Mysteries

Took two weeks off.

I feel better about everything.

Went camping in the freezing rain with Jay at Horseshoe Canyon. It was beautiful.
Jay said last night, "You know, that was the best time, and it was completely accidental."
It was. We just went without checking the weather forecast, set up the tent and hoped for the best. We had some dim idea of climbing--and we did. Freezing fingers on the beautiful Arkansas rock. We just sort of arrived and made the best of it. When it was too wet, we hung out in our sleeping bags in the tent and read books. At night we drank hot Bailey's by the campfire and I got out my fiddle and played every song I knew. We ate a lot of organic cheese doodles and chocolate and I gained 5 pounds (which I actually needed to do, I was getting way too bony). We took walks through the pastures and spent about 2 hours watching baby goats. The land was a like a dream, covered with mist, greening with spring. We found an old wooden swing and climbed over boulders and harassed each other and got smelly and made shadow puppets with our hands on the tent wall. It was grey outside and in, and we totally lost track of the time. Cell phones didn't work.
Kids got back from their dad's Sunday evening. I've been having a great time, cooking, noodling around the house, bleached the basement floor, caught up on the laundry. Took Karma, my yellow lab out on long walks every day. It's been raining, but who cares?
If you're in the right space, everything feels like a pleasure.
There's this beautiful upswell of good green energy pulsing through, makes every bit of life seem beautiful.
okay, so Zen thought.....the ego judges, right, and if we'd been judging--"oh it's too cold, too wet, too this too that" to climb, we never would have gone, and we wouldn't have had the experience we had. Don't prejudge. Just show up for what's happening.
You come back from something like that and everything gets looked at fresh--you see so clearly the things that trap you!
Stupid things--like I weigh myself every day, and if I'm not where I think I should be (133 pounds), I just don't eat. Or I eat only juice. Or I eat everything I want to eat (cheese doodles) and feel guilty and crappy.
What a stupid thing to feel guilty and crappy about. I mean, I'm not out defrauding old ladies or running stop signs or jaywalking, I'm eating bad food! (Not so bad, even, I mean, nothing has to die to make cheese doodles)I'm two pounds over.
Or--I start into my old habits--"I must spend 30 minutes excercising, and 30 minutes lifting weights" I don't know. I guess that's the world of form--and, admittedly, form can save your ass. Form are the lifesaving practices of culture, they keep us from the wind and wolves. The artificial scaffolding of timekeeping keeps us reaping and sowing, managing our energies effectively--and in the Trauma Unit, form is sometimes all I have to keep me from losing my mind and throwing myself weeping over my patients broken bodies (drama!)but I guess the key is detachment--to recognize it as form and form only and not get trapped into thinking it's anything else, and to let form serve you, rather than the other way around. One hand or the other, because there have certainly been times when form was all I had, when zen has only been habit and not heart. In the space of a half hour, it will fluctuate 300 times between heart and hand.
I think I solved my koan, by the way.
What is this?
This is what.
3 years. What is this? What is this? What is this? What is this?
Then I just started giggling.

So, Tuesday, at Ernie's, Lilly and I were sitting there--and we couldn't figure out the time. All the clocks appeared to be working, but they all showed slightly different times. Lilly had ordered almost everything on the menu--french toast (which they're famous for), sausage, poached eggs, hash browns...and couldn't eat it. The check was $9.82 for two people. Only at Ernie's.
"Is it time to go?" Lilly asked.
"I don't know." I don't wear a watch because something about my electromagnetic field just screws them up, and I'd forgotten my phone.
I got up to ask April, our waitress. April's maybe 5 years younger than I am, has been working at Ernie's since she was a freshman in college. She's a little overweight, but pretty, strawberry blonde hair. She's smart, but can't seem to decide on anything to do with her life. She was getting her Ph.D in political science, then took a leave of absence, then went back, then took another leave. Then she became a realtor for like two seconds, she's got one of those voices--a whiskey voice--she's what you call a great girl. You know? Maybe 2 generations removed from the farm, hip but grounded. She's going to be the same at 50 as she is now, but it's not like that'll be bad or that she's old before her time--just consistent. So, anyways, I ask her what time it is, and she tells me--8:00. "I know," she laughs, "none of the clocks show the right time around here."
I've spent a lifetime with malfunctioning clocks--it was a lot worse before I had kids--the energy was out of control then--so I understand.
"The place is haunted," she says.
"Really?"
"Really. Clocks have not worked here since that waitress disappeared in the 70's."
"What waitress?"
"Becky Doisy." April leans back on the counter, eyes sparkling, she likes to tell a story."Becky Doisy was a waitress here, and one morning she just never showed up. They never found her, or found out what happened to her. And ever since then, the clocks haven't worked at Ernie's. Haven't you ever noticed the graffitti on the wall in the bathroom?"
Of course...I always notice it. I just never thought about it. I thought it was some movie reference or something. Ernie's graffitti is pretty erudite.
"Who Killed Becky Doisy?"
"Yep. No matter how many times we repaint the bathroom, it's always the first thing to show up. And, check this out, it comes up through the paint. Right where it was before."
"You think it's her?" I ask.
"Yeah--there's some weird shit here."
"If it's her," I muse "she's probably haunting you because whoever killed her is still showing up at Ernie's."
April stops smiling.
"You think so?"
I feel like we're in a Nancy Drew mystery all the sudden. Like a story has started that is going to take us all over and that we have suddenly become actors in something bigger. Ernie's was just a setting before, a place for lost souls to get the 3.79 breakfast special. Now there's another player.
"Well, of course. She's probably trying to let us know. You're probably still handing him biscuits and gravy."
"I never thought of that."
We look at each other. We look around the restaurant, at the regular faces we both know so well. The rain falls outside, cold and grey.
Who killed Becky Doisy?

That's my 1/2 hour.