Wow, I'm about as far from Zen as can be

I'm about as far from a Zen state in my life, mind, body, and heart right now as I have ever been, and I had a dream last night that proved it.

I'm in Japan -- Tokyo. There's nothing in my dream about the recent horrors and tragedies there. I'm excited to be there, and I'm looking forward to shopping, dressing in something extreme, going out, etc.

However, I'm there on some sort of business, and there are other people from the company with me. I have these very specific times and places to be, yet when I get to them, there's always something wrong -- things are rescheduled, people don't show up, etc.

My hotel room is far away from the places I need to be at the hotel. So I start using other places to change in and out of business and casual clothing. I do this once on a balcony, but I hate it because I'm visible to others.

Eventually, I start keeping my clothing and other things I've brought in an elevator. There's a closet there and some shelves, and I hang my clothes all around. But I have to keep an eye on everything, because I don't want the staff or thieves to take my stuff -- including my computer, my fancy iPod that reminds me of stuff I need to do, and shoes. Lots and lots of shoes.

I remember one demonstration at the convention clearly. They have a model of a tall building and some computer graphics to show why the building wasn't destroyed, only damaged, by a bomb. I remember seeing this sort of origami rendering (in computer graphics) of watching the building's insides rise up through the building due to the explosion on the ground floor. But the debris didn't actually overflow over the sides of the building, so the speaker was talking about how this did minimal damage, as opposed to what happened at the World Trade Center. I remember thinking that it did a lot of damage, IMO. I thought about all the office equipment and furniture and stuff crushed inside the building. I didn't think about the people.

Okay, so some people I've become friendly with are going on a train trip to a cool part of Tokyo, and I'm invited. I want to get dressed in my fancy, cool clothes, which include a wonderful white feather boa with black feather at the end. I get a special haircut to match it, but I totally screw up my make-up. With effort, I wipe most of it off.

The dream shifts here. I'm talking with a woman who is excited to be there, but new to the area. Instead of being in Tokyo, we're at the UCLA campus. I offer to show her around. I take her up the right side of the big, red, curving staircase in the lobby, then show her all the twists and corridors to come down the left side. I offer to show her my favorite spot in the whole campus (this place in Royce Hall where you can look up the bell tower), but she's not interested and not impressed with the staircase thing. She decides she'd rather go it alone, and we (now back in Tokyo) part ways in the lobby.

In the lobby, a crowd has gathered around one of the women I've met at the conference. She has a knife and has gone insane, threatening everyone. I skirt around her and get back to my elevator.

I need to be ready at 4 PM to go with the others on the train. I go into the elevator, and it's full of my stuff. I start sorting, and at first it's a large, but doable task.

Then I realize it's 10 minutes to 4! I look around. My bed is in the elevator now, and tons of stuff. I start throwing things in bags and boxes, but there is so much! I have all these little do-dads and things. And it seems to get bigger when I turn around.

Then I realize that I can't take the elevator back to my room directly. I have to relay my stuff through the express elevator that goes to the 15th floor. So I take the stuff out of the first elevator and put it in the second elevator (the office workers don't like that, but I promise I'll be just a few minutes). The doors to the elevator start sticking, but I'm muscling through them now.

Back to the first elevator, where I get dressed in this rad outfit and then run around looking for the people going on the trip. I finally find them, and they admire my outfit, but they know about the elevator problem and offer to help, but I can tell they don't want to. I take their help anyway.

We run around trying to unload the first elevator and then put the stuff in the second elevator. I don't understand how I have so much stuff. How did I get it packed into my suitcases for the trip to Japan?

Finally, I get a load to the hotel room, which is a mess and chock-full of stuff. I decide I can leave the bed in the elevator.

I miss one of the elevator cars, and I get into another car to find that two guys are using it themselves, with two little beds of their own.

I get on the train to the fun thing in my outfit. I don't have fun. I wear the wrong shoes and my feet hurt.




Nope, not Zen.

In the room the women come and go

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Chocolate and Cheese

My two favorite foods are chocolate and cheese. But I cannot stand it when they are combined. I guess they're a food version of yin and yang to me. Sweet and salt. They circulate my palate. I find when I want one, I want the other, even though I want them separately.



Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. -- Robert Frost

Why Can't Life Be Like Knitting?

The best time of my life was also the worst.

I had no money, no friends, no social life at all, actually. I made no money. I was buying groceries and paying rent on credit cards.

Six days of the week, I woke up and made a shake for breakfast, then baked a potato or something else for lunch and went to the library. I had all sorts of stuff in my graduate carrel that I wasn't supposed to have, particularly a little electric kettle, with which I made soups and tea and stuff.

Around 2 PM or so, I would go for a walk around the park. Then I had to get some sort of dinner (Arby's was the only thing on campus back then, apart from the horror of the actual cafeteria, so I had a lot of chicken sandwiches) around 7. Then I played a game -- if I worked until 11 PM, I could go home and watch Letterman, and then go to sleep.

On Sundays, I drank beer and watched sad movies.

And this was life for about a year or so. It was...disciplined. I thought of it at the time as having no life.

But it was also wonderful. I had one thing to do, and one thing only: write the dissertation. I mapped out the chapters, did the research, wrote up the conclusions. And it was great.

It's occurred to me that knitting gives me some of that same singularity of being. The same focus. I have a specific goal and a map to get there. I know exactly when it's done and exactly what it takes to succeed at the task.

Compared to real life, that's paradise.