September into October 2011

After our unusually moderate summer we’ve just had a third short bout of triple digit heat (as high as 112 one day). The poor roses: most fried even before their buds fully opened. The gloriosa daisies, ruby, orange and yellow nasturtiums, purple and red fushias, bright orange marigolds, purple sage and lantana – all impervious to the blasting heat – keep the garden a still cheery, colorful place. The climbing jasmine, in a surprise second blooming, scents the front French doors and hot tub area while a new Winifred sage living outside the study French doors perfumes the air around my desk. A few more gardenia buds actually blossomed in the heat.

The cucumber crop and the first planting of salad greens are now gone by. The latest plantings of red mustard, arugula, bok choi, romaine and butter lettuce grow inches even as I watch them. The oregano flourishes and medium size tomatoes are coming ripe so I’ve lush salads for breakfast everyday. Collard greens, two kinds of kale, and two kinds of chard are daily ready to steam for my dinners. It’s such a hoot picking meals from my tiny container garden.

My neighbor/landlord’s four hens provide us both with more eggs than we can eat so we pass them on to our neighbor up the road. I send along the ground fall apples for their Arabian horse who is wild for them. They, in turn, bring over their overflow of grapefruits, tangelos and lemons (most welcome now that my Meyer lemon is between crops).

Each week the hummingbird population multiplies exponentially and my efforts to keep them in sugar water grow more challenging. The patio garden is alive with the cacophony of the seed-feeding birds and the clicking and wing-whirring of the hummers. I add my own big noise banging on a metal trashcan cover to chase away visiting hoards of voracious giant pigeons when I see them crowding out the small birds at the seed feeders. They’re always sneaking back when I’m not paying attention and flying off when they see me coming. Alas, the ants and bees have lately discovered the hummer feeders. Since the Vaseline on the hanger-hooks is no longer working as an ant barrier, despite my usual no-kill policy with insects, I’m drenching the eaves (and ants) with organic, non-toxic-to-birds/pets/humans/fish orange-based bug spray, sigh. I absolutely won’t kill bees for any reason so I’m waiting on the arrival of a large order of bee-guards with which to replace the plastic flowers on all the feeders. Hopefully, these deterrents will send the bees to find free lunches elsewhere. A particularly good thing since I’m allergic to bee stings and the droves of bees make having breakfast on the patio too dicey just now. (They like to come see what I’m eating!)

As I type this, the feeder outside my desk window is completely covered by a swarm of bees. They’ve gone through the twenty ounces of sugar water in just this afternoon: amazing. A preying mantis has today taken up residence on another of the hummingbird feeders and I’ve watched it devour two bees in the past hour taking time in between snacks to groom its front “paws” (what are they called?). A local beekeeper I called suggested removing or not refilling the particular feeder they’ve glommed onto in hopes that this doesn’t lead them to group on any of the others that seem, thus far, to attract only occasional singleton bees (that the preying mantis is eating!).

On my nighttime walks up to and part way along the nearby fire road and sometimes while I float in my hot tub under the stars, great horned owls and one of the local coyote families often serenade me. A woodpecker now comes to work at drilling one of the trees just over the fence. The background hum of crickets and cicadas seems particularly intense these nights. A few very young possums – so ugly they’re sort of cute – visit the small food bowl I leave outside the study for Peabody. He’s a scrawny, gangling adolescent gray tabby who comes daily (and nightly) to get loves from me and attention from my two enormous kitties who patiently accept his visits (and chase away all other feline intruders).

It’s been an odd season since I last wrote. The strange emotional volatility I described then passed without any further clarity about its source. My best guess is still that it was a form of post-partum reaction to finishing the book, sending it off to the hands of the editor/friends and entering what I call a between-time: no longer where I’ve been, not yet where I might be going.

The first four weeks of these past six continued to be a time of being fallow: drifting even more than usual with nothing calling my attention. Reading, napping, wandering up the hill to the fire road late at night when I can luxuriate in the feeling that I’m the only person on the planet, intermittently doing my bone-building regimen, tending all the different bird feeders and the kitties and otherwise feeling aimless – these were the whole of my existence. None of the household projects I’d left for this time held any interest for me. Actually, nothing at all did. Most of the time that felt okay. Days just meandered away while I handled the chores of maintaining my life among the various green, winged and four-legged beings I tend. Then, occasionally, when I’d step back from simply being in the middle of where I was to look at my circumstances with outside-eyes, I’d uneasily wonder if anything would ever again peak my interest or raise some passion/caring in me. The old Hatchet-Lady critical voice never showed up but the wondering did trigger some discomfort, particularly as I looked at how three of my closest friends were currently doing their very full and engaged lives.

The distress would, each time, pass quickly: my inner-mommy reassuring me that it was absolutely fine for me to be just where I was for however long I might be there, even if it was for the rest of my life. She reminded me that when I stayed in the middle of my daily experience, I was both comfortable and content. That, in fact, it actually felt quite pleasurable to have nothing demanding my attention. She reminded me that the discomfort/disquiet arose only when I stepped out of my experience and into looking at it from an outside perspective or set about comparing my own life to anyone else’s. All of that, so important to remember to avoid doing especially in a between/ fallow season.

Then, on a Monday morning three weeks ago, at the start of my monthly unplugged week, I woke up eager to begin cutting and sewing new slipcovers for my couch, several bolsters and chair pillows, curtains and cat-hair covers in the cottage. It’s something I do every six or seven years when the last generation of slipcovers gets a bit raggedy. It was exciting to be interested in a project after so many weeks of no-interest. Since I use the current covers as patterns for the new ones, I start by striping all of them off and laying them out on the floor over the new off-white bedspreads from IKEA that provide the fabric I cut from. It creates a good bit of chaos in the cottage. The cats love it for the novelty and the obstacle course it provides. For me, even though it’s what I call creative-chaos, it’s kind of edgy to live with for more than a very few days. Usually the whole process doesn’t take more than three days of intense work. Little did I know what lay ahead this time around.

Shortly after I started working on my 70+-year-old Singer Redhead sewing machine (that I bought from the estate of its 94 year old original owner 30 years ago) the presser foot went flying off and the needle bent into a J – all for no reason I could discern. I reassembled things with a fresh needle and went on sewing for a while before the new needle broke in half, again for no reason I could see. This happened twice more with replacement needles, each time after some bit of regular sewing. Then, I noticed that the metal presser foot was being scored by the needles. Clearly things were out of alignment and required a trip to the colorful, eccentric guy who runs the Fix-it Shop and who, when he serviced it six years ago, said the machine would likely outlive me. (Things used to be made to last!)

I was feeling a little cranky and frustrated but remarkably, not that upset by the interruptions until I arrived at the shop to find he’d closed early for the day. I took a few deep breaths and decided to head to Target for a replacement machine to use till I could get mine fixed. I bought something called a Singer Mending Machine that turned out to be a toy-like plastic imitation of a no-frills sewing machine. When I got home to continue on with my project, I discovered that its bobbin-winding mechanism produced bobbins that were pretty wonky. Though I could sew a bit with them, the thread began breaking at random intervals. After a shout or two of frustration, I had to start laughing at the absurdity of it all. At any other time – certainly at this stage of my life – such a sequence of hitches and glitches would have been a clear message that it wasn’t the time to be doing this project. I would have put it aside and gone on to something else for a while.

Alas, no part of me was able to let go and stop. The chaos in the cottage was beyond what I could tolerate and there really didn’t seem to be a way to corral it short of finishing the new covers. Still, I had no choice but to let it go at least for the night. Next morning (after calling first this time) I dropped my machine with Mr. Fix-It and returned the dysfunctional toy machine to Target.

Meandering around town while passing the three hours till it would be back in working order, I stopped by the library and shared my tale of frustration with my librarian/friend and personal reader K. Laughing and commiserating with me she offered me her inherited Bernina as a loaner. I decided to wait till my own Singer was back in hand later in the day rather than risk another potential disaster. My repaired and serviced machine worked beautifully that evening and part of the next morning before it ground to a halt: the motor straining but nothing moving. I couldn’t believe it and couldn’t figure out what had now gone awry although it seemed to have something to do with the belt, sigh. When I called the Fix-It shop that Wednesday afternoon, I found out that my savior was off on vacation till the following Monday. While in my volatile state last month, I’d have had a roaring tantrum/meltdown by now. But this time, though I spat a few frustrated curses, I had to laugh at the crazy extremeness of the piling up messages saying “Stop, Now!” that I apparently needed to ignore or try to override.

After a few deep breaths, I called K to see if she was still willing to let me, the seeming Angel-of-Death to sewing machines, borrow her Bernina. She was and I went by right then to pick it up, read its instructions and get back on track (I hoped). All went easily and well for a day before I managed, by missing one bit of direction about installing a new bobbin, to jam this machine! It beggared belief. I resorted to praying over the machine, going away for a while and then rereading the instructions, fiddling and finally – with no clue about how I did it – releasing the jam. Late the next day (Thursday by now) I had another episode of bobbin-replacing jamming, more praying and another releasing of the jam without understanding how I’d done that. But, this time, I saw in the instructions what I’d missed that both times led to the jamming so I wouldn’t make the mistake again, sigh!

Persisting despite all the clear stop signs, I obviously was making a choice to dance with thwarting and frustration. I kept surprising my self with the calm and hilarity with which I met each of the continuing and by now, ludicrous, challenges. I did take in that I was being forced by all this to go more slowly than I would have with the project. In the past, I’d stay at it for endless hours each of the three days without stopping for breath. That pace was not an option this time. And, even when I had a working sewing machine, I was taking breaks.

Then, on Friday morning when I went out to the patio with my morning tea I discovered a six inch wide highway of ants crawling up the wall outside the house dividing into a two inch black swath along the eaves from which six of my hummingbird feeders hung. Each of the feeders was covered in ants and each of their containers of sugar water was filled with drowning or dead ants. I wailed my overwhelm, my wish for a clone so I wouldn’t have to deal with the mess. Then, with the next breath, my inner-mommy reminded me that if I just went ahead with what needed doing I would feel less over-the-top. It was good advice. Once into this unbidden additional project, I was instantly calmed. Being with the story about it was more distressing than the doing turned out to be. That was the lesson that kept repeating over the next three days as, while I finished the slipcovers without further sewing machine hitches and with my unstuck Singer repaired again, I kept spilling/knocking over innumerable cups of tea, glasses of water, little dishes filled with vitamins and almost anything else that could be upset and make messes.

I know that had all these things happened last month, each frustrating event would have opened a gateway for whatever old, fermented unexpressed rage might have been stowed away inside me to piggyback out with the current distress. Instead, after all that releasing a month ago, I apparently had no stockpiled fury to spend. So, through these repeating experiences of thwarting and frustration I had only the current upset to feel before being able to move on. Each time that amount of upset was fairly minimal. It was all pretty astonishing to witness.

I had so many moments through all of it when I would shake my head at this bizarre level of challenge with which I was dealing: how ultimately inconsequential all of it was in the scheme of things even though it was daunting as it unfolded. I felt blessed that these were what were my problems at this stage of my life when the really serious concerns I might be having (health, finances) are so not-at-issue: when my security is as guaranteed as it could be (barring global catastrophe) for the rest of my life by my various insurances and the final additional inheritance from the proceeds of the sale of my sister’s condo. (It’s still saddens me so that her life-long self-denial has left me with such abundance with which to take good care of my self.) It’s astonishing, always, that even in my quiet somewhat reclusive life with such minimal interfacing with the so-called real world, Spirit repeatedly finds ways to take me through experiences that test, teach and grow me.

My arm is functioning normally now although my elbow is a bit deformed. It’s hard to believe how quickly the time moved as I was healing. It seems like a century ago that it all happened. Time is such a weird thing.

The update about the book-birthing process: The reader/editor/friend who’d reorganized the sequencing has been through it now for the fifth into sixth time over these years and has sent me some for-better-sense edits on the first two sections. Two and a half pages of fairly minimal changes that were intended to make things more readable for what she called “novice Robyn readers.” She’s edited, she says, less from a professional editor’s eye and more from her wish to keep things true to my own particular voice: such a perfect-for-my-purposes approach. Each time she goes through the essays she find passages that touch her in new ways and feel relevant to just where she is in her own journey: lots and lots of synchronicity that’s exciting to both of us. I’d wished that my tales would work like Sufi tales: to be able to touch readers at many different levels of awareness at different readings. She also reports that she finds my writing voice identical to my speaking voice – something I’d ardently hoped for. It’s all so exciting and miraculous.

From two of the other readers I hear that it’s very slow going because it stirs up a lot of their own material. I’m overjoyed that the tales are working this way and absolutely thrilled for them to take as long as they need for it all to be a process for them. I now suspect that I’ll not get the book and eBook out by year’s end, given how the timing is unfolding. More likely, it’ll be Spring 2012, the same season that each spurt of forward motion has come for the past almost seven years since I started this project. Something magical in the seven-year cycle.

On a totally other note: In those rare moments when I actually choose these days to scan the headlines on the Huffington Post as I pick up my emails, I cannot believe the lunacy of the GOP candidates or of the Tea Party, or fathom where what’s going on our and the global economy will lead us. I don’t know what planet all of these folks come from or where they’re taking us. It’s hard to find any hope for reason or statesmanship. I now try not to read any of it just as I avoid all other media: it’s just crazier making than I can tolerate. Not sure this is a good thing but it’s the best I can do. And, I’m grateful to those whose activism may help things move in saner directions.