When I moved back to the valley, much of my savings went into renovating the old house.  I added central heat and air conditioning, insulated everything,, and upgraded both the kitchen and bathroom, replaced the roof and windows and gutters.  It took months to get everything done and I have only recently settled into it enough that I no longer feel like I am camping out. I suppose you would say that city life spoiled me and I admire the way you lived your life without all the conveniences I feel necessary for comfort.

Then severe storms shut down everything in the valley for several days and I was helpless.  No phone service, no electricity at all, no internet. I had not unpacked the crates of books I shipped here, but found a few Zane Grey novels and a copy of “Smokey the Cowhorse “in the attic.  When I grew tired of reading, I came across the tattered cards you used to teach me Patience when I was in the second grade.

I lit an oil lamp as more thunderstorms boomed outside and spent an evening reminiscing about the quiet times I played the game while you did needlework by lamplight.  I wonder if it originated as symbolic of life and I learned why it was once called”  Patience”.  It’s the same game popularized by Microsoft and now called Klondike Solitaire.

The original layout can be the circumstances we are in or the life we are handed at birth.  We don’t know what is there until we turn them face up.  This reminds me of the Zen attitude of not knowing. The stock pile cards are options we may have and it will change as the contents of the stock pile diminish.

That is a fantasy that we are given in Western capitalist society. If we follow all the rules, we will end up with all our cards in tidy little piles in the Aces’ corner.  Frustration arises when we can’t uncover the cards we want or need and are stuck with incomplete piles. It takes time, observation, and patience to decide where to place cards and when.

Observing my inner world as I played was interesting.  The repetition and steady movements were almost like a ritual as I laid out the cards and drifted into a meditative headspace. I didn’t analyze or build strategy, just watched what arose and dissolved as I played the game, allowing them to settle just as we did when sitting on the cushion during formal meditation.

I was tempted to “cheat” by looking at the facedown cards beforehand and became frustrated when wanting/needing a certain card and it was not available. I was distracted by the interplay of colors and patterns when my need for controlling outcomes became unbearable. Sometimes I noticed the distraction and reminded myself to concentrate on the cards again, drumming up determination to do it correctly instead of wandering off into la-la land and missing obvious openings for card placement. Sometimes I stared at the layout, wondering how the cards would fit, unable to see moves and I was reminded of Roshi telling me to sit more, to keep sitting, when life circumstances were difficult. Eventually, I would see a move that felt obvious once I recognized it.

The desire and need for control were interesting to watch as I chafed against “the rules”. Too often I have tried to play by my own rules and have ended up with a mess.

Roshi and I have often talked about the need for rules and structure to provide parameters within which to work. There is a certain security that comes with observing and respecting boundaries as long as everyone involved agrees on them. Being the lone player in Solitaire is a way to observe our reaction to restrictions without the distraction required to cooperate with a partner or a team.

Electronics has produced a version of Solitaire that is combined with dopamine stimulation and gambling. I wonder what you would have to say about it if you were here for me to show it to you. There are bright colors, animation, and splashy screens as well a tinny, boppy music. Cheating by turning over cards ahead of the ability to play them is impossible. It is designed to entice people to put more money into their accounts to purchase more chances at winning and to induce a fugue state in which discernment and logic are minimized.  I confess to playing it often over the past few years and have wondered if outcomes are deliberately manipulated based on the amount of money in your account. After thousands of games I have played on my phone, I have noticed changes I can only blame on artificial intelligence.  Programmers tell me the cards are shuffled at random, but I tend not to believe it.  Perhaps that is my over perceptive paranoid pattern recognition kicking in.  I haven’t taken the time to record observations and screenshots.

The phone game does not allow for the introspection that manual play with an old deck on a tabletop does.  I hope that by upgrading the old house that I have not done to our history what electronics have done to this card game. I suppose I could justify it by saying that times change and my needs differ from what yours were.  Electronics have expanded my worldview in contrast with yours, which was limited to the immediate county.  This may drift into a contemplation of having no preferences and sameness and differences, too. There are the same rules with different presentations. Is it worth the time and energy to tally up the number of differences that have evolved as social mores have changed? I wonder what you would think of social media.  I don’t dare ask Caleb. I know what his reaction would be, complete with swear words.

I can’t set up a shrine to the past and refuse to change anything, but neither can I overlook current circumstances.  I wonder how many people would be content playing with plain cards versus the electronic game.  And how many younger people these days have ever been taught to play manual games. I remember talking about rules, restrictions, and rebellions with you one time when I was an angsty pre-teen.  You told me that the answer is always somewhere in the middle of two extremes and turned back to mixing up biscuit dough.

Photo by Zosia Szopka on Unsplash

Dear Aunt Martha,

I’ve been trying to keep a daily journal but writing to you is much easier.  I used to tell my students in composition classes that they had to write to an audience, so you are mine now.

Keeping myself clean and fed has proved to be more of a job than I thought it would be.  I didn’t realize how spoiled I am.  Friends once paid big money to spend time at retreats doing what I have to do every day now.

I once had a dishwasher, now I wash everything by hand.  I have to drive an hour and a half to a decent grocery store now and it’s too late in the year to put in a garden.  Fresh vegetables are expensive and I am grateful for the overflow from Caleb and Ann’s garden, but what am I going to do with all of this squash and zucchini? Ann is teaching me to can. There isn’t much room in the freezer to store more than weekly groceries.

Samu practice at retreats was fun and exciting, largely because for many of us it was not things we had to perform every day and there was an “odor of sanctity” about it that made it feel special, as if we were earning spiritual brownie points for doing menial work.  I had a housekeeper and  reliable appliances at home and  am reminded of Marie Antoinette playing at being a shepherdess. I wonder what my former retreat companions would do if they had to evict a 6-foot black snake from a chicken coop.

Speaking of chickens, they are not your original flock.  They were  dispersed by the hurricane.  I stuck my head into Tractor Supply looking for cat food when they had chicks and fell for the cute little balls of peeping fluff.  David, Caleb’s youngest, helped repair the coop and has taught me about caring for them as a 4-H project.

 I never knew domesticated fowl could be so funny. There is no way I could sacrifice one for dinner, even if the preacher came to visit.  I remember watching you do it and how you showed me the eggs inside the butchered hen. These are pets and are more entertainment than a television could ever be. The fresh eggs are a bonus and they lay enough that I can return Caleb and Ann’s generosity.

Caring for the flock and the lack of automation in the kitchen  caused me to realize that I have romanticized rural life based on trailing after you and Uncle Bud as a child. You were always a safe place for a troubled kid and I never knew how much hard work it took for you to keep body and soul intact.  Watching Uncle Bud do the milking twice a day was an adventure for a child, as an adult it would be part of the daily grind of responsibilities with no relief.

I think it’s human nature to romanticize our pasts as we search for parental figures to replace the ones we lost or never had.  There are jokes among professors about student crushes and tales told at cocktail parties after a few drinks.  I was privy to more than one student-teacher affair that went sour.

 I had an embarrassing crush on my first Buddhist teacher and spent hours staring at his crotch during dharma talks.  I will always appreciate his kindness and patience as he gracefully ignored my puppy eyes. Reality hit especially hard many years later when I tracked him down and he did not remember me.  I shed too many tears over him during our association, but healed a great deal from the experience.

Roshi talks about having no preferences. That’s a tough one to swallow, especially as basic survival depends on our atavistic brains picking and choosing. We gravitate towards the pleasurable and reject the uncomfortable while Roshi instructs us to embrace both. We talk about the Sandokai, the Harmony of Sameness and Differences, and try to apply it to our lives.  Meanwhile the Four Noble truths remind us that suffering arises when we want things to be different from what they are.

We put people, places, things, experiences, on pedestals and imbue them the qualities that we want for ourselves or are repelled by them.  The flock of chickens are hilarious entertainment. Each has a name and a distinct personality. Perhaps somewhere in my psyche I see them as the toddlers I was never able to mother or grant them mental processes that they don’t really have as I compare their behavior to people I know.  I wonder if that is what Roshi means when they talk about life as a mirror. Projection.

Maybe my next book will be about the chickens.

Love,

Geneva

Caleb said he thought you died before the storm hit. You were in your chair on the porch with your Bible in your lap and the house had not been prepped for weather. Widows were open, and some rain had blown in, but the old place had not been damaged. Patches was in the middle of your bed with a new litter of kittens.

Some civil engineer with a Yankee accent kept walking around the place muttering to himself. When I asked him what was wrong, he went on and on about how great-grandpa had built it to cooperate with nature instead of dominating it and ranted about the hubris of the construction industry. Caleb spit tobacco juice on the ground and said, “Maybe this time you damned flatlanders will learn a thing or two.”

Feelings are still running high in the valley 5 years after the hurricane. People grumble that the big tourist towns got most of the help and some are still living in temporary trailers. These old mountains still grab the clouds and squeeze them, reminding too many of what it was like before what we thought would last forever was blown away.

It’s raining today, the same steady, hypnotic drizzle that set in before the hurricane came along. Everyone in the neighborhood has a radio tuned to the weather channel now and they get nervous whenever they hear thunder.

They finally finished rebuilding the bridge and we can get back and forth into town quicker than taking the detour through Dutch Falls . I quit my job in California and moved into the cabin as soon as the courts said it was legally mine, but it took a while. I haven’t finished unpacking yet. Thank you for remembering me in your will.

I was away too long. I didn’t realize how much I had changed until I was buying gas at a convenience store in town. The kid behind the register gave me the side-eye, up and down look before saying, “You ain’t from around here, are ya?” His attitude changed when I told him who my grandparents were. But I’m not so sure if I fit in anymore. I hadn’t seen Caleb since before I left, when I met up with him to get to your place after the storm he said, “You put on shoes and went to town, didn’t ya? I hope ya didn’t get too big for your raising.”

Since moving back to the valley I’ve been faced with ingrained attitudes inherited from family about those who are different and unfamiliar. I thought they had been erased until I came back to my “roots.” It hit home. People in these hills remember history. To many post Civil War Reconstruction was yesterday. Family karma is passed down in subtle, social ways, too often unconscious until we take active measures to uncover them. It’s not easy and most folk don’t want to spend the time and energy to do it. I thought leaving would fix things. I had to manufacture anger like most young people do and I don’t think I ever fully separated. Life felt claustrophobic and I was not ready to marry a local boy and start spitting out babies. I wanted more glamour and excitement than that, yet your letters and care packages were my secret comforts. I reminisced about the hills under a pen name and managed to survive college by waiting tables. A PhD, three husbands, and a career teaching never filled the empty spaces in my heart.

When I traveled for book tours, spending large amounts of time in cities up north and out west, I resented being treated like an exhibit in a zoo. It sometimes came in hand to have people automatically subtract 30 points from my IQ as soon as I opened my mouth. Most often it came from the “professionals”, the educated social climbers, I encountered. They have asked me whether we wear shoes where I come from and if the movie, Deliverance, was a true story. Some dared ask if I belong to the Ku Klux Klan.

Gentrification is coming into these old backwaters much too fast. I was hoping it would take much longer for the tourists to find us. Last time I saw Caleb, he said that his bull had cornered a group of hikers up into some trees at the edge of the pasture. Apparently, they didn’t read the no-trespassing signs. Edith Hartwell caught a SUV with Florida plates parked beside her garden and a couple of strangers helping themselves to the corn and tomatoes. Locals won’t shop at the old store across the valley anymore since the Wilsons sold it to those people from up north. Last I heard they were opening branches in larger towns and selling nostalgia along with the horehound candy, fishing rods, and cast -iron pans.

I find myself walking in the space between being a local and an outsider. I became “gentrified” through education and experience and no longer fit into a defined tribe. I think Caleb is still mad at me because I refused to marry him straight out of high school, but it’s good to see that he found a nice wife and sturdy children.

Somewhere along the way I became a Zen student and I wonder how my practice will fit into my new lifestyle. Should I turn the farm into a retreat space or monastery? That feels too much like how the Wilson’s treated the old store. Thanks to Zoom, I can continue meeting with Roshi and the sangha as long as a bird doesn’t light onto one of the wires or a squirrel doesn’t short out a transformer.

I could ramble on for hours and too many pages, but the sun is going down and I need to feed the chickens. Patches’ progeny are nagging me for their gushy food and I’m hungry. Instead of sitting on the porch with a Bible, I sit in your chair with a sutra or a koan. There’s not much difference between the two.

I hope your celestial choir practice goes well and you get a break to peek down over the edge of a cloud once in a while to check on me. Much love, more later. Geneva