Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We've been watching Perry Mason the last couple of nights on TV.  The commercials are all about adult diapers, drugs and bathtubs you can step into, so they must figure the demographic is 80plus.  We mute the sound and read to avoid an unpleasant preview of attractions to come when we are enfeebled and incapacitated next year.  Perry is soothing, because in the space of thirty minutes the guilty are found out and punished, and the innocent vindicated.  Raymond Burr has a benign half smile that says he's going to get you in the most tasteful way possible.  When I watch, I always think of his most iconic role as the murderer in "Rear Window".  His bulk is reassuring here, but terrifying in the movie.  He and Della Street are strictly on the up and up.  Today there would be entanglements galore.  The mysteries are streamlined yet full of surprises, and my husband and I rarely get it right.  The motivations are the usual:  greed, lust, jealousy, anger, fear.  But in this artificial world, there is black and white, and in court, justice is serviced.  It might as well be Superman, this fantasy legal world, but it's a relaxing escape from true life.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Last night I read that a favorite author of mine, whom I've seen half a dozen times at readings, has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment.  I thought he was a better person than that.  I know the author/young author relationship is fraught with power differential and opportunity to misinterpret and misbehave.  I saw it plenty when I was in graduate school.  Writers would visit and sometimes they thought they were God's gift to women.  I've also seen grad students be aggressively seductive, hoping the author's interest would further her career.  I've seen a few famous old farts with thirty years younger wives who get their poetry read at their spouse's readings.  I knew there was a line that some people crossed and I would not.  I knew it was messy to think that if someone slept with you it meant you were a good writer.  It only meant you were sleepable.  In my generation we were encouraged to marry a professor if we wanted the academic life, not, for heaven's sake, BE one.  I guess I'm eternally the optimist, expecting that great writing goes along with great character, when it so clearly doesn't.  But if it's all the same to you, I'm going to keep assuming the best until told otherwise.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I admit it.  I watch the Oscars.  These days, I do it mainly for the dresses.  I'm torn between my choices for films and performances and what has actually been nominated.  But I did have a thrill this year.  Wes Studi was a presenter, for the montage of war movies honoring veterans.  I'd just seen him in "Hostiles", a film that failed to work but who's heart was in the right place.  I'll see anything with him and Adam Beach.  I liked the inclusion of a Native American actor in the program.  Though we seldom see them, they are increasing in number and importance.  Like Latinos and Asians, they are still woefully underrepresented, but I'm hopeful.  When I see the increasing importance of Black filmmakers and actors, and their garnering more nominations, I am encouraged.  What is even perhaps more important, at least to me, is the few roles of signifigance for women and the dearth of cinematographers and directors.  Let's hope there will be more Greta Gerwigs and Rachel Morrisons in our future, and then more stories genuinely from the woman's point of view will appear.  Not the phony woman played by Frances McDormand in "Three Billboards" or the fantasy mute in "Shape", but more Katherine Grahams and Tonyas and Annas. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I listened to my teacher's dharma talk this morning about impermanence.  This is the truth that Buddha taught.  Our circumstances and lives are constantly changing, as our thoughts and feelings do.  Sadness doesn't last, it comes and goes.  Happiness as well.  The ground of our being is not what goes through our minds or emotions.  It's not even what happens to us.  It's the truth of our human condition that, when we are aware of it, enables us to be compassionate and free of our baser impulses.  I was looking in a catalog yesterday and there were a lot of dogs, mainly labs, in it and I felt acute pain again at the loss of our two dogs.  And I thought that getting another dog would not lessen my loss.  Those two particular dogs are gone.  I might not have a similar attachment to a new dog, even if I picked the same breed and color and size.  Dogs are just as unique as we are.  Then I felt happy that we'd had them so long, and how much delight they'd given us, but I also remembered the worry and problems and all the complexity of loving a being.  It's not easy.  But this is who we are.  We love and lose and risk love again.  We have our memories, which comfort us.  We have the dread of more pain, if we open our hearts again.  But we do, we do.  Because that is who we human beings are.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Boy, was I in a grumpy mood this morning.  I didn't have any plans for this weekend and that snowballed easily into feeling massively sorry for myself.  I criticized my husband at breakfast when he innocently suggested we take a hike around a reservoir.  I huffed upstairs and got dressed, by which time I realized that nothing I had thought of had even the teensyist component of exercise involved.  So I marched back downstairs and deigned to accept the hiking offer.  We got to the reservoir and a downpour had us frozen in the car.  Neither of us had remembered an umbrella.  We listened to a story on the radio about an explorer in the antarctic, and when the rain ceased we got out and made it around the reservoir without precipitation.  I wanted to talk about the radio show and he interrupted me, so tears formed and I wouldn't speak to him for twenty minutes.  Finally, we made peace and we did discuss the explorer, and the time whizzed by.  I felt better simply because I'd gotten some exercise.  We had lunch, returned home and I walked to shops and bought two frames for prints I'd gotten on Thursday.  I felt even better after the second walk.  I still have no plans, but after all, who's fault is that?

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We had a nice time with our younger son last night.  His wife is at a conference, and I realized it's seldom we see any of our kids without their spouses or children.  It's a rare treat.  We sat at the kitchen table and heard about his work, quite interesting, and some about his hopes and dreams for the future.  I'm honored when any of our kids shares something deep about themselves.  We try not to cross any boundaries, but it's good to hear how they are thinking and what their goals are.  We've tried hard to respect their privacy, especially as we had problems with our own parents giving us unsolicited advice and feeling certain they knew what was best for us.  I don't even KNOW what is best for my kids, and they've often surprised me by choosing a path I wouldn't have chosen, then showing me what a wise and rewarding choice it was.  They are different than me, and listening is when I can get a sense of who they really are.  They've all been out from under our care for so very long, that we have to keep getting reaquainted again and again.  It's exciting.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm in a kind of spring cleaning mode.  I am trying to clarify what people say to me, and am finding that even best friends and spouses speech can be unclear at times.  I seem to be on a sweep, because I even called our car repair place and clarified what we wanted and needed.  And I did a pretty good job.  With my friend, I discovered she is covered for her surgery and really doesn't need my help, which is good, great, and no rescuing on my part necessary.  With my husband, I told him how I felt when he says certain things, and he responded that he just has been grumpy with headaches for a couple of days and we made peace. 
I think the clarifying began at the beginning of the week when my older daughter gave us the good news which we've been waiting for eagerly:  that the treatment is helping.  A lot of clouds dissipated immediately, and now I feel like sweeping all the cobwebs away.  I wish I could say I literally am cleaning house, but no, this is all strictly metaphorical.  But who knows?  Next, the vacuuming!