Alana's Dharma Blog

Lately I have been contemplating on beauty. It is a quality so dear to me, I dedicate so much of my time, my energy, my possessions in service of it. When I think of a moment I consider to be one of my ‘peak beauty moments’ — standing in front of the full length mirror, modeling my bright red wedding dress, my super-fit 20 something bod and flawless dewy skin — it seems all rainbows and candy canes, the joy and pride and elation of seeing beauty, ‘having’ beauty, being beautiful. Of course I celebrate it, cultivate it, desire it desperately. Why wouldn’t I?

But beauty’s shadow self is already upon me — I literally see it in my own reflection — it is the fact that beauty fades. My own beauty fades, and that loss stabs me in the heart each time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. 

I was looking through a photo album the other day, I found a picture of my Mom back when Seth and I were kids,  she was so young and so pretty. Now, in a more recent picture she looks so old, wrinkled and saggy. It happened to her, and it is happening to me, RIGHT NOW. My skin around my eyes starting to get crepey, my boobs sagging, my cheeks looking sunken.

Even when I can manage a beauty moment, there is always backsliding. Even as I stood there, 30-something-fitter-than-most-20-somethings, dressed for Halloween as a perfect Wonder Woman, I was eyeing the pizza restaurant wondering when starvation would win over my willpower to be thin.  I just had fillers and I am already thinking of the next treatment, worried about the second to worst cosmetic problem, now that the first worst is ‘solved’. I diet, and am thin for a second, before I backtrack, never really going back to as thin as I was in my peak days. Always, there is someone more beautiful. In my peak days, there were my drop-dead gorgeous friends Erica and Jessica that could turn every eye in a room away from me. Now, in my 40s, there is almost everyone younger.

In my own, rather short lived beauty, there have been countless physically painful moments; literal poking, prodding, fillers and botox, laser treatments and hours at the gym, seeking to maintain or return beauty lost. There are all the emotional pains too; the horror of  finding my fist gray hair, looking in the mirror as I get a hair cut and trying to bear the sight of my sagging jowls, humiliation when I have a pimple or a cold sore at a big event. The planning for procedures, the fear I might get found out, or permanently scarred. How do I regularly ignore these pains? How do I ignore a lifetime of hurt to achieve something so so fleeting?

Pain/pleasure, censure/praise,  gain loss, fame/insignificance, as I was considering the polarity of the worldly conditions, it dawned on me that their pairings are inevitable; they will always come together, unbreakably linked for all time. The reason is simple — whatever has the ability to move in one direction has the ability to move in the other: If something can accumulate it can dissipate, if it can grow it can whither, the quality that allows for gain is the same quality that allows for loss. Everything is this way, it is baked into the fabric of this world.

I was looking at my favorite yellow purse, starting to fray a bit at the seams, and I realized I could consider the physical world in terms of pairings as well, in terms of coming together and moving apart. My purse is an aggregation of parts, a zipper, leather, strings, nylon, bottlecaps, by definition the fact that it had the ability to come together means it has the ability to come apart. That is the nature of all 4e objects. My body is the same way, a compilation of skin and sinew and organs and cells, they come together in a certain form, for a time, and then the parts disaggregate. Through this body I experience both pleasure and pain; the same mechanisms — the same neuropathways and brain functions, the ability of all those little neurons and signals to aggregate and disaggregate in particular ways — that allow for pleasure under one circumstance are the very mechanisms that facilitate pain in another.

My problem is that I want pleasure and not pain. I want a purse that is together not falling apart, I want a body whose aggregation is young and fit and healthy. I want beautiful not ugly.  But opposites are built into the nature of each up/down. States that I find preferable all depend on circumstances, and we live in a world where circumstances continuously change, so how could states not follow suite?

In one circumstance a purse or an Alana body are whole and in another they start coming apart.  That is normal.  Which makes me start wondering… maybe what is abnormal is me. More specifically, my expectation that stuff (both material and immaterial) that is part of an eternally bound pair, would only ever show the side of the pair that I prefer. Maybe my suffering isn’t really normal either: There is no particular value built into either side of a pair –heads or tails, a quarter is just a quarter — I only suffer if I am rooting for heads and tails come-up. In other words, I am the cause of my own suffering, I have normalized it, taken for granted that it is just a part of my life, but it doesn’t really have to be; if I can just abandon my preferences/desires that cause the suffering in the first place…man the Buddha was really on to something…

This blog is a direct continuation of the previous entry — Its about me and me. If you have not already done so, please go back and read that entry before you proceed here.

On the tail of realizing that my own standards/impossible desires –and my inability to uphold them — lay at the heart of my negative feelings about my Mom, I started considering a few other troubled relationships in my life to see if I could find the same pattern at work again. My mind immediately flashed back to my old mooching friends, Sandy and Blake (the blog is here), who never seemed to pay for anything when we spent time together.

Ultimately, out friendship ended because of money. We sold them a car, that we had a better offer on, but I wanted to be a “good friend” and sell to them for less because they were in financial straights. A few months later, they sold us a different car in return, but it needed work to be brought up to emissions standards. Technically, the car was illegal to sell in the state of California until the emissions work was done, but again, knowing they needed the money, we bought it from them on the promise that they would get the emissions work done quickly, at their own expense, and get us the working car we had paid for. But months went by and no car. They had brought it in to the mechanic, but the work never seemed done…finally I had enough — I felt like we had gone above and beyond to be good friends and they didn’t return the favor, they didn’t respect us at all. In the end we told them to keep the money and the car and we went our separate ways, the end of years of intensely close friendship.

Now, when I look back on this, I can’t help see the same pattern emerging as I saw with my mom: I wanted to be a good friend, I wanted to be giving and generous, I wanted to be patient and let what I saw as them using me roll off my back. That was an ideal, magnanimous friend in my mind, that is who I wanted to be. But, I couldn’t muster continual patients, my friends forced me past the edge of my generosity ‘comfort zone’. I stopped hanging out with them not just because I felt like they took advantage, but because they made me feel lesser –like a bad friend and an undesirable person. There was a feeling in my heart, each and every time they made me pay, of anger and discomfort because my selfish reflex didn’t jive with the compassionate, always giving, good friend Alana I wanted to see myself as.

What is more, I wanted my good friends to act in a certain way –namely I wanted them to do things I believe confirmed me, made me feel good and special and loved. The problem with all the mooching was I began to wonder if their friendship was validating my awesomeness or validating their want for money.

Obviously, there are a ton of wrong views in these thoughts: That good friends are by definition people who are generous and giving; or that the purpose of friends is to validate; or that Blake and Sandy’s behavior was mutually exclusive with respect; or that the reasons for the car not being done were about me, or them for that matter; that making us pay regularly was taking advantage and that the non-monetary things they contributed to our life had lesser value. I dealt with many of these, years ago, in the original blog (the blog is here). But the truth is, none of these views triggered powerful enough emotions that they would have led me to dissolve such a dear relationship on their on.

What triggered emotions strong enough to break up with Blake and Sandy was me and me: It was the fact that my emotional response, to their behavior, reminded me of the limits on my own self-imagined magnanimity.  It was always me, my views of right and wrong, my standards for good and bad friends, and my need for friendships to validate my view of myself…I am starting to suspect that, in fact, it is ALWAYS about me and me.

Today I was at Whole Foods and a call came over the loudspeaker, ” Can the owner of the silver BMW with plate number XYZ please come to the front”.  That was me, “that is my car” I said, as I rushed to the front desk. It turns out I had parked crooked over the line and the person in the space next to me couldn’t get out. I hadn’t realized I had done it, and I was already feeling bad and self conscious as I went outside to straighten the car, when a stranger in the parking lot mutters, “who the hell would park like that?”

I was so angry, I suddenly hated that stranger, even though I didn’t know her at all.  But in my mind, I was sorry, I didn’t park badly on purpose, it was an accident, so why the fuck is she being so mean and judgmental? As I fumed in my car, repeating the mantra, “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her”, it dawned on me,  I don’t really hate that woman at all. The person I am truly hating right now is me…

Alana is considerate and kind, those are traits I pride myself on. I think these are important qualities in a person, and in a community. In my mind, situations where people are considerate go smoothly and those where they don’t, well the threat of disorder and violence lurks beneath every honk and curse and broken social norm. I value living in orderly places; it is the reason I moved to uptight Greenwich from unruly NY, it makes me feel safe. But here I am breaking my own rules. Feeling upset when the place I normally appreciate for its citizens’ polite policing, is finding me to be the offender. I can’t just let go of my rules, I can’t admit that the fact that I can’t even keep them faithfully should call their absoluteness into value.  No! For me polite/considerate/compassionate is true and good (even though their upholding is making me feel pretty bad about myself right about now). So, instead of dealing with that whole kerfuffle of contradictions, I shortcut the cognitive dissonance I feel with a simple emotion — hate.

In a flash I project the hate outward, on the woman who wouldn’t give me a pass. Who judged without seeing my intentions, my usual polite nature. But it is my own value of this quality that makes me so upset at being judged lacking in it. It is really me, my failure, that I hate.

A few weeks ago I was at the Wat and LP Anan was playing a little instructive game with me. He opened up a website about ‘miss-matched’ couples and started sharing pics. One was of a super tall guy and a tiny woman, another an old guy and a young woman, another a fat woman and a skinny guy. He asked if I agreed with the website that these couples were, ‘mismatched’, if their being together bothered me in some way. I admitted they did and he asked why. I said the guy is too tall for that lady, the second dude too old for the woman, the third woman too fat for the skinny guy.   He called me out — he said that the problem wasn’t with the coulpes, the problem lies in my heart: The height difference in the first couple exceeded my threshold for height differences in a couple. The age difference in the second couple exceeded my threshold for an appropriate age difference in a couple; that the weight difference in the last couple exceeded my threshold of acceptable weight differences between a couple. In other words — my thoughts, my judgments, were not about the couple at all, they were about my standards and expectations. They were about me and me.

I had taken this lesson home and started contemplating on it when it hit me. My Mom and I have struggled with a hard relationship. But ever since a trip we took last summer together, I have been feeling like I hate her. I agreed to the trip because she wanted to travel so badly. She promised she would be ‘easy’, not make a big deal about her religious diet, that she would be so very grateful. On day 1 she was dragging me to restaurants I didn’t want to go to so she could get a kosher meal. A small misunderstanding about a rural stay, and her diet options in the town of 150, had her screaming at me for 45 minutes telling me what a bad person I am, how inconsiderate, etc. I broke. I yelled. I wanted to drop her on the side of the road and drive away. Instead, I calmed down on the outside, and seethed on the inside, through the rest of the trip. Them, I went home, with hate unlike any I have had before, in my heart.

Now, almost a year later, with LP’s lesson on the brain, the hate starts making more sense: I want so badly to be a good kid, to be a calm, patient, saint-like person. To be equanimous, like a good Buddhist. It’s the Alana that hugs homeless people, and frets so much about being a good Buddhist. My Mom, she pushed me too far to be that ideal Alana, she forces me to acknowledge that there is a threshold, after which I am not calm or patient or good, I am just fucking pissed.

My hate of my Mom is really just me hating someone that reminds me of my own failings, of failings of this world. I need the world to follow my rules and standards, only in this world of rules, and consideration, and goodness, and patients, can I possibly be safe. I can’t bear to see the bald truth, that my own inability to maintain these qualities means they aren’t really absolutes of this world at all. Nor is Alana identity, rife with wonderful qualities, an absolute. So, I just tune out the uncertainty and impermanence and fixate on nice, simple, hate.

But is it really fair to hate my Mom just because she reminds me that I come-up short in following the rules — that I made up in the first place — about how things and people should work ( even though they don’t actually always work that way)? This really has nothing to do with my Mom; this is about me and me.

All those couples LP showed me obviously don’t agree with my standards. My mom doesn’t think she is acting in a way that would drive me away, or she wouldn’t do it. The lady in the parking lot today was Greenwich-style-polite-policing in a way I usually do, I usually agree with, only this time I needed a pass. Clearly these standards of mine aren’t absolute truths of this world, because not everyone agrees with me. I am catching myself up in webs of me and me, worsening my entrapment and suffering with each surge of struggle and hate, while the world moves along, being what it actually is, unconcerned with me and my standards.

• For time with my beloved father, for feeling special and valued when he loved and approved of me, I had a childhood suffering with an ill mother, bullying, being jealous of my brother, striving for popularity and friends, and then shattering pain and loss when Dad died.

• For time with my ex Fede, and the imaginary future of a long happily-ever-after marriage, I had to deal with him prioritizing his studies over time together,  his years of absence when he went to study abroad,  his condescension and withholding of affection, for sexual deprivation and ultimately the sorrow of a bad breakup.

• For my time with my ex  Alex I had years of sexual tension between us, the fear of losing a friend, his acerbic comments, worry about him and drugs, awkwardness of losing my virginity, getting used for a final stand, all for a few weeks together and then me sobbing away our breakup.

• For my job I had years of anxiety trying to prove myself, frustration with my boss, stress of employees, embarrassment of not being more senior and anger at being constantly reminded of it. Uncertainty, feeling like I was undervalued in the search for the director’s replacement, travel back and forth, stress on low pay, all for a few moments when I feel exhilarated, pride at being a part of something I identify with.

•   For my beloved Eric, I trade the stress early dating if he was the one, stress being domesticated and feeling like I cant go out , be sexy, build my identity and worth off of everyone wanting me, stress of him being distant in early Uber and dating days, stress of the times I feel like I have disappointed him, stress over his health and his jobs, feeling dragged around, under valued in one way and undeserving in another, stress of missing him and of having him there, all for the moments and memories of joy and hope for more later.  And definitely an end where, either I leave him and worry for his wellbeing, jealous Ill be replaced, worried we wont meet again, worried I will owe him. Or he leaves me and I am lonely, I miss him, my identity is shattered, my sense of safety and wellbeing is shook, my financial and logistical worries take over, I worry about if to ordain or keep lay living, of where to go and what to do with myself when I exhaust the imagination of a partner shaped object beside me while I enjoy life, to make me enjoy life more and prove it is enjoyable. And the pain when my hope for finding my happy ending is dashed.

Eric and I were traveling in Japan over the 2018/2019 holidays and we decided to spend a few days in Naoshima, an island in the Seto Sea famous for its many museums and art instillations. Eric and I went into an instillation, Backside of the Moon, by the artist James Turrell and the piece absolutely blew me away. Spoiler alert here: I am about to describe he piece, so if you had big plans to travel to Naoshima to see this work, you may want to skip this blog. Otherwise…proceed at your own risk:

The instillation is open, by appointment, for 15 minute slots. When your time arrives, you and a group of around 10 people are escorted inside a room that is pitch black. The docent announces there is a bench directly behind you and you are instructed to step backwards and sort of grope your way onto the seat. Then, you wait. In total, pitch darkness, you sit and do nothing at all. Minutes ticked and ever so slowly, I thought I saw a bit of a flash in front of me. More time and more and more, a bit of light appeared. Gradually the light brightened and grew until I could see a large illuminated square directly in front of me. Eventually, the docent returned to the room and instructed us all to walk toward the square, and we could all see, and proceed to, the light in front of us. Then, the docent explained we have been in the same room for 15 minutes and nothing in the room had changed. No light was turned on, no curtain pulled. What had changed was us, the viewers, our eyes had adjusted to the room and come to see the faint light that was there all along. Pweefff –that is the sound of my little mind totally blown…

After I left the exhibit, my first though was really that the piece is a perfect ubai — a parallel — for dhamma practice: This world doesn’t change, but us practitioners adjust our view, and slowly we see this world for what it is, for what it always has been: A world that is inconstant and stressful.

What is more is that I don’t expect change, I don’t always see it coming, because circumstances, and form, can shift at a creeping pace, but in the end the magnitude of change can be seen, just like the square of light at the back of the room. We mistake barely perceptible change for permanence and then face a huge –often heartbreaking — shocker when what we know and love changes in an undeniable way.

Additionally, I tend to look outward for change: I know that everything in this world continually shifts, but I rarely look inward to see how this common condition (duhh, it is called a common condition for a reason) applies to me. I don’t internalize change, but 15 minutes in a dark room was all it took for me to change. My rupa, my eyes, adjusted. My nama adjusts all the time too –it makes me see that even if I had a perfect, mythical, world, where nothing changes at all, I couldn’t hope to find satisfaction in it because I change. What I am used to changes. What I see and therefore what I want and what I imagine changes.

This particular art piece has stayed with me over the years. Over and over it comes-up in my practice as the perfect illustration for some topic I am considering, so I am sure you will see it again.

I will give a little further spoiler about this piece:

About a year later, this piece was an essential data point I used when I was trying to learn about and understand rupa. I had been deeply considering why all human rupa wasn’t the same and it was thinking back to this exhibit that made me realize that my own rupa body interacts with the rupa environment — that what I am exposed to and used to effects my form. That many of the physically based differences between humans — tastes, strength, fitness ability — arises not because of “specialness” but because all rupa form is subject to the same rules: It adjusts and shifts in reaction to other rupa in itself and in its environment.

Last night I was in bed in my Manhattan loft fuming  — the neighbors had lit an illegal fire, in a condemned chimney, and smoke was pouring into my apartment. For me, this type of situation is my worst fear, a reflection of my greatest sense of injustice; people being inconsiderate and breaking the rules, resulting in an affront to my personal safety.

This situation felt particularly affronting because it is on the tail of my asthma flare due to recently being caught breathing wildfire air on my last trip to SF. The smell of smoke in my apartment was a flashback to the panicking feeling I had as smoke filled the air in SF, and my breathing became labored, just a few weeks ago.

This sense of dread that I could stop breathing, fear that the situation wouldn’t be rectified, indignation at the neighbors’ blatant disregard for the rules…it triggered several contemplations, but here I’ll share just one about making SF ‘un-mine’:

The recent fires in CA have already made me really rethink any goal/fantasy to go back West when Eric and I retire. I have a respiratory disease and the fires are getting worse each year. But I noticed it hasn’t just effected my long-term fantasy; I don’t even feel like going back for work or visits in the short term either. The idea of more back and forth is exhausting, the time away from Eric, feeling unsettled in my life. This past time I was on the East Coast (right after the fires) I started thinking maybe I hadn’t given Greenwich a fair chance, maybe I could build a better life in Connecticut after all.

Laying in a smoky house, fear and anger making my focus extra sharp, I realized what has changed: SF isn’t mine anymore. When I said it in my head, my heart knew for sure it was true. And though practice has taught my mind to try and refuse my belongings and my identities before, this has to be the first time my heart really really felt it as well.

When I started poking around to see what has changed, I realized the biggest thing is my imagination that I have a certain future in SF (or Cali, or anywhere out in the West Coast fire country), that it can be my “forever home”. I just can’t reconcile the fires/air quality with a belief that I can mold both the home, and the home-shaped void in my heart, to fit each other. Without this sense of hope and permanence, my heart rejects the West Coast, I am ready to move on.

Before, I looked at the city, and my situation, with such soft eyes. Sure, I saw the needles on the streets, the cost of living, the strain of going back and forth, but these things were worth it. I also saw the city changing, the people, the places, the weather even, but it was still similar enough, familiar enough that I could literally, watch my imagination fill-in the gaps, smooth over the changes by focusing on the familiar. Now, in the wake of disillusionment, I feel the weight of the commitments I have made, my duties, that keep me bound to travel to SF, for right now, so much more strongly.

It really stuns me, I have spent so much energy and desire fixated on how to leave NY and go back to the West Coast: Seattle, Portland, Denver, Cali, pushing Eric into countless job interviews at companies in all these places, so that I could align my heart home with my full time home. So I could align my location with my identity: A West Coast Gal. But 1 new piece of information is all it took to kill this hope.

Recently I sent a whole bunch of clothing to consign and before I did I assessed the “story of impermanence that each item tells”; there was a whole category of items that I was disposing of because I got new information –down is warmer than wool, I have a nickle allergy, silk is too hard to clean, etc. It dawned on me that I am constantly getting new information and with it my needs and wants are also constantly changing. In other words, there is literally no end to my desire and there is also no possible way that I can satisfy it. I am on an endless treadmill!

My big question now is how do I get off the treadmill? As I started divorcing myself from Fire Country, new imaginary homes began to stew in my brain. Maybe CT is a forever home, maybe Vermont is the perfect place to retire.  And so the treadmill keeps rolling…

Of course, this isn’t the first time  I have unmade something as mine: Once the ugliness or untenability of something hits my heart, disillusionment sets-in. Just take my still smoke filled NY Loft for example: This thing was ‘un-mined’ almost as soon as I bought it. Like the West Coast, there was an evolution in my understanding that I didn’t control the place (too small, lot line window, noise, maintenance issues and ultimately a city I hate), I can’t shape it to my imagination. I can’t force it to bend to my will. I bought it because I thought it was one thing, a cozy new nest for Eric and I to build an exciting life, and it quickly became a massive failure and financial mistake. Now it is up for sale, us hoping to cut our losses.

Once an object strays too far from my imagination of what it is/will do/will make me, I purge it from my identity. Even if, like the NY loft, it remains with me physically, it is gone from my heart. Once my heart, my sense of self, strays too far from what I imagine an object to be, like countless fashion looks I have cycled through and left behind, I purge it from my belongings. If all it takes is a change of object or a change of heart to make something not mine, how can I believe it was ever really mine to begin with? I cling so tightly, endure so much suffering in the name of that clinging, to things I will eventually let go of –by choice or force. I suffer not even for the objects, but for some duration where I can fool myself into thinking they are mine.

It was November 2018 and I had managed, by coincidence, to escape smoke from the fires raging in Northern California by a single day. My flight back to New York from an important event I had been working out in San Francisco departed early in the morning, by afternoon fires had created all kinds of delays and cancelations. Smoke filled the skies of San Francisco, air quality went to the danger zone, friends were texting me pictures of orange and black skies, complaining it was impossible to breathe.  A part of me felt relief that my asthmatic self hadn’t been caught in the fires. But another part of me felt ‘survivor’s guilt’; as the fires raged on, I started feeling bad that I had escaped when I had so many friends and co-workers stuck and suffering.

A few days later, I went to have coffee with a friend in NY and told her of my guilt. In my mind, my guilt was a sign of my compassion, my deep empathy for friends. So, you can imagine my surprise when my coffee companion told me to get over myself and quit being so egotistical. “Egotistical, WTF?” I thought. “Everyone finds their own way” she explained.

After we talked, I thought more about what she said: Everyone does find  their own way, i.e. each person has their own karma. As I wondered and worried about why everyone else couldn’t just leave, or find a way to be spared, what I was really doing was wondering why everyone wasn’t just like me. I was assuming everyone would be as effected as me. Everyone would have priorities like me. Everyone would  have the same causes and effects as me. I was being egotistical, missing the differences that exist amongst people who are, well, not me.

But, in my self-centered assumptions, I was making a more subtle , but equally egotistical error — I was missing the sameness between me and everyone else. This time, I may have been spared suffering. This time, I watched from afar as the skies turned black, and with distance felt pity mixed with superiority: I was spared after all. But what about times before and times after? In one instant, one situation, I can count myself advantaged –my karma allowed escape; but like everyone, I am subject to my karma, my turn at suffering has happened before and it inevitably will again.

Eric and I were watching one of those reality home building shows today; a couple had worked hard, had long and successful careers, and were now building their dream home, on their dream plot of land.

Only the land they chose was the top of a cliff, overhanging the ocean, with sandy earth that was sliding away. When the engineer came to make a first assessment, he told them the dangers and difficulties of building there – the erosion was so pervasive, extreme measures would need to be taken to keep it at bay, and even then, the house was unlikely to make it more than a few decades before sliding into the ocean.

Knowing the dangers, knowing the effort, knowing the risk, the couple chose to build anyway: This was the spot they imagined spending their golden years, a place they had vacationed many times, that they had built their fantasy retirement around. They simply couldn’t give it up, they figured it would remain standing till at least the end of their lives. And so, the house building project began. Afterall, from imagination springs hope eternal.

The trials and tribulations were countless. First, a special sea wall had to be built out of huge boulders to keep the erosion at bay – only the first big storm threatened to sweep away the wall, and the couple had to go out in the storm and try to secure the boulders with netting.  Then there were issues getting government permits for the home and lawyers had to get involved. Then there were issues getting building materials up the cliff and a new road had to be built. The costs became so high that the husband had to return to work in order to afford completing the home. Only work was in the city hours away, so the commute was unsustainable, and the husband decided to build his own business, from scratch, so he could work from home. Then there were fights between husband and wife about materials and layout and design. All this before a house was even built.

All that stress for a house. As I watched them build, heard their story, all I could think is, “not fucking worth it.” For 50 minutes, of the hour-long show, I just kept muttering under my breath, “So, so, so not worth it. They are being idiots.”

But then, in the end, they showed the home all done and it was stunningly beautiful. The narrator asked the couple if the years of stress building it had been worth it, and without hesitation they said “yes.” Even I, suddenly forgetting the last 50 minutes worth of vicarious stress, thought “Yes! Worth it.” Suddenly something I had been contemplating for years became very clear to me – THIS IS HOW DESIRE FOOLS ME.

Years ago, I had been flipping through a calendar from the Wat with quotes from LP Thoon. One of them had really haunted me; I can’t remember word for word, but the sentiment was, “can you identify how desire fools you?”

As this finished, beautiful house, flashed across my TV, I saw I was tempted by a single moment in time. My mind seized upon that glorious, peak house moment, and the siren song of desire drowned out all the thoughts of the eroding coastline, or the struggles to build, or the coming out of retirement, or the stress of potentially losing the home in old age, or its final future resting place at the bottom of the sea.

Desire tricks me through the dark powers of my imagination. My imagination, that clings to/hopes for a still picture, a particular moment in time. An imagination that lulls me into forgetting the past, and ignoring the future, with the false promise of achieving that peak moment, and keeping it forever, or at least for a duration that satisfies me. An imagination, that minimizes suffering; or makes me think, “I am special, I can magically avoid the suffering I watch others endure”; or that, even if I can’t avoid suffering altogether, it will be measured, on my terms, an acceptable and ‘fair’ trade-off for that beautiful, perfect peak.

I, a slave to my desires, cycle through nightmares of effort, stress, risk and loss hoping to achieve, and hold onto, my dreams. Ignoring the reality of a world were everything, always, changes.

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?