June 17, 2004

• Silver and gold,

  and warrior karma

  It’s Thursday again, Thor’s Day–has been raining here for maybe
  eighteen hours.  It’s soggy.  I go to town later, my turn to
  drive the van and let the rehab residents get away from the ranch for a
  while.  Life on the ranch comes as a shock to some of them: 
  shoveling shit, castrating pigs, and other such chores that are supposed to
  build character. 

  I reacted with surprise the first time I heard
  their chorus of “thank yous” as I let them out after a round
  trip.  After some observation and reflection, I think they’re
  honestly grateful for the chance to get away for an hour or two. 
  I’ve been unable to articulate to them why I do it more for me than for
  them, and why my response is just as often, “thank YOU”, as “you’re
  welcome.”

  ---

  
  I was awakened in the middle of a dream this morning.  In the dream I was being told to go to a
  place called Gem Lake or Gem Lakes, Utah. 

  I’d never heard of it
  before.  I was told there was a Crystal Lake, Emerald Lake, Diamond Lake,
  etc.  I wanted to find out if such a place existed outside my
  dreams. 

  With Google, I found it in the Mirror Lake area in
  northern Utah.  (If I were there, it wouldn’t be too far from
  there to Capitol Reef, nor even to Sedona….) I found some pictures of
  Gem Lake, and a site that
  sold maps listed one map, the Mirror Lake region, that featured a Diamond Lake,
  Gem Lake, Emerald Lake, etc. 

  I want to go there, and I wonder if and when it might become
  feasible.   I almost wrote, “…become possible,”  but I
  know it’s possible today.  I’m just not ready to accept the
  consequences of such action, incur the debt, drop the responsibilites
  and commitments I have here, action my mother would have called,
  “rash”.  Sometimes I wonder if, had I been more willing to be
  rash, to throw all caution to the winds and take any risk, accept any
  cost, if there’d be more “gold” in my life today instead of all this
  silver.

  ---

  silver and gold

  What
  started my musings about silver and gold was something said in a
  comment, about someone having figured (for some reason) that I’d drive a station wagon.  Yeah,
  I do drive this old silver Subaru wagon.

  I even love my silver Streak, because he is wheels.  He represents
  mobility, which is a lot like freedom.  He lets me go from here to
  there and keeps me from having to hitchhike to do it.

  But at the risk of hurting his feelings, I must admit that he is second
  choice.  I drive this car because Greyfox picked it out and bought
  it.  It was a backup car, something he could use for his roadside
  stand if his other car puked, went tits-up, or some other colorful term
  for malfunction.
  
  If I had my druthers, first choice, I’d still be driving Gina, my
  little gold Fiat X1/9.  What a car she is!  Impractical as
  can be–F.I.A.T:  fix it again, Tony.  But that body by
  Bertone, those seats with the perfect lumbar support–all I have to do
  is park her on a little up-slope, and I’ve got a comfortable recliner
  to sleep in.  I’ve done that enough times when there wasn’t enough
  money to rent a motel room.

  Getting her restored to running condition would cost more than we’ve
  paid for both of our last two cars combined.  Keeping her
  running–I don’t even want to think about it.

  She’s not really a good car for here, either, where the roads are rough
  and her suspension would bottom out on every bump, and where her front
  bumper would plow snow in the winter.  So golden Gina stays
  parked, her gold getting rusty, while I drive silver Streak.

  I’m really grateful for having gotten the chance to put over 50,000
  miles on her.  I’d never have had her at all if she hadn’t been technically totalled so that Greyfox gave her to me to get rid of me. 
  He’d had her ten years, since she was new, and put only about fifty
  thousand miles on her.  In the three years after he gave her to
  me, until the last time she stopped running, when we didn’t have the
  money to get her fixed, I drove her more than he had in those first ten
  years, and replaced a clutch, a transmission, and a few smaller parts,
  too.  She almost, but not quite, enabled me to get the wanderlust
  out of my system.

  Almost
  all of the jewelry I wear is silver.  I like bracelets best
  of all, and have a preference for wearing several bangles at a time, so
  I can hear them as well as seeing them.  Silver is okay, but it
  tarnishes, and the tinkle of those bangles is nothing like the chime of
  gold. 

  I simply have not had access to much gold.  This isn’t a golden
  lifetime for me.  Whether I might have made it so had I chosen
  differently at some point, is something I wonder sometimes but don’t
  spend much time thinking about, usually.

  Gold symbolizes the Sun, silver the Moon.  Gold symbolizes power;
  silver, knowledge.  Some say knowledge is power.  Maybe it is
  in a sense, but sometimes knowing just doesn’t quite come all the way
  up to doing.  Once in a game, a quest at an SCA tourney, I was
  challenged to choose between knowledge and power.  Without even
  pausing to consider, I said, “knowledge.”  The speed with which
  I’d made that choice surprised even me. 

  It has been that way all my life, choosing knowledge over comfort or
  wealth or anything else.  In my twenties when I was homeless,
  plenty of men would have given me a comfortable and maybe even a
  luxurious home, but they would have demanded my time and
  attention.  I chose to spend my days in the public library reading
  and my nights on just any old floor or whatever.  It’s not
  something I thought through, just an instinct or inclination inborn in
  me.

  ---

  The other thing on my mind today
  was warrior karma.  That’s something I share with just about
  everyone who is closest to me.  Many of us have been to war in
  this lifetime, and have an affinity for weapons or martial arts. 
  This may seem paradoxical, but most of us also deplore war, have
  protested against it, and will go way out of our ways to avoid a fight.

  My sensei is a fine example.  He teaches all the kata of Shotokan
  Karate and demonstrates them to perfection.  He has also studied
  under masters of Ninjutsu, and of other schools.  He’s a lethal
  weapon.  He worked for a while as bartender in our local lodge,
  and frequently some drunk would try to goad him into a fight, like some
  cowboy trying to take on the top gun.  He would be in deep legal
  shit if he did get into it and hurt someone, of course.  That’s
  not why he just lets the taunts roll off him, though.  He hates
  combat, loves discipline.

  I’m not so high-minded as sensei, though.  Through some trick of
  red-haired genetics, or some temporal lobe injury from anoxia at birth,
  or my karmic history, or all that and/or something else, I’ve got a
  hair-trigger temper.  Six decades have brought some
  moderation.  As a toddler I committed mayhem on my playmates with
  teeth, fingernails and sticks.  Well into my twenties I was still
  biting when provoked. 

  Although it has been many years since I got physically rough with
  anyone except in the dojo, I still can and do wield words like
  swords.  That’s progress of a sort, I suppose.  Where I’m not
  showing any progress is that I enjoy it.  I’m shameless,
  unrepentant, and take mischievous–yes, mischievous (irresponsibly
  playful) and not malicious (malevolent, hateful)–pleasure in the
  aftermath of those incidents when I am goaded to my breaking point and
  unload on someone.

  It wasn’t that way with the physical violence.  Even if my action
  had been in self-defense, every time I ever hurt someone, I hurt in
  sympathy afterward.  When I was younger, much younger, I would
  speak with malice, too.  I’d say words calculated to hurt, whether
  they were true or not.  I  have not done that in decades,
  either. 

  This came up at a meeting recently.   The topic was
  intentions, and how in recovery we are learning to do things with
  “good” intentions, for the “right” reasons.  One member who has
  often said that he believes what we do is more important than why we do
  it, reiterated that stance.  He says society doesn’t care how
  warped and twisted his thoughts are, as long as he doesn’t act on
  them.  His approach to self-mastery has been from a direction
  quite different from mine.

  I said that my spiritual development had been like climbing a mountain,
  only to discover when I reached the top that it wasn’t a peak, but a
  plateau with another mountain beyond it to be climbed.  The last
  of such mountains I’d mastered was learning to speak and act from the
  heart, saying only my own truth, sincerely meaning every thing I said
  and did.  I’ve done that, and now I find that I need to work on my
  intentions, on the “heart” from which I speak and act.  It’s not
  enough just to be honest, I must also work to be true.

  Gotta go now, get a shower and get on the road.  I could go on and on, but….

  • 2:30 pm
  • 10 Comments