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Month: December 2020

Farewell Ukiah Gardens

Farewell Ukiah Gardens

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 Taking a break from the hot springs, we decided to head over to our favorite restaurant in town to grab some lunch — Ukiah Gardens, here we come!!!
Eric and I have been coming to the hot springs in Ukiah for years. We have a routine, a favorite cabin we always stay in, a favorite coffee place, a few shops downtown that we like to stop into and — above all else — Ukiah Gardens. Everything there is done with love, the food perfect, the staff friendly. My mouth was watering as we pulled into the parking lot and images of their crispy golden mozzarella sticks filled my brain. And then we we saw the sign … “Ukiah Gardens is closed. Thank you for your decades of patronage and support…we are retiring.”
My heart sank. I loved that place so much. Out of my control, outside of my knowledge, based on its own circumstances (owners retired), a restaurant I associated with me — my memories, my vacations, my happy spot — was spontaneously closed.  It was gone. No warning. No final farewell, just gone.
Just like that I was just a little less enamored with Ukiah. A little less thrilled with the idea of coming back to what was supposed to be my favorite vacation town. Is Ukiah now really the same city? I don’t exactly see it the same way, something I desire about it, fantasize about it is gone. But still, its called an Ukiah, everyone, mostly, acts like its the same. But what if more and more businesses closed, people left, the weather changed, fire came raging? When exactly would I stop wanting to come here? When exactly would it stop being what I call Ukiah at all?
Alana’s Present Day Note: The truth is Rupa is constantly changing.  Each and every form, each environment filled with forms, continually shifting, aggregating, disaggregating. Usually, I don’t notice. I don’t pay attention and I gloss over the changes in my mind, focusing instead on the similarities. But what if I payed closer attention to each shift in an environment, in an object? What if I realized that every new state, no matter how small or subtle meant the former state was poof, popped, gone. Each charge cycle on my phone, changing the balance of the elements of the battery, bringing it closer to failure.  Each thread loosened from my sweater creating a subtle rearrangement of the form that changes the fit and thickness. Each meal digested, changing the balance of nutrients, and toxins, in my body both taxing and feeding systems, organs and cells. When exactly does the battery stop being a battery, or the sweater a sweater, or the body a body? What lost feature stops Ukiah from being Ukiah?
If I really understood that with each and every change, the former state of a 4 element object was gone, never to return, would I really believe I could count on those objects to be there for me, to behave just as they did before? With a new balance, a new aggregation, are the form and features and functions I have come to expect from past elemental balances really guaranteed? And if continual shifting makes an item unpredictable do I believe I can control it? Do I believe I can use it to control the world? How could I have control when I don’t even know for sure what something is going to do,  or better yet, the shape/function/features of the entire environment or body I find myself in? Just one shattered windshield forcing a glass shard to my jugular, just one errant cell that starts growing and spreading unchecked, just a few breaths of wildfire smoke to deprive my lungs of oxygen, so many shifts that can render this body out of my control, utterly useless in efforts to control other objects, or to represent (manifest) me. Poof. Popped. Gone.
And if I really understood that each aggregation of an object is continually shifting like sand, could I really cling to it? What exactly can I hold onto in something that is always changing? It is only my illusion of sameness from one moment to the next that allows me to cling.
A restaurant I loved, that had been around for decades, that I counted-on and that I saw as a fixed feature of a place, a special spot, that was MINE — from my perspective — disappeared over night. Poof. Pop. So gone it was impossible not to notice. But what if I noticed all the poofs and pops of every object, at every moment, their flux, would I really even bother to make it mine in my heart when it was going to chameleon out on me almost instantly? The perception of duration in form, the duration of perceived form — this is the willful blind spot that I continually nourish because it allows me to claim rupa as mine.
A Less Than Relaxing Day at the Hot Springs

A Less Than Relaxing Day at the Hot Springs

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I was at my favorite hot springs, lounging in one of the bathtubs, warm water and blissful serenity washing over me. Then suddenly, I heard the roaring sound of a jackhammer in the not distant enough distance — goddamn construction totally fucking with my chi . So annoying!!! Out of nowhere, it hit me — if I actually controlled my body, I wouldn’t hear the noise. I could just shut it off at my ears, or in my head. If I did control this body, all manner of sensations could swirl around me, but I would be like a radio, able to tune my senses to pleasant sensations and tune away from unpleasant ones.
The self — with my wants, aversions and desires — is so clearly not the body (rupa) vessel.  The body is impervious to my wants and desires. The self is so clearly not the owner of the body; the body bows to the rules of the physical world, it doesn’t oblige the standards or rules of the self. A jackhammer is too loud. It is definitely too loud for a hot springs resort where I am trying to vacation. And yet, here we are, a physical environment I don’t control effecting a body that I clearly also don’t control. Why would I — they are both made of the same stuffs.
Sure, I am a factor, a force that can use one form to act on another form, but I am bound by the rules of form. I can act only in accordance with what those rules will allow. And all the appropriate physical conditions need to be met  in order for me to obtain the effect I want. In other words –I am one factor in shaping the physical world. I am subject to it, not sovereign.
A bird cant soar without wind despite having a physical body conditioned for flight. A fish can’t swim without water. An Alana cant shut off a sound at my ears without an implement, like earplugs to block the sound. A fatso Alana can’t will herself thin, the required changes and conditions for thinness must be met in the body. An Alana cant halt aging and time at all. Nothing can.
Moreover, the impact I am able to have on this form may or may not yield the effect I want. All last week, I kept putting Chapstick on my dry lips to help them heal them and the result I got was a terrible breakout. Clearly, I don’t control my body or I could avoid the unintended consequences that came with my efforts to manipulate it. Guess I’ll be tossing that lip gloss…
The Cost of Special

The Cost of Special

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As I was listening to NPR podcasts,  a story teaser came on about a woman who was sexually assaulted and her journey navigating the justice system to bring her attacker to trial. I was interested, so I clicked the button to ‘hear the full story now’.  The woman’s story began with a night she was drunk and decided to try and buy drugs from a stranger. She went for a ride in  his car to go and pickup the drugs and ended up being raped.

In the first 3 minutes of the story, my mind was saying, “duh lady, of course you got assaulted.”  I wanted to sympathize, to be that compassionate Alana, but in my mind, I  immediately go to excuses — the reasons why this would never happen to me. I’m different. I wouldn’t put myself in that kind of a position. She is stupid, and I am better than that.
But here is the thing, in college I went to plenty of parties, I did drugs, I got into strangers’ cars, and hooked-up with tons of random people. If I am being honest with myself, I put myself in equally as compromising and dangerous a position as that woman in the story many times over. I am lucky I was never raped.
More stories came on NPR… bombings in Yemen, and I’m thinking, “not my problem I’m not Yemeni.” An Alzheimer’s disease story, and I’m thinking, ” I’m young, I’m safe from that being my problem (though ironically my grandpa passed from it, so it has touched my life).” Immigrants being torn from their families at the border, and I’m thinking,  “I’m a US citizen, I’m safe.”  In each case, when I hear about misfortune my thoughts immediately go to all the reasons I’m different, safer, better. My mind is literally doing extreme gymnastics just to prove my different-ness, only its all going on in the background, subconsciously…that excuse, that justification, jumping to mind as automatically as breath moves into my lungs.
 The truth is, there are plenty of  differences between me and the people I hear about on the news: differences in age, health, location, nationality; there is no end to the details that differ. But the bigger picture is one of sameness — like them,  I’m a person, with desires, who is subject to karma and change and decay and loss. And in the end, isn’t that what I really care about? Isn’t that what I spend my whole life trying to fight (vitamins and gym) to ignore ( travel and TV) to disprove ( picking up skills and doing a ‘good job’ at work, in my community and at home)?
Ohhh and then there is the cost of selling myself this lie…there is the labor of accessorizing, the money spent on cars and furniture that make me special, the pain spent on beauty and workouts to make/preserve my fit and beautiful body, the time digging for the right outfit, building and maintaining the right skills and relationships. The disappointment when I fail, not thin enough, pretty enough, smart enough, not a perfect partner or child or sibling or employee. Not special enough to be exempt from failure and decay.
But wait, there is more! There is the pain of hate and judgment of what doesn’t fit my little narrow criteria of acceptable. Because I’m special, of course, my rules need to govern. My normal needs to be ABSOLUTE normal.  And my heart literally explodes with rage on a NY street because NYers can’t act like my normal SFers.
In fact, when I think about it, almost all the pain in my life is really about being constantly disappointed when the truth of my sameness, my not-specialness comes crashing in. I was so shocked that I couldn’t thrive in NY. But look at an orchid flower, it is so dependent on its environment to thrive or die. Su-fucking-prise Alana, your no different than an environment-dependent little flower. With each wrinkle, sag, cellulite, I feel like such a failure I couldn’t prevent it or fix it…how exactly is it a personal failure that I’m subject to the same rules of  aging and decay as everything else in this world? When my ex and I split up I cried and cried and cried. But breakups happen everyday, illnesses, deaths, losses. Somehow it’s a gut punch, it feels different, when it’s me and mine, but its the same, cessation and suffering that everyone faces at one point or another.
Still, I build, build, build my little life, my precise environment, my careful standards -like a beaver that spends most of their lives building and protecting that nest, eating, sleeping,  procreating, and building…it seems like such a pathetic life when it is a beaver’s. But look at me crafting the body, acquiring/maintaining the clothes/house/stuff, building the skills and education, feeding the relationships. Sure, it looks a little more complicated than the beaver, but is it really? So much toil. Worse than a beaver really, the beaver needs a nest to survive. Do I need fine furniture and clothes? I labor to refine, to curate, to have precisely what I want in all cases in my life, down to the fucking detail. And so there is insane work and compromise and cost to me and to Eric to have the place and life I want. There is wailing and gnashing of teeth when I’m not getting the particular nest I want.
And here’s the kicker: If all this shit worked, I think it would be worth it. But it doesn’t. Not really. Even if I avoided rape, being an immigrant, devastating disease, it’s just a matter of time. My grandfather had a fine life, was a good guy, but then he got Alzheimer’s. My Dad, same story, but it was cancer that killed him. I have friends who were in love, then divorced, who were doing great at their jobs but got layed-off, who were rich and hit financial struggles.
And me, I had a life that was happy (mostly anyway) in SF and I lost it. Actually, I left it, it was my fault, my decision. How do I think I can avoid misfortunes of chance (like illness and layoffs) when I cheerfully skip towards misfortunes that I had some choice in, like this move?
This specialness lie I build like a beaver’s nest with such care and precision, with so much work and cost, it is the reason I hurt. At the end of the day, when the work is paused (never done really) and I ache from the labor, it was me who caused the pain, the suffering. I choose this. I do it to me. There is no outside force compelling me. And this I suppose is the only good news. The pain is on me, but the solution is with me too. I can stop. I want to stop. Right now it feels like inertia is carrying me on, its too fast. But I’m applying the break. I am trying to stop letting the lie be on autopilot. I dedicate this blog to my practice. To the ability to take the wheel. To stop.
The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

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This contemplation is one of the first times I really considered the cost and suffering of building wealth. It is not that I didn’t understand that money, like everything else, has two sides previously, I did. But this was the first time I viscerally understood that a dominant pattern in Eric and my life — sacrificing now to create savings that would bring us future happiness — might actually be delusional on many levels.

First off, there is no guarantee that it would work, i.e. we might not be able to raise the money. Second off,  it dawned on me that even if we could acquire it, it might not make us happy. Finally, I got to the question of even if we could raise funds to retire early, and we were happy, it could only last for a finite period. Plus, of course, there was the weird world view lurking beneath the whole endeavor– if money was supposed to make us happy, why on earth were we so damn unhappy in the journey to try and acquire it? Why had the money we had  failed to make us happy already, when we needed it to the most, upon our  move to New York?

I am going to go ahead and keep this entry as close as possible to my own contemplation notes from the time. I will however make a few adjustments for readability and add some notes for understandability.

Last night Eric again suggested we pack-up and leave NY and he look for a job elsewhere. I don’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to do. We are so unhappy here. I started thinking what were the mistakes that got us here, to NY, to this point, in the first place? Two came to mind:

1) We didn’t consider the costs of uprooting our lives and moving. We didn’t accurately weigh the downside, instead choosing only to imagine the positives of an enriching job, a fun adventure, an opportunity for newness.

2) I believed that the happy, balanced, chill Alana I felt myself to be in San Fran was a fixed thing. That the qualities I loved about SF Alana abided in me. That those qualities, and my generally good fortunes, would follow me along to NY. I suffered a delusion of permeance that quickly came to bite me in the ass in my new NY life.

Now that I understand the wrong views that brought us here so clearly, now that I am suffering the costs, why do we stay? Why do we keep doing something that is causing us suffering? The answer is so clear — we want the pot of gold at the end of the journey (for you Dear Reader: literally, we want money. Enough money to fulfill our dream of early retirement. It is still, even now, 3 years after the initial contemplation, a hazy imaginary future, but it involves travel and lots of time together and n assortment of hobbies we enjoy. It is, in our minds, freedom). The path to our goal was taking too long in SF (Uber didn’t look like it was going to be the payday Eric had expected when he took the job), other options we had considered, a job in the Valley or at Microsoft, seemed like less lucrative than Eric’s current NY gig. Clearly, the singular root source of the problem here is gold/goal (to achieve that gold and the imaginary future we thought it would bring).  With this clarity, it seemed we had  two choices:

Option 1: If the goal is the gold than we go for it. “Chin-up Alana, stop whining, you choose gold, so no reason to fixate on happiness, health or anything else.” Those are all just distractions from the goal. There is no reason to whimper or wallow. It really is time to suck it up and go for it because, in theory at least, it is what we want. No one is forcing us toward this goal. There is no reason we can’t quit it. So if we don’t quite then might as well be all in. (Note to self: I can’t help notice the irony here –the goal/gold is supposed to make us happy, but the  path to obtaining it certainly does not. And once we have it, do I know for sure it will buy me what I want Do I know that once I have what I want I will be happy? After all, I thought NY was what I wanted and I am miserable here. Even if it does make me happy, for how long? Even ‘happily ever after’ is temporary, dashed by death or illness or calamity.

Option 2: Change the goal. Apply wisdom to undo the desire for the gold.  Below are my considerations aimed at option 2:

Let’s pretend we reach the goal; we have all the money we need for early retirement. So…

For how long will we have it? Where is my evidence from this world that prove duration can be short? Far shorter than what I want or what I imagine this ‘happily ever after’ to be. Two stories, that over the years have really hit my heart, come to mind:

1 — Eric had a co-worker at Google, she worked so hard and was so happy when finally, she had made enough for her own early retirement. Her husband and she bought a beautiful home down in Carmel and moved there. Six months later he died of a heart attack.

2 — The actor in Spartacus was just 40years old. He was beautiful, talented, after years of effort, he had finally landed a starring role in a hit series, his career was taking off. After the first season he was diagnosed with a rare cancer. Only months later he was dead.

Will I think it’s worth it later? What are the seeds of hurt that it causes?

Back when I was at my fittest, I was working out 17+ hours a week. My whole body hurt, I was itching to find more time in the day to have other hobbies besides just working out, I missed eating non-performance food. Even my blood work showed liver enzyme elevation from working out so much and eating so little. Still, I thought it was worth it for ‘the look’. In my head, I still remember the event where I put on an outfit and looked my best, possibly ever. That night I felt so proud and good. Now, years later, it makes me sad to look at those event photos and realize how hard I worked for a body hat I lost already. That I am unlikely to ever have back. What seemed worth all that sacrifice at the time sowed the seeds for future pain and shame and loss.

When I reach the goal will I even like it?

How many ebay boxes have I opened to find exactly what I ordered and to just not really like it? What about NY – it’s just what I ordered, the city, the house, but I am utterly miserable in both.

Does the goal/gold even get me what I think it buys? Will an early retirement feel like an eternal vacation? The gold was supposed to get me a comfortable NY life/adventure, but I’m not happy here at all. If we get in an RV and travel everywhere wont I miss home just like I miss SF now? In fact, right now the experience I want most is to go back to the past. It felt like we were super close to ideal, only Eric had to work so hard, at a company he didn’t like. Did chasing the goal actually bring me further away from the happiness and life I actually want?

When I consider what the gold actually buys other folks, I can’t ignore that even the wealthiest, seemingly happiest folks I know met with illness and death. My dad and stepmom were well off, in love, enjoying their retirement.

Another couple I know from work, also very much in love, enjoying their wealth and retirement, till the wife got cancer. Sure, she lived another 7 years, but in constant pain and in -and -out of the hospital. That also isn’t the ‘happily ever after’ I envision.

Even if I do get the gold, it doesn’t mean I will get the fantasy I think the gold will buy . In other words, even if I love the ebay dress, it doesn’t mean that when I walk into a room wearing it, everyone thinks I’m pretty and rich and fashionable.

I came to see that in my mind, the ‘happily ever after equation’  me+ eric+ money, that’s the fantasy. But we already have all three, so why am I not sitting in this New York loft feeling happy?

And how much do we hurt each other for the gold? For the imaginary fantasy we think it brings for us?  Eric’s jobs over and over dragging me away from friends and communities and homes I love. Me making him work to buy me more, to satisfy the expensive overlapping venn diagram of lifestyles we both enjoy. He ignoring me, deprioritizing our relationship, all the missed birthdays and holidays because of work. Me unwilling to settle for the quieter life he might enjoy and pushing for a city place as well.  We hurt each other today to have this fantasy life together in the future.

It is so clear to me now, money is a tool that could have never have made NY comfortable. Before we moved, we knew it was a dog-eat-dog city, a place that was a struggle to live. Both of us had lived there before in our 20s. But we believed this time would be different. We believed that money would insulate us, make a NY life more comfortable, hat it would buy us enjoyment.

But even Bill Gates, with his great fortunes, could not make the city clean and quiet. He could not make people less cold and rude. He could not make the city scape something other than its bleak, green less, concreate jungle.  These are things I hate. How could I think money was going to ‘solve’ them?

The house we bought was something we wanted and then it quickly became a burden. We were so irresponsible, we didn’t do enough due diligence buying the house because we had money, we felt like it didn’t matter because we could afford it. Money made us reckless.

Fear of not reaching the gold is why we didn’t take the alternative jobs that would have portended a different scenario for us – that now, in hindsight, with IPOs already done,  would have made us even more money. All our planning and fretting doesn’t guarantee us the us money we seek.

The questions to continue considering:

1) what about the cost of money –getting it and keeping it? Also losing it? I wouldn’t miss SF so much if I never had it. Right now, I wish I had stayed in Texas so that I didn’t have to continually compare SF to NY and find NY so lacking.

2) Duration – even if I do get the gold, and I get everything I want from it, for how long?

3) Do I even want what I get once I have gotten it? Eric and I so wanted the NY loft before we moved here, now we are struggling to get someone, anyone to take it off our hands for us.

4) Does it get us what we want?

5) What do we really want? ??? It’s some image of a nest, of us together, with pieces  from our memory. Ironic so many of them come from the SF days we just blew up… Can money get us there? It got us further away. Greed got us further away.

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