Little self Likes the F Word

I.

Shortly after mortgaging five and a half acres at the tail end of a small neighborhood, my husband and I installed a gate at the bottom of the drive as a polite way of telling the neighbors, and everyone else for that matter, that we’d rather they remain on the other side. It wasn’t long into our self-imposed arm’s length distance, so to speak, that the airplanes started to intrude on my quietude. 

The garden had become my sanctuary. With the gate to the property closed and the kids away, I’d relish the hours of planting seeds and soaking up the sun in perfectly preordained peace. Sure, the neighbors were having a pool party complete with pop music, again, but on my hill, under that oak, I could almost understand, almost remember, what mattered. 

Until— the airplane I hadn't planned for flew over.

Henry David Thoreau once proclaimed, “Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth”. Those planes lay waste the landscape of my heart as I searched for a world I could reconcile. 

Then they expanded the local airport. The jets grew larger, the flightplan more directly overhead—and lower. I would hear the rumble growing even before it crested over the mountaintop behind the garden. That steel pterodactyl flying so high above would be met with a bird of a different type as my middle finger, by reflex of my ire, would extend and curse that trespasser of the sky, my sky. 

For years, the perpetration, the penetration of my sacred space was met with this weighty gesture and the proper snarl of Fuck you! Being indigent and indignant for so long left me with few other words and a loss for how to express them. 

My little self liked the F word.

Fast forward a couple dozen of these uncomfortable confrontations, and there was an increasing fervor for extolling all the vitriol I could muster. Then—  I finally got told. This was one of those humbling moments where the cosmos conspires in order to tell you it’s tired of your shit.

Of all places, the messenger came on a Zoom call during a knowledge meeting on the subject of perspective. Sweet Adele, how you shook my world with those words, all the while smiling and stroking your cat. You said something like this: You know, I can really relate to what Maharishi was saying because you know all those planes, I seem to be in a flight path to the airport, and they used to just bother me so much. Now, I’m just thankful they stay up there. It really is all about perspective.

I think my jaw dropped, and then all I could manage was a wide, deep grin. I almost giggled.

II.

Ah, perspective.

III. 

My little self still likes the F word, and it smokes as much pot as it can. 

In fact, it likes weeds of all kinds. 

There’s nothing like a little homegrown and the chore of an untidy garden bed to keep it nice and detached, an ecstasy of numbness. 

Most days it wakes up resistant to the idea of asanas and meditation. 

It doomscrolls the latest media feed and gets sucked into the game.

Don’t even ask it to want to move until past 10:00 am.

Reluctance and coffee join it on the mat in front of the altar.

Then my dad leaves, and my father-in-law follows.

My daughters’ tears drown out everything.

But every now and then something aligns—

the veil gets thinner and the tears are fewer and far between.

Coffee and weed don’t seem as necessary for a while.

Hummingbird visits or spider weaves a new web.

Hawk circles overhead.

Owl hoots from the mountaintop and drowns out the plane.

Daffodils emerge again.

Fruits begin to bud on the trees, 

and self begins to remember—

even if ever so briefly.

Spirit whispers in my ear on a new moon’s night

as a reckoning births the finest thought of creation,

and a seed of perspective gets planted.

IV.

My little self evolves, ever-seeking, but never quite passing GO.

V. 

This time, a drone hovers directly overhead all that seems sacred.

Another bird launches itself into flight. 

It has been conditioned.

It chooses flight, fight, and freeze— and in that order.

But somehow, this time, I don’t remember uttering the curse that usually combines itself with that age old gesture—

maybe Self is returning.

VI.

Maybe. 

My daughter reminds me this is a polite way of saying No—

whatever that means.