6-28-10 0918 Green House, Woods Hole.
Well, this trip is over, ended, finished, done. We rolled into Mast Road around noon yesterday, and by 7:30 were sitting down to dinner with Ruth (who says she gets my emails but never reads them). Fuji celebrated by actually catching a chipmunk; the munk perhaps grown careless after a spring of few predators. Now she is eying the bad squirrels who throng to the bird feeder with a calculating gaze. And of course, there are the rabbits that make going out on the bike with her on a leash a true adventure. She hits the end of the leash in pursuit of a rabbit with all the force of an 11 pound tuna hitting the end of the line, enough to pull me off the bike if I am not read for it. It adds an element of excitement to biking.
The house was kept in wonderful condition by the renter, and most of the green glass jars are unwrapped and doing service as sugar pots and the like. Tirien and family arrive at the end of the week, and we are planning to be dressed as Marsh-ians for the 4th of July parade, to draw attention to the need to protect the Woods Hole Wetlands. I got out kayaking this morning, and actually connected with a dinner sized bluefish. And now its sunny, with the nowadays sounds of summer (powered tools doing jobs that could be done by hand), and the little dog is suspiciously supervising the bird feeder area.
Its a little strange to have the scenery staying in one place and for me to be moving. After to many days of the opposite. The scenery yesterday was green and glowing. It got hot later in the morning, but starting from Great Barrington was very lay back indeed. It was Sunday, a day of brunches, pancake breakfasts, and assembly for family picnics and games. No soccer games; I suppose people are all watching the World Cup games, and now that England has joined Spain, France, and the USA for that matter in being played OUT of the running, we don't really have to worry about outcomes.
So, what did I learn about myself and my relationship this trip? On the last day, we played a book tape by Jonathan Frantzen (The Corrections) which has a family of men who act out, in broadly drawn and very believable permanent states of depressed agitation, some of the worst aspects of my own behaviors. Rigidity, control, punishing the women who love them, they are real exemplars of the kind of paternalistic social interactions that George Lakoff points out is still the dominant paradigm for much of Amurica. Listening to their mean spirited pratings, and the descriptions of their angry and violent actions, its easy to identify which of mine fall into that category. When I automatically disagree with what Sala says, when I make a mistake, reproach myself, and then express myself angrily to her, I feel their terrible example gives me more support for change in myself. What a good book should do, I guess. And of course its all part of this more central struggle, which I think I have more accurately identified as how to accept my own disturbing thoughts, and let them come and go without becoming involved unless they are really where i want to be at that time. Mostly, of course, the outside world scrolls along like passage down a highway. Most of what comes in does not have major emotional tags attached. But then, something does, often something that involves a multimedia contact with material that I already have processed into internally held belief. Thats when it becomes difficult, when the new stuff and the old stuff fit a pattern of reaction.
So i agree, a weekend (or longer) sitting retreat with a teaching I feel is qualified definitely should be on the agenda. In the meantime, thanks for listening, and I will continue to blog at least most of my diary if you want to tune in
The other blog at that site, entitled The Village Physiologist, represents an ambition to write some brief thoughts about human physiology...will work on that too.
love and kisses
alan
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