Tending Joy

Note to self: Posting once a month is insufficient. But here's the news of the month:

The lovely ketch is still on the river in Guatemala, along with Beloved Younger Son, Delightful Daughter-in-Law and Glorious Grand-Daughters. Dear Husband and I, on the other hand, are in the noisy, crowded city trying to spring some parts from customs, where they have been stalled since March 27. Five weeks today. We have been here a week, visiting offices, sending e-mails, making phone calls. Sometimes accepting 'tomorrow, maybe,' other times arguing.

In one respect, the Trip of a Lifetime is about ruined -- which is a position I am being adequately successful at staying out of, emotionally. What is true is that the 6 weeks of sailing in Belize has been cut to about 7 days max, possibly less depending upon weather. Oh, and whether we are able to collect all the embargoed parts or not. The 2 weeks of sailing from Belize to Mexico has been cut to one week or less. If we are not able to collect all the parts, most of the trip will be motoring as we will only be able to sail downwind, using spinnaker, jib and staysail, with neither main nor mizzen available to balance the rig or allow any sailing to windward.

Though disappointing, this has not deprived the trip of all of its usefulness nor even of all of its delights.

So far, for example, Granddaughter #1 has learned to drive a 40-horse dinghy quite competently, even at planing speeds. Granddaughter #2 has gone from dog-paddle-with-lifejacket to a respectable sidestroke and a beginner's messy crawl, no flotation required. Younger Son has demonstrated significant competence with mechanical, electrical, and plumbing repairs and has been instrumental in getting everything shipshape and ready to move. If the sail track and lazyjack blocks had been delivered even two weeks late we would be enjoying lake sailing in preparation for next week's high-enough tides. There has been plenty of kayaking, dinghy sailing, and enjoyment of licuados, tostadas, pollo y lomito. The vacation has not been a bust, it just has not gone as planned.

And now there is a new plan. Tomorrow we go to the customs office yet again. If we are at all successful, Dear Husband will take what parts we can get and board the bus for a 5-hour ride back to the boat. I, on the other hand, will fly to California for another delightful weekend of important work with valued colleagues, feeding my spirit and supporting some of the most important Soul-Centered Education I know about. In a few days I will rejoin the boat and we will continue the trip North, in whatever way that seems possible.

 Today somebody asked me if I was offended with them. I had to think about that a moment, because yes, I was -- but I hadn't acknowledged it even to myself. Then I looked closer and realized that my internal reaction (you know, the one I hadn't noticed) was way out of proportion to the little thing they did that I found so obnoxious.
 
Well, as you know, i'm a rational, responsible, self-aware person, so I pretended nothing had happened and just didn't answer the question.

About two hours later somebody else asked me a very similar question. They had done even less, but my reaction was immediate, and somewhat (embarrassingly) loud.

So finally I took a look at what's going on with me.

Let's see: 20" of snow in the driveway (where it drifts; we only got 18" in measured snowfall) means I can't leave the house without 'permission' -- that is, I have to wait for the snowplow to get here, and then I have to borrow the one 4WD vehicle we own among the household, which isn't mine.

The days have lengthened substantially since the Solstice, which means I only have to put on my drive-at-night glasses at 5:45 instead of 5:00. And as long as I can sleep until 8 am there's light in my bedroom. This means I'm only feeling about four hours worth of light deprivation every day.

My mate and I are having trouble communicating. I think we're having trouble with the fact that we don't want the same things out of retirement, but it's been hard to get coherent about it. I've been harboring the hallucination that if he would only be here, doing the couples counseling that we started last spring, maybe things would get better. But I suspect that from his perspective he's already put in about as much time and money as he's willing to. And since I haven't been willing to change, and he hasn't, probably we are at an impasse.

We've tried to talk about this a little bit. It's easier in e-mail, but it sure isn't being easy. I feel so unheard. I feel so lonely, even when he's here. He says he admires me for all the things I am and he's not. But he doesn't want to learn to be any of those things. Whereas when I'm admiring him for being all the things he is that I'm not, my second step has historically been to ask him to teach me. I haven't been as good a teacher as he has been. Does that mean that I'm stuck with doing all this stuff alone?

Just now I'm stuck waiting for replies and a real conversation to develop. I wrote him a long letter at the Solstice, and carefully cut it back to a page to make it manageable for him. It took him two weeks to reply, a few sentences in response to paragraphs. 

I can't get his attention. Or when I do get his attention, he wants to explain why it's unreasonable of me to want our partnership to consist of shared deep personal experiences.

I'm so hurting. I'm so angry. I don't know if he's reading this -- he's told me recently that he 'often' reads my blog, but that come to think of it he lost all his bookmarks when he replaced his computer. Which I think was in November. So I gave him the address again. Is he reading this now? If he is, will he respond to any of it?

How long should I wait to see?

I promised a post for Blogging Against Disablism Day, and now I'm late -- Beltane celebrations distracted me. My excuse is that I've been starved for public ritual work for six months, so this weekend I sort of pigged out, dancing one Maypole and supporting another, plus the Full Moon. But that's no excuse.

This week I've been much more aware of 'able-ism' or 'disable-ism' (same thing, different words, depending on which of the English-speaking countries I might be quoting), and of barriers to accessibility. Mostly because this week I've been back in the states.

In rural Guatemala and island Honduras, in the two little towns where I've been, accessibility levels reminded me of suburban and urban United States in the 1960s. Stairs everywhere, bumpy rough asphalt paths and uneven tile surfaces, cobblestones on the way to the only entrance door. Narrow doorways, crowded public transportation. Wheelchair users would have a hard time.

Perhaps as a direct consequence, I rarely saw anyone using crutches or wheels on the public street, and when I did they often were begging. My supposition about this is not so much that folks with mobility issues could only find work as beggars, but more than it looked so difficult to navigate out on the street that most folks with mobility issues probably stayed home a lot.

Here at home, though, where I remembered curb cuts everywhere and braille panels next to the ATM machine, I see we still haven't made our neighborhood adequately user friendly for everyone. Some curbcuts are obviously a problem - slanted, bumpy, on odd jolt at the bottom or top, aimed in a funny way. During our recent rains I observed two curbcuts that were flooded when nearby culverts became choked with debris.

In a restaurant, the music is so loud that everyone is shouting. Turning up the hearing aid doesn't help in that situation, so we fall silent while we eat, and save the lip-reading for after the meal. Able-bodied patrons don't seem to like it any better than those with hearing challenges, so why all the noise? Oh, yeah -- to set a 'happy, upbeat mood.' This is the reply when a woman at a neighboring table asks for the music to be turned down. Dunno 'bout you, but I'm not usually 'happy and upbeat' when I have to shout, nor when I can't hear what's going on.

At the airport. Continental was happy to sell me a seat on Flight 6361, but they didn't mention that this was a codeshare number for a flight actually operated by United, out of a different terminal. (Now I know: if the flight number seems too long for the flight, it's a codeshare). Too bad I let go of my sturdy helper before finding that out. Skycaps are available out on the sidewalk, but -- at least at that moment -- not inside. When I left the terminal to get a cart ($4) someone reprimanded me for leaving my two 50-pound bags behind.

On-line. Lots of us prefer on-line education because of its built-in accessibility and non-discrimination advantages. I don't get judged as the oldest person in the class, somebody else isn't dismissed as too young; nobody is shunned or ridiculed for being dumpy, skinny, or having a bad hair day. Unless we talk about it, nobody knows what challenges fellow students might have in the 3D world. Just this morning, though, I received a message asking professors to please include a regular 'meeting' of the class, whether voice-to-voice or text-to-text, because student evaluations often mention feeling 'lost' or 'disconnected' from classes where such live-chat meetings don't occur. Just this morning I needed to remind someone that not everyone can participate in conference calls and instant messaging.

Universal Design has prominently showed up in my awareness. Beginning a decade ago, when we built this house, and had to keep reminding the contractor that we had a couple of aged parents who used wheelchairs -- and no, couldn't climb 'even that one little step'. I'm enjoying what I'm reading -- noticing that signs with big letters, high contrast, and letters separated from pictures are easier for everyone to read, not just those with visual 'impairments;' noticing that cleaning up the audio makes everyone's experience of paging systems more useful, not just those with hearing challenges; noticing that highlighting stair edges helps everyone ... I could go on.

Just at present I'm glad to see progress ... and embarrassed at how slow it is, and how many large institutions have actually resisted change rather than leading it ... and chagrined at how glad I am to still be a TAB.*

Looking forward to more Universal Design, more genuine, easy accommodation of difference.

Reading another post on BADD, I heard the expression "the problem is You." That blogger was referencing the way they had been treated as a 'problem,' as a person needing accommodation. But for me, I want to address it a little differently: the Problem is US, the temporarily able-bodied who blithely assume someone else will fix it, or that we don't need to remove barriers because no one has actually expressed a wish to enter our space or use our facility, or that it's such a big problem it doesn't matter if it takes a long time. As with all the other forms of discrimination and privilege ... the problem is us.

Working for change.

Blessed Be.

Here I am again in Rio Dulce.

Lots is the same -- the beautiful river, the part about living close to nature. Wearing T- or tank-top and shorts, day after day. Never wanting jewelry or even a skirt.

Lots is different -- this time we're in a bungalow on stilts right at the water's edge, protected from direct sun by the jungle overhead; this time we're on an island, so everything is a dinghy ride away (even the restaurant so close that even I could hit it with a softball). This time one of the grandkids is with me; we're all studying Spanish a couple of hours a day; we're doing a little tourist stuff.

One difference has surprised me -- my Dear Husband and I are getting almost no private conversation. A 10-year-old goes to be at pretty much the same time we do, and has been up before us nearly half the time. The best we've managed is a cup of coffee at 6 am. Next week I think we might revise the Spanish schedule so she's in class at a time when we're not, so we can have a couple of hours to do more than 'utility' conversations.

Another surprise is that we are indeed entering the home stretch on this major refit of sailboat project. Looks like at the end of the coming week we'll start up Second Summit's diesel, for the first time in over a year, and motor a couple of miles upriver, taking her from the carpentry shop (where all the interior work has been done while she lay at dockside) to the yard where she can be hauled out for hull work. She might be out for a month, but not longer than that -- there isn't all that much to do, and all the hull materials have arrived and are waiting.

Having a grandchild around does present a couple of challenges. This week the carnival has been in town, and here in Guatemala it is Almost Exactly the Same as the carnival of my Connecticut childhood in 1960 -- a Ferris Wheel, a Tilt-a-Whirl, Bumper Cars, Merry-Go-Rounds, a midway full of games of "chance" (some of them quite evidently rigged) offering dimestore prizes, pizza, cotton candy, hot dogs, sodas, too much noise and lots of crowds. Only one 'new' ride, the Zipper -- a derivative of a Ferris Wheel with caged cars that can turn upside down in both directions. No new midway games -- except the old milk-bottle ringtoss has been replaced with Coca-Cola ringtoss. Several new kinds of candy, though, apparently locally produced in several fruit-and-sugar flavors.

All that was no problem, though I wouldn't necessarily have chosen to go without a kid who wanted to. But then ... she got on the Tilt-A-Whirl and then asked me to go with her. She looked forlorn, small, scared ... and so I did. (She'd had her eye on the Tilt-A-Whirl all week; I didn't have the heart to refuse). This might have been a mistake, as my neck has been a bit sore and crampy all day. But it's a small thing.

Mostly she's being a delight, alternating between 10-going-on-25 and 10-going-on-6, just as you would expect. Today when we toured the Castillo de San Felipe (1595-1736 Spanish fort at the foot of Lake Izabal, built to defend the lakeside warehouses from river pirates), she kept better track of where we'd been than the grownups.

She understands far more Spanish than she can say, feeling shy about making mistakes. Me, I can say far more than I can understand, which occasionally gets me into trouble. But I can just about read a newspaper now -- yippee!

We're here two more weeks, then I take 10-year-old grandkid home and, a week later, come back with 8-year-old grandkid, this one's younger sister. And more of the same.

Relationships

Getting good at this ‘parallel play’ stuff – each of us doing our own thing, but sharing space and meals and good talk about how each project is going. Several good conversations with Dear Husband this week negotiating plans. Warm gentle fondness and lots of cuddling. A couple of good conversations with new friends among the cruisers, including a dynamite Ladies' Lunch that makes me wish I would be here next week to do it again -- all of us 'of a certain age' and each of us fairly eclectic in our own different ways, and great conversation!

And I'm looking forward to seeing the folks at home, too.

Writing

Memoir is growing by leaps and bounds, even though I sometimes think Red Smith was right – all you have to do to be a writer is sit in front of the keyboard until little drops of blood form on your forehead.

Student Handbook, draft one, is about finished – now I have the technical challenge of figuring out how to upload it to our shared workspace site.

Chaplaincy

On the back burner while I’ve been in Guatemala. Not certain what will happen once I’m back in the states, but probably within the next few weeks I’ll be thinking about Hospice work again.

Medical

Sure is different to be over 60 than it was to be younger than 60. The present challenge seems to be gastric – dunno if I’ve picked up a parasite or have an obstruction or just what. I’ve been mostly staying acceptably comfortable by taking stool softeners and the occasional laxative, but clearly whatever’s happening is not clearing up by itself.

So I leave the Rio Dulce tomorrow and fly back to New Jersey on Wednesday … and see my doctor on Thursday. I’m not expecting anything very dire, but I do suspect I’ll be doing whatever constitutes a ‘full G-I workup’ these days (and if I'm going to do that, I'd rather it be somewhere where I know the language). I still remember the barium enema I had in 1953, but probably this won’t be as difficult as that was, whatever they’re going to do.

Celebration

Second Summit is starting to really look good. Her new floor gleams, her new interior walls are smooth and watertight and beautiful, the Master’s Cabin aft is coming together very nicely and will convert to 2 cabins readily when we go to sea (and thus need more people along). Time to order the replacement sail and start measuring for curtains, we’ve gone around deciding where the interior lights and grab handles should be, and the new Navigator’s Desk looks like being perfect. Yippee!

Magic

I’ve done very little formal ritual work since arriving in Guatemala. Some meditation, both formal and informal, and plenty of intention work … but nothing in a cast circle, nothing in the way of handicraft with an intention chanted in. I’m feeling complacent rather than deprived, but I suspect that’s just part of the climate thing. Everything seems to happen on a slower schedule than it does at home. But it is odd to find that, apart from noticing and greeting the Moon each night, I haven't even celebrated the Full and Dark.

Sobriety

After nine months of strict teetotaling, I ordered a gin-and-tonic a month ago. I was surprised at how little effect it had. I noticed the circumstances and observed that I was actually choosing to drink rather than speak up to say I was tired of this conversation with total strangers and casual acquaintances ... or even make some excuse and go curl up in my bunk with a book.

A couple of days ago I found myself feeling stuck in an even less worthwhile conversation, sitting at a table with three elderly male white boat guys listening while two of them made racist and sexist comments about everything that had happened today … and I felt like it would be rude of me to stand up and walk away. So I ordered a beer.

Clearly this is not a good pattern for me to be in. On the one hand I dunno as there’s any great need for me to “never” put alcohol in my face again; on the other hand, clearly I need to find a better way to cope with uncomfortable conversation. And I don’t think I want to reinforce the idea that any time I don’t like what I’m doing I should have a beer. Is that simple avoidance or what?

Spiritual Practice

Back on track with Active Meditation. This week the topic is the Group Soul.

Still not spending more than a few minutes a month with Discourses, which makes me about six months behind.

Keeping Commitments

Still having trouble with remembering what day it is, remembering what time I’m supposed to be where … which seems to be typical of the way the locals do things, too, but doesn’t work for me when I’m supposed to be in an on-line class or a conference call. Still having trouble double-scheduling things.

I’m hoping this will clear up when I’m back in NJ with a calendar posted on the refrigerator, and everything happening in the same timezone.

Physical Reality

I will be glad when we can move back aboard the boat. I will be glad when my body is feeling better. I could definitely love seeing some of the sights available in Guatemala, and I have definitely had all I need to of hanging out at the boatyard and sleeping in this cluttered storeroom.

Plans, Overwhelm, Overbookedness

Actually the schedule seems somewhere between ‘just right’ and ‘a bit too loose’ at the moment. Planning to leave on less than a week’s notice has been easy, packing in one day has been fairly simple. Mostly I’m enjoying watching my anxiety wax and wane, and noticing that I can recognize the symptoms of that even when I’m not “aware” of feeling that. Dithering, second-guessing, trying to do the ‘perfect’ thing instead of ‘one of the good things’ … all seem to exist just so I can know how I’m doing even when I’d rather not know.

So: a couple of days of travel, and then we’ll see.

Here on the Rio, 2008 went out in a hail of fireworks -- a week's worth, but especially on the 31st they went on at great volume for hours. It also went out in a week of daily rain, very little sunshine, most of that in 30-minute pieces. Much of the rain was in small bits, too, but frequent. On the next to last day of the year we say a brilliant, full-arc, double rainbow, so close we could see where it ended in the water on our end. Lasted for an hour, so we could watch it move with the sun -- awesome.

And then came yesterday -- 2009 dawned only partly cloudy. The day was brilliantly sunny for more than half, and as far as I can tell, no precipitation after morning dew. Today begins even prettier -- just a few tiny clouds on the horizon, and the most lovely blue sky everywhere.

Already most of what has been damp for a week is nearly dry. Already the little dry-weather animals are out.

The world is a beautiful place.

Blessed Be.

... another loom!

I've been away from my beautiful 4-harness Wolf-pup since December. Sometimes I've missed the weaving terribly. But a walking loom on the boat would be terribly impractical, and I really prefer that to any sort of tabletop loom, and besides the wood would swell ... I've made lots of excuses to myself, and put up with deprivation as well as may be.

Next week I head home. Or rather: in 7 days I leave Guatemala. A few days in California (during which I will be far too busy to weave, booked into a group project from 6 am to 8 pm daily). And then home. So only 6 or 7 more days to miss weaving.

This, no doubt, is why yesterday I bought a backstrap loom.

Josephina, a Guatemalan Mayan lady who lives the other side of San Antonio from Rio Dulce where I am, comes on Thursdays to sell the richly woven cloth of her village. It all looks like embroidery, with hand-laid patterns of extra weft above the tight, dense weave of the underlying cloth. Last week I bought a tablecloth, a scarf, a table runner from her ... oh, and a bottle carrier because it was so perfect I could hardly resist. While we were talking about her wares -- in my absolutely minimal Spanish and her fairly limited English, with lots of gestures -- I asked questions about how the work was made. Next thing you know she was calling over someone who might translate -- next jueves (Thursday) she would be back, and would bring a loom from her pueblo.

So yesterday she was back, her table full of goods arrayed as before. I came over to see her and she showed me what she'd brought -- a backstrap loom strung in a beautiful blue thread, with just a few inches worked warp. Already I could see the beginnings of the butterfly design. She led me to a tree by the hammock. "This is good, yes?" She tied the end bar of her loom to the tree above our heads, and then knelt on a cloth on the ground, the weaving in her lap. She tied a broad lozenge of woven rope to the other end bar and then pulled the resulting loop over her head and down her body, like putting on a teeshirt. She settled the rope seat behind the seat of her skirt and sat back on her heels. Presto, the warp was tensioned just right.

She wove for half an hour, demonstrating the rhythm, noticing each time I looked at something more closely, turning the loom to show me more clearly, or moving more slowly so I could see. And then she said something that I thought meant 'do you want to try it?' I said yes, but we didn't change places. In a few more minutes she had to go back to her table, customers coming. She stood and rolled up the loom.

I thought I had received a wonderful demonstration and wondered how I would repay her kindness -- should I now buy something else? or could I buy her lunch? And at just that moment she turned to me and indicated the loom, the part-woven cloth, the basket of spools of thread for it, and said "Good price for you?" Eventually we settled on a good price, and she made it clear that she had brought this loom to sell to me if I wanted it. Probably she made the warp for the express purpose of selling it to me, choosing a pattern that matched the runner I had already bought, so I'd have something to copy.

I feel silly, still, in a couple of ways. If I'd only realized the loom was for sale before she stopped weaving, I would have tried it there and then and let her correct my technique. If I'd only waited another week I could be home with the loom that's waiting for me, its warp already strung for my next project.

But not very far under that minor self-judgment is a lovely ecstatic enthusiasm: Yippee, I've got a loom I can use on the boat! Yippee I've got a loom that will travel! Yippee! Yippee!

And -- I've tried it out, and there are only two questions I haven't figured out answers to yet, and neither will be pressing for several hours of weaving (if they don't become obvious anyway). I love my new loom!

2-28-08  (posted 2-29)

Arrived. Tied up across a dock end, side-tied to starboard. Powered up with 50 amps of 120V electric for the first time since April in Dania Beach. Went for a beer to celebrate.

Two beers on an empty stomach, after a week of no alcohol … it’s not that I was all that much ‘in practice’, but I sure am aware of being ‘out of practice’ at the moment. Good thing the dock’s three feet wide or I might’ve gone swimming.

Three hundred and fifty e-mails in the week off-line. Most are group lists, okay to catch up on during the next few days, but a few needed prompt responses and … the next thing you know it’s midnight or more.

800 miles from Florida and the wi-fi is cleaner, faster, and cheaper. Go figure.

Rio Dulce is amazingly beautiful.

Tomorrow must do laundry, but for now: bed.