• About

The Dishwasher's Tears

~ how do we reconcile the beauty with the horror?

The Dishwasher's Tears

Monthly Archives: October 2015

uncertainty

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by tearfuldishwasher in Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

rhino-copy

*

who, me?

*

I got two weeks left at work and it’s twenty four days until we’re out of the house and yesterday the guy I wanted to buy the airstream from says he changed his mind and wants to keep it so now we’re scrambling a bit.

We got no home to tow!

What’s going to happen to us?

I don’t know.

And that’s just it, I think. That’s the uncomfortable place we’ve been digging for, in a way. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We lit fire to one end of the bridge we’re on and we’re hoping to get the rest of the bridge built before the flames catch up to us and we fall flaming into the abyss.

It’s so exciting!

Probably we’ll find another Airstream that fits our needs and whoever owns it will actually want to sell it to us instead of just dicking us around, and we’ll go get it and we’ll bring it back here and we’ll get it all road worthy and load it up with the eleven things we still have left and we’ll high tail it out of here as happy as clams.

Probably that.

But maybe not. You never can tell. And here’s where I find the nut of this whole endeavor- I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know that what we’re doing, what we’re embarked upon, is a path with a heart. 

We’ll be doing what we want to be doing. Without knowing exactly how that’s going to pan out. What do we know? That we’ll be together. That we’ll be awake. That we’ll be attentive. That we’ll be wide open. That things we could never anticipate will befall us.

Because we’ve set fire to our past we can’t go back, we can only go forward. This is a good way to proceed if you are a nervous little poodle like me. It cuts out a lot of bad decisions I’d be maybe prone to make, and it makes me sack up a little bit, pull up my panties, and get ‘er done. I’ve learned more about accepting uncertainty and discombobulation in the past six months than I have in long while. I’m getting better at it. If I’m riding a tidal wave of whiskey on a surfboard of I don’t care, I may not be curving a bad ass bottom turn or shredding the lip, but I’m paddling like crazy and getting to my feet at least.

Or something like that.

One of the most fantastic things about all of this is my wife. She’s fucking amazing, is what. Takes it all in stride, makes it look easy. She tends to me, makes sure I’m not freaking out too bad and if I am she’ll hold a cold cloth to my head and whisper sweet nothings into my ear until I stop shaking. She’s beautiful and brilliant and so goddamn alive and I’m getting at long, long last to live my dream of spending all of my days with her.

I am a lucky man.

Even if I do end up living in a van down by the river.

***

Love to you all. May you find what you seek and may goodness and mercy follow you all the days of your lives.

***

Fifty-one fifty.

21 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by tearfuldishwasher in Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

The-Deep-Water-copy

Woke up this morning to an unusual feeling- nothing to worry about. No worries at all. We’ve  accepted an offer on the house and escrow closes in thirty days. They’ve stopped assigning me cases at work because I won’t be around to testify at trial. Everyone is healthy and relatively stable. I have so many friends and no one is mad at me or disappointed in me. I’ve got a good retirement that will meet our pared-down needs and I won’t have to work again unless I want to, and I doubt I will want to. My wife loves me and we’re going to be together day and night. We have jettisoned everything that doesn’t serve a simple life on the road, and we’re headed out soon.

A nice way to wake up on my birthday.

***

Namaste, y’all.

***

Pilgrimage

15 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by tearfuldishwasher in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

boudhanath stupa

It has been eight months since I returned from pilgrimage in Nepal and India, following the Buddha’s footsteps from his birthplace in Lumbini to his parinirvana at Kushinagar.

Everything associated with that pilgrimage was, and continues to be, the most profound thing I’ve experienced in this lifetime. Eight months on it remains as vivid and pulsatingly strange to me as it was when I was in the midst of it all.

I say it’s been eight months since I returned, but that’s not quite right. I got off the bus, but I never quite made it back to my old life.

***

The proof of that to me lies in where I find myself today. My last days at work are slipping by with alarming rapidity. Our lovely blue house is on the market and every day new families walk through it, seeing if it will be their home soon. It is no longer ours, that feels true, and we want only to be good caretakers until the next occupants reveal themselves and take possession of what was for so long our home. We have been hard at work divesting ourselves of possessions, of the physical objects we’ve accumulated- but the growing emptiness of our closets and rooms is just an echo of the deeper divesting of old patterns, ways of being that no longer quite fit, that no longer serve us, and are being left behind.

The Woman on the Verge and I have endured a similar paring down in our relationship with each other. Everything was ruthlessly eradicated, tossed out, lit on fire, and we found ourselves in a vast, empty, new world. What was left was different, but vital and condensed and brilliant- like finding jewels in the ashes of a fire.

From top to bottom, inside to out, everything has been jettisoned that could be. Only the most vital, the most true things remain.

The world itself seems to have dried up and blown away in the force of all of this change. Not the true world, but the world of illusion, the world of my hopes and fears, the world I created with my ego, with my plans and strategies, with my lies and errors and confusion.

I’m walking around now with only the sound of wind and sea in my ears, a vastness, an endless openness, seems to expand in all directions around me.

I know not what we’ll find.

***

I know that it sounds simpleminded to lay all of this change at the feet of that pilgrimage. Nothing really changes everything like that, right? Millions of threads of past actions and thoughts just converged at that time and location and although it might look to me from my limited perspective that one thing caused the other, it’s likely more complex than that.

But still.

I want to say this happened, that happened. I want to tell the stories, one by one, of all of the improbable and impossible and miraculous events that transpired- for me, and for all of us on that trip. But that implies that the pilgrimage happened, that it is in the past. But that is not my experience of it. Eight months on, the pilgrimage is still very much happening now. And I don’t mean the aftereffects of it, I don’t mean the memories. I mean it’s still as if I am there, as if every moment in those caves, in those temples and chambers and gates and hallways, is still happening right now. And will always be happening. Has always been happening.

I have spent my whole life trying very hard to understand the nature of reality, to delve deeply into all models of what’s really going on- time, matter, energy, life, death, suffering, joy. I want to know. I want to take it all apart and see what makes it tick. And I’m still doing that, I am. I haven’t stopped. But something profound has shifted in my approach. I’ve let go of understanding, I’ve let go of the desire to say, “This is how it is.” This is real, that is not. This is true, that is false. I am this, you are that. I am here, you are over there.

What pilgrimage did, one thing it has done to me, is to rip that mask off. Rip it off of me, and rip it off of the world. There’s no more any sense of how things are as being in any way definitive. Everything is provisional on the most profound levels. There’s no ground left for me. And yet, in this swirling, dissolving, complex maelstrom of everything and everywhen there is, there still is. It’s not as if anything has gone anywhere.

Nothing has changed.

***

I’m finding more and more that my words are inadequate to describe my landscape. I say and say and say what I’m seeing, what it’s like, how it feels, what I experience, what that means to me, and I seek everywhere among my most trusted companions some validation, some agreement, some sense that I’m not simply losing my mind altogether.

But what is blows through me like a wind and drowns out everything else, everything which is false, everything which is approximation.

I stand transfixed.

***

The great good thing about the teachings is that they give me a reliable map, one I can use to find my way back when I go too far off the beaten path and sense I’m in the weeds. I can experience all things, but there is still practice, there is still equanimity, there is still wisdom and compassion and a lot of hard, practical work to be done.

***

Perhaps I am wrong to speak at all of these things. I know there is a danger in it. A danger of becoming intoxicated with my own experience, a danger of encouraging others to see the path as woo-woo mysticism and strangeness rather than reliable and practical and simple and good.

But maybe you are in a similar place, maybe it does some good, too. That’s my hope, that’s my prayer. I want to be open about my experience in the hope that it serves you, serves your own efforts to be good and to understand and to be of service. I mean, that’s what it all comes down to- we should be good, and we should help each other, and how hard can that be?

***

Thanks for listening.

***

Namaste!

May all beings find happiness and the cause of happiness.

May they be free from suffering and the cause of suffering.

May they not be separated from the great happiness that is free from suffering.

May they abide in great equanimity, free from attachment and aversion

to those far and near.

***

“It’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world”

07 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by tearfuldishwasher in Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

261559_239595322726673_145934608759412_944367_869611_n

***

This is pretty much how I feel all the time now.

***

Again and again I am learning that it’s never what is that is the problem, it’s what I think about what is, or what I think about what might be, or what I think about what might not be. Right now things are moving so fast and yet at the same time we’re stuck. I feel stuck. And I feel like I’m in free-fall. Encased in concrete so I can’t move, but then thrown off a cliff!

Woooooooo!

We have put the house on the market at last, and I’ve put in my papers to retire. We’re getting rid of stuff every day, and fixing endless little things around the house, and keeping it spic and span from stem to stern. And letting strangers in to poke around. And signing endless forms, and filling out endless forms. Getting a mail service set up and changing our residency to Florida. Getting our health insurance figured out. Changing banks. Getting our daughter and grandkids moved again- the fourth time in three months? Money flows through my hands like water and I just watch it go.

Still trying to find our Airstream, looking at rigs in Colorado, New Mexico, Northern California, Georgia, you name it.

Every few hours I find myself on the verge of a panic attack, or deep in one. Heart racing, mind racing, incomplete tasks multiplying around me like the brooms in the sorcerers apprentice, driving me mad with anxiety and fear and the looming collapse of all of our dreams. And every few hours I’m buoyantly happy, pleased with all we’ve managed to do so far and thrilled at the prospect of eventually having all of this in our rear-view mirror as we pull out onto the open road and into the life that awaits us.

I’m proud of myself for getting this far, for uprooting myself from the earth I’ve clung to so stubbornly all these years. I landed here and dug in like a tick- my wife has always said that I will die in this house, and that it would take a load of dynamite to blast my ass out. Of course, I wouldn’t be doing any of this if it weren’t for her vision and her courage- she’s had the scent of the open road in her nose forever, and now, at last, I’m ready to go with her.

I’m reminded of the beginning of our time together, when we bought a boat and quit our jobs and tried the live-aboard life. It was a complete disaster- I didn’t know how to sail and we were broke as shit and our tiny boat was a wreck- but our dreams were sweet and intoxicating, and we tried hard to make a go of it. So in a way, we’re going back to our roots after twenty odd years of “normal” life.

It’s difficult to live in this in-between state where everything is dismantled- some things getting moreso, some going in the other direction. Everything is jumbled and in flux and uncertain, and every day is an endless stream of decisions to be made and actions to take and it’s all crazymaking. We both long to lie down with a book and a drink and lay about on the sofa- but when we do we’re both anxious about a million different things that still need to happen or we pray don’t happen.

***

So, good practice ground for letting go. For remembering that we don’t control what happens. For giving it our best and then letting go of the outcome. For finding those moments of peace within the chaos. For tending to ourselves and each other with compassion and understanding and spaciousness.

And for eating our livers.

Ha!

***

In other news, I posted last time about something bad happening and you guys just blew me away with your love and support.

Thank you.

I love you guys!

And it’s not maybe as bad as it seemed at first. It might even just be shitty, and difficult, for a while, and not the end of the world or anything.

So.

Good on that.

***

Life is upside down right now, and I daydream a lot about how great it’s going to be when I’m retired and hanging out with old girl out in the middle of BFE, sitting around a fire under the wild blazing stars with no internet, no phone service, no obligations- just companionable silence and wildness and openness and us and planet earth and no where to go and nothing to do and nothing to be but ourselves.

Of course I know that there’s really no difference between those two states- it isn’t really the external conditions that matter.

Except maybe they do matter, a little bit.

I think it’s worth exploring and finding out.

***

Big love to everyone!

Namaste.

***

Blogroll

  • 37Paddington
  • A Clear and Empty Mind
  • Bodhi Path San Luis Obispo
  • elizabeth
  • INFJ
  • Instagram
  • Judy Wise
  • laurel
  • letting go
  • Marie Dodd
  • ms. moon
  • Pasadena Bodhi Seeds
  • planting along the verge
  • Premium T
  • purely subjective
  • rebecca
  • Wonder, Silence, Gratitude
  • yolie's tumblr

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 98 other followers

Recent Posts

  • Sunrise Ehrenberg
  • Lars and The Real Girl and the Nature of Mind
  • Glory of the mundane world
  • go easy
  • my ugly

Archives

  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • June 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • March 2006
  • February 2006
  • January 2006
  • December 2005
  • November 2005
  • October 2005
  • September 2005
  • August 2005
  • July 2005
  • June 2005

Categories

  • Uncategorized

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • The Dishwasher's Tears
    • Join 98 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Dishwasher's Tears
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...