Alana's Dharma Blog

This post shares some highlights of a daily, self-assigned, homework exercise to explore the role of imagination in my day-to-day life. This blog is a direct continuation of the previous 2 posts; if you haven’t already done so, please head back and read those before proceeding.

• I was sitting in a park today and there was a free concert preformed by an Orthodox Jewish band. They were singing in Hebrew, songs I knew so well from my childhood. As I tapped my feet and sang along, I realized as a kid, I just assumed I would grow-up and continued to practice Judaism. My family was Jewish, our community Jewish, there were no other conceivable options. It made me see so clearly that my today reality –of being a devout Buddhist, practicing with a Buddhist community – was outside the scope of anything young child Alana could have imagined, and yet it is what happened.

• Eric and I were talking about our fantasy retirement: at least two homes, continual travel, country/city, etc. I am always imagining a life on the move, exploring, being in different places. But the reality is, I already have that in my life – back and forth to SF, having moved 7 times, lots of travel — and it hasn’t made me feel truly satisfied. I always move, trips end, I always look for more. Why do I let my imagination keep tricking me into believing the next thing will be different? That this ‘on-the-move’ retirement plan we work so hard for is going to make us happy, when the on-the -move life we have had so far has failed to do so, at least in any enduring way.

• An old childhood friend called me out of the blue today. She needed money, she was homeless, about to get kicked out of her hotel. Her parents had told me she had fallen on hard times, but it was still a shock to hear from her. When we were young, she was my hero, she was so popular, so mature, when we would play make-believe about the jobs and lives we would have when we grew-up, I believed her when she acted out teacher, or doctor, or pilot. None of those games were sufficient to turn her into the jobs we fantasized about, and none of the games ever predicted her grown-up reality — drug addict, dropout, homeless. Reality doesn’t conform to our imagination. Nor does our imagination predict reality.

• Every year –for over a decade – our office holiday party had been at the Marriot. This year though, it changed to a restaurant down the block. I got the invite, I knew it had changed, I had it in my calendar for a month. But every time I thought of the party, I kept imagining the upcoming party, I kept imaging the backdrop of the Marriot. Today, when I walked over to the party, I started walking towards to the Marriot before changing course to the restaurant. Even though I knew, I had the raw facts, my memory kept feeding my imagination with old data.

• I am in Japan, our trip was going so well so far. After stress and worry that things wouldn’t go as planned, I had started to convince myself it was smooth sailing. Then we got lost –taking the wrong train 4 hours in the wrong direction before having to about face. I was so stressed: I wanted to arrive at our next stop early to see the town, as we only have one night there. Had our trip gone bad from the start, I wouldn’t have been so upset, I would have expected it. But a few days of bliss left me unprepared, extra pained because I imagined only up and not down. What is more is when we finally did get to town, it was nothing but a bus station, a store and a small shrine. There was nothing to see –I stressed so hard, not for what I was missing, but for what I imagined I was missing. If I had known, I would have taken a later train and enjoyed the last city more.

• I walked into a fancy store today, expecting to be greeted immediately – after all, this was a high end luxury shop. But the employees just kept working, ignoring me. I made it all the way upstairs, walked around, still no greeting. I was offended, angry, didn’t they know I am important, I have money to spend, I walked out without buying anything. As I continued on to the next shop, a lower-end place, I realized I didn’t have the same expectation of service since it isn’t a luxury brand. My annoyance and offence arose not based on the service, but on my imagination of how I would be treated in a certain circumstance and my disappointment/ imagination of what it meant about me that I wasn’t.

• I was sitting in the onsen (hot bath) tonight and watching the steam rise. There was something my dad always used to say that came to mind. He said, “life is like smoke, smoke is an illusion.” But I see smoke, or steam in this case, is not an illusion, it’s just insubstantial. It blows with the winds, changes shape and then fades away. That is what life is like, shifting and insubstantial. And yet, I long for it. I cling to it. Why? I came on this trip to Japan because the last time I was here I had fun. I loved it. I assumed this time would be the same, I assumed I could hold on, repeat, find satisfaction. In truth, much has been different than my last trip to Japan; some parts fun, others not so much. I am born in much the same way as I decided on this trip: I see the wind blowing the direction I want to go and I imagine it will be like I want, like my past experiences, or my future hopes. I think it comes down to just me and my desires. But all it takes is a gust the other way, like a move from SF to NY, and it isn’t fun anymore. Its continual shifts through states I like and those I want until dissolution. My imagination of what it is and what it will be is the reason I take the plunge.

A final note on my process and concluding: I want to add a note here that, clearly these collection of thought/ daily exercise blogs don’t have a conclusion. In proceeding blogs you will doubtlessly see the fruits of these exercises fueling synthesis and conclusion. In fact, these little daily drips sometimes come back, even years later, and help hit a point home for me. I know concluding is a critical (and deeply ongoing) part of practice – a part that gets captured in many of my blog entries – but my conclusions often follow from a slow and steady collection of evidence. That is the phase of practice these particular ‘daily exercise’ blogs offer a glips into.

This post  shares some highlights of a daily, self-assigned, homework exercise to explore the role of imagination in my day-to-day life. This blog is  a direct continuation of the previous post, The Tyranny of Imagination; if you haven’t already done so, please head back and read it before proceeding.

• I was planning a little weekend getaway with Eric. I thought to myself, this is what I think my retirement/perfect future with Eric is going to look like — continual travel, moving around, staying in hotels and Air b&bs, exploring the world. In fact, this is what we work and struggle so hard for today. It is a fine fantasy when my asthma is in a good place. But last night, I woke-up unable to breathe. It was a reminder of all the times I have woken in musty, moldy, allergen-ridden hotel rooms gasping for breath. And, as I age, my asthma keeps getting worse: How do I really expect this imaginary future to unfold and, if it does, how pleasant will it actually be in light of my health?

• The dentist talked me into crowing a cracked tooth to protect it from further damage. Now, a few weeks later, it seems like the crown has made the tooth worse and now I will need a root canal. I imagined my intervention would ‘fix’ my tooth, but instead it made it worse.

• The fires were raging up in NorCal and a co-worker had lost his home. As I lay in bed, I thought to myself that, “tomorrow, I will invite him to stay with me till he gets on his feet.” I fell asleep congratulating myself on being such a ‘good alana’, taking someone in. I imagined the kudos from friends and acquaintances, the loyalty won by this co-worker. When I called him in the morning to invite him to stay with me, I learned another co-worker had already taken him in, marking the death of good hostess alana in just one night.

• Eric and I went for a walk in the neighborhood. We were bored, not expecting much from the day. But we stumbled on a small museum and went in to find an amazing art exhibit. It was such a great day even though we hadn’t planned it.

• Yesterday I went to Neiman Marcus because I have a gift card to spend. I walked through the aisles of fancy clothes, fantasizing myself in each dress, imagining the message such- and-such a pattern, or color, or cut would tell the world about me. Like a piece of fabric can force people to think of me in a particular way. Mostly, I love the fancy shit –the Goyard and Prada and Guccis of the world. At least when I want people to think I am rich, pulled-together, fashionable and buttoned-up. But then, at other times, I fear giving off that vibe: at work, at the Wat. All I want is for people love and accept me, clothes are just a tool. But if I anticipate the same exact outfit to will cause me to be accepted in some circumstances and rejected in others, can that outfit really make me loved or accepted or protected; after all, circumstances, people, fashion, clothes, me, are constantly changing. Why imagine a single object to be my eternal ticket to adoration?

• On some level, I think Eric and I had imagined we would make it back to the West Coast one day: Cali, Portland or Seattle maybe, that would be the place we ultimately retired. But this latest round of fires blew up that plan: Asthma + 6 month long fire seasons is not a winning combo. Now, the dream is dead long before it was ever born out in reality.

• I was sore from yesterday’s workout, so I wanted something easy today. I decided to go to a class that is usually pretty tame. But, for the first time ever, the teacher decided to do a “deck of cards workout”. Each suit has a different exercise: squats for hearts, pushups for spades, etc, and the face number is how many to do. The workout is totally random, it depends on the cards each student pulls. Totally contrary to my hopes and expectations, I pulled the hardest cards, doing a workout from which I almost collapsed.

• Eric and I decided on a last-minute trip to Vermont today. We love VT, and on the drive-up, in the aftermath of loosing our West Cost retirement plan to fires, we started talking about moving to VT. We started sowing the seeds of a new plan, a new fantasy, with out ever reflecting that the last one cost us pain to plan for, pain to loose, and never even an ounce of joy given its failure to come true. I watched how even just fantasizing caused tension ( he wants rural and I want city) and stress (could we afford VT’s exorbitant tax rate). Fantasy about the future cuts both ways. There is hope, but also dread and whatever the outcome, there is work and stress trying to force the one we want to come about. All for something that can latterly go up in smoke in an instant.

• Eric and I signed-up for a late night, lantern lit, guided tour of the famous Sleepy Hollow cemetery. It sounded like a fun way to celebrate Halloween. Only it was freezing, raining, the lanterns were putting out kerosene fumes that made me gag and the tour was unbelievably boring. I had been so excited, but ultimately I wish we had stayed home.

• I seriously hate NY. I think the worst of the city and everyone in it. Soooooo, when I forgot my purse on the train in from Greenwich, I was absolutely certain the purse was gone fr good. I had no hope. No expectation that it would be salvageable and I was already imagining the process of canceling my cards and getting a new ID. As a formality, just to be responsible, I went down to the train station lost and found to inquire if some mythical being –the kind NYer – had turned in my bag. Sure enough, it was there in lost and found. Ever Credit card, every cent still intact. Pretty lucky NY isn’t as bad as I imagined in this case huh?

One of my coworkers has a dog, named Pizza, whose frequent trips to the office are a delight for everyone — he is so cute and loving, always ready to play and help take the edge off a stressful workday.  Pizza is my doggie ideal; a fluffy little Schnauzer mix, that is more fur than dog. Until, one day, when he wasn’t…

One morning, I heard the jingle of Pizza’s leash and went out to the hall to greet him. I met what looked like a totally different dog:  Pizza had been to the groomer the evening before, and today he was fluff free, looking nearly half his old size. He trotted over for a morning treat and suddenly I realized, I’m just not as excited to see him. I thought to myself, “It is just hair, it will grow back, it is not like the dog or his personality have changed.”  But, I couldn’t deny the truth in my heart, less fluffy = less doggie appeal.

Dear Reader – this blog is a direct continuation of the preceding blog, Goodbye Goyard Part 1. If you have not yet read that post then please go back and read it before you start on this next entry. 

I am looking around myself at all these items I have laid out to consign, each one telling me a truth about myself and about this world. A part of me so desperately wants to hang on to many of these items, a purse I may ‘need’ later, a pair of shoes just-in-case they are the perfect match to an outfit I don’t even own yet. I want to keep items because they are expensive, precious, because they have special meaning to me.

But most of these items I have chosen to consign have been unused for a while; these items are a ‘tell,’ they expose the fact that I really have no idea what the future will hold, what I will need (otherwise would I have bought a bunch of expensive shit I barely used?).  And besides, I have already learned that even the largest collection of objects doesn’t insure I will have what I need when I need it; I had a closet full of dresses and I didn’t have a single gown when I needed it for a work event. A house full of stuff, and not a single object could free me of feeling trapped when I moved to New York (actually objects -namely a new house I hated and money from my husband’s job made are what keep me trapped), or of feeling despair when I lost my father. 

• There are 3 brand new green purses, with tags still attached, sitting on the floor. Each one is identical to a purse I had in the past, that I loved and wore regularly. As the original bag showed wear, I began to worry about whether in the future I would be able to find that same bag again. So I stock piled a bunch of the same bags bought while still in season and stored in my closet for later use. I bought these bags to make me prepared. But, if they really did prepare me for a future, wouldn’t they have been worn as part of that future? The were not. My bag preference changed .So these three new green purses are showing their true colors — they are powerless to do what I thought they would do. They are powerless to make me a fashionable, ever prepared, woman.

• Then there is the fur coat I had bought the thing when we first considered moving to NY . I had an image in my mind of what a fashionable, NY winter style would be, and it definitely involved mink.  By the time I actually did move to NY, I had learned a few things: 1) a down jacket is warmer, easier to clean and way   more comfortable. As fashionable as fur may be, winter requires function as well. 2) I fucking hate NY. I can barely stand being outside long enough to get cold. Who needs to peacock around in a fur coat when they are miserable and crushingly depressed?  So this coat sure as hell didn’t prepare me for NY, otherwise it would have whispered to me “don’t fucking go!!!”

• A $400 orange sun hat from a little known fashion brand. I remember when I bought it imaging that it would make me so chic on trips to Miami or Hawaii, but its brim is so big I literally can’t see to walk around in it. Tripping over your own feet is not very chic…

I was so enamored with my imagination of what these objects did that I ignored impermanence — would I even need them and what are the 2 sides?

These objects tell me about how piss poor my powers of prediction are. They show me that with new facts new needs arise. With new needs, new objects are sought out. But aren’t there always going to be new facts? That is part of what my daily impermanence contemplation has been telling me.  So am I just going to keep rotating through new items endlessly? Living to acquire and then dispose of stuff as the inevitably new patterns arise?

My body changes, my clothes are always aging and changing too. Its just that it often happens so slowly and subtly I don’t notice for a while. My hope is born out of duration, that I can look sexy for at least some time, that this object will help me do it. But if I really think about it, the hope itself is based on my turning a bling eye to the change that is always occurring. The heart belt is proof that there was a phase before and there will be one after. The only question is am  I willing to keep cycling through these phases? Are they worth it?