spirituality 3 Comments

On Aikido And Zen

I wouldn’t say aikido is getting easier, per se. I think maybe Sensei is starting with more basic techniques and building on them more slowly throughout the class. Plus, I’ve only been attending the Wednesday one-hour classes, so there’s only so much one can fit into that teaching block. At any rate, I feel like I’m picking up on things quicker, physically recovering quicker after class, and not being as terrified that I’m going to screw up.

We’ve been doing some techniques that require rolling, too. I haven’t gotten much better at it, but I have started to do it instead of wussing out entirely. At the suggestion of Taisho-sempai, I did about a dozen rolls by myself after class, and finally started to comprehend how it’s supposed to feel. I think. It stopped feeling so awkward and clumsy, anyway, and I came up on my feet at the end, so that’s an improvement.

After class, at Zen practice, I made a very, very important discovery: I can’t sit for extended periods of time in seiza (kneeling, sitting on my feet). I’m not sure how long our session of za-zen lasted, but my legs went past asleep to downright numb. When the bell rang for the end of za-zen, I physically could not get up. My legs had NO FEELING. I flopped around to face in the general direction of the altar, to which everyone was bowing from a standing position, and massaged my feet. They felt rubbery and detached.

You can probably guess that I didn’t exactly attain enlightenment during today’s za-zen session.

Immediately after za-zen, we were all to head out to the aikido mat in the other room to do walking meditation, so I forced my legs under me and balanced on lower legs and feet that I literally could not feel. I swear, this must be how people with prosthetics feel when they walk. There was no small amount of luck involved in my keeping upright during the short walk to the mat. After a little bit of walking meditation (which started out embarrassingly wobbly for me), the pins and needles came in, followed by normalcy. Finally. After several minutes of walking.

Never. Ever. Again. From now on, I sit on my ass when I meditate. None of this kneeling in seiza shit.

After an evening of aikido and zen practice, I feel much like I remember feeling after church. Calm. At peace with myself and the world. In tune with those around me. Except, adding the aikido into the mix, I also feel physically different. It’s like Sensei was talking about at the end of class today: training mind, body, and spirit takes more than just sitting and lighting some smelly-good candles. It takes effort.

I feel like Wednesday evenings are becoming my devotional to myself. Mind, body, and spirit.

ruminations

On Funerals

Last night, while channel-surfing, I caught part of an interesting film on PBS last night about home funerals. What caught my attention at first was a scene of an open, occupied coffin — obviously homemade — being carried into someone’s living room. The occupant was obviously a real person, and obviously not acting. Neither were the mourners. This struck me as an interesting bit of cinema, considering that many people are uncomfortable with funeral photography, much less funeral cinematography.

A later scene showed a ranch family building Grandpa’s coffin, with Grandpa sitting nearby in his wheelchair. Various brands were burned into the outside of the coffin: children’s initials, Grandpa’s initials and brand. Grandpa even helped brand the coffin, with some assistance. There were actually a few scenes where the viewer got to meet Grandpa and his family, which made his own home funeral even more poignant later on in the film.

Aaron has mentioned details here and there about how he’d like to be remembered at his death. It’s not nearly as uncomfortable a subject as I would have expected; probably because we’re young enough that our own mortality doesn’t quite hit home yet. So, it’s easy to accept his wishes, while still contemplating my own.

Even though I’m comfortable talking about funerary rites with my husband, it’s still a little uncomfortable to contemplate discussing his wishes with everyone. It still seems a little private, a little personal. It shouldn’t, though. Should it?

He’s told me in no uncertain terms that he wants to be cremated, and he doesn’t want his remains to be buried or stored or kept anywhere. He doesn’t like the thought of people mourning over his physical remains; he’d rather people remember him as he was. I’ll do that for him, and I’ll respect his wishes, though I’m not sure I want the same for myself. The genealogist in me can’t quite come to terms with not having some sort of marker, proclaiming the dates I was on this earth.

It’s funny that I can’t let go of that, though, especially considering that I tend to think of cemeteries as U-Stor-Its for dead people. We need somewhere to keep old Aunt Myrtle… so we set aside a plot of real estate, and stick her with all the other dead people. It’s not like the old days, where she’d be buried on the family homestead, in a piece of earth that had actually meant something to her while she was alive. Now, the living just find a quasi-local place with an open spot for the dead. Given that, I think I’d rather be passed down through my family in an urn or something. Use my ashes slowly over time in some sort of secular ceremony. Pass the urn around and share your favorite memories of me. Put me in your tea. Something, anything, but don’t just stick me in storage where no one will remember or care in a few decades.

Cremation wasn’t something I’d even considered until I met Aaron. I’ve always known that I didn’t want people looking at my corpse, though. It’s uncomfortable for me, although it’s traditionally how American funerals are done. I much preferred Memaw’s service: closed-casket, with a photo of Memaw in her mid-40s on an easel by the coffin. People who only knew her in her old age saw the picture and said, “She was so beautiful,” and people who hadn’t seen her in several years didn’t need to see how her lung cancer had physically changed her appearance.

I’m not even sure how I feel about the traditional funeral service. I think I’d much rather have a private family gathering for the somber part, then have more of a wake for everyone else. Make it a party. Remember who I was. Tell funny stories. Pull out the photo albums. Eat. Play some music. But try not to be too depressed. Enjoy and share the memories you’ve got, ’cause there won’t be any new ones.

Maybe I’m too irreverent about the whole thing. I guess that’s just how I’ve become in my adulthood. Take all this with a grain of salt, too; funerals are meant for the living, not the dead, and it’s not like I’ll be around to make my decisions stick.

randomness 1 Comment

Lonely

Aaron went back to work today, after two weeks of vacation. Two weeks of coming home to my honey at 5:15pm and not having him leave for work fifteen minutes later. Two weeks, granted, of being less productive than I should have in the evenings, thanks to spending quality time with my honey.

I should be happy tonight, though. I have a job lead that is (bad news) a good 40-minute commute away, but (good news) would pay literally double my current salary. I should be so effing stoked right now.

Instead? I’m in a weird, lonely, unmotivated mood. I’ll probably curl up in front of the Food Network shortly, and call my evening a wash.

roadtrips 1 Comment

Camping at Harrison Lake

Sunday night’s camping trip almost didn’t happen, even after booking the campsite two months in advance.

Eight o’clock Sunday morning, Aaron and I were awakened by the most amazing thunderstorm. By 10am, the rain was still going strong. By noon, the rain had abated to a drizzle, but still wasn’t letting up.

We’d already assembled everything we’d need for outdoors cooking and sleeping the night before, and had been planning to head out to Harrison Lake around 2:30pm to get there after the check-in time of 3:00. By 3:30, though, we were playing Wii Baseball and had resigned ourselves to an evening indoors, and to making our preplanned foil dinners on the grill instead of a campfire.

At 4pm, though, the rain let up and the sky started to clear. Just a little. Enough to permit camping, at least, if not swimming. So, we packed up the car, and off we went.

We arrived at Harrison Lake an hour later, after a minor detour on County Road M (props to Aaron for knowing how Fulton County roads work, and getting us past the roadblock with no problem). Located our general camping area, then headed up to the main office to check in. Bought some firewood at the camp office, and headed back to our campsite to set up.

I had been very deliberate about which campsite to reserve online; I wanted as few close neighbors as possible, plus a view of the lake. Seeing the site in person, I felt I had chosen well.

The sky was overcast, so we started pitching the tent as soon as we got situated, anticipating an early dusk. Luckily, our dome tent didn’t hold too many mysteries, and we got our shelter going on without too much fuss. It took us a little while to figure out how to assemble the fly (aka the cool tent cover thingie), but it all worked out eventually.

Shelter, check. Next order of business: fire.

We assembled the smaller pieces of firewood in the teepee formation, got out some newspaper to light the fire, and went for it. Tried log-cabin-style when the teepee didn’t work. Flopped everything in a pile when log-cabin didn’t work. Doused the logs with lighter fluid. Repeatedly. Bemoaned our lack of tinder. Felt generally inept.

Little did we know that the camp office was selling “green lumber.” One well-meaning passerby let us in on that little tidbit. “Look at that,” he said. “That ain’t even cracked. Good luck getting that to burn.”

Hmm.

We pilfered some more likely-looking wood from abandoned campsites — people leave it, after all, since transportation of firewood across county lines is illegal due to the spread of the emerald ash borer beetle. The additional firewood was a little help, but not much, as it was still damp from the rains. Aaron even left briefly to try to buy some better firewood elsewhere, but the local minimart had already closed.

Finally, two hours after we’d first started trying to build our campfire — yep, that’s TWO HOURS of fighting with Mother Nature — our camping neighbors presented us with a starter log. They were using a camp stove, they said, and had never used a starter log, but kept one with them just in case. They must have been watching us fight with our campfire (or lack thereof) for a couple of hours, and finally took pity on us.

The starter log did the trick. Loads of fantastic fiery chemicals made both our green lumber and our damp pilfered firewood stay lit. By this point, it was reaching dusk, and we had to wait for the fire to burn down enough to present us with sufficiently hot coals for foil packet cooking. We roasted a couple of hot dogs in the meantime; we hadn’t eaten since lunch.

Just after dark, our chicken and veggie foil meals were ready to eat: chicken breasts, mushrooms, onions, asparagus, summer squash, and green peppers cooked in a foil packet. We ate in the dark at our picnic table, wishing for a lantern. Afterward, we made some s’mores (with Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate bars) and sat around the campfire, talking and drinking bottled water (no alcohol allowed in state parks).

I’m not sure what time it was when we finally let the fire burn itself out and went to bed — sometime around midnight, I think. Aaron had bought a new air mattress and battery-powered pump for the trip; I’d ended up underinflating the bed due to my unfamiliarity with the airbed/pump combination, so whenever one of us got up, the other person’s ass touched the ground until they came back. That was the only real downside of sleeping in the tent — that, and the massive amounts of dirt we tracked in on our sandals. All night, Aaron kept waking up at unfamiliar nature sounds, and I kept waking up just wondering what time it was.

Finally, just before 8am, we heard the very loud sounds of a tanker truck pulling up and emptying the port-a-johns across the way. I couldn’t get back to sleep after that, and was up and around at 9am to try to stoke the fire. No luck, and we weren’t about to spend two hours trying to get a fire started again. We skipped breakfast and opted not to trek down to the shower house. Instead, we packed up, took a leisurely walk around part of the lake, and left around 10:30am.

On the way back through the country, we saw a billboard for The Barn Restaurant at Sauder Village, which wasn’t far from the campground. Since we hadn’t eaten breakfast, we decided to take a little side trip to The Barn for an early lunch. They opened at 11am — only a couple minutes after we pulled into their parking lot — at which point we went in and proceeded to have the best lunch buffet I’d had in quite a long time. Roasted and broasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad bar, taco bar, baked beans, rolls with apple butter, and quite possibly the best peach cobbler I’ve ever had. Ever.

And that was our first camping trip together. No swimming, very little walking or hiking, but there was s’mores and campfire cooking and sleeping in a tent. I think we’re going to try this again sometime… hopefully, when the weather will be a little more agreeable. And when we’ll be armed with a starter log.