -- to recall more accurately -- driving a CRV, one of those so-called crossovers, and for all I know it was literally a Honda CRV.) She completed three-quarters of the U-turn. I was at the intersection's stop sign, getting ready to turn left. The only other traffic was a car to my left on Lowell. I slipped through and proceeded to make my left turn. I wasn't in a big hurry, though I was a bit later than I'd planned to be on the way to a pre-Mother's Day "tea and dessert" with Mom, 99, and the seniors at her independent-living facility. I didn't impatiently beep my horn or wave my arms. The driver witnessing all this, on Lowell to my left, who couldn't go anywhere anyway except backwards, sported a beaming smile. In her twenties, hair tied up, she flashed an exuberant, bright-toothed smile of wonder and delight. It said, "Look at you, maybe you are lost. you've decided to correct your 'mistake' and do a 180. How sweet. Isn't life grand!" Or notions along those lines. Her smile was rich, patient, buoyant -- and unmistakably genuine. I was immediately grateful that I had not beeped my horn or waved my arms. I was also relieved I had not given U-Turner the finger or yell to no one in the car, "What's the matter with you? What are you doing? How dare you slow me down? What is this country coming to?" I first thought the two female drivers knew each other or were related. I assumed Smiler's breezy tolerance was several doses of "hey, that's cool, we'll find the place, no hurry, we'll get there, I'm good." But as I drove on, on Lowell, with U-Turner in my rearview mirror, Smiler was nowhere to be seen. Now it appeared that Smiler and U-Turner were strangers to each other, as they were to me. With U-Turner in my rearview, searching Tipp Hill slowly for her destination, I had a revelation. Why is familiarity the pretext for kindness? Why couldn't Smiler be someone who took the world in stride, as it came to her, at its own speed, someone who took the "good" with the "bad" equally, not personally offended or distraught by life's disturbances or challenges? Before you dismiss this view of life as either sappy/sentimental or deranged (and I get that, I really do), think again. (Or feel again. Neuroscientists tell us there is no difference biologically and neurochemically between thinking and feeling.) Aren't we offered many moments in every day with an opportunity to be either the Smiler or the FingererGrowler? I am not suggesting that I (or you) can inhabit a Hallmark, gauzy world of inhuman tolerance, or walk or drive in a hazy, psychotic fugue of benign delight. 

Well, maybe I am.

p.s. This episode reminded me of Splashed Woman of Times Square, in the Eighties, who got doused by a cab. It drenched her. I witnessed this, fifty yards away, on my way to work. She laughed.