The Benefits of Radical Anarchy: Enjoying Family Dinners
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The Benefits of Radical Anarchy: Enjoying Family Dinners

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The Benefits of Radical Anarchy: Enjoying Family Dinners

My blogs of late have emphasized my dissatisfaction with some thoroughly corrupt institutions in our lives: government and big business. Radical anarchy may be the only solution. And radical anarchy has so many applications. Once you get in the hang of it, it’s a useful approach to so very many situations. All this time I’ve considered myself a one woman stand against entropy. Maybe it’s time to rethink that.

Like family dinners. Getting all 4 of my daughters to sit down to a meal with my husband and me is like herding feral cats. Two are in college and are often in their distant cities. Even when they’re around, this one is working, that one has dinner with the other parent, the other one has two parties and, like, six best friends who demand to see her!
There are always the emotional undercurrents of getting a bunch of women together, who’s mad at whom and why. There’s the emphasis on relationships, makeup, hot guys, relationships, clothes, and hot guys. Did I mention there’s a lot of discussion about relationships and hot guys?
It’s not like we don’t talk about other things as well. Books, movies, TV shows, politics, and the current topics in their majors, neurobiology and sociology. But sooner or later…
“Do you think I should cut my hair real short and wear a lot of eye make-up?” one daughter asks.
“Do you think I should get an apartment with my boyfriend this summer?” asks another daughter.
“Do you think it’s okay to date a guy if I’ve already dated his best friend slash roommate?” asks the third. “Does it matter if the guy I dumped is stalking me now?”
“Can I paint my fingernails and get a dress like Mary had on at the Christmas party?” asks the little one.
“Oh my god, it’s an estrogen-fest,” my husband Sabin moans.
Then the dog barfs on the floor after eating someone’s purse, and the 5 year old breaks a glass and turns off all the lights in the house. The Christmas tree falls over, disgorging its lights, and all the iPhones in the house beep with simultaneous texts. The middle daughter chooses that moment to explain exactly why her boyfriend should be so much more grateful and appreciative to be dating her than he is–all while she in-boxes three guys she’s keeping on the hook for later, maybe. Sabin stabs himself in the knuckles with a fork just to distract himself.
And if you are in the mental state to enjoy radical anarchy: it is a rich feast for whimsy.
Being Grateful
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Being Grateful

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BEING GRATEFUL

This morning was the Thanksgiving assembly at my little daughter’s school. She came in holding hands with a partner, lines of Kindergarten girls walking two by two up the center aisle. They wore orange-red-and-brown headdresses in the spirit of the season and tried not to skip and giggle, but to conduct themselves with dignity.

 

Once in her appointed place, my little one spotted me, and promptly made gestures at me, waving her mischievous hands around her head. She told me later that she was trying to ask me via sign language if I was wearing my Spock ears. I have a pair that I have been known to wear around the house… But no, I informed her, pinching her nose playfully. I just had my hair tucked behind my ears and it made my ears look pointy. I was not wearing my rubber Spock ears.

 

The girls, K through 3rd grade, sang a few songs of gratitude, a tradition going past 100 years at this school. The sweetness of their tuneful voices uplifted me, set me to ruminating on the blessings and joys of life. We ended with “America the Beautiful,” and I am grateful to live here, even if the TSA gropes me next time I board a flight.

 

And I am grateful for my sweet little one with her Spock questions and dancing eyes. My unruly 16 year old who breaks my heart half the time and then the other half makes me laugh until I cry–she’s a gift. A bittersweet gift, but a treasured one. My step-daughter is loving, sweet, and considerate. I’m lucky to have her. My friend Gerda is one of the world’s great fonts of spiritual wisdom, UFOlogists, and lovers of chocolate: I am happy she’s in my life. Geoffrey, Debra, Lori, Marcia, gorgeous Sarah N. and even cranky Paul: individuals I’m fortunate to know and enjoy. Thomasananda, I wish I saw more of you, but still, its always a joy to connect with you. Dani, Komilla, Rachel: you’re great!

 

Right now, I’m also grateful for and to my husband. He spoiled me with a luxurious purse as an anniversary gift, the kind of gorgeous accoutrement that I’d considered out of reach just now. It’s beautiful! And generous of him. Most generous of all, he recently admitted to me that he hasn’t always treated me the way he wants to. He said he’s aiming to be a better husband. That kind of honesty and vulnerability take courage. It takes a great soul to openly claim that. I am grateful for him, and for his presence in my life.
The Power by Rhonda Byrne
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The Power by Rhonda Byrne

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The Power by Rhonda Byrne

Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret and now The Power, is close to people who are close to my husband, so I had the good fortune to meet her. She was lovely, with the contained grace that I associate with people who live from a strong sense of purpose.

Byrne advised me to read The Kybalion by the Three Initiates and The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly Hall. With my insatiable reading lust, I acquired the books immediately. I devoured them promptly. I’m glad I did; the old Hermetic teachings have a lot to offer. The sense of paired, complementary qualities reminded me of the Kabbalistic Sephiroth winding along the Tree of Life. I love these ancient, eternal paradigms of thought!

So, being favorably impressed with Byrne, and wanting to support her because she’s friendly with some of my husband’s favorite people, I ran out and purchased two copies of The Power. One for me, and one for my husband, who refuses to share both food and books. The first bit of territorial prerogative always surprises me. I had my oldest daughter twenty years ago and I haven’t eaten an entire plate of food by myself since 1990. Someone is always sticking a fork in and grabbing a bite. Lunch is my happy time, when I’m alone in the apartment. I can eat standing up and walking around, which I prefer, and enjoy my tuna and peanut butter sandwich in peace, with no grimy fingers trying to steal some.
But I understand why Sabin won’t share a book with me. I use them up. I ravish them. Books are comestibles and I scribble in the margins, apply post-its, and turn down corners. Once I’m done with a book, it wants to take a shower and a nap.
The Power is no exception. It’s juicy and interesting, ripe for plundering. There’s a lot here, most of it good stuff. Opening the mind and heart to love can only benefit people. Thinking in positive ways about what you want is wholesome. When you ride a horse, you have to look where you want to go, and that is subtly communicated to the animal, who then goes there. It’s the same way with your mind and your life. Your mind has to focus on what you want and love, and then the great beast of your life can trot in that direction.
In general, I like this “New Age” the Secret and positive vibrational stuff. It’s got flaws, like everything else in this marvelous, imperfect, blissful, agonizing world. Gossip claims that one of the guys from the original movie of The Secret is in jail. And there’s sometimes a lack of groundedness in these teachings; elements of fantasy creep in. “Blame the victim” arises.
My most serious qualm with this school of thought has to do with karma. As I currently understand it, Karma is a complex law with a long, long arc. I’m not so certain that it works so simply as “Do good and think nice, and because you’re sending good and nice vibrations out into the universe, good and nice will come back to you.” I think that sometimes what you did twenty-five years ago, or twenty-five centuries ago as a temple dancer in Egypt, can come back to bite you in the tushie. Sometimes we reap the fruit of a seed we planted eons ago.
Then there’s the relational dynamic. We have karma not just as individuals, but as members of our family, our generation, our country, our religion. We also have dyad karma. I am stretching the meaning of karma here to apply to the invisible field of thought and feeling, emotion and expectation and communication within which two members of a couple live. Eg, if you’re married to someone who thinks badly of you, or who is convinced that you embody a certain negative trait (which is probably their shadow anyway), it’s hard to overcome the stickiness of that. It’s easy to get trapped like a butterfly in a spider web. It can be just as toxic within a family or any other community, like a school. Structures of thought and connection arise, and they can be cages.
Still, The Power is full of truth and light. It is passionate in its desire to give to the reader and to improve the reader’s lot. I’m writing my personal reservations in the margins, but it’s worth reading. It’s always helpful to return to the fundamental touchstone of life: am I acting out of love or out of fear? That’s the choice. Love or fear. I like to read these kinds of books at night, so I’m uplifted in the hypnogogic state. I like to think that the positive impact on me will be more profound, if words about love and joy and peaceful abundance are sailing through my dreams.
I also recommend Mary T. Browne’s The Five Rules of Thought and Geshe Michael Roach’s The Diamond Cutter. Like Byrne’s book, they give to the reader. What all three books share, though The Diamond Cutter approaches it differently, is the need to discipline the thoughts. We spend decades learning how to read, write, and cipher, but we have to seek out the knowledge of how to use our own minds constructively. The Power can help with that.
Dinner with Friends
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Dinner with Friends

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Prelude No. 5 in D Major

There’s a great moment in the movie INDEPENDENCE DAY when the always watchable Brent Spiner, playing wacky scientist Dr. Brackish Okun, in charge of the secret alien research project at Area 51, says, “As you can imagine, they… they don’t let us out much.”
I laugh every every time I recall this quote, and Spiner/Okun’s affect, and not just because I relate to the crackpots, conspiracy theorists, misfits, and geeks of the world. It’s because, as a working mother of four children, I don’t get out much. Not as much as I’d like, for sure. And my monastic husband has, as far as I can tell, few social needs other than watching the Tour de France. He’d be content to spend 7 days a week in his studio, sculpting.
I’m not sure he even enjoys conversation with me. He says that when I die, he’s going to have me stuffed and mounted, so he can enjoy the pleasure of my company: in silence. (Kinda creeps me out, that.)
Which makes it all the more pleasurable that we’ve found another couple we both enjoy. I like them because they’re smart, funny, and good-hearted. Theoretically that makes an impression on Sabin. I suspect that what he really enjoys is that they are both successful working artists and they have a lot to say on the topic of art.
John Link is a mad genius of a musician and composer, who has translated Chopin’s preludes into vocal compositions for 5 voices, guitar, bass, drums and violin. “As Chopin meant them to be played,” he claims. Lori Belilove is a mesmerizing dancer and brilliant choreographer, and the dynamic head of the Isadora Duncan Foundation. Her “The Everywoman series: The Red Thread” is one of most moving pieces of dance I have ever witnessed. Sabin Howard is the greatest living figurative sculptor. I write fiction. So we come to the table, literally, representing 4 arts: music, dance, visual art, and story telling.
Last Friday Lori and John came to dinner. They were subjected to my cooking but didn’t complain, though they had every right to do so. Really, my salmon aux herbes Provencal came out with too many herbs, and not the right ones. It’s hard to mess up baked salmon, but my native ingenuity was up to the task. I think they forgave the cuisine because we got involved in a discussion of critical importance: the nature of creativity.
Lori talked about watching some of her dancers choreograph, how they do it for love. They want to be loved and appreciated, and their dance is both an offering of love and a request for love. I had to ask about a pure creative impulse that is a kind of radiance, a flowing forth from the core. Sabin, who is fundamentally solipsistic, favored that paradigm. John leaned toward the relational model; he wants his pieces received by an audience, as I want my books read by people.
Performers like to perform, and John and Lori are both performers. Sabin as a visual artist does not perform. He intends to create a piece that will, literally, stand forever. Bronze sculptures endure for thousands of years. Sabin’s vision of beauty and humanity are meant to stand the test of time. Music and dance are meant for something else–perhaps to intensify this moment now into timeless, transformative immediacy–though, naturally, John and Lori would dearly love for their work to survive them, and their grandchildren.
So, this business of creating art: I think of it as a disease. An infection. I have to tell stories because they roil about my brain like a fever. One story is barely written when I am starving to tell the next one. Perhaps the virus of art is the next topic at dinner?
SONOS fills the home with music
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SONOS fills the home with music

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Over the course of what felt like a particularly dreary and inelegant winter, I fell in love: with Mozart.

The gifted and lovely psychic Mary T. Browne advised me to listen to Mozart. Classical music had been only a distant interest, sparked mostly by watching dance performances. But, trusting the ineluctable Ms. Browne, I played Mozart.
The more I listened, the more I was entranced. The music has a balancing, peaceful effect, a sweet joy that’s a welcome surcease from the heartache of watching a 15 year old go off the rails, and listening to the self-righteous rantings of an ungrateful 19 year old. “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” wrote Shakespeare, in King Lear. And how right that master of human psychology was, whether the Bard really was Anne Hathaway’s husband, or he was Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe.
The point isn’t that everything important or meaningful about the human condition is found in Shakespeare, though that is true. The point is that the Andante in C major for Flute and Orchestra, K 315, makes my life better.
So I experimented with ways to imbue my home with music. The Apple wireless system with Airport worked well, and the app REMOTE on my iPhone controlled the system nicely. But I decided I wanted a more integrated look, feel, and sound, rather than having a Bose speaker in the dining room and a Sony speaker in the bedroom.
Ecco, SONOS. The Bridge plugs into my airport extreme and transmits to all the S5 players throughout the apartment. The speakers have good quality sound. The SONOS controller downloaded perfectly to my iMac, and the Sonos app to my iPhone, so I can DJ the music even from the bathroom. As for volume: it cranks!
We’ve discovered Pandora radio and Rhapsody. My husband Sabin, whose grandfather was a concert pianist and whose musical taste is more complex than mine, has his three favorite stations: Spanish Guitar radio, AC/DC, and Dvorak. My wild thing 15 year old daughter plays Glee Cast and Sexy Bitch radio. For my little one, there’s the Magic Kingdoms and Small Worlds station on Rhapsody. I have, okay, no scoffing, Rod Stewart radio, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart radio, and my Yoga playlist which includes Krishna Das, Cynthia Snodgrass, Deva Premal, a rockin’ Halleluya by Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, and some lush renditions of mantras like the great Om Tryambakam.
The Sonos system isn’t cheap, but it works well. There are a few glitches. Occasionally the music drops. Usually that’s a quick fix by switching channels in the control panel. I initially ordered four S5 units from the company; three arrived, and one showed up in Memphis as an empty box. Sonos was nice enough about it, but they wanted me to wait for the investigation to unfold. They weren’t altogether pleased when I articulated my belief that the empty box wasn’t my problem and I wanted another unit shipped to me pronto. To their credit, they did ship the replacement unit pronto, at great effort to themselves.
So “if music be the food of love, play on,” and fill my home with love!
AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS by Martin Seligman
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AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS by Martin Seligman

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Recently a wonderful opportunity came my way: I was able to tell a well-respected, practicing psychologist my objections to psychotherapy as it is currently practiced, and he listened carefully, and he responded with both clarity and respect. I have a chance to rethink my position with new insight.
Fine critical analysis is not always a gift. For those who follow Vedic astrology, I have Mars in Virgo rising. Astrology is descriptive, not causative. In my case it rather beautifully describes my forward movement (Mars) with critical discernment (Virgo) and how it pisses off people (energetic, non-diplomatic Mars, in the first house).
And to those who scoff at astrology: “I use astrology for the same reason I use the multiplication table, because it works.” This is a quote from Grant Lewi (1902-1951), an English professor at Dartmouth.
Astrology is a multi-faceted art and my chart yields a further description. Jupiter the great benefic sits in the 7th house, facing my rising sign. In Vedic astrology, Jupiter is in Pisces, its own sign, which creates a Hamsa Yoga, the swan yoga, for good luck and evolutionary progress. Jupiter aspects that rasty Mars of mine. It is surprising how often something good comes out of my forward movement.
In this case, the gift was twofold: one, the psychologist received and validated my careful observations (ever notice how few therapists can listen to anyone, or hear criticism?) and two, this thoughtful man responded with ideas that hadn’t occurred to me. His willingness to engage me intellectually gave me a new insights, new awareness. I enjoy that. I am grateful.
My beautiful step-daughter at Johns Hopkins is aware of my on-going debate about psychotherapy, and told me about a class she took at Hopkins called “Positive Psychology.” She sent her professor’s book to her dad for his birthday. Naturally, I pounced on the book.
And the book is fascinating. Dr. Martin Seligman makes the point that most current psychology is negative psychology: the study of despair, depression, organic illness, failure, self-sabotage, e.g., “discovering deficits and repairing damage.” What about the study of positive mental and emotional traits, like peace, joy, hope, faith, and optimism? Don’t we all want more of those in our lives? But those don’t get funded by grants so they tend not to be studied.
In my opinion, ‘positive psychology’ has largely been left in the hands of New Age self-help gurus and “The Secret” purveyors, which is mixed. Some of those people are selling snake oil, some of them are on to something. (No, there is no irony in a follower of astrology stating this truth.)
Seligman points out, rightly, I think, that people stand to benefit from studying “positive institutions that promote strengths and virtues,” that lead to “lasting fulfillment: meaning and purpose.”
Seligman admits to being agnostic and I am always surprised at the lengths to which ethical humanists go to avoid acknowledging a divine presence. What is the big deal about accepting the infinite field of all-consciousness in which we live and have our beings? Still, his well-written book builds toward an explanation of how to achieve meaning and purpose, and true happiness, in life. I recommend the book. It’s good reading. It’s a rich feast for thought.