Thoughts on Things: Frayed at the Edges

When linen frays at the edges, it frays with all its heart. In fact, if you don't clean-finish the seams of the linen shirt you're making, the seams will begin to unravel with the first washing. Run it through the washer a few more times, and you'll soon have not a shirt but a froth of linen threads.

 

Fraying at the edge is what happens as you get older. As life tosses us around and around in its washer and dryer, our edges get more and more frayed. Distinctions are less sharp. Precision eludes us. Clear and well-defined thoughts become foggy and vague. Things we once knew like the back of our hand are now black holes in the mind. Our very brains are frayed around the edges.

 

Our bodies are the same. Bits and pieces of us begin complaining. The left knee creaks. Calcium deposits build up on this finger joint or that one. It's Arthritis While-U-Wait. The hair thins. Old tooth fillings begin to crumble. And let's not even talk about eyesight and  hearing!

 

So here's the question: Fraying around the edge: good or bad? To a young person, the answer is clearly "bad." What could be worse than losing your sharpness, your cutting-edge mind, your clear sense of purpose in life? Clarity is who you are. Fraying is for others.

 

Yet, if you continue to live, you will fray at the edges. Your faculties will dim. Blurring may occur.

 

Imagine a piece of linen of a color you love to look at. Now imagine washing and tumble-drying it a dozen or more times. See that stiff linen melt into incredible softness. It becomes an entirely different fabric. Feel how soft it is, with a "hand" that dissolves gently into your own strong hand. Yes, the edges have loosened and have turned into that froth of threads mentioned above. Both the warp and the weft are floating now, finding their own new way, taking a path the weaver didn't anticipate. Anything can happen. Let it fray, let it fray, let it fray.

 

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca

Thoughts on Things: Oh, Those Deadly Sins

There are seven of them, but we won't discuss all of them today. They are best assimilated if taken in small doses.

 

Sloth. When I was little my mother called me "Queenie" because she saw me as a slacker. It is true that I took every opportunity to hide myself away with a book. I much preferred reading to housework. In fact, I still do. One of my sisters told me years ago that when she was little she decided that she would never sit and read while someone else was working. She had seen me in action (in inaction, more precisely) and vowed to be different. Apparently it never bothered me to have other people vacuuming around my feet as long as I could still remain immersed in a book. My family certainly considered me lazy.

 

Was I? I suppose so. Who wants to work? But I think part of me (I can think this now; I couldn't think it then) simply had to get away from that noisy family. There was no place in the house where I could be alone. The only way I could justify slipping away into my private self was by reading, feeding my imagination with story after story. I wasn't so much looking to escape "work" as I was looking to escape. 

 

Gluttony. Oh yeah, I can do this one. It isn't that I overeat, really, though I've been known to do that. More precisely, my life revolves around food.

 

St. Thomas Aquinas would have something to say about me. He maintained that there are five ways to commit gluttony: by eating too much ('nuff said). By eating too soon (lunch at 11:10, anyone?). By eating too expensively. By eating too eagerly (mea culpa). And by eating too fastidiously (I'm sorry, I eat only organically grown foods. Oh, I'm not eating wheat these days. Are these organically grown bananas? Does that custard have milk in it?).

 

Can you have a life of the spirit if you're concerned mainly with the stomach? Would I rather eat than pray? Probably. So I try to do as the Buddhists do: when I eat, I eat. When I pray, I pray. That way, eating itself becomes a form of attention that verges on (is?) prayer. Attend to what you do.

 

Of course, I don't really do that, either. My favorite thing is to read while I eat. I keep trying to wean myself from it, but I love it so much. If I'm eating alone I always read. If I'm eating with my husband, we have a rule that we can't read at dinner, but we can read at breakfast and lunch.  Maybe I can assert that what I love is reading-while-eating, and I can attend to THAT: to reading-while-eating. I do that sometimes, taking my mind off the book and thinking how much I'm enjoying eating and reading at the same time.

 

My mother's "little friend" Irma was the 5-foot-tall dynamo who mothered the Crosby clan. Their five children matched our own five (until our beautiful Mary Eileen came along a little later, making us six). At our annual joint Christmas-Eve get-togethers, the Johnsons (us) and the Crosbys always feasted, though meatlessly, as required by Church rules. And at the end of the meal, Irma would always say, "I have committed the sin of gluttony."

 

There are five other deadly sins. Are they Grumpy, Happy, Dopey, Bashful, and Doc? No, nothing so benign. They're more like Anger, Avarice, and Lust—sins you can really get your teeth into. Like gluttony, in fact.   

 

Copyright 2007 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca

Thoughts on Things: Making Molehills

I wish I knew how to make molehills. It must be fun to work in miniature, creating a little bump where none was before. And then to smash it or kick it aside when you tire of it.

 

I make mountains, myself. Mountains R Us. Give me a grain of sand—from which an oyster might make a pearl, an ordinary person a molehill—and I'll manage to grow it into a mountain.

 

I water it with my tears and my fears. I give loving attention to it, never flagging in my devotion. That grain of sand grows. It's too big now for any oyster. In fact, it could itself swallow a dozen oysters or two.

 

Watch it grow as I pour my energy into it. I feed it. I roll it between my fingers like a worry bead. And the more it grows, the more there is to feed and the more energy I spend on it. Soon it's on its way to being a true mountain. A magic mountain. I am a magician.

 

Once it's a fully grown mountain, what do I do? I slide down it. I can go from high to low in the snap of a finger, the wink of an eye, two shakes of a lamb's tail.

 

But after my mountain is fully grown, I lose interest. It's time for a different mood. Up. Down. Up. Down. My astrologer says that's because my Moon is in Gemini. Or maybe it's the other way around. Either way, Mercury, who is apparently the only god with free access to the Underworld, goes leaping from the Underworld to the Other World at a thrilling pace. Do not pass go, Mercury. Just slide your way to the highest highs and the lowest lows. That's the way you are, the way I am.

 

After all these years, there's some comfort in knowing that the fault lies not with me but with my stars.

 

One night I was in the depths of despair. I hadn't really enjoyed the concert we attended, even though it was the Gryphon Trio, starring my favorite cellist, Roman Borys, who looks like Jerry Seinfeld and plays better than anyone. But even that concert failed to raise my spirits.

 

So I came home, still terribly depressed. Nothing was going right. I felt old. I was worried about health. And about what I am supposed to be doing with my life. Big mountain a-building.

 

I brushed my teeth, and then, from a new container the dentist had given me, I took a length of floss and put it between my lips to keep my hands free for a moment.

 

I was instantly happy. Instantly. Unexpectedly, the new floss was peppermint flavored. And I realized how happy I am to be in the physical world right now, where I can taste bright peppermint, hear the Gryphon Trio (yes, even in a bad mood), and enjoy all delights of the physical senses. If I were in a spirit manifestation (that is, for example, dead), I wouldn't be able to have physical experiences. No peppermint floss.

 

So peppermint floss made me happy. Not forever, of course. I'm writing this down, so that the next time I start to build a giant mountain perhaps I will remember to cut off a length of peppermint floss and put it in my mouth. Ah, the delights of the flesh.

 

Ann
www.anntudor.ca