Westwood: Summary of Purgatory Lane

As all Westvillians know, our zip code is a happening place to be. 28806. Most Westvillians don’t know about Purgatory Lane, my fond nickname for the first full block of Westwood Place. Why Purgatory Lane? Well, I’ll describe it to you and then you can come up with your own conclusions. Please note that I have changed people’s names to protect their privacy. With that being said, you’re more than welcome to come over and sit on my porch. It makes for some fabulous day-time, prime-time and late-night programming. Screw cable, people. Also, look for the POLL at the bottom of this page, after you read the blog, of course.

First, Purgatory Lane is not for the squeamish, overly conservative, or those incapable of being surprised on a daily basis by a dearth of odd events and sights. On one little block we have the TYPICAL ASHEVILLE EARTH FAMILY (or TAEF) with their goats who follow them down the sidewalk and half-clad children jumping on an immense trampoline. They nicely juxtapose THE WALL CREW across the street comprised of “Trudy,” the block gossip-keeper and one of my mainstays of neighborhood information; “Tom,” who has more injuries due to insobriety than I can count yet still makes it a personal goal to drink at all hours on, beside, or behind the wall as well as entertain folks with doing somersaults and cartwheels in the road even though he only has one leg and no feet; and a woman who I’ll just call cigarette butt-finder because she constantly shuffles along the sidewalk with her head down looking for used tobacco treasure.

Down from THE WALL CREW are the CELL PHONE SCREAMERS, who between fighting loudly enough so that the whole block can hear about who slept with who’s girlfriend, thumping the block’s residents with rap music at all hours, and getting yelled at by angry grandma, find the time to wheel out the basketball goal and play a pick-up game, which by the way is really fun to watch from my front porch, especially when the goats are out too. It makes me think of what Cuba must be like. 

Then there’s THE ASHEVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT PARKING LOT,  where “Mr. Whaler” and his nephew “Dave” live, an address often visited by Asheville’s finest–rarely by just one of them and frequently by more than 5 (hence the parking lot metaphor). It’s really Dave who makes Westwood PURGATORY. He is by all accounts our most interesting character and our most dubious one, too. On first look, he’s just another obnoxious and loud redneck with doleful brown eyes and lots of tattoos. On second look he’s really a criminal, having been in and out of jail a half dozen/dozen times, and has people yelling threats at him in the middle of the morning such as, “What, you want the fist, too?”  In fact it was the day that I discovered from Trudy of THE WALL CREW that the man yelling this specific threat in a loud, Dixie-gay voice was not Dave’s taller, flamboyant and certainly courageous cousin, as I had first thought, but his boyfriend, that I first had the idea for a reality TV show.

Add to these denizens, the Shambhala Buddhist Center down the block (which is why we aren’t completely in HELL, thank you Chogyam Trungpa),  Asheville’s oldest school of herblism, the Gas-Up, Steebo’s toy dump-truck garden and The Rocket Club, and well, there you have it. The perfect setting for a modern Asheville-Russian-Dickensian novel. If only I could legitimately include The Admiral, the 100 block of Westwood might just swing towards HEAVEN. Too bad. So how do I fit in all this? You tell me, I’m the one who’s writing about it, after all!

Christmas in June

Why is it so hard to make decisions sometimes? I find myself wanting a crystal ball or at least a sideshow fortune teller to tell me the eventual outcomes of the various choices I have. You know, big decisions. I’m okay at the drive-thru. Wouldn’t it be great if we could go to bed with a couple of choices floating around in our brains, wake up, grab our coffee and double-click our daily crystal ball program to see our multiple paths and futures laid out in HD? That would be cool.

But also cool is our not knowing. Just a different kind of fun. After all, it’s the roll of the dice that draws people to Vegas. And so it is with all of life’s little (and big) decisions. I heard this morning that we should approach each moment like it’s Christmas Day, full of presents — and PRESENCE — not to shake in speculation, but to enjoy.

Happy Holly Days.

Everywhere Community – Q&A for you

Community starts with making connections. If I took the time to really connect with people — let’s say the cashier at the local Ingles store or my neighbor across the street, how big would I grow my community? If we all took that time to be real and vulnerable with people, let go of some of our head chatter about being too afraid to do these things, stepped outside of our normal way of doing things, what kinds of communities would we all have?

Let me know about your community. What do you value about it? How did you create or come to be a part of it? What keeps your community going? What challenges and triumphs do you have together? Who would you be without your community?

Thanks for responding!

Showing Up is Most of the Game

One of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Lama Surya Das, talks about the importance of just showing up. In his very New Jersey accent, he can relay information in a fresh way, for example, his comment on what we need to do in meditation as well as life: showing up is most of the game here. So many times we find ourselves pronouncing our small view judgments on the world, categorizing everything from our friends to our blogs, putting things in neat little boxes, wrenching our guts because life isn’t exactly how we want it to go, and we then wonder why we’re stressed out, ‘lose’ control, and feel ungrounded and alone. How much more fulfilling is it to just show up, be present, breathe through things, open our hearts, and step into the moment fully.

I am grateful for the people in my life who really show up and thus, prompt me to do the same. I am equally grateful for all those who choose not to show up, thus prompting me to show up. I am grateful for all those who don’t know what the heck I’m writing about because they prompt me to show up too. I am grateful for the myriad experiences I’ve had, the woven tapestry of people, places, and events that give me plenty of opportunity to stretch, smile, and grow. May all people everywhere be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

Cure for the ‘greens’ (as well as the ensuing ‘blues’)

When we love, we do not grasp. The two are at odds. Love means that someone else’s happiness is more important than one’s own feelings of __________ (fill in with whatever’s most appropriate for you: importance, security, etc).

If you find yourself struggling because you’re feeling jealous or insecure, do this: pray for your love’s highest happiness, even if that happiness is ultimately found with someone else–anybody besides you. Imagine him or her so happy they radiate. Do you remember how you first felt when you saw your loved one truly happy? How you wanted the world for them and would draw down the moon, if that’s what it took? And did you feel that way with strings attached, saying to yourself, “well yeah, I’ll draw down the moon if…”? Hopefully not!

Love is transformational, supportive, and freeing–for you and for the one you love. Jealousy tears us all up from the inside out, and causes us to forget our true selves and our true capacity to love another.

Life is too short to spend on keeping our love small.

Charcoal and Chalk

There’s the story of a monk in a cell who, though wrongly imprisoned, took advantage of the time and decided to purify his thoughts with a piece of charcoal and a piece of chalk. Every time he had a negative thought, he would scratch a mark in the wall with the charcoal. Every time he had a good, positive, loving thought, he would put a white mark on the wall with the chalk. At first, by paying attention to his thoughts and hearing himself, there were many black marks, but as time went on he could more clearly understand and anticipate the rise of the not-so-good thoughts, and he could replace them with good ones. Eventually he didn’t have to try anymore and his walls were all white.

Our brains start to “learn” how to think abstractly when we’re teenagers, or so I’ve heard. The idea of ‘consequences’ for the things we do doesn’t quite sink in until we’re past adolescence. But I have to wonder about the veractiy of this. I do things all the time that I know aren’t good for me. I can beat myself up internally, I can say “I can’t” when I very well know that I can, I cut corners and then pay the price later. So how much do we really hear and pay attention to ourselves and all the things we say upstairs, in our heads, in the dark, or even outloud for everyone to hear? How dark or how light would our prison walls be?

Spice and Everything Nice

Nothing says the beginning of fall to me more than the lovely option of pumpkin spice coffee. Somehow this very small thing has managed to erase a morning fraught with a forgotten pan on the stove, a lost cell phone, missed stains on my shirt, and a fourth day of rain. With just a  cup of pumpkin joe, I’m seeing my missed opportunities for gratitude, like the fact that the house didn’t burn down, that a lovely woman named Ingrid found my phone and called the most recent person to call me so I could get it back, and well, the girl at the coffee counter said I could probably get by with the stains because after all, it is raining and those spots could just be water…

Baby It’s Cold Inside: Cockatiels as Canaries

Early this morning I awoke to the small sounds of my sneezing Cockatiel. Kiffa was sneezing for good reason: my toasty home’s normal temperature of 68 had plummeted to 59 by 3:30am. Birds make great weather indicators. Cockatiels especially, being tropical birds, do a good job despising even chilly air.

HOME HEATING: After putting on my warm socks and shoes and blessing dozens of sneeze-chirps, I set about identifying why my house was feeling refrigerated, and discovered that while my “monster” (what I call my furnace) was getting signal from the thermostat, it wasn’t igniting. Throwing open my basement door, no tell-tale glow of the furnace flame against the dark, concrete walls presented itself. So, thinking that I was mysteriously out of oil, I applied myself to the task of keeping Kiffa warm.

MIDNIGHT RUNS: Heating the bird with the electric oven seemed risky. But candles were my only other option. I layered Kiffa’s cage with blankets and, wheeling it into the kitchen, set it about a foot from the stove. Next I put on a huge pot of water to simmer. Not used to wheeling around in the wee hours and watching the glow of a hot eye, Kiffa let out a low whistle. I took it as a sign of her good humor and will to live. I knew I couldn’t leave a stove on for hours, though many people do, so I did what all good mothers will do in the middle of the night: make a run to Wal-Mart. 40 mintues later I returned with a space heater, glad that my bird and my home weren’t roasted.

THE LITTLE RED BUTTON: With the whirr and ensuing heat from the Honeywell, Kiffa’s sneezing subsided. We slept, warm again. As soon as daylight peeked in my window, I got dressed, went outside and banged on the tank. Not empty, it said. Mustering my courage, I went downstairs to face the Monster. Oh you’ve got to be kidding, I thought aloud, and mashed the reset button.

I’ll Take Revelations for $800

MONEY: $800. That’s what I spent on Christmas this year. Now, for a lot of people, this isn’t much at all. Some of you, I know, have spent thousands. For some of you, $800 is an awful lot of money. For me, $800 bought me a whopping revelation wrapped and delivered to me on Christmas day: all my tinsle, ornaments, gifts, chocolates, and wine didn’t have nearly the effect on others as one email did on me.

ONE: email. I got a surprise email on Christmas from a 14-year-old girl in foster care whom I work with. It was simply a heartfelt expression of gratitude for those of us at Under One Sky (where I work) who have been in her life, who’ve believed in her, and who are helping her find a family. She said that because of us, she was the happiest she’d been in years.

EIGHT: minutes. That’s probably how long it took her to write that email. 8 minutes offered me the opportunity to be grateful for a job that allows me to increase others’ happiness. 8 minutes let me connect to someone who is simply grateful for a family to spend Christmas with. 8 minutes humbled me.

ACCOUNTING: 2009. The year I will spend more time–and less money–letting others know how grateful I am.

The Three Minute Fiddle

What are all the things you need to take care of that would take three minutes of ‘fiddling’ or less?

FAST LANE: The little things in life that could take three minutes or less to fix, clean, organize, list, pay, toss, destroy, and/or create is endless when you really think about it. Well, unless you’re one of those people… But that’s just it, unless we have a 3 Minute Fiddle list going, thinking about what would be on the list takes more than 3 mintues, surely!

INVITATION: Take a few (but no more than three!) minutes and see how many ’3 minute fiddles’ you come up with. I’ll do it too and get back with you here in a moment… Go ahead, I’ll wait if I get done before you do.

FIDDLE LIST: 

1. replace lightbulbs in my dining room
2. tighten up my front doorknob
3. re-level my stove
4. write my last name clearly on my mailbox so the postman knows who doesn’t live at my house
5. send out my magazine subscriptions
6. turn my ironing board around
7. empty the toaster “crumb” pan
8. sort out my hole-y socks
9. clip the squeaky branch that enjoys its frictional relationship with my bedroom window
10. check the pressure in my tires

FEELING SATISFIED AND/OR PRODUCTIVE: These ten things would take just a wee bit over half an hour to accomplish. Imagine the satisfaction I would feel! And yet, not doing them is almost a strange comfort to me. For instance, I know when it’s windy outside because the branch starts squeaking on my window. I am now a more ambidextrous ironer because my ironing board’s nose points left. Sometimes I like sorting through all the mail to find my own, hidden among the chaff. Not having adequate dining room overhead light means that I have all the more reason to light my 15 candle candlabra. You get the idea. Sometimes the 3 minute fiddle is just way overrated.

What’s in a Namity?

With Tuesday just around the corner, I’m inviting those who have been a wee bit jealous that a certain President Elect’s name has singlehandedly added pages to the “O” section of Webster’s future 11th edition to get their own names in the dictionary spotlight. Not that O-isms aren’t fabulous, mind you–they are; I’m just asking about the rest of us.

NAMITY (name-ity): n. A made-up word based on someone’s last name, having a distinct and unique definition based on the personality and/or actions of that person, either general or specific, that closely resembles an existing word and usually ends with recognizable syllables, mostly suffixes, of that existing word.

So I invite all of you to come up with your own ism-asm-ology-ish-essness-tic ‘namities’ based on your own last name. Here’s a couple of examples from my last name, “Paar”, to get you started:

1. Paarundrum – my oblique way of talking about metaphysics and ‘hyper’-consciousness (YOU know what I’m talking about)
2. Paarticle — random bits of dust, dirt, and dog hair that will cling to your clothes when you visit my home
3. Paartapotty — the glazed-over gaze I will you in conversation when I have to go real bad
4. Paarpetuity — the length of time I will be grateful if you respond to this blog with your own namities

Your turn! TIP: if you have a really really long last name, try shortening it so that it’s still recognizable to others, but easy to work with. Check out www.wordplays.com for more word fun. And as for Tuesday, I’ll be watching the Obamaguration!

The Same Year Duke Ellington Died

What do you know about the year you were born?

I was born. It was 1974 and a whole lot of interesting things happened. The ‘smoking gun’ tape of the Watergate scandal was revealed, followed by the loss of Nixon’s remaining Republican support base in Congress and his eventual resignation in August. But while America was glued to perhaps the most captivating  period of modern American political intrigue, Ted Bundy was on the loose, murderer Ronald DeFeo, Jr. provided the inspiration for The Amityville Horror House, 3 commercial jets went down killing nearly 600 people altogether, Muhammed Ali beat George Foreman in The Rumble in the Jungle to regain the heavyweight title, Austrailia was flooded, 149 tornadoes hit in one day in the U.S. killing 315, MLK Jr.’s mother, Alberta Williams King, was killed, both Westminster Hall and the Tower of Londer were bombed, and while Ford immediately assumed the Presidency, it took a while longer for Nelson Rockefeller to be sworn in as VP.

OTHER HEADLINES: Patty Hearst was kidnapped and held for ransom by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Sweden became a Parliamentary Monarchy. Greece decided against a monarchy. Turkey invaded Cyprus. Haile Salassie in Ethiopia was deposed by the Derg. The Earl of Lucan disappeared. Isabel Peron, succeeding her husband to the office of Presidency in Argentia became the first female head of state in South America. “Lucy” aka Australopithecus aferensis was discovered. The UPC bar was born on a package of Wrigley’s gum. And of course, one has to include that Miami won the Superbowl.

WHAT’S IN A YEAR: I remember a few months ago listening to an NPR report about how flooded the news was in the fall of 2008. Reporters simply had too much to report on, and had to employ ‘news triage’ to cull out the supremely important news from the well-it’s-really-imporant-but-it-can-wait news. How will a 34-year-old 33 years from now sum-up world events from their birth year? No doubt 2008 and 2009 will both generate birth news blogs of greater than 330 words.

Short Reflections on a Week of Firsts

Monday as I listened to NPR, I regarded how few of Dr. King’s speeches I was truly familiar with. I regarded the enormity, the scope, for the first time, of the history–any history other than WASPCM (white anglo-saxon protestant and catholic male)–that I missed out on growing up in predominantly white suburban schools.

What 'firsts' did you have this past week?

Tuesday I met with friends, and together, glued to the television, we watched America’s first African-American president take the oath of office. I don’t own a TV myself, so in the morning, while it was still first light, I turned on the radio, just to hear about the throngs, to get a taste of it along with my morning coffee. At about 8am I got my first tweet ever over the phone from a friend of mine who was standing at the reflection pool in D.C. and listening to little kids talk about our President. By 5pm I had watched an entire inauguration live. And for the first time I had cried during an inauguration too.

Wednesday upon awakening, I thought, “I have a president. I have a leader.” For the first time in my life I felt proud to be American, really proud. I even thought about setting up and waving an American flag on my front porch.

Thursday I listened to the first thoughts of others–both positive and negative–around the country as part of an NPR special (can you tell I love NPR?)

Friday I interviewed a friend and co-worker who told me a story about his uncle, who helped educate the public about the Nation of Islam and Afro-centric history before I was born. I listened with new ears for the first time.

As part of this new chapter in our country’s history, I think it’s critically important that none of us get comfortable with the idea that we’ve come far enough, or that the election of an African-American president is the milestone. It’s not. Injustices will still occur. Minds and hearts will need liberation. Hatred will still need to be overcome by truth and love. For my part, I’m looking forward to more firsts–unashamed for what I don’t know and haven’t yet done–just looking forward to a life of learning to do ’what’s right’.

Hover Time

HOVER TIME: my word for down time, slow time, chill time. It’s whatever quantity of hours that your soul gets to loose itself from wrangling and harranguing deadlines, plans, and details. Hover time could be watching the snow come down while half reading/half sleeping through an afternoon. Hover time is being out in the quiet woods alone with God. Hover time lets you hanglide over (h-over) your small life and see its true bigness from up above. Hover time is hawk time. Hover time gets rid of the soul’s hangover from a world too much with us.

MOST RECENT HOVERING: I found a chimney in my backyard. Funny what you can find with some thick gloves. I pulled at a beaded curtain of kudzu that blocked the half-toppled river stone chimney-complete-with-fireplace from sight, climbed up to the top and scanned the woods from my new vista. I took my oldest dog Juni into the woods with me. We worked on the trails and fire ring together and mused at all the holes, one of which I fell into trying to get her attention. She’s deaf, so when she wanders, I have to run to catch up. The groundhog hole swallowed me up to my knees. I wasn’t hurt, but I sure was shorter. Ivy covers up a lot of the holes. Ivy and kudzu: nasty partners. Now kudzu can’t wind itself around anything bigger than 3 or 4 inches, but ivy can climb anything, and the kudzu climbs the ivy!

PRETEND: So when I hover in my backyard I pretend I’m Aldo Leopold. Ever read him? Sand County Almanac. I may not have skunk trails in February, but I have trees full of crows, maybe 8 acres of thickets thick with titmice and tanagers, and a plot of sky occassionally visited upon by a red-tail, cree-eeing above the pines. Even though I’m not up in the pre-Canadian wilds like Aldo, I have plenty to get lost in, plenty of space and time to hover in. Plenty of time to be found.

Nose Prints of a Four Year Old

SIMPLE WANTS: We who live in Asheville, we who remember when the white stuff fell in these hills up to our ankles in the not-too-distant past, we who still believe we can smell it: yea, we pray for big snow. Do we get it? No. Sure, we get hard frozen ice about an inch thick. We get nasty wind blowing 30 miles an hour. But snow? Forget it. Nada. Zip.

WITH CHILD-LIKE GLEE: So, being an embittered snow-lover who doesn’t ever see any, I found myself last night standing in front of my living room windows with my nose pressed against the glass like a four-year-old all because the white goodness from above was coming down in buckets and actually sticking. I grabbed my cell phone.

IMPROMTU TEXTING: (Paraphrased) Drive over here we could throw snowballs. I always forget where you live. What?! Exit 2 off 240. Oh yeah. I could bring Grace and Buffy. Great! Ok I’ll be over soon. Ok

THE COLD HARD TRUTH PART I P.M. : 20 minutes later my friend calls me to say that his parking lot is covered in snow, a couple inches of it. He lives on a pretty bad hill and his tires are balding. Just stay put I tell him. Sigh. Now what. I press my nose against the glass again. Snowball throwing would be so much fun, especially followed by episodes of Will and Grace.

ANOTHER PITCH: I call my upstairs housemate and ask her what she’s doing. She was getting ready to go out with some friends. I told her my most recent disappointment. An hour later she came back early. We went to the Admiral and drank hot toddies. When we walked back home in the nasty biting wind, we shares our hope that we would really really get some snow overnight and go sledding in the morning. We would certainly get more than just the 1/2 inch we already had. A lot more. The weatherman said we had a 60% chance of more.

THE COLD HARD TRUTH PART II A.M. : Fat chance.

Tea, Rain, and the Eventual End of Winter

The End of Winter

Last Sunday it was so warm here in Asheville–downright hot–that I sunbathed on my back porch. Same went for Monday and Tuesday. (For context the Monday and Tuesday of the week before I was throwing snowballs.) Now, having gone through a short mini-summer teaser, I’m drinking warm cocoa-spiced tea, aware of the gray sky building behind me. The cold is back, not wicked like before, but damp and penetrating nonetheless. Of course, winter will end. Always does. I heard the irises growing the other night under an almost full moon. The trees are weighted with fat buds. But for an unequivocal, eternal reminder, you really only have to look to the daffodils, who announce spring’s return faithfully and brilliantly through snow, wind, ice and yes, even through late-winter tropical vacations.

Obama Administration Announces New Department

That’s right, embarrrassed by two out of two recent gift bombs, the first being the lame twin Marine One Helicopter models to Gordon Brown’s children and the second the misspelled “Reset” button to Russia by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama whispered in her husband’s ear Friday night after an incognito trip to IKEA, that there’s no way their reputation will stand in the wake of future gift gaffs.

Haunted by nightmares of giving bad Warhol-esque Mao t-shirts to Chinese diplomats and rubbery Eiffel towers to France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, Michelle convinced Barack to create America’s first Department of Homeland Gift Giving. Possible Secretary nominees include everybody’s favorite gift maker Martha Stewart, cultural phenom Jai Rodriquez from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Carl Kasell, NPR’s Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me’s official judge and scorekeeper, who at the very least, promises he’ll record greetings on the home answering machines of world leaders everywhere.

In the meantime, Michelle organized a spur-of-the-moment white elephant party this morning, in the hopes of winning the perfect re-gift for Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Choosing the heaviest and most brightly packaged gift, Michelle was disappointed to find that alas, it contained 20 pounds of peanut brittle.

Days of Wind

I use wind a lot in my writing, especially as a metaphor for change. It’s hard not to think of wind when my life is blowing to and fro like a palm in a hurricane. Not that this is a bad thing. In fact, I think it feels good to have the currents of my life refreshingly upset, to have my feathers ruffled, to experience the rush and strength of flux. Of course, it helps to be flexible! I am reminded of the comparison of the oak tree and the bamboo shoot when it comes to withstanding wind: an oak can be uprooted in gale force winds, but the bamboo shoot will just bend as it needs to.

We are in for a lot of wind, my sources say. Much of how we withstand it comes from how we will percieve it. It can destroy, uproot, disrupt, defoliate, rip, tear, and kill. It can also pollinate, transform, remove, brush clean, scrub, reveal, and fluff!

Recipe for Change

Key ingredients to make the switch from being anxious about a lay-off to being excited about a future of limitless possibilities: curiosity, motivation, and hutzpah. Throw in some good friends, planning, and play. Bake in a clutter-free, prayerful mind for a previously determined amount of time until ideas come out clean. Serve with sides of gratitude and humility.