Let's Try Zen

Wednesday night Sean and I made our first foray into Buddhist meditation at a Zen center in New Haven, housed on the second floor of a charming old-fashioned house near the hockey rink. The school is a part of the Korean Buddhist tradition (I'm learning in seminar just how different Buddhism can become as it moves among geographic regions in Asia) and its founding teacher, a monk, lives in Rhode Island but travels about to the various centers so that he can speak with people looking for guidance.

I was quite nervous when we arrived, because it seemed suddenly very foreign and uncertain. There was only one woman there, an older, gray-haired woman named Mary, who was very pleasant. She took us into the teacher's room--which definitely had the air of being inhabited only rarely, and then by an ascetic--and we settled onto some cushions for a general introduction to Budhhist meditative practices.

When meditating, you sit on a small round or rectangular pillow that is placed on top of a larger cushion. You can sit cross-legged, as I did, or with your legs tucked under your as you sit on a pillow or a small stool. You can sit in a chair, too, if you want--it doesn't seem to matter exactly how you sit as long as you sit.

A certain kind of body alignment is also advised: back straight, but not rigid; head up, earlobes centered over the shoulders; hands in the lap, palms upward, left over right (the right hand is considered to be the more "discursive" material hand and is therefore being silenced by the left, which doesn't really apply in the case of a lefty like me, I should think) and the thumbs meeting about an inch below the belly button. A feature of Korean Buddhism is that its adherents keep the eyes open, cast down on the floor in front of them, rather than shutting them.

After the physical orientation came the mental. Mary advised us either to count our breaths up to ten, starting with one again any time we found ourselves distracted, or to use a mantra. As you breathe in, in your mind you say "Clear mind, clear mind, clear mind," and as you exhale it's "Don't know." Every time you find yourself drifting, which she assured us we would very often, you have to bring yourself back. I was interested to learn that meditation doesn't involve blocking out the sounds that are going on around you, but rather welcoming them; Mary said that when she meditates, she listens to the sounds outside the room, then the sounds inside the room, and then the sounds directly around her as a way to focus.

So after we've been sitting with Mary for about forty-five minutes, we put on robes of pale gray and go with her into the meditation room, where the rest of the people who have come for the evening have already been chanting for a while. The room is completely different from the rest of the apartment, obviously redone with light, highly polished wooden floorboards and columns. A gold statue of the Buddha, to whom you must bow as you enter and exit this room, stands on a pedestal at one end. On the floor in front of it are a circle of cushions with pillows. Sean and I sit down and try to make ourselves comfortable, one of the others knocks a wooden bell, and for the next half-hour we're in silent meditation.

When I say silent, I mean silent. You could hear every tick of the clock, every person swallowing, breathing, and making other bodily rumbles, every rustle of fabric. Er, well, I was actually the only person rustling. Mary had told us if we got really uncomfortable to get up and stand for a while, but I was too embarassed to do so even after my left leg completely fell asleep. It hurt like a bitch. Up until that point, I was doing fairly well, despite having chosen the seat facing the window, so that the movements of the people in the window right next door kept attracting my eye, despite my attempts to keep it focused on the floorboards. I couldn't tell how much time had passed, but I was sure it wasn't longer than fifteen minutes--then the bell was struck again. A half hour had actually passed. Sean's legs had been so uncomfortable that he actually had a little trouble standing at first (at least he didn't rustle in vain to relieve the discomfort!). After 30 minutes of sitting meditation, there's a short period of walking meditation, during which time Mary drew us into the kitchen, as she had only indicated we should stay a half hour our first time.

Meditation is really, really difficult, both physically and mentally. Mary advised us to try only about five minutes a day at home, to get your body used to the idea of it. She also stressed that regularly joining a community is important, because sometimes you don't make room in your daily life for extended meditation. Joining is free; you can leave donations if you want to. When we left, I was immediately resolved to come back the next week; Sean a little more hesitant, but he promised to try it at least once more.

The past few days I've done little five-minute sits in the morning. I need to try out more positions and find one I can comfortably maintain for more than fifteen minutes. It makes me feel good, though, and I want to keep going. Fingers crossed that I won't rustle so much next time.

Sigh

The couple who looked at our house left me a voicemail this morning to let me know they decided not to put in an offer for it; the wife said she decided it was too much to take on a new house when their daughter will be going to college soon. I can't pretend I'm not disappointed--it would have been such a relief to be able to sell the house so quickly--but it really was almost too much to hope for that they would take it off my hands right away. However, I'm glad I signed up with the realtor, rather than waiting and hoping on these people. Also, I'm a little relieved that I won't have to handle the deal myself when it does happen, even if I do have to pay the realtor a commission.

It's ironic--now, when I'm close to selling the house, as has been my objective from day one, I feel rather wistful about the prospect of keeping it.

Signorelli, Lorenzetti et al--

What is this sudden distinction between "New Blogger" and "Old Blogger" one is now forced to make when logging in? Apparently it's meant to make anyone who hasn't switched over the the 'new' version feel like they're sorely missing out...but I like the simple format blogger has. I'm not really interested in dressing up my posts with any fancy-pants-ness, anyway.

Today marked not only my first day of classes, but also my return to working in the slide library after a whole year's absence between Florence and then being Dr. Escobar's nominal research assistant. Filing the 15th and 16th century slides was particularly depressing, since a year ago I could have been standing in the Brancacci Chapel, or in front of Donatello's David instead of squinting at it on a scrap of plastic. I could have wandered into San Marco or the Accademia on my way home this afternoon, instead of fighting the wind up past the townhouses--dull, dreary, homogenous things! But, as I often chide my roommate, dwelling on past glories doesn't help any; it just makes the present seem that much less livable.

Sean remarked a while back that this is our first spring semester spent jointly at Fairfield since we've been dating: sophomore year he was at UMASS, and last year I was gone. Now that we've been triumphantly reunited in the January deep-freeze, we celebrated by entertaining Popham with a grade-A faux-squabble in the cafeteria--he compared me to me a buffalo, I destroyed his new paper airplane, and it all ended in detente when I had the salt shaker raised and he the pepper. Hahaha. Love is grand.

Nerves

In a few hours I will be returning to the house I just recently left, in order to show it a second time to a couple who just may, god willing, want to make an offer for it. They came on Friday and did seem interested, but when they hadn't called me back by Sunday morning about seeing it with their kids--as they knew I was going back to school Sunday--I kind of decided they probably weren't interested. Then they called in the late afternoon, and we arranged to meet today so their kids can see the house.

Seeing as I've never sold a house before, I'm a little nervous. I don't know if they'd make me a verbal offer today, or maybe one in writing once they've talked it over privately with their children--I'd hope for the one in writing, because it would spare me having to negotiate a price immediately and in person. I feel at a disadvantage with the wife, who is clearly the one in command, because she knows, obviously, why I have to sell my house, and that I'd like to do it as quickly as possible. She also knows that I'm younger and have no experience with this. Linda warned me that buyers usually try to 'lowball' the seller at first to get them to come down a lot in price out of sheer surprise and panic--another reason I'd prefer a reply in writing. Gives me time to think.

I'm crossing my fingers that everything goes well. If I sell the house myself to these people, I don't even have to pay the realtor anything, which would be sweet. He tried to convince me over the phone yesterday that he could handle these people for me if I would agree to pay his commission as though they were buyers he found himself, and I declined. A few trips up to Windsor in gas money is much less than the fee I would have to pay him.

The New (and Last) Semester

And so, quicker than I ever would have thought possible, my final semester at Fairfield begins. Winter break terminated a day ahead of schedule for me; Heather couldn't make it up to hang out with Carla and I tonight after all, so we decided to come back to campus early. We ended up going to the community theater to check out Stranger Than Fiction (not half bad) with Mike, and afterwards enjoying some amaretto sours safely in the embrace of our wonderful little townhouse.

It was very bittersweet, closing the door of my house when I left this afternoon...The past three weeks have been a frenzy of cleaning, as I emptied out and shined up the house to put it on the market. Before I went home, I had accepted that there was simply no way to get the house in shape in less than a month, especially while working forty-hour weeks at StubHub. I surprised even myself.

It turned out that returning to customer service was hell, especially when I went home every night to the thousand responsibilities and tasks that needed to be done with little energy and even less optimism. So, I told them them I'd only be staying two weeks, not three, and then I proceeded to vigorously not care about my performance the second week of my employment. (I correctly figured that since a., I was only staying a very short while, and b., I had been previously acknowledged as an extremely good employee they were always happy to see back, that no one would really be checking up on me and how much work I did. Bingo!)

Ridding the house of excess furniture was much easier than I had expected, thanks to a little divine intervention that brought us to Betty and Alan, a pastor and his wife living in Manchester in an apartment with no furniture and only a blow-up bed to sleep on. We had everything to offer and they needed everything, so they took a great deal: my mother's bed and furniture, my sister's bed, tables, recliners, a couch, the kitchen table, the dishes and cups, the towels and sheets, an extra TV and phone. They came to the house on a Thursday evening to look at everything, and Alan returned with a UHaul the next day while I was at work, with Sean deputed to stay at the house. In under an hour it was done, and the house was eerily bare.

As unsettling as it was to be in such a stripped environment, to not even have a kitchen table to eat at nor anywhere really to sit besides my own bed, it made cleaning a lot easier. Once the furniture was gone and I had left StubHub for good (thank god) everything proceeded at an amazing pace. By the time I left home, I had had the house appraised, shown it to a couple who knew my next door neighbor, and signed a contract with a realtor to put the house on the market. As of today, my house is up for sale.

When I stopped by the convent to see my mom's coworkers yesterday, Sr. Sally and Sr. St. Henry asked me if Jen knew the house was up for sale; "hmm...I left her a voicemail about it, I think." They were a little surprised that this wasn't a collegiate effort, but Jen has proved to be a little less than helpful in the cleaning department. She was mainly concerned with getting her own things organized and moved to New York rather than actually being of any use. I asked her to do a few things, like take a carload of trash bags, most of which had emerged from the cleansing of her own room, to the dump--she not only complained, she demanded I reimburse her for the ten dollars she had to pay there. Two days before I'm ready to leave home she mentions over the phone that she is not, after all, taking most of the furniture she had previously laid claim to--furniture I didn't let Betty and Alan have because it was for her. It gave me no small amount of satisfaction to warn her, upon her final departure with her loads of junk earlier this month, that I would no longer feel compelled to consult her before disposing of anything in the house--it kind of lets me understand why our dear president finds unilateral action so appealing.

But that is all behind me for the present, and with the house on the market, the keys in the realtor's hands, and my mail forwarded to school, I won't have to be running up to the house every weekend like I had unpleasantly anticipated. I can enjoy my senior year for a litle while, before I get to start the usual freak-out over a place to live and gainful employment.

Think--I may never spend another night in the home I grew up in, the home where all my memories live. It's a vague sort of pain, but there nonetheless.

The New Year

I haven't posted here in almost a month. Things got fairly crazy at school as the semester came to a close; however, after a particularly harrowing week that saw me racing to finish two ten-page papers while prepping for the modern art exam that our teacher decided to hold on the last day of class, the actual two exams I had to take, in women's studies and physics, seemed somewhat less daunting.

I did find myself stressing about the results of both the art and women's studies exams, though, something I almost never do--art because I knew I had gotten one ID wrong out of six, and I wasn't certain of my final essay, and Women's studies because I needed the final exame to make up for the C+ I got on the disastrous two-question midterm. After the exam, Dr. Hohl told me that if I got an A on the exam she'd discount the earlier test, which both relieved and terrified me--what if I didn't ace it after all? As it turned out, my worries were unfounded. I got an A in modern art, an A- in women's history, and an A in everything else. At first I allowed myself to be a little disappointed at seeing the "minus" sign next to the A for women's studies, but then I recognized that even with two A-grade papers and a hopefully-fabulous final exam, a professor can't outright ignore a C+, no matter the circumstances. Therefore, I'm very grateful that I managed to get the A-.

My grade-craze this semester had a couple of motivating factors. This was one of the first semesters where I had more than one class that I was a little uncertain about--my internship, for one, where I worried not about my workplace evaluation, but about the stupid paper we had to turn in about our new-found wealth of experience. The C+ in women's studies was the first I had ever gotten on a college midterm, and it really freaked me out. Plus I just hated modern art, and I worried that that would show through. Mid-December also witness me undergoing the realization that I DO want to go to grad school--just not for English--and hence maintaining my GPA took on a further importance.

Underneath it all, though, was the desire to prove to myself and, I suppose, in some supernatural way, to my parents, that even under the stressful circumstances in which I found myself this semester that I could still maintain the kind of grades that they had always expected of me and which I have long since come to expect of myself. In this I can say I succeeded; I'm very proud of everything I was able to accomplish this semester, including some papers that, I feel, rank among the best I've ever written.

The end of the semester brought new challenges, naturally--my painful return to employment at StubHub, for example, which thankfully ends this Friday, as well as the depressing tasks associated with emptying out and cleaning out a houseful of memories. Not that there haven't been bright spots--my first Christmas with Sean and his family, exchanging gifts with my friends, New Year's celebrations in New Haven, and, this upcoming weekend, my two-year anniversary with Sean!

In the midst of everything, there are always blessings.