Chasing the Unknown

Pema Chodron has written a series of essays called "Comfortable with Uncertainty". She may be. But for the rest of us, that title is aspirational at best. Uncertainty is our bugaboo, our bogeyman. No matter how many Buddhist pundits we read, no matter how we admire the concept in principle, we still go in search of that one final thing to cement our certainty once and for all, disregarding the fact that cementing anything leads only to rigidity—and we all know that the tree that bends with the wind survives while the tree that rigidly resists the wind will be toppled to extinction.

 

So there we are, looking for the security of the known, little suspecting that it's the unknown that will complete us and actually save us. And again we are holding two conflicting ideas in our capacious minds. They cancel each     other out and leave us, as always, hoping that one more refinement, one more purchase, will bring us finally to the security that will make us safe forever. Delusion.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Ann Tudor
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Just for the Fun of It

The animals that are not human know

(or seem to know, for what do I know?)

how to move and live for the fun of it.

When I think of the mountain goat

scaling the peaks with abandon,

I suppose he's hunting for food,

but between bites he gambols.

Just for the fun of it.

 

Billy Collins pictures whales

crisscrossing the ocean trails

because they can.

I imagine waving my broad

and majestic tail

to propel a giant body

across the vasty deep

and I can put myself there

in the same way I can become the trees.

 

In that spirit I glory

in the flittings and flyings

of the teenage jays that cavort in the evening

outside our upstairs window.

Just for the fun of it.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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Declining

Introduction: I decline to decline these nouns because attempting to do so would make more obvious the decline of my cognitive functions.

 

It began when I turned 80. Until then—until that very day—I had been about 60 in my mind. But those two little digits suddenly turned my attention from my present and past toward my future which, for the first time in my life, had limits. It's hard to believe, but until that moment I had given zero attention to the inevitability of personal extinction—aka death. Like, ME. Me. I was going to die some time in the foreseeable future. Ninety seemed like an ending date, and that was only ten years away. Ten years to get my affairs in order (a bit of a joke, that is). I'm not a bucket-list type of person, so I didn't start making notes about projects or trips. No, I just thought: someday soon this will end.

 

Now, I say this began at 80, which it did. But let me tell you, turning 85 is what revved up the process. 85! Only five years left until 90. Maybe I should revise that ultimate date. Move it to 92, 95—and look! The obits these days feature dozens of deaths at 102, 105, 107. So with that realization, surely I can begin to relax: there's no rush.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2024 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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