cool day, crabby mind

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Yesterday's oppressive heat has turned, after some purgative storms, to a crisp and cool morning. It makes life seem somehow easier. Not that much easier, but easier.

Once upon a time there was an elderly woman in whose obituary I read some words that become increasingly sane as time passes. "If," she was quoted as saying, "you wake up after the age of 65 without any aches or pains, you will know you are dead."

Aches and pains are par for the course and yet now and then waking up with aches and pains -- however reasonable -- brings on a fit of explosive and unreasonable crabbiness. Recollecting times without aches and pains brings on a foot-stomping crankiness. Somehow THIS isn't right; I've done enough of THIS ... let's get back to normal!

And accompanying the physical, there is a mental crabbiness and confusion. Where are all those wants and plans that once shaped the day ahead? They seem to have lost their force and yet wanting is such an old and familiar friend, there seems to be a hole in the fabric. I can say what I don't want -- that's the nature of crabbiness -- but finding something that I actually do want seems to have become incredibly elusive. I want things MY way, but what the hell does that mean? Where are the new wants that might fulfill the promise of wanting stuff? Things seem to be dripping out of control even as the understanding that control is a figment of the imagination gains sway.

Yesterday, Eric came to find out about Buddhism in the zendo. We went through the postures and etiquette and sat a little and walked a little and later he told me he was going through a rough patch with his wife.

His words made me think of a turning wheel ... that his search and his difficulties were really as common as salt, though of course not to him. And in the same way, my difficulties are common as salt ... but not to me. Around and around it goes. Nothing new or relieving or unusual ... although a while back I was interested in an exterminator's tale of raising worms, a thing about which I knew little or nothing. Some of the old interest raised its head ... the right kind of worms, where you bought them, how much they cost, what kind of mark-up anyone might expect when selling them, what they ate, the good they could do ... now THAT was interesting whereas aches and pains and loss of control and blog-writing and Buddhism and doing things for others was pretty much like flat, crabby-making beer.

A little breakfast, common as salt, will probably set things right.
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