Tag: squirrels

The Sounds of Silence

I have nothing to say. That interests me. Words are important currency in our society. People often seem to value them above a lot of other elements. Snakeoil salesmen have historically used them to good effect.

When thoughts and words aren’t forthcoming, it feels odd to me. We need words to offer and feel validation. We use them to connect to and shape our environment.

Words are important for plotting a path in life. Words underpin the narrative upon which we build our beliefs and develop our goals. Without words, we cannot articulate our dreams nor map a way to actualize them.

What is it about having nothing to say that intrigues me? In part, words have been my survival tool. I have relied on my ability to write or talk my way either out of or into any situation I believed I wanted to be part of.

I cannot say words were equally effective in improving my judgment, however. Some of those situations I got into I very quickly I wanted to get out of. There is a lot of wisdom in the caution “be careful what you wish for.”

We don’t much value nothing these days. It doesn’t sell well or for much money. And yet, there is so much available for us to learn and feel in nothingness and silence.

Most people fear emptiness. Recall in your own life uncomfortable silences that may have made certain interactions difficult and awkward. Recall the allure of frantic celebrations or parties we attended when thinking or speaking might have been impossible. The din of people trying to talk over loud music drowns out any intimacy there could be.

I once attended a 10 day silent meditation retreat in a beautiful country setting based on the ancient Vipassana tradition. Vipassana is a meditation discipline wherein we train our minds to “see things as they really are.” My interpretation of Vipassana is that by letting the mental clutter in our minds settle, we can clearly see ourselves and others.

Here is what the worldwide Vipassana website tells us about the practice:

There are three steps to the training. The first step is, for the period of the course, to abstain from killing, stealing, sexual activity, speaking falsely, and intoxicants. This serves to calm the mind, which otherwise would be too agitated to perform the task of self-observation.

The next step is to develop some mastery over the mind by learning to fix one’s attention on the natural reality of the ever changing flow of breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils.

By the fourth day the mind is calmer and more focused, better able to undertake the practice of Vipassana itself: observing sensations throughout the body, understanding their nature, and developing equanimity by learning not to react to them.

Finally, on the last full day participants learn the meditation of loving kindness or goodwill towards all, in which the purity developed during the course is shared with all beings.

https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/about/vipassana

The experience of a silent retreat is purifying. And calming. But many don’t make it through the ten days. Days Three and Four are well known as “bolt” days. These are the days when people are most likely to leave. For some people, being alone with their thoughts in complete isolation is too difficult and too frightening.

I believe you have to be ready before you undergo a ten day course of complete silence and disconnection from the outside world (no cellphones, journals or even books are allowed). Participants are free to go as they wish. They are also free to come back if/when they feel ready.

Finding a time and place to experience complete silence and disconnection is no mean feat. Social media bombards us with an endless array of opportunities to connect and share and communicate with others. Quantity has won the day over quality.

So embracing my inner Luddite, I am better and happier generally when I carve out tranches of silent “me time.” Early mornings are good for that. And what is it I do in that space? Nothing.

I try doing something that is very hard for me. Just being. I ignore my devices, TV and my phone. No reading or writing emails. Not even writing this blog until I have had some nurturing quiet time. I like to sit and absorb what the world around me is offering me in those periods.

Birdsong in nearby trees. Jet planes flying overhead. Squirrels scuttling at top speed across the wooden fence in our backyard. I often do a body checkin at the same time.

How does my tummy feel today? Are my muscles aching from that swim yesterday? Am I hungry? Or thirsty? The body chatters away incessantly, if wordlessly, with us if we just tune in to it.

Odd admission for a writer, no doubt. But I believe in the underlying logic. By carving out time to card through my thoughts and reactions, the output of words is a little clearer and more focused.

As Vipassana aims to teach, I feel more confident emerging from silence that I am seeing the world as it really is, rather than how I want to see it. Maybe the world would be kinder and more sane if more people did.

Nest Building … Again

There are curtains going up around our patio today. The sense of comfort and coziness is palpable. I am going to enjoy it while I can.

I have frequently been guilty of my eyes bigger than my belly. No more so than when trying to set up house.

After some pretty unsatisfactory relationships, I chose singledom for decades (would I say anything different even if I hadn’t made that conscious choice?). That decades-long period of my life was socially thin but healing. And safe. It allowed me to clear a lot of cobwebs from my eyes.

But I have to admit I was a lot less productive than I might have been had I been coupled up. No way of knowing, really. During my hermitage, I found it mighty easy to devise elaborate plans and projects in my head. Actualizing not so much. I have that gift. Living in my head, I mean.

So when I imagined the verdant garden I would build in my minds’ eye, it was invariably better than actually creating it. Setting out to create a garden brought me nose-to-nose with hard reality. Especially of the four legged variety.

I once saw (to me) a hilarious cartoon. An onlooker watching his gardening neighbor working in the soil, waxed on about the paradisiacal scene unfolding in front of him. The gardener looked up and sharply retorted: “This isn’t paradise. This is war!”

After years of impotent vegetable production and many failed gardening attempts, I well understand that gardener’s frustration. Though I lived in the city, it might as well have been living in the deep, backwoods country.

There were skunks that lived under the deck. The groundhogs set up shop beneath the storage barn. The rabbits lived on another property nearby but visited regularly. The raccoons came and went and were very attentive to the slightest food scrap left out for them to enjoy. And the squirrels.

I am not sure I could utter that word out loud without having it sound like a curse word. Diabolical, clever, determined beyond all reason are those little bushy tailed demons. And hungry. They are blessed with great appetites. As I learned and it turned out, nothing I set out in my garden was safe.

A beautiful green pepper was growing in my raised container garden (that I sing the praises of a single pepper underscores how poor my green thumb actually was). I was so proud. One day I came out on my back deck.

The pepper was sitting on the rail of the deck. I panicked but quickly settled when I saw it was still verdant green and perfect. On the side facing me. The backside of my single perfect green pepper was carved out like someone had conveyed an abstract menacing message in hieroglyphics. I got the message.

On another occasion, thrift seeker that I am, I once bought a half dozen end-of-season corn plants. A good three to four inches high. I couldn’t wait to get them into the ground.

The local rabbits couldn’t wait to get them into their gullets. The morning after I planted them, I found only several sad remaining nibs poking out of the ground.

Instead of saving lotsa bucks with my thrifty purchase, I lost ten bucks worth of plants. Or, as the rabbits would have described them, absolutely delicious tender little bunny hors d’oeuvres. Bunny hors d’oeuvres sounded pretty appealing around that time.

In other aspects of gardening education, I learned how to drown slugs in beer placed in jar caps. The little lushes.

I put chili flakes and cayenne pepper in the feeders to ward off the little curse words because I was told squirrels will not eat hot spicy things. Well, that was a lie. I’m convinced the squirrels deeply appreciated how the spice kicked the birdseed up a notch. Don’t get me started on blood meal (which was bloody expensive) and whatever pestilence that was supposed to ward off.

And I knew it was the squirrels because no bird goes through as much birdseed as that feeder dispensed in just a few short days.

So I am enjoying my current delusion of comfort and coziness with the installation of new curtains. In here, protected from the elements and Mother Nature.

I can fool myself that there is not a whole wicked world out there full of raccoons, and skunks and bunnies and squirrels that will soon descend on my virginal and vulnerable patio vegetables and make short work of them.

For Northerners reading this, I will agree my complaints and caution may seem unseasonal. But mark my word. You have a whole winter ahead of you to gird your loins and bone up on how to protect your plants and keep the peskier elements of nature far away from you.

Trust me, if you wander down that garden path, you are going to need all of the ammunition you can get.