Chapter 45. Rest Is Not Peace.

Chapter 45

Rest is not peace.

 

The following day I decided that I would take a break from the study of manful mediation.  I am not sure why, it just felt like one was in order as I had been spending more and more time every day at this practice for almost 9 months now.  Maybe I thought that I had peaked and didn’t know how to top those last few MM subjects.  Maybe I didn’t know what to meditate about after those visual explosions of boobs and tushes.  Maybe I did know what subjects come next and didn’t want to go there. Perhaps I was trying to prove I could get by without the internal work. Who knows, the truth might be that I still know why I went cold turkey.  But I do know that as soon I tried to enforce a self-imposed ban on further meditation sessions the results were disappointing right out of the gate.

 

Mornings seemed a whole lot emptier. I would finish the usual daily solo breakfasts, it seemed that they were much larger ones now, without pleasure.  These were really big breakfasts, good size plates of 3 egg huevos rancheros with lots of crema and jack cheese.  A spinach omelet with fresh mozzarella cheese and cherry tomatoes with dark brown fried potatoes. I would drink two maybe three coffees along with some whole-wheat toast with a little butter (a brief nod to the healthier life I sometimes pursue). Then I put my white gym sock clad feet up on the dining room table because she who would not like this behavior not one bit can’t see what I am doing when she ain’t here. I read the Comicle and the NYT cover to cover and when they are done I am too. As I carry the dirty dishes back into the kitchen, I furtively take a look at the illuminated coke clock that lights the back of our home.  I am not happy with the result, it is only 9 a.m.  The house is watching and waiting for something to happen and so am I.  The dog is sound asleep and so is my life outside of these decorator yellow walls.

 

Loading the dishwasher with our morning residue, I wonder about where this is all going, always a mistake. When does this powerful low-pressure zone break down and the fog I am living in come to a stop?  When will I become busy again?  As BB King sang, I am like a one eyed cat peeking in a sea-food store.  I have been living on the inside looking out for too long not even knowing just what to look at anymore.

 

Yesterday was just plain awful in its nothingness. I spent most of it going through old files and shredding documents, a project that seemed necessary. Some of the work that I had done in the past was actually intellectually interesting and fun to read. But mostly, I wound up just feeling depressed that so much water had passed under my personal bridges as I threw out box after box of filled with leftovers from my former careers.

 

Not one to suffer for too long, I finished the afternoon in front of an early Giants spring training game after browning a few pounds of short ribs which now sat braising on the oven in the every trusty cast iron Le Creuset. I was accompanied by a freshly opened big fruit big alcohol glass of zinfandel resting firmly in my hand effectively blocking out the winter gloom and taking the truth out of the room.  Big foot white dog was happy for the company and curled herself up along side keeping both of us warm and a fire burned quietly in the wood stove.  The fire took the remaining sting out of the day and it made she who loves to come home to a warm home and meal on a cold winter afternoon happy even if there was no way she who does not eat that much could ever consume even 10% of that portion of ribs.

 

The Zin was wonderful and I finished it that night but it gave me a hangover the next day to add to my dark grey morning mood.  I took the upset stomach and fuzzy head as a rallying cry. After a Thursday breakfast featuring a massive plate of perfectly crisp matzo brie topped with sour cream and blueberries (frozen at this time of year) I decided that it is time for a change!  Yes sir, time for action.  That’s right Action with a capital A.  Make something happen, call some contacts, see what is up in the job market get on the phone.  Yeah, that’s right you can do it, that is the ticket daddy.  But those thoughts fizzled out as fast as the flame on a nickel sparkler. Action?  Action?  Sure big guy.  I wish there was.  If only there was something to do.  There wasn’t and I knew it.

 

Again trying to rally, I figured that maybe exercise would help.  So by 11 am I had walked white dog and finished ½ an hour of downward and upward dog sun salutes A and B posing and stretching.   Even with the exercise I felt tense and very restless and I knew why.  I was hooked. I needed my MM fix.

 

I have never been one to give myself over to anything easily.  I had good self-control, just walked away from pot when I was 40 and could go weeks without a drink or wanting one.  Yet here I was pining for a meditation session.  Who would have thought it?  So why was I resisting?  Pride?  Showing that I could go without.  The question pounded me: why resist?  The answer was simple: I had no reason to. Given the choice between battling continued anger and depression over situations that I can not change and time spent on a comfy cushun where I could explore thoughts that made me happy, I decided that maybe a break from MM is not what I needed right now.  This might even be time to step up the work.

 

I headed to the mancave, no literally bounded down the stairs, and set out the cushun again feeling relieved to be in the company of an old friend. I was so ready to meditate to pass the time away and feel like I was accomplishing something good. Meditating to stay away from the bitterness and frustration that wait around the mental corner under a street lamp of pain suggesting we go for a joyless ride together.   Yes yes yes, what would make my happy today?

 

It didn’t work out that way and that was the lesson learned. Right after sitting still, regaining control over my breath and beginning to calm and then meditate, I was immediately overwhelmed by these same thoughts and they weren’t good or happy. They were completely scattered and downright negative. Whether sitting or not, I was plenty pissed off with this ongoing predicament and couldn’t control those feelings.

 

You can’t call your meditation subject every time and make it a good one when you need a personal pick-me-up.  In fact, the lesson learned is the opposite. The frustrations of life get in your head and when they do, the teachers tell us not to fight.  Instead we need to embrace our difficulties and learn from them.  So I gave the personal shit I was going through a big hug and plunged in to embrace them yet again until they were done.

 

What I found in this focused meditation wasn’t easy. It just doesn’t add up for us grown up men in so very many ways these days. If you let your frustrations get to you, whether it is under or unemployment, your empty nest and busy not there and not her fault for that wife but not there anyway (have you seen the statistics, you are not unique), dissatisfaction will drive you one hundred percent bat shit hiding under the bed with the dust balls and tissue wads crazy.  The whole picture is wrong. Not out of focus.  Not blurry or underexposed.  Just plain wrong. These should be some of the best of years of our lives, shouldn’t they?  We spend years in college, then those of us that ‘succeed’ rise up through the work-force taking on greater and greater responsibilities learning more and more, becoming very competent, absorbing information as you become a professional, a continuing education filling up our mental hard drives with bits and bits of useful information.  On top of this effort we bust our asses to become better parents than ours were and for the most part we believe that we are.  Oh, and we are good at what we do too.

 

We are there for our kids, supportive, understanding, friendly and for our spouses. We become wiser, experienced and then we peak.   The input begins to slow down and then slowly slowly comes to a stop.   Our personal software becomes outdated, there is no update to download, our internal technology is obsolete and there we sit, whirring wheels of information suddenly skipping and making popping noises, doing fuck all except spin like a corrupted hard drive having gazed for too long into the famous MS blue screen of death without understanding DOS and not knowing what to do next or where to find the manual.  If this isn’t enough our testosterone levels are falling off a cliff.

 

To make this phase even more poignant, for the first time in forever you have time to think about things.  You look around and take personal inventory and what do you see?  You realize that the core values that defined the past twenty five years of your life, your traditional working career and parenting are gone and most likely they aren’t coming back. Maybe ever.

 

Does that mean that the world should come to an end?  Should you let the remainder of the experience be treated as if it has no future?  Is it, dare I even think this, strike 3 game over you are out?

 

What is the next move?  There is no guide to this de-structured life. We are on our own to create a new map to navigate middle age, to learn to make the most of it without a teacher and not willing to be taught even if we find one.  These thoughts bothered me. I had spent too much time there already.  They played in my head like an old copy of Workingman’s Dead that we listened to way too often and way too high and scratched to oblivion till it skipped and skipped.  I felt like that needle in the groove, trapped and unable to move on unless someone came in and lifted up the tone arm.  And then I did.

 

At that moment, five words burst into my mind in 64 point Arial type set against a large white screen that came out of absolutely knowwhere.  I honestly can’t imagine where they came from but here they are just as they appeared to me that day:

 

Awareness.

Justice.

Charity.

Healing.

Righteous Living.

 

I stopped cold and stared straight ahead without moving or thinking.  It was as if the words of the bible itself were speaking to me in person and that is not an everyday occurrence by any means.

 

So there I sat staring to smile again, pulling a bitch about life and the lack of a guide to rely on when one appeared from within without warning.

 

What to do next? Each of these concepts was worthy of a meditation on its own.  But analytic to the core I tried to judge how well I had done with each subject one by one.  Let’s see how I thought that I did.

 

Awareness.  B.  Making real progress doing a much better job of living life in the moment and learning how to stop judging everything.

Justice.  D. Not working on causes, too involved in my own foibles to expand this strike zone.  Needs work.

Charity.  C.  An easy one to improve.  Have to get on that board that I was invited to sit on last month.

Healing.  B.  While I didn’t dwell on it day to day, I realized that a great benefit of being around was simply to support she who has no time to take care of herself, daughter who needs it and son who doesn’t very often but does when he does.

Righteous living.  This seemed to be an average of the first 4.  So give me a B-.

 

When I finished my focus on these 5 concepts I felt renewed.  The darkness had gone out of my mind and it came to a gradual peaceful halt.  I hung in a graceful state of nothing for an unknown time and at some point gradually rose to the surface without effort. The session ended happily with a great feeling of satisfaction.  This had been another breakthrough, a sense of new depth in the MM world.

 

As I reentered the morning I realized I hadn’t showered in two days because I didn’t smell that great.  So I hit the bathroom for a delayed and much enjoyed hot morning shower where I sang Kinks songs (Vicoria, Waterloo Sunset and Lola).  This was totally out of character but I didn’t care.  Afterwards I shaved and washed my face.  During the wash that little red bump on my nose began bleeding.  Unfortunately this was the fourth day in a row that it had done so, a bad sign and a reminder that I couldn’t ignore it anymore, that it was no zit like any I have ever known. All of the home remedies had failed to cure it from skin cream to masks, it was time for real treatment.

 

I was happy, if that is the word, that I could set a dermatologists appointment the next week to see what the thing was.  Maybe it was some kind of cyst or something they can drain or burn off or freeze or whatever.   It was so small, how much trouble could it be?

 

The next Monday I drove into San Francisco to see my dermatologist.  He is a realist.  He says little burns and freezes well and doesn’t waste time.  His rates seem normal and while I can’t say I enjoy visiting his office, its fast and easy.   So what happened when I saw him that day was a surprise and not the kind that you enjoy unwrapping.

 

After the usual drop your drawers identify the discoloration and mark the ones that he doesn’t like with his pen for freezing he got to the main course.  He lifts up his specs and looks at me.

 

So, is there anything else you want me to look at?

 

“Yes, I want you to check out this bump on my nose.”

 

He lowers the specs and move closer.  I can see his dandruff on his collar.

 

He speaks quietly. “How long have you had this?”

 

“I don’t know, four five months.”

 

“It’s a good thing you came in.”

 

This is not what I want to hear.  I ask for details but he is already moving towards his sink getting some tools which I later learn will punch a neat circular hole from the bump for the biopsy.

 

“Well, tell me. Just what is it?”

 

“I am sure its cancer, and a basal, but I need to send it out to the lab just to confirm the type.  We need to get this out as soon as possible.  This is an aggressive one.

 

That is two for two. It’s not good news when your doctor tells you were right to come in.  It’s not good either when he tells me that he doesn’t need the biopsy to tell you that this is an aggressive form of cancer that needs to be taken out as soon as possible. Skin cancer is a wake up call from the beyond when it doesn’t metastasize.  If it does, then it becomes a calling card.

 

He gives me a rubber ball.  Tells me to hold it.  “This is going to hurt.”  He is right and it does, but only for the few searing seconds when the needle comes in until the novacain starts to do its job on my nose.  Soon I don’t feel a thing. The cut is done quickly. As he works, he wants me to set an appointment with a surgeon that he works with.    I ask him if we can’t burn this one off or freeze it. He tells me to think of this as a plant laying down roots.  We need to get it all out and that is the only way. He puts a small bandage on the neat hole the he has cut and walks out.

 

A few minutes later he returns, there is an opening next week. I can’t tell what to think, I feel as numb as my lips.  There is very little I can do now except move through it, the die, such as it is, has been cast.  He sends me home.  At least he explains that this type of cancer doesn’t spread beyond to the rest of your body in most cases.  I feel a little better.

 

A few minutes later, as I drive through the city I am stuck in traffic on the approach to the Bay Bride for the millionth time. I feel like an old car that is growing rusty.  While I sit killing time, I pass the moments shuffling through my Ipod looking for tunes about noses.  I can’t come up with any outside of Parliament’s Sir Nose Devoid of Funk. So I broaden the play list to faces.  I decide that Small Faces don’t count.

 

As the traffic began to move again I wondered about what it all meant.  And I thought for the first time in so long about death.  It seemed appropriate, didn’t it? I knew that it wasn’t likely but what if this was the moment where the inevitable march towards lights out campers begins.

 

I realized that I had avoided a death meditation or for that matter a whole lot of other serious subjects.  Well, I wasn’t meditating but it was front and center now. I do know this.  No matter how you look at the game, I had started the fourth quarter of my life. No matter how well I play, even if I score that miracle touchdown with less than a minute to go and hit the 2 point conversion, the other side is going to march down the field and kick that winning field goal with no time left.  I won’t be blocking that last kick no matter how hard I want to.  I wondered if I would ever be at peace with this whole damn thing.  Then I was cut off by a black Yukon getting on the bridge and the world came roaring back in flash as I hit the brakes and cursed at the bitch behind the wheel.  Not every part of me mellowed yet.

 

Here are the face songs that I found while idling.

 

You Are My Face.  Wilco.

Angels With Dirty Faces.  Los Lobos

No Good With Faces.  Jack Johnson.

Smiling Faces.  Blood Sweat and Tears.

Smiling Faces Sometimes Tell Lies.  The Undisputed Truth.

 

Matzo Brie for breakfast.

 

I first had this dish as a child during the long days of Passover when we couldn’t eat bread.  Now I enjoy it all the time.  This is a recipe for 2 servings.

 

6 pieces of matzo.

3 eggs.

Blueberries.

Sour Cream.

Salt, Pepper, Cinnamon.

Oil for pan.

 

Crumble matzo into large bite sized pieces in a bowl.  Boil water and pour over matzo.  Let soak for no more than it takes to moisten it.  Use a spatula to drain out the water.  Beat the eggs with salt, pepper and cinnamon to taste.  Add the egg mixture and soak while heating pan with oil.  Don’t let the oil smoke but get it hot

 

Add the matzo, don’t break up the pancake that it forms.  Let it brown then flip it.  Brown again, then break it up to be sure that the inside is cooked.

 

Serve topped with blueberries and sour cream.

 

Delish.