Community

People ask how I'm liking retirement.  They ask how the assignments are working out.  M, my slow travel expert, asks how I'm connecting with people and places while I'm traveling. Do I have intentions to become part of the communities in which I stay?  If so, what will I do 1st, 2nd, and 3rd to see what's available to me?

To answer the first two questions:  I'm loving it. I was  mainly exploring during my time in northern CA, as well as setting up logistics.  And of course, I started with the sister trip in May, and in June had a week with G in San Francisco and its environs.  Now I'm in the first few weeks of my second longest assignment:  Claremont, CA. I'm trying to set up a practice and writing schedule. I am following through on my daily texts and 4 minute diaries and budget entries, but otherwise  I'm most successful at walking dogs and swimming laps in the house pool.  Other than feeling guilty for being so unproductive, I'm ridiculously happy with this. I send messages about the triple digit weather to obviate my guilt:  see, it's TOO HOT to explore, my asthma kicks in if I'm out in this poor air quality for too long, etc etc.  But really, I need to stop focusing on that. As Abraham (Esther Hicks) would say, I need to activate something better than guilt, something more vibrationally satisfying than asthma.  Or, as the Buddha would say, I need to stop focusing on desire, the desire to be an admirable self.

In my need to be productive, I am not seeing the reality, which is perfectly delightful.  I have dogs to cuddle, books to read (or listen to), tomatoes to harvest from the garden, good pinot grigio to drink.  When I feel sleepy, I go out to the pool, usually sans suit.  I take a slow breast stroke/scissors kick towards the deep end and the sitting garden, looking at the tall bird of paradise trees, the flower arch with bright pink blooms, the little smiling turtle light.  At night, the arch is outlined in tiny white lights, and the solar lights in jars line up along the pool.  I reach the end of the pool and lean back for the even slower side wiggle back stroke.  At the shallow end, I flip my feet under me and go back towards the garden and the deep end.  The water is warm later in the day, cool in the morning, silky on my skin.  Sometimes the surface is dusted with pollen and little seeds and occasionally I dodge a fuzzy insect body, pushing it towards the filter or away to the side.  Although I am swimming laps, I do not count them or work at them.  I swim until I don't feel like swimming any more.  Sometimes I lie on the lounge chair, baking both sides before sliding back into the now-chilly water.  Sometimes I read, sometimes I listen to an audio book, the ipad carefully placed in the shade under the plastic side table.  Sometimes I nap, but not too long.  Even with sun-screen, I don't want to hazard this heat for too long.  The dogs come out through the kitchen flap and circle the pool, watching me and then finding a shady place to wait while I finish what I am doing.  They are very attentive to me, as the source of food and cuddles and walks.

I did look into some things to explore.  As with Santa Rosa, my host had some ideas of things to do:  the Huntington Gardens, the Arcadia Arboretum, 4th of July fireworks, the Botanic Garden, Monday night concerts in the Park, Temecula wineries, Santa Monica 3rd street shopping, Long Beach, Descanso Gardens.  Then, as M suggested, I looked into ways to be part of the community.  The Chamber of Commerce had a calendar of events and activities for Visitors, and I discovered the Claremont Forum as well.  The result is a Google Calendar filled with events that I may or may not attend:  outdoor concerts (it's TOO HOT), the weekly Farmer's Market, art exhibits, Shakespeare in the Park (Much Ado, and Hamlet, quite the contrast.) Those were not really ways to connect with the community, so I looked at classes and music offerings.  I am now involved in the Vocal Forum, classes put on Wednesday nights by the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, and as an offshoot of that, I'm singing in their summer choir.  On Sunday, the communion music was provided by an excellent violin/flute duo, so I approached the violinist after church and asked her about local amateurs with whom I could play (she was clearly a professional.)  She took my number, and we'll see.  Today I connected with a fabric artist who teaches Japanese at the Claremont Forum, and we're booked for a single session at $50 to get me started on my studies in preparation for the December gig in Nagano.

These are all pleasant ways to occupy my time, but they don't feel necessary.  It's nice to have something to write about in my daily texts, of course, and it soothes my guilt to think that I'm being productive. The vocal class even got me to get out my violin and do some practicing, thereby justifying both my Housesitter Profile title (Musical Librarian) and the space and logistical issues caused by lugging the instrument around.  Today I practiced voice, violin, and Tai Chi Chih, And now I'm writing.  So, see?  I'm being productive!  

But....I don't really feel invested in any of this.  I am happy just being.  My day has a pleasant arc to it:  wake up to the meowing cat, pet the dogs.  If it's early enough, take a walk, either before or after breakfast for all 4 of us.  Sit with coffee and toast and the crossword.  Check email and Facebook.  Then progress with the day.  Do I need to go shopping, clean up the house, water plants?  Do I have something scheduled for the day?  Do I want to log into Tutor.com and float, in hopes of some tutoring sessions?  Do I want to write?  Practise?  Swim?  Listen to an audio book and knit?  Write?   Call a friend or family member?   Eventually, I take a nap, sometimes inadvertently.  Soon it's 5 pm, and time to look at the evening. If I have nothing scheduled, do I still need to walk the dogs?  Go to class?  Log in for a tutoring session?  I need to send a text to the folks who are tracking me, reassuring them that I'm still alive and well.  And the next thing I know, it's time for bed.  The dogs, who have been following me all day, follow me there as well, and we all settle in. I don't feel like I've wasted the day, but what have I done?  As I texted once, don't know where this day went. Surely I didn't spend the whole day sitting under a dog and coloring online?  'Fraid so.  And that's fine.  When it's time to get active, I'll get active.  And phooey on the whole meditating (Buddha) and examining (Plato) options. That's another sort of desire, it seems, the desire to reach some sort of meaning or nirvana, to have purpose in my life. Right now my purpose is to keep someone else's fur babies happy, and that seems sufficient.

All of this begs the question:  am I lonely?  I don't seem to be.  The difference between working and living in a community and house-sitting in random places seems to be one of focus.  When I was caregiving for E, I was living like this, but I felt trapped by the 24/7 responsibility of it, and I felt like I had to get out in the larger community and make music and see people.  When I was working in libraries, I felt trapped by the schedule, and my health was compromised so that I didn't get out into the community enough.  Now, I'm in a 24/7 situation of sorts, but I am free to get out when and how I want. And now I find that I don't want to get out much.  All of that need for community and activity was apparently manufactured by some other need:  the need to escape my entrapment.  I find that, while  I miss my PDX and ABQ and Taos and WitsEnd peeps, and I feel wistful about the various groups with which I've been involved, I'm not lonely. It helps that I have the internet, but mainly it helps that this is what I want. 

I think about this. L, when she was dowsing, said that I needed a community.  When I was video chatting with W, she said that people who live happily into old age do so when they are in a community.  So, the question seems to be, what constitutes a community?  Is it the physical contact?  I get that with the dogs and cats.  Is it the emotional contact?  I get that through correspondence and chatting.  Is it meeting needs?  I get that through emergency contacts and activism. Is it passion?  I don't seem to have that, but I do manage to find music wherever I go. Is it relationships?  That's the missing link, it seems:  can relationships be sustained long-distance?  Does a community need to be local?  Are the social and personal networks sufficient?  Now that I'm no longer trapped and I seem to have what I want, do I have what I need?  Do I have a focus?  Do I have a community?

Time will tell.  Or my heart will.  Or both.

Trajectory

We were talking about making music, versus playing notes.  J was commenting that she observed the shape of the music by watching the players' body language:  it was like they were on a journey.  E said, "That's very perceptive," because one of the things she is always conscious of is that music is notes passing through time, and it is her job and delight to follow and guide that journey.

Later I attended a concert where she came to the microphone and talked about the piece the group was about to play.  "This music has a trajectory" she said, "you can't just sit where you are," arms held out, encircling a rotund shape.

I envy her certitude.  She knows her craft, and she can find that trajectory and follow it, while the rest of us follow her in turn.  We find that trajectory through her interpretive journey.  We watch and listen and move along with her.  It's thrilling in a way that other journeys are not:  I find myself holding my breath...will she make it?  where is she going now?  wow, this is amazing, I can't believe I'm here!

In fact, having a brilliant musician share that trajectory is one of the joys of life. But there is a certain sorrow too:  it's over too soon, and the guide is gone. Also, following an expert guide has its own hazards.  While the experience is perfect, it is also mediated, not completely experienced. Part of a journey is plotting the course, and we feel lazy or cheated if we follow someone else's footsteps.  There are templates, guidebooks, maps and reviews, but ultimately the journey must be one's own discovery or it's meaningless.

And here is where I bog down. I love following the brilliant artists.   Musical, visual, literary, scientific...you name it, there are some amazing minds and talents out there, and I want to experience their insights, to follow their journeys. I am not a genius (or rather, as Elizabeth Gilbert said on TED, I may just have a rather lame one).  And, isn't there a certain ego in this need to plot one's own course, not to mention stress? Is it really worth it?  Read the lives of explorers: even if they are sure, their followers usually are not, and there's that waterfall over the precipice, that dragon, that formless chaos, just waiting for people who leave the safe places and get too close.

 Life is mutable, life is change through space and time.  Life is music, in a sense, the melody passing through time, changing, moving....And it's not so easy to find the trajectory of a life. So much of life is a reaction.  It doesn't seem to have a meaning or a movement.  It's more like the Philip Glass score I saw in the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis:  play freely for 40 minutes.  pause for 1 minute.  play freely for 25 minutes (Merce Cunningham Exhibit, May 2017.) It's random and ugly and...not music. The very freedom, illusory though the scripting shows it to be, means the trajectory cannot be understood, even in retrospect.  I pity the dancers who try to give visible form to that chaos as it is moving through time.  And yet, that's what we are doing, trying to follow the trajectory of our lives.

All my experiences continue to point me down that path.  The journey is continuing, and I'm still not making sense of it.  While right now I'm looking at it in terms of music, I continue to turn to literature and philosophy and poetry.  When I was 13, I read The Chosen, and I was deeply moved by it, by the elements of the coming of age, the relationships with the fathers, the emotional underpinning that ultimately controlled the overt intellect.  Male oriented, steeped in intellectual Judaism, it yet seemed to be the story of all kids trying to find a place.  Potok starts the book with this lengthy quote:

“When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him.
In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one.” –Karl A. Menninger

So, the journey is a struggle, one that cannot be understood from the outside, and one that cannot be controlled from the inside.  Or can it be?  I'm reading Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation, and I've just reached the point where the philosophy of non-violence is being transformed by the Buddha.  "The world, whose very nature is to change, is constantly determined to become something else...It is at the mercy of change, it is only happy when caught up in the process of change, but this love of change contains a measure of fear, and this fear is itself suffering"  (pg 278.)

I have taken change as my lifestyle, but that very statement implies that I am in control, that I see the trajectory.  And I don't.  Is it possible that I'm following this path in order to learn just how ego-driven I am?  Is the path I need to follow the 8-fold one?  Can I get there as a nomad, planning and scheduling and budgeting my way through the year? Or do I need to observe these self-centered ephemeral thoughts and let them go? Do I even want to?

I don't think so. For every thought about weight and health and wealth, there is the soft touch of warm fur, the smooth silk of  cool water moving along warm skin, the astringent deep warmth of coffee in the mouth. For every planned excursion, there is the delightful oddball discovery, like the Little Free Libraries dotting the neighborhood landscapes.  For every great work in the museum or every amazing plant in the arboretum, there is an artful graffito or a century plant in a humble garden, growing higher than the telephone pole.  And I would not experience any of these if I did not also take my egocentric self on these planned and plotted journeys, if I did not tell myself these stories.

So...trajectory.  the path that a moving object follows through space as a function of time (Wikipedia)...the curve that a body (such as a planet or comet in its orbit or a rocket) describes in space (Merriam Webster online dictionary)....the path described by an object moving in air or space under the influence of such forces as thrust, wind resistance, and gravity, esp the curved path of a projectile or the course of a disease (freedictionary) an intelligent network connecting publishers to retailers, libraries, schools, and new distribution channels around the world (trajectory.com)

It's all about movement through space and time.  And do I really need to plot that movement or analyze that change?  Or shall I go back to that spreadsheet (recording those expenses) or that calendar (inputting those events)?  Yes, I think I should move along this trajectory and tick off the box on my mental ToDo list that says "think for a bit, and write what you thought."