| A Cottage by the Sea |
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 I’ve been back a week. Jet lag taken care of, a pound lost, porch furniture put away; jigsaw puzzle started, library book read, friends visited; I’m fully immersed in life here. All good. I miss, however, interrupting my early morning walk along the Arno to stand at a bar to sip that first early morning cappuccino. One more thing, I love my early morning, black American coffee.
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 I am participating in an on-line course entitled ‘Growing a Rule of Life,’ sponsored by the Society of St. John the Evangelist, as Episcopal monastic order in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although I refrain from specifically religious or Christian comments in this blog, I think that the question and suggestions posed by Br. Curtis today speaks to all of us looking for silence, solitude and simplicity.
How can you find and maintain a healthier balance in your life? First, have beauty in your life, regardless of the challenges that face you. He suggests we consciously take beauty into our daily diet. Living in country I’m apt to take the beauty around me for granted, even on my walk. Today I will take in beauty. Next, every day plan something enjoyable in your life. Again, I take those moments for granted. Today I will plan something enjoyable. Do not ‘dis’ or disrespect yourself. There are so many way we can be negative about ourselves. Today I will not ‘dis’ myself. He also suggests we part with something every day. “Even in a monastery we accumulate things and I find it enormously liberating – I travel lighter – by parting with something every day. It will also change your relationship to things, where you’re aware that you’re stewarding something for as long as it’s helpful, and when it’s time to let it go, you part with it. Not cling, but part with it.” Today I will get rid of something. Finally, Br. Curtis urges us to create a Sabbath habit. Taking time away from busyness doesn’t have to be for a day but for a period of time. I’m pretty go at this now that I’m retired, but I can feel I’m on the run. Today I will be conscious of a Sabbath moment.  My new plan to deal with stuff and dust is going along extremely well. I’ve only cleaned out one shelf, so in terms of volume I’m winning no simplicity award. However, my mind is clear of fretting and perseverating about the what, when, how, and where of it all. That is mental simplicity.
As far as writing ‘Very Grateful’ is concerned, I doing a fair amount of thinking, which in the education field is called pre-writing. My plan is to open up the file and delve in when I return to the cottage on November 16th. For now I’m gathering grateful stories. My mom’s message lives on. The other day the 96 year old mother of a friend told me that since hearing of my mother’s final words, she has taken on naming gratitudes instead of worries when she wakes up in the middle of the night. How is that for mental simplicity?  Again I’m dealing with all the stuff (and dust) in this house. I like to say that I want simplicity in my life to be represented by a very few things—two sets of dishes, three changes of clothing, the books I really will read-- which may be why I love being at the cottage. As you might imagine, the owner from whom I rent has things all over the place, but they aren’t mine to care for, consider, or even dust. Here at home, however, the responsibility is mine and my husband’s.
It has come to me that I am dealing with a two-pronged concern. The first, and real one, is all the stuff. The second is all the thinking I do about the stuff, all the thoughts that consume my mind. Thoughts about too much stuff, the time it takes to deal with it, how and where to get rid of it, how to even begin….and on and on. The bottom line is that I just want all the excess stuff to go away. As I sit her writing, I realize that what is more important to me than simplicity of things is simplicity of thought about them. This morning, before 9AM, I organized the mud room. Summer towels to the attic, a mess of extension cords out to my husband’s work bench for him to deal with, books and white elephants bagged for the church fair. I did all this purging and organizing without preplanning or thinking. It was simple. My plan, after I post this on my cottagebythesea.net and lettingofstuff.blogspot.com blogs, is NOT to think about dealing with stuff until tomorrow morning, when I’ll take on some other area, perhaps just one shelf or drawer. Can simplicity of thought lead me to simplicity of things?  Here’s a new, simple way to getting a good night’s sleep, to sleeping through the night, to at least not waking up and staying awake. Eliminate the idea that in the middle of the night you need to know what time it is. Hide your digital clock; turn it around to face the wall; cover it with your bathrobe; get rid of it entirely if you don’t use it during the day.
I discovered this little trick to a better night’s sleep when our clock stopped giving accurate time. It was getting ahead of itself in its clock-like way, which was most annoying since I was counting on it every minute, day and night. So I unplugged it. But then what? No instant way to know time, especially in the middle of the night. After a week of sleeping without those red numbers lighting up the room, however, I realized that I didn’t need to know that it was 3 AM. More importantly, when I did awake in the night, I noticed that I was going back to sleep more quickly. Knowing the time was no longer one of those little triggers waking up my mind. My phone on my bed table is now my clock. In the early morning, when I sense that it is time to get up, I take a peek, and guess what? It is always somewhere around 5:30, which is when I like to get going. Um, maybe I don’t even need my phone. My body knows.  Where does the time go? That wonderful cliché says it all, or more to the point, says it often. I try to post every other day, but that doesn’t always happen. My last post, on August 17th , was on my brother’s 67th birthday. Where does the time go? Already he’s three days older; so am I; so are you, whoever you are out there reading this. What’s my point? Maybe I’m just observing. No, more than that, I’m thinking about how I have spent those three days, what I have done, and how I feel about it.
I’ve done some sitting around, working on a jigsaw puzzle, happy as can be. I’ve made it through the day safely and in good health. I’ve made progress toward a personal goal, namely working on the memoir I’m writing about my mom. I’ve done something for someone else by visiting some elderly friends. How has the time gone? It’s always a good day, or three, when I can get up in the morning and be grateful for all that I can do, and for the possibilities of the new day.  As I’ve mentioned before, for me a routine is fundamental to the success of this experiment in living in Florence, even if it’s only for two weeks. I strive for a routine of daily living, with leisure and long and short term purpose, not a fast-paced, tourist itinerary that is part of vacation travel. Of course, a schedule is important for wherever I live. I know I’m on the right track when I feel contentment with what I’m doing at the moment, when I’m not thinking excessively about what I’m going to do next, and when I’m creating meaning as I go along. Meaning, which is essential to a life well lived, appears in the particular work I do, in the experiences I have, and in my general feeling of well-being. Inner contentment; we know when we have it. Of course routine will vary but this morning it was pretty much as I like it here. At 7 AM I stopped by S. Trinita and enjoyed a half hour of silence before mass began. Then I left and walked along the Arno and over Ponte alla Carraia for my early morning cappuccino. Back to the apartment to check email and then to library to write. It was cloudy when I first started out, and raining while I was at the library. Now the sun is working it’s way through. I’ve eaten lunch and will go out for a walk, maybe stop at a museum. Such is my day with enough of a routine to feel purposeful. Three more days and then I’ll be home to live a different purposeful routine. This morning~  1/29/14 Here’s today’s ponder as I sit on the deck knitting and watching the sea. I suppose I could say that I’m setting some kind of intention to experience silence, solitude and simplicity, but that’s not true, at least the intention part. I’m just letting it all flow over me. I’m not at yoga.
At lunch the other day a friend, who has known me since high school, said that she considers me a very intentional person, that I set out to do something and I do it. She used the example of setting intention at the start of her yoga class. I understood what she was saying, but I wouldn’t use intention to describe how I go about doing what I do. To my way of thinking, intentionality implies a somewhat lock-step, mental plan for achieving specific, concrete goals; and that just isn’t the way I see my life from the inside. I’d say I operate from a spiritual flow more than an intentional time clock. What I accomplish is driven by my mission. Example: Each day at the cottage I hope/plan to complete a monthly chapter for the book I’m writing (today was May 2001). Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t. But it is the reason that I am writing the book that keeps me moving forward, chapter after chapter, even when I’d rather knit and watch the ocean. It is my mission to inspire, affirm and encourage others to find meaning in their lives that drives me. I suppose I could call that intention, but the idea of mission flows deeper into the arena of longing, which is a far cry from putting a check on to-do list. It’s a matter of semantics. But for sure, I wouldn’t be able to ponder this with extended periods of silence, solitude and simplicity. ‘Very grateful.”  Bitter-sweet! I’ve been thinking about the simple things and routines that I posted about the other day. Simple they may be, but more than that, they offer stability, which is also something I strive for. Things that are stable in my life, offer a sense of simplicity; what is simple, offers stability. They go hand in hand. Case in point.
Saturday some friends are coming for supper. The menu I have chosen (chili) is not a simple one as far as preparation is concerned. (Simple in this case would be takeout.) But it feels simple because I know how to put it all together. I have the ‘stability’ to cook the chili and rice, gather the condiments, make the cornbread, toss the salad, set the table and clean up afterwards. I’m not saying that simplicity is the only way. In order to get there we often have to go through complexity. I’m reminded of Piaget’s observations that learning involves a continual pattern of disequilibrium and equilibrium.  All the dishes I use except for a pan for cooking my oatmeal. Here are a few snapshots of what constitutes a simple day at the cottage. Simple things and routines I can count on.
• Prepared meals ready in the freezer—no cooking, no cleanup. • Cereal always a viable option. • Hot water in five seconds from the tap. • Wearing the same clothes every day—no wardrobe decision • Same three basic walking routes to choose from • Safe surroundings. • Wash my dishes immediately after using—no dishwasher to empty. • Bed by 9:30, up by 5:30. • Same but different sunrise every morning. |
