September 2011 – Patricia Wild

September 22, 2011: Oh!

Came home yesterday after daughter Hope and Kristian’s week-long, delightful wedding cum family vacation, happy, tired and eager to resume my normal life.

After hours of laundry and putting a carload of stuff away—on Friday night, David and I hosted the rehearsal dinner for fifty and basically schlepped our entire kitchen’s tools plus ingredients for lots of Mexican food—I thought I was ready for that resuming-my-normal-life bit. Half-way through returning a phone call, however, I realized how tired I was. And maybe a little cranky? So when the woman on the other end of the line wanted to talk about Troy Davis, I begged her to change the subject. After a week of hanging out with family, a week when I’d purposely NOT discussed politics, a week without newspapers or checking my e-mail, a week of being MOB, doting Grandma, sou chef and scullery maid and avid novel reader, I didn’t want to hear it. I wasn’t ready.

I wanted to bask in the glow. I wanted to look at wedding pictures. But where the hell were they? How come the wedding photographer, Scott Langley, hadn’t posted them yet? May I confess to a few, cranky, entitled, hissy thoughts?

This morning, after a good night’s sleep, I get it. Oh! Right. Besides doing weddings, Scott Langley documents death row moments. He’s been in Georgia.

Take your time, Scott.

September 12, 2011: The View from Here—And From There and . . .

During a quiet moment this reflective weekend, had the opportunity to list in my journal how, ten years later, September 11, 2001 has forever changed me. Last night I added one more. I offer this brief list NOT because it’s unique. Just the opposite. At whatever latitude and longitude, let us mourn. Together.

How My Life Is Different Post 9/11:

1. Fear and sadness are the fabric of my life.

2. I know more about Islam and day-to-day Middle-Eastern life.

3. I know I am being watched/under surveillance.

4. TWO wars daily break my heart.

5. I better know the answer to “Why do they hate us so?”

And finally, # 6, which came to me after reading Thomas Friedman’s piece in the NYT and while walking on a broken, trash-strewn sidewalk along Somerville Avenue—and after seeing “Higher Ground”:

“This is it.” Broken, neglected infrastructure, the hopelessness and futility and rage expressed by this crap is How It Is, How It Will Be, I fear.

(Unless, of course, you and I . . . )

Labor Day, 2011: Latitude, 42.39 degrees N; Longitude, 71.09 degrees W

The day before Hurricane Irene was due, had been searching online for info I could relate to, i.e., simply gave just the facts, ma’am: no hysteria, no hype, no overblown videos. And discovered the National Weather Service’s no nonsense site.

Of course, the first thing the site wanted to know was: Where are you? So I typed in my zip code.

I’ve bookmarked that site; now, every morning I read “7-Day Forecast for Latitude, 42.39 degrees N and Longitude, 71.09 degrees W.” (AKA 02143. AKA Somerville, MA.)

So here’s an emerging spiritual exercise: To first take a few moments every morning to envision this precious planet, its globe-ness, its continents and seas, and then to take time to imagine carefully calibrated lines from earth’s poles and from above and below its middle and to feel where I am in relation to the equator and Greenwich, England.

“Ahh,” I think. “So that’s where I am!”

But there’s more to that Ahh than a mental acknowledgement of longitude and latitude, more to that profound sense of place. Here’s what else I contemplate while sipping my coffee: I’m—and you’re and we’re—in It and of It and It. The Soup. The Ball o’ Wax. The Whole Enchilada. Om/Aum. Within God. Deeply interconnected.

And whatever we do to the earth and to one another we do to ourselves and to The Divine.

(This Mindful stuff is exhausting!)