Every so often--like, just lately--I feel as if life picks me up by the scruff of the neck and shakes me like a dog, saying,
"Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!"
"It" being some version of attachment, in the Buddhist sense. Alternatively, it could be saying, "Wake up! Wake up! Wake UP! to what you're doing."
Death is a big shaker, and this morning my SIL, a woman I've never seen eye-to-eye with, was telling me how I should deal with my father's brush with death.
(He's OK now, but his heart attack last week was more serious than I'd realized. He told my sister afterward, "I'm an old man," and it seems that happened all of a sudden, at almost eighty-six.)
I told SIL I didn't want her advice (it never, ever fits me, yet she never, ever tires of offering it to me).
I swear I said it politely, but soon we were actually yelling at each other. So weird.
Even in the middle of it I thought it was ludicrous--we must have looked like dogs barking in each other's faces.
Great.
And I'd spent an hour listening to Pema Chodron yesterday. That's probably why I could see the humor in this altercation, at least, even though I didn't manage to avoid it.
I went for a long bike ride to calm down afterward and thought, Everything is topsy-turvy, yet it's all good and important: what's happening?
Then it occurred to me we've just entered Scorpio (Oct. 24), and that feels so fitting to me.
Astrology is metaphoric, but the season of Scorpio is literally a time of death and transformation here:
I was biking past blown milkweed, fallen leaves---everything is letting go for winter.
I love Scorpio, I love this season: a time of deepening dark, on the borderlands of Death––(November is the Month of the Dead in the Catholic Church)––a time that suggests I set my attachments down before they're stripped away.
The thing with SIL is, I know very well that I shouldn't engage with her--I should always walk away. We've never in thirty+ years arrived at a mutual understanding.
Oooh, but my ego hates to walk away when this person pushes my buttons; I want to jump (in the ring).
And I am helpfully reminded today that that never goes well.
I say it's helpful because in the coming months or years, my father's changing health and eventual death will bring me into the orbit of my family, an orbit that is full of flying debris.
It would really behoove me to drop my attachment to being right (or even understood) and to relax my grip and concentrate instead on evasive maneuvers.
Scorpio's not my home sign (that'd be Pisces), but it's a fellow water sign. Familiar and wonderful, but not necessarily easy.
It's a fun house: Friendships transform into... who knows what? (Marz and I, for instance, are taking a friendship sabbatical.)
People pop out and yell at you!
Fathers turn into old men!
I appreciate––even love––that it's stripped to the bone, but no, it's not easy.
Death has sapphire eyes and teeth of pearl.
"Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!"
"It" being some version of attachment, in the Buddhist sense. Alternatively, it could be saying, "Wake up! Wake up! Wake UP! to what you're doing."
Death is a big shaker, and this morning my SIL, a woman I've never seen eye-to-eye with, was telling me how I should deal with my father's brush with death.
(He's OK now, but his heart attack last week was more serious than I'd realized. He told my sister afterward, "I'm an old man," and it seems that happened all of a sudden, at almost eighty-six.)
I told SIL I didn't want her advice (it never, ever fits me, yet she never, ever tires of offering it to me).
I swear I said it politely, but soon we were actually yelling at each other. So weird.
Even in the middle of it I thought it was ludicrous--we must have looked like dogs barking in each other's faces.
Great.
And I'd spent an hour listening to Pema Chodron yesterday. That's probably why I could see the humor in this altercation, at least, even though I didn't manage to avoid it.
I went for a long bike ride to calm down afterward and thought, Everything is topsy-turvy, yet it's all good and important: what's happening?
Then it occurred to me we've just entered Scorpio (Oct. 24), and that feels so fitting to me.
Astrology is metaphoric, but the season of Scorpio is literally a time of death and transformation here:
I was biking past blown milkweed, fallen leaves---everything is letting go for winter.
I love Scorpio, I love this season: a time of deepening dark, on the borderlands of Death––(November is the Month of the Dead in the Catholic Church)––a time that suggests I set my attachments down before they're stripped away.
The thing with SIL is, I know very well that I shouldn't engage with her--I should always walk away. We've never in thirty+ years arrived at a mutual understanding.
Oooh, but my ego hates to walk away when this person pushes my buttons; I want to jump (in the ring).
And I am helpfully reminded today that that never goes well.
I say it's helpful because in the coming months or years, my father's changing health and eventual death will bring me into the orbit of my family, an orbit that is full of flying debris.
It would really behoove me to drop my attachment to being right (or even understood) and to relax my grip and concentrate instead on evasive maneuvers.
Scorpio's not my home sign (that'd be Pisces), but it's a fellow water sign. Familiar and wonderful, but not necessarily easy.
It's a fun house: Friendships transform into... who knows what? (Marz and I, for instance, are taking a friendship sabbatical.)
People pop out and yell at you!
Fathers turn into old men!
I appreciate––even love––that it's stripped to the bone, but no, it's not easy.
Death has sapphire eyes and teeth of pearl.
"In 1578 skeletons of early Christian martyrs were discovered in tombs under a street in Rome. The skeletons were distributed around churches in Europe, dressed and decorated with jewels as a reminder of the riches that awaited them after death.More photos here
Art historian Paul Koudonaris set off on a journey to discover these ‘Catacomb Saints’, which he documented in a book, Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs (2013)."
"Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!"
ReplyDeleteI love that! Such a naughty dog you are. But some people deserve to be bitten--and honestly, you should have bit SIL years ago.
Sometimes it's easier to "drop it" once you realize you don't like the taste.