Wherever You Go, There You Are

Since we’ve all been (rather) homebound these last two+ years, flying on an airplane and going somewhere new feels like a big adventure. I’m on my way home after spending 5 days with an old tai chi friend on Whidbey Island, offshore Seattle. Getting there, and back, was the most complex part of the trip. 

Paine Field Airport, the closest to the island, opened as a commercial airport just before the pandemic hit. It’s an upscale joint, more like a fancy hotel lobby than an airport with three gates, serving one airline, and restricted in the number of flights/day it can process. Since it is a small, almost elite, airport, customer services are limited.

I arrived five days ago. After waiting 90-minutes, I caught the shuttle to the island, and my friend turned up on the same ferry. She’d finished her dentist appointment in Seattle early, and hurried home. She texted me as the ferry departed the dock, asking if I was in the shuttle bus on the ferry. When I replied affirmatively, she said she was in line just a few cars behind us. After the ferry got underway and we were free to move about the ferry, she came up and sprang me and my belongings from the shuttle. We stopped at Rocket Tacos (Freeland WA) for a spicy lunch of street tacos, the local variation of charro beans, and a locally made ginger beer as we made our way to her beautiful waterfront home.  

That first afternoon we walked 3+ miles (round trip) across one of the narrow parts of Whidbey Island, from her home on Penn Cove to the campground closest to Fort Ebey State Park on Puget Sound. It was a glorious introduction, really a reminder, of the rich, damp, evergreen forests of the pacific northwest, and a cold, grey, drizzly reminder of why the vegetation is so rich. I brought home a tender spot that would blossom the next day into a blister on one heel from walking in my new boots. A quick stop by Walgreens for blister care pads and moleskin and I was good to go again. I did spend a day in my wooly socks, without shoes, as the blister settled back down.

We balanced out touring the sights around the island with her necessary work tasks, most of which were zoom calls with clients. I read, and sat in front of the fireplace, watching the water and the sky, and the birds. On her deck, she has 3 seed feeders, one suet feeder and one hummingbird feeder. We were constantly entertained by a variety of birdlife. Bald eagles, Canada geese, ravens, and herons also visited the Cove, trees and green space around, and in front of, her home. I’m sure there were owls too, we just didn’t see them.

I also learned the rudiments of the game of Euchre, and played a couple games with two of her card-playing friends. We also watched a little Netflix – some of Brene’ Brown’s Atlas of the Heart sessions, and the two Hannah Gadsby shows. Both memorable for different reasons. 

My one uncertainty was getting back home. I had a reservation at the hotel closest to the airport that had a restaurant. None of the hotels had shuttle service to the airport. It was a customer service that disappeared with Covid and isn’t likely to return. As a customer, I miss the easy convenience of it.

Last night when I arrived on the shuttle, I called a taxi. The young woman driver had a baby stroller in the trunk. We chatted on the way over to the hotel. She was a young mom with two kids at home, and was saving to buy a car of her own. When I called to request a taxi to return to the airport this morning, I complimented the young woman to the dispatcher. She informed me that she had fired the woman last night because she’d taken ‘her’ taxi home, rather than returning it to the base. The next driver had been unable to make his runs without a car. This was not the first time this had happened. Her firing was not ‘bad luck’. We do get what we create.

Hide The Ball

I don’t know if you remember that old magician’s trick with the usually three upturned cups and the ball that seems to magically move from cup to cup, and the observer never quite knows where the ball is, or how it got there. In one of our Practitioner classes years ago, a dear friend said, “I play hide the ball with myself all the time, and it frustrates me!” When she said it, I realized I couldn’t imagine a more appropriate way to describe how we keep ourselves from knowing ‘stuff’ that we claim we want to know. Most of us do this, at least sometimes. This is not a criticism. I think it’s an aspect of being human.

I’ve been using this pandemic cloistering period to work on my writing practice in a world-wide community of writers. The way this program is set up, everyone has a page of their own as a place to show their work. It’s a little cumbersome until you get the hang of it (like most things are when they are new), but it’s really not hard to find your own page. I’m watching one of my writing friends do his darnedest to keep himself from writing, and letting himself acknowledge that he actually writes well and beautifully. He’s a smart guy. He’s got a successful day job. And he’s got this other side that’s creative, poetic, profound and astoundingly lyrical in its beauty and depth. 

This morning I noticed that he’d written an extraordinary piece of incredibly touching poetry on someone else’s ‘page’, and sheepishly admitted that he didn’t know how to find his own page. We’ve been in this writing program for fivemonths. Twice I’ve offered to zoom with him on his computer to show him how to find his own page. I know of two other people, moderators of the writing program, who have also offered to assist him. Someone even made him a ‘how to’ sheet of directions, and he persists in hiding the ball from himself. I just wanted to cry when I saw his commentary this morning.

If we, or someone else, don’t want to know something, there is nothing that can be done to force them or us to see, and know. It’s not like having a puppy and rubbing their noses in it when we catch them peeing in the house. We don’t learn that way. Once we finally do wake up to the game and see, and are willing to own our own ability, agency, autonomy, authority, responsibility and power, there’s nothing that stands in our way.  

Being part of a world-wide writing community is both exciting and terrifying. I was telling one of my artist friends about it, and she was horrified at the idea of showing her work to others as it was in process, specifically so that other people could comment on it. I told her it was really quite fabulous, because one of the rules of engagement in this group was that commenters were required to be constructive, and kind. Early on when I joined this online writers’ group, I noticed the moderators, quickly and decisively, removed two people who didn’t know how to be constructive and kind. 

It serves each of us to have a small group of supportive friends, who we trust and who actually have our best interests in mind and heart, and who will help us see our blind spots.  Without that, it’s easy to just keep playing ‘hide the ball’, and we don’t learn and grow.

The Writer's View, 3Dec19

For some reason that still puzzles me, I signed up for, and participated in, a book-writers' boot-camp this summer.  The two dudes who ran it promised that if you did the exercises and activities when, and as, they described them, you would end up with a true first draft of a book by the end of four 8-hour days of constant writing.  Apparently, I thought the nudge would be worth it, and so I sent in my (non-refundable) full tuition payment, made my airline, hotel and rental car reservations, and cleared my calendar.  

I didn't enjoy the process, because I hate feeling pushed, and that's exactly what they did. The entire program was delineated into 6-minute increments.  Six minutes to brainstorm possible titles. (There was a little bit of guidance on the types of titles that generally are picked up by bookstore buyers, and by consumers.)  Six minutes to describe everything you know about, even stuff you don't think matters.  Six minutes to define your target audience.  Six minutes to come up with five chapter headings. And so on, ad nauseum.  And it did, indeed, work. 

One of the things about the week that I enjoyed was getting an increased awareness of the breadth and depth of stories I have in my own personal history. We all do, if we're paying any attention to the moments and interactions of our days. One of the leaders talked about his own process of practicing his story-capturing skills by challenging himself to write a story every single day and publishing them all on a blog.  By the time he stopped his daily activity, he'd written and published (if writing on a blog is publishing, which it is, sort of) 646 days straight.  Granted, they aren't all riveting and mind-expanding, but they are stories of his daily life, and remembrances of childhood that could be used to illustrate a point.  

One of the questions 'up' for me right now is how to mentally think about individuals who, for no apparent reason, walk out of my life. When asked about their departure, there are no hard feelings, and nothing is amiss. It's just over. They feel like they've changed. The whole conundrum does leave me puzzled though. And it reminds me of a story.  

On the first night my taiji group was in Fiji, the locals welcomed us to the island with sweet-smelling Plumeria leis and a welcoming ceremony. The younger women danced a stylized, formal dance while the men played drums, and some of the older women prepared this milky white beverage that was served to us in coconut shells, family style.  All the tourists who wished to drink this beverage were encouraged to do so.  It tasted like I imagine dirty socks would.  Fortunately, it didn't smell like them.

Several days later, I was sitting on top of a picnic table at dusk, after a long day of strenuous taiji practice, enjoying the night sounds of the insects, the sights of the fruit bats flying low, and sounds and scents of the waves crashing on the rocky beach. A couple local men who served as security guards for the small resort stopped by the table to make small talk. We talked about the weather and the beauty of their island, both of which were glorious. I asked them about the welcoming ceremony. The older man replied that it wasn't made up for the tourists, that it was used by the locals to include the tourists in their extended family for the duration of their visit for their safety and protection, and then, after the tourists had gone home, the locals did a second ceremony to remove the tourists from their protection.  

I wonder what sort of disconnection ceremony I might do for this one who has walked out of my life, and I wonder what impact that might have?  I'll have to give that some thought. 

Keanne's Story, 15Jul11

My friend Keanne and I are part of an 8-woman prayer group, playfully entitled TSW because we know that our prayers do manifest in our lives and that praying with each other gives us each extra oomph in our lives.

Keanne's experience:  Just want to let you all know that the restaurant is coming right along. We have an architect that is working with us to bring the building up to Code.   We are looking at about $50,000 to make all the changes necessary for city building codes. The kitchen doesn't require any modifications.  We need a proper parking lot, the floors refinished, wheelchair ramps improved, landscaping and another bathroom. I met with a professional though the SBA that does business plans. He also will begin to speak to lenders for us.  He says we should have our money in about 3 to 4 weeks.  We are also looking at some grant money as a vegetarian/vegan restaurant.  I have got the QuickBooks thing down pretty well and was able to come up with a Profit and Loss Statement. Wow!  We made a profit in our first 6 months!

Plans are being drawn up this week and next we will be getting our permits for construction. Our space is workable for a 'proper' restaurant. We will close the dinning room during the construction but will be opening a new room where we will be doing healthy grab-and-go food. Vegetarian take-out, plus our cooking demos and we might even do some yoga dinners. We are so excited. We love the support that we are getting from everyone.  We have talked with the landlord not to raise our rent for the next five years and after that only 10% a year for five years. So we plan on being in business for at least the next ten years.

We recently had a man in the restaurant that is a professional photographer; he is willing to do all our pictures for our web sites in exchange for food certificates.  And we just met a woman who is redoing both our web sites so they match and complement each other. She also is working for trade.   Doors continue to open for us. We believe in what we are doing and so does the vegan/vegetarian community. TSW!  You're not kidding. Thanks for being my spiritual support. Knowing we are all here for each other provides such a feeling of confidence and security. I love the TSW Gang!