A Hillbilly In The Zendo

Dear Aunt Martha,

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.