A Few Less Feathers
How can you sleep
when your very bed
calls in the lightning?
- Ralph H. Blum, The Rune Cards (Hagalaz: Disruption)
Marshall and I had a laugh a couple of weeks ago about the challenge of trying to abide in harmony with the Universe. She related the morning she was up at 5 meditating in the backyard when she felt something tickle her forehead. She simply noticed it and returned to center. Very Zen. Until the tickle bit her, her hand went to her forehead and came back bloody. At that point, she had to fill the garden with laughter at the ridiculous.
It’s hard to be Zen in the face of something as small as a mosquito; no wonder the rest of it is such a challenge.
This morning was the second consecutive day I did yoga first thing. There is a 6:30 yoga show on Fit TV (Comcast, channel 222) that is just enough to get the old bones going, and my back has been overtaxed lately, so stretching is key. So there I am on my yoga mat in the basement, feeling good about myself and settling into my third downward dog. I hear Rico come in through the cat door in the unfinished side. A minute later I hear his footsteps in the room, so I look over from upside down and see his happy face. With a big, fluttering blackbird in his mouth.
Screaming at 6:39 in the morning during yoga really harshes your mellow. But suffering, flapping animals in the jaws of death, in my house, have been known to make me scream. As you may recall, this happened a couple of months ago, when I had to take the baby bird to the wild bird rescue center.
What’d I do this time? I simply hustled Rico and his hapless prize back into the dark room of the basement and shut the door between us. I could hear fluttering but I realized I had a choice (thanks to practice in Breakthroughs class) and chose not to let this incident derail my desperate need for yoga.
Needless to say, my breathing for the remainder left something to be desired. As did my relaxation pose.
Then, when “class” was over, I stomped up the stairs and started pacing around the backyard and the house trying to figure out what to do. It was 7:01, but that didn’t stop me from calling about five people and railing on their voicemail about how I didn’t want to deal with the bird downstairs. What I really wanted to do was burst into tears that this shitty thing was happening to me–again. Why should I have to wake up to a life-and-death issue first thing in the morning? Why is Rico so talented that he can navigate a fluttering bird through a goddamned cat door? Why do cats have to be carnivorous? And other ridiculous objections.
Yesterday I happened to watch Oprah for the first time I’d turned in the TV in about 6 weeks. The show was on “Resilience,” and hosted folks who’d been through god-awful experiences and turned their lives around. This is probably my favorite topic in the whole world, especially if it involves a descent into heroin (which, sadly, none of these did). A woman who’d lost both her two-year-old son and her husband in a plane crash she survived made the claim that, for her, the key to getting through it was allowing herself every last feeling she had, including being pissed at God, even if well-meaning friends told her she shouldn’t.
So I think my ranting, raving, and resisting was what enabled me to finally take a deep breath, go down to the basement and open the door. There was the blackbird, actually standing, looking at me with the glazed eyes I recognized from last time as indicative of shock. In my yellow dishgloves, I dropped an old cloth over it and was able to put my hands around the body and carry it outside. Walking fast and glancing over my shoulder the whole time for Rico, I took it down the alley until I found a neighbor’s nice back yard and released it. (I know.) Amazingly, it flew off with the few tail and wing feathers Rico hadn’t plucked. Looked pretty funny, but also miraculous.
Then I stomped back home and lassoed Rico with a new bell collar I’d meant to strap on him a month ago. Who knows if it will help, but it was amusing watching him try to get away from the tinkling sound.
The quote at the top of this post kept going through my mind afterwards. How can we sleep when our bed calls in the lightning? How can we meditate with a mosquito biting our forehead? How can we be in the yoga zone when a bird is struggling for its life as a result of our cat? But then, that’s the challenge. Probably even Tibetan monks lose their cool from time to time when such things happen.
***
On other fronts, I discovered the bike route to the university, and the discovery was, as my brother would put it, “dope.” Seriously, once I get a pair of panniers and don’t have to strain my back with the backpack, I’m going to ride as often as I can. It’s safe, there’s a lot less traffic, I get to pedal through two beautiful parks, it feels good, and it probably only takes about 5 minutes more than driving once you factor in the parking and the walk from the car. It’s surprisingly easy being green(er).
Also, I realized that if I were to attempt every self-improving daily practice I’d like to try in the mornings–yoga, meditation, blog posting, generative academic writing, running, being in the silence, working on my breakthrough areas–I’d pretty much have to get up at 4 a.m. And that is not going to happen. So what do we do, rotate them?
Finally, I did not get any bartending shifts this weekend, so I won’t get to tell stories. However, my dear friend from college, Viveca (aka “Soul” to my “Wisdom,” who used to think the Joan Armatrading song went “fall like my dog” instead of “fall at my door”), is in town and will be ditching her family to hang out with me tonight. Nothing could be better. We’ll drink to the blackbird that survived.
