Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Queen’s Chronicles: BEGIN AGAIN

September always feels like New Year to me. It carries so much more significance than does January 1. The first crisp hint of a chill in the air always shakes me out of my summer lethargy, wakes me, makes me more alert. It focuses and concentrates my attention. I can smell the possibilities of a fresh start in the air.

Reinvigorated by the sunny days and laze of summer, life now begins again in earnest in schools, government agencies, cultural institutions and businesses across the country. There is an unmistakable aura of enthusiasm and energy in the air, a palpable sense of intensified determination. This annually renewed resolve seems so much more natural than the resolutions we make at the turn of the calendar year.

Fall jumpstarts everything, including itself. Labor Day has become the popular indicator of autumn, rather than the equinox, which occurs three weeks later. In the same way, Memorial Day, which predates the solstice by three weeks ushers in the civic summer season. By this reckoning, school starts in the fall, even though it is still summer.

Most of us have been indelibly imprinted with the excitement and optimism of the first day of school. There is nothing quite so inspiring as buying blank notebooks, pencils you have to sharpen yourself and some brand new white shirts. So clean, so fresh, so hopeful.

The Jewish New Year falls in the fall. My memories of the High Holy Days that I celebrated as a child with my family have little to do with organized religion. Rather, I remember a domestic sense of auspicious new beginnings: major house cleaning, usually a new outfit to wear to temple and, best, we ate off of the good china with the real silverware.

I think of my birthday as being in the fall, but it is actually four days before the equinox. Our birthday is our own personal New Year. It is an annual reunion that we have with ourselves, and attendance is required. Our birthday is our periodic opportunity to take serious personal stock. “How am I doing?” as Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, would always ask. Like any new beginning, our birthday is an ideal time to sharpen our priorities, realign our perspective and rededicate ourselves to living the very best life that we can.

Every September I take time out of time to evaluate my past experiences and actions and to prepare myself mentally, physically and spiritually for the coming year. I usually retreat to some extent and fast to some degree during the two-week period surrounding my birthday. The new and full Harvest Moon, and the autumn equinox usually coincide.

This experience is intended to center me and slow me down. It is my birthday gift to myself. During my fast/retreat I devote myself completely to cleansing and centering myself: body, mind and spirit in readiness for the future. I rinse my system with fresh water and teas, I clean my house and altars and I use yoga, meditation and t’ai chi to flush my mind clear of the mental detritus that I have accumulated.

Since the early 1980’s, I have kept a birthday book. Therein, I ritually record an accounting of the past year. I process my impressions and my life lessons. How have I grown? What have I learned? And what is it that I just can’t seem to get through my thick skull? I plot my progress. I ponder my possibilities. I pour over my problems. I plan my goals.

This civic fall also marks the seven-year anniversary of September 11. Let us mark this poignant time by reflecting honestly upon our vulnerability in today’s terrifying political/economic climate, our culpability in the deadly repercussions that arise from our own chauvinistic attitudes and deeds, as well as our impressive individual and communal capacity for extraordinary acts of courage and devotion.

May this new season signal the beginning of a new era of planetary peace and plenty.

With blessings of best intentions and new beginnings,

xxQMD

Saturday, August 16, 2008

The Queen’s Chronicles: LETTING GO OF ALL THAT DOES NOT SERVE

I am doing a yard sale tomorrow. A GIGANTIC yard sale. I have been feeling an overwhelming urge to purge this past while. To clean out, throw out, release, discard. To distill and streamline all of my possessions.

This is a huge task, because I have many, many, all too many possessions. I didn’t always have too much. When I was 22, there was a fire in my apartment building, which I escaped in my pajamas. Everything else I owned was burnt, including one of my three cats. After the fire, I possessed literally nothing.

A manuscript of my writing was lost to the flames. It was ironically called Burnt Offerings. Among my most precious offerings were my grandmother’s jewelry and the exquisitely worked infant clothes that she had sewn for my mother, her girl baby. The fire also took my personal archive that used to be stored in my mother’s house before she did the Grand Purge: my scrapbooks, report cards, drawings, awards, photos, etc. The real important stuff.

The fire drove me out to First Street in my nightclothes and in total shock. Luckily, The Catholic Worker charity just happened to be across the street. I ran there barefoot and they gave me a pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers and a sweater. Now I owned three things.

The next day, I withdrew (with quite some difficulty, since I had no passbook or identification) my entire savings of $300. I went to a discount department store and bought underwear, toiletries and an outfit to wear to work. I paid for my purchases and left my wallet on the counter as I walked away, still in a daze. There was to be no more shopping till my next paycheck.

My boyfriend and I spent a couple of months in a Red Cross operated welfare hotel until we could save enough money to get an apartment, a furnished three room place in the Village where we lived for two years. Then I moved alone into a sublet loft for the next two years.

So when I moved into my new loft with my new boyfriend four years after the fire, I still owned next to nothing. I had a sleeping bag, an hibachi, which served as both a stove and a heat source, a box of books and a suitcase of clothes. Nothing else. Nada.

I have been avidly adding to my collections —furnishings, kitchenware, clothes, books, spiritual artifacts, art supplies, office paraphernalia, people, plants, pets —ever since. And now, 37 years later, I am moved to seriously edit and refine my needs and tastes. I want to be surrounded by only those things that are particularly special and meaningful to me.

It has become my practice to throw out, re-cycle, or donate one thing every day. This has been a great way to claim what is truly important to me and to discard what is not. But despite this daily ritual, I still am overwhelmed with accumulated items.

It seems to me that we spend the first half of our lives accumulating things and the second half getting rid of them, paring our possessions down to a manageable cache. This is prime time to check my baggage and lighten up my load.

With blessings of less, which sometimes really can be more,

xxQMD