Thirty years ago I rode to Ballston Spa to meet with the woman who would become my oboe teacher. For our first lesson, I barely got to play a note. Before I even took out my instrument, she made me lie down on my back. The key to playing the oboe, she explained, was learning how to breathe. I thought I knew what she meant, but I didn’t, and even when I approached understanding, it was just going through the motions. At the time, it was a difficult lesson that didn’t open itself up right away.

She told me to lie back on the couch and relax.

In case it isn’t obvious, the moment someone tells me to relax, I tend to do the opposite, resulting in all sorts of additional tension. Shoulders bunched up, shallow breaths into my upper chest, and the wish that she would just tell me how she wanted me to relax made for an uncomfortable set of circumstances. I lied there for a while doing my best imitation of a relaxed person while she waited and watched. My mind scrambled to find the way out of this, the magic thing she was looking for me to elicit. Should I yawn? Should I feign sleep? Should I fart? What did this lady want from me?

She pushed my shoulders down. “You’re not relaxed yet,” she told me. No shit. You are telling me to relax and I just met you ten minutes ago. I’m lying on my back on your couch and you’re hovering over me, watching every intake of breath. How in the hell was I supposed to relax? It was at least the fifth circle of social anxiety hell, and every which way I looked was just another circle of it.

I stayed there and she instructed me to close my eyes, because whatever a relaxed person was supposed to do was clearly not in my lexicon. I’d always impressed every teacher I had and within the first few minutes of this oboe lesson I was letting her down. If I couldn’t do something as simple as relax, how in the hell could I play an oboe concerto? Well, I didn’t quite make that connection at the time – I only knew that I was failing and flailing at the whole relaxation exercise, and that made me even less relaxed.

We stayed that way for about ten more minutes, at which point she indicated I still wasn’t relaxed. Detecting a note of amusement in her voice, and guessing that it usually didn’t take this long for other students to relax, I implored her with a little laugh of desperation. Patiently, she waited for whatever sign she was seeking that would indicate my desired state of relaxation, but it never came.

I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t relax.

Not under command.

Not while being watched.

And all I wanted was for her to tell me what to do so I could pretend to actually do it.

Was all my tension and unease written on my face? I tried relaxing the muscles of my forehead and jaw, I tried letting a soft smile spread to the corners of my mouth, and I tried to slow the erratic blinking of my eyes.

This was an excruciating exercise for a kid like me. I don’t know how long we waited, but I knew it usually didn’t take this long. Already, and forever after, I would be slightly different from everyone else. My mind began to wander because I was at an impasse, and whenever I find myself with nowhere to turn, I let my unconscious mind work its own way out of the predicament. In this instance it was just enough, and my breathing went just the slightest bit into my stomach, at which point my teacher perked up and said I was finally relaxing. She put her hand on my belly and asked me if I felt the breath going in.

Oh my sweet Lord in heaven, that’s what she wanted? Why didn’t she just say so from the damn beginning? I can breathe into my stomach and look like the most relaxed person on earth! She wanted something genuine and real, but I was in no way ready for that. In fact, I wouldn’t be ready for decades. But I could feign a physical state of relaxation simply by slowing my breathing and letting it fill my stomach. I knew it was pretend, but it was a start. And it got me up off the damn couch.

I would not be able to truly relax for many years. From my outward appearance, most people couldn’t tell. It wasn’t that I was a high-strung person – I didn’t usually act jittery or tense or nervous (unless I happened upon excessive caffeine or sugar), and I didn’t have the typical persona of someone who didn’t know how to let go. In fact, the majority of people who encountered me assumed I was more relaxed than most, living a charmed, easy life with nary a care or concern. Unfortunately for my health and well-being, I kept it all bottled inside. My tension, my anxiety, my crippling doubts – they all held up within my heart, hiding there and wreaking havoc in other ways.

For a long time I thought it could be solved in another person – the perfectly supportive set of parents, the loyal and trustworthy set of friends, the caring and tender romantic partner – and those things helped in their own way, but they also hindered finding it on my own. Only recently have I begun to see that it doesn’t involve a husband, a family, or a support network of friends, it doesn’t involve a job, a career, or a creative outlet, it doesn’t require fancy clothes, expensive cologne, or material accumulations. It was within me, just waiting to be unlocked, waiting for me to figure out the way to access the calm serenity that is possible when you look within and face whatever truths you’ve kept inside. That may mean accepting the unease when someone commands you to relax. That may mean acknowledging the discomfort that comes with worry and fear. That may mean lying on a couch and realizing that you can’t always be perfect for everyone, and that it’s ok not to be. Because if you’re ok with yourself, you don’t need all those other things.

Today, I breathe into my stomach when things are falling apart around me, and it helps. It doesn’t solve everything, but it changes the dynamics of perception. Most of the time that’s enough. I breathe in slowly, then breath out slowly. Repeating this a few more times, I shift my focus from the bad things at hand to the singular effort and action of the breath.

Two words, otherwise innocuous and innocent, when put together can become the saddest thing in the world. ‘Author Unknown’ is one such pair that has always struck me as supremely sad. Coupled with the sadness is a mystery, a tantalizing hint at something still left to be discovered, a puzzle that can never be fully solved. Banished to a blank background, without a known author the only thing we can go on is the words themselves, which is how writing should be read for the most part, even if it results in a disembodied voice. A voice that exists on its own, without history or source or baggage, speaks to us differently. It demands something more from the reader, and only the strongest among us will truly attempt to engage. 

Comes the Dawn

After a while you learn the subtle difference

Between holding a hand and chaining a soul

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning

And company doesn’t mean security –

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts

And presents aren’t promises –

And you begin to accept your defeats

With your head up and your eyes open –

With the grace of a woman – not the grief of a child

And learn to build all your roads

On today because tomorrow’s ground

Is to uncertain for plans – and futures have

A way of falling down in mid-flight –

After a while you learn that even sunshine

Burns if you get too much –

So you plant your own garden and decorate

Your own soul – instead of waiting

For someone to bring you flowers –

And you learn that you really can endure—

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth –

And you learn and learn—

With every goodbye you learn

~ Author Unknown

Over the last long weekend, I painted a pair of bathrooms – one in a shade called ‘Summer Sky’ and one in a shade reminiscent of the summer sun called ‘Wild Daisy’. You may guess where my mind has been. As Mercury shifts into retrograde motion, we need to ground ourselves with safe rituals. Painting has always been that for me. I may not like it, but it helps.

According to my Uncle Roberto, who was a house-painter when he was alive, painting is all about the preparation. It was the prep work that was the most difficult and time-consuming, but it made all the difference in whether the paint job was to be successful or not.  My Uncle was best at showing us how not to live, mostly with warning tales of his storied past and questionable decisions, but when it came to painting he knew what he was talking about, and I took the lesson to heart.

These days painting often signifies a rebirth, or a cleansing of some sort. It was literally that for this round, as I couldn’t get some candle soot off the walls and ceiling so I simply threw new paint at the problem and here we are. We were due for a change, and as we enter the final throes of a winter I’m all too ready to forget, it’s time for something new.

It had not been a good morning. Though the sun was shining, it was bitterly cold. It looked a bit like spring, but the air was decidedly entrenched in winter. I hesitated when looking out at the world. The wind was blowing the detritus from smokestacks at a stiff horizontal. Flags fluttered in taut formation and the Hudson River was ruffled in waves of all sizes. I decided to venture out in spite of it.

At the local coffeehouse, I sat in a seat by the window and soaked in the bright light. My spirits lifted, as they tend to do with an influx of light, and I felt a bit better. The server had given me the wrong cookie – I ordered a Blackout and when I got back to my seat I saw it was a regular chocolate chip. Initially I resigned myself to eating it, but I realized my heart was set on the Blackout cookie – it’s the only reason I was breaking my eating-well streak (ok, mini-streak) – so I went up and asked if I had been given the right cookie. The man said no, and he gave me the one I ordered and said I could keep the chocolate chip one as well. The day was turning around.

I sat and slowly ate both cookies, while reading more about mindfulness and monks. The passage I was on described inhabiting the physical body, and how monks are always completely aware of where the body is and what it’s doing. If they are sitting, they are conscious of themselves sitting, if they are standing they know fully that they are standing. It sounds silly, but how many times do we actually acknowledge and realize what our bodies are doing unless something is going wrong?

I took the idea with me as I left, and focused on the fact that I was walking. My legs were moving – one foot in front of the other like the animated Christmas special says – and I saw the footfalls of my monk-strap shoes. Everything happens for a reason. Across my mouth, covered against the wind in a pink and gray scarf, a slight half-smile appeared, and maybe it showed in my eyes because I passed a woman who gave me the broadest and most genuine smile I’d seen in a while. It was almost disconcerting, in a very happy way, and I thought back to the adage that the Buddha may appear in anyone at any time. If we approach strangers with that in mind, it makes for a much more peaceful existence. I thought it was a fluke, but then I passed another woman whose fuchsia jacket caught my eye. She too had the biggest smile on her face and directed it right at me, as if waiting for a response. I was too shy to do anything, but I felt those smiles and I took them in.

The wind was not so brutal now, even as the temperature was dropping. Fortified by a hot cup of coffee, or the friendly visages of sweet strangers who may or may not have been manifesting the Buddha, I felt the warmth of the universe.

“To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.” ~ Alexander Pope

We are so quick to anger. And we are so quick to argue. Simple inquisition is too quickly taken as an attack, and no matter how misguided or misdirected it is taken, if one thinks it’s an attack, it feels like an attack. Too often we live in defensive mode, and maybe that’s safer. I don’t know. It feels like I’ve been doing things the wrong way and am just waking up to my worth and value, while realizing I have more work to do. Much more work, and the thought is daunting and invigorating. Humbling too.

The universe reveals its intentions through signs and symbols, and sometimes in blatant directions printed plainly and clearly for a reader like me. Such was the case as I was contemplating decisions the other day and the book I’ve been reading brought me to a page that extended its advice gently and helpfully for those of us suffering:

“Sit in the full or half lotus. Begin to follow your breath. Choose the situation of a person, family, or society which is suffering the most of any you know. This will be the object of your contemplation.

In the case of a person, try to see every suffering which that person is undergoing. Begin with the suffering of bodily form (sickness, poverty, physical pain) and then proceed to the suffering caused by feelings (internal conflicts, fear, hatred, jealousy, a tortured conscience). Consider next the suffering caused by perceptions (pessimism, dwelling on his problems with a dark and narrow viewpoint). See whether his mind functionings are motivated by fear, discouragement, despair, or hatred. See whether or not his consciousness is shut off because of his situation, because of his suffering, because of the people around him, his education, propaganda, or a lack of control of his own self. Meditate on all these sufferings until your heart fills with compassion like a well of fresh water, and you are able to see that the person suffers because of circumstances and ignorance. Resolve to help that person get out of his present situation through the most silent and unpretentious means possible.” ~ ‘The Miracle of Mindfulness’

Of course it requires the two things I’m least likely to successfully become: silent and unpretentious, but I’ll do my best. If all else fails, at least I’ll be on the road to becoming a better person. There is nothing to be lost in that.

You don’t always understand when things are going out of focus until it’s too late. At first you think it’s just a passing cloud, or a floating bit of fuzz that momentarily gets lodged in the corner of your eyes. You blink a few times to correct it, then move onto something else because life demands it. The world doesn’t slow for your own failings or faltering. It won’t slow for mine either. Instead, you work through it, carrying the bit of haze with you, assuming or hoping or stupidly ignoring, waiting for it to lift, waiting for it to correct itself. And sometimes it does.

Things become clear again, like a dirty mirror you didn’t realize was dirty until it starts to obscure. You wipe it off, see everything in focus, and things seem brighter, cleaner, better. Then, as if some insidious steam seeped into the room, the mirror clouds again. You lose a bit more sight of yourself, and you wonder at the mirror, and your own vision.

A little fuzziness in life is good. There is no such thing as perfect focus. The human experience is too shaded with various textures and filters to ever perfectly reveal anything. And a little blur to things can be artfully executed, lending movement and the idea that we are, indeed, alive and in constant motion.

Yet there is a limit to how much distortion and distraction may be good. Swerving too far out of focus can feel exciting and daring for a bit, but a lifetime in haze and confusion is a life lost. And things born out of darkness of obfuscation are doomed to fail. It feels like I’m coming out of such a haze, and with it all the requisite tumult is hitting just as Mercury moves into retrograde.

There is a jolt. A cry. The earth feels like it’s shifting.

Suddenly, clarity.

Clarity and color.

As if a scrim you didn’t realize was there rises and illuminates what had been hazy.

The lifting of a veil.

Some veils are pretty.

Some veils are poisonous.

The ones that are both are the trickiest of them all.

I’ve always been aware of the haze, and I’ve always known about the veil.

It may be time to see anew.

After holding onto my iPhone 6S for as long as possible (since I foolishly paid in full when I got it) I finally had to succumb to the five-minute battery life I was getting and upgrade to the iPhone 11, in this beautiful seafoam color. We are all at the mercy of the phone companies, so I’ve reached the point where I’ve stopped fighting and just give them my monthly allowance. The older I get, the easier it is to throw money at problems and not mind it. 

This upgrade is already worth it, if not for the battery that lasts longer than a day, then for the camera, and the ‘Contour lighting’ that makes my facial moisturizing scramble look positively ludicrous. Who needs Tom Ford‘s $75 Anti-fatigue eye cream when you have filters that make everyone look prettier? It’s time I stop fighting the aging process and give in to the technology at hand. 

I’ve only just begun to look into the other camera features, but I’m sure there are ways to get into more trouble on FaceBook and Instagram with this puppy. And if you ever find me banned there, you can always come back here, where it all happens no matter what corporate entities try to stifle. Try it on me! 

Colin Harrison is a writer who has captured the dangers of mid-life manhood better than almost anyone else I’ve read, illuminating where we so often take the wrong turn if given a chance, and where we might go completely off the rails if we’re not careful. More than the mid-life crisis, this is a perilous time fraught with the temptation to do the wrong things, coupled with a valiant often-delusional belief in doing what feels right while under some curse or spell. It’s a recipe for disaster, the end results of which can be reached from any number of ill-advised paths.

“Such men believe in luck, they watch for signs, and they conduct private rituals that structure their despair and mark their waiting. They are relatively easy to recognize but hard to know, especially during the years when a man is most dangerous to himself, which begins at about age thirty-five, when he starts to tally his losses as well as his wins, and ends at about fifty, when, if he has not destroyed himself, he has learned that the force of time is better caught softly, and in small pieces. Between those points, however, he’d better watch out, better guard against the dangerous journey that beckons to him – the siege, the quest, the grandiosity, the dream.” ~ Colin Harrison 

In these past few weeks, and perhaps the weeks to come, when full moons and Mercury in Retrograde have made (and will make) life tumultuous and emotions intense, it has been important to remain calm in the face of calamity. One of the tricks I’ve come to learn in this life is that sometimes it is better to stay the course and not make rash decisions. That is much easier said than done, particularly in the heat of anger or righteousness. I will do my best, but I’m not making any promises. 

The post says all I will say about the buffoon occupying and disgracing the Oval Office right now. I’m too busy painting bathrooms and figuring out a new iPhone to make much sense of anything else anyway. It’s also the first day of a new cycle of Mercury in retrograde – so get ready for some insanity to see us all the way to March 10. I am so not ready for that jelly. God save the queen. On with the recap…

It began with a drive through Andy’s past.

Emi Lu drew us a ship on the sea.

Admiration from afar for the African violet.

Some Speedo bulges to warm the winter.

Palo Santo for the soul (a.k.a. Holy Wood).

A strategically-placed pillow hides my junk.

Just for funsies.

A tale of two foxes.

Messy Valentine’s visage.

A little love song for Valentine’s Day.

An afternoon cup of tea, solo-style. 

The Buddha in winter, beneath the falling snow. 

This is how I meditate.

From the liquor bar to the shampoo bar, courtesy of the Beekman Boys. 

Hunks of the Day included Anthony Ramos, Kevin Lee, Steve Brockman, Taika Waititi, and J.R. Price.

The idea of a shampoo bar never much appealed to me. I assumed it was like a bar of soap – drying and harsh and having no business anywhere near something that should be soft as hair. I also didn’t think it would lather up as much as typical shampoo, and I adore a powerful lather on my head.  Enter the Beekman Boys and their goat milk shampoo bar, and color my world instantly changed.

Trying out their Activated Charcoal version, I followed the instructions and rubbed it on my head as I began my shower. Immediately it began forming a nice lather, and even better a cooling and calming sensation with its elements of menthol and essential oils. It was actually lathering up better than certain shampoos I’ve used of late. While lather is one thing, the true test comes after the shower, and after my hair has dried.

In this case, the end result was happiness indeed. Far from dry and brittle, my hair felt nourished and soft. Maybe it was the argan oil or the charcoal, but whatever alchemy was at work, it worked wonders. Bonus perks include the fact that it’s a solid bar that doesn’t make any use of plastic or bottles for packaging. If you’re looking for environmental soundness, this is it. There’s also a lot of shampoos in a single bar of soap – one will last as long as a decent bottle. Trading in the drinking bar for a shampoo bar is indeed a very good thing.