Sabbath Day

I have found the perfect pre-church Sunday activity for me. Each Sunday morning I walk up to Fellsmere Park with an empty garbage sack, pair of dish gloves and a nice piece of classical music. I know others do not understand what drives me to do these things, but I wish they could feel what peace and happiness I feel in picking up garbage.

As a visitor to the park I am greeted by the early morning sunshine, the sound of the lapping Fellsmere pond and little ducks quacking their hello’s and how are you doings. Old Asian men and women swing their arms and backs in invigorating exercise and smile and say Hi with a polite nod. Frisky little dogs are out taking their morning romp. And I, picking up a few pieces of plastic bags, bottles, and Dunkin Donuts Styrofoam cups get to be a part of that. There is a purpose and a direction that I feel. And a pleasure in knowing that I am helping take care of the Earth. And a connection to other people.

I've been told that it’s working and not keeping the Sabbath day holy, but to me it feels holy and peaceful.

The only thing I can’t figure out is how the majority of the trash winds up in the brambles. Is that where people discard it, thinking that no one else will see it? Is it where the wind blows the unanchored cup? Yes, it’s in the thick of the brambles that I am always trying to tear away a plastic bag from the unyielding thorny bush.

I wonder how much I am like the thorny bush that refuses to let go of the garbage, or how much I am like the garbage that without weight and substance can be tossed and blown about? But mostly I think I am me, a steward over the park who takes joy in its existence and lends a helping hand.

Drugs

Lately, I find that the open use of drugs is becoming more and more acceptable and it makes my stomach turn. I am fearful of it as I would be rushing into a burning building. I want to stay as far away from it as possible and can’t possibly understand why anyone else is standing up close roasting marshmallows on the open flame.

I have always had this aversion to drugs. In fourth grade I read a book called Go Ask Alice. This book shook me to my core and I read it over and over. There was something similar in where me and my sister had come from, and where we could end up and it terrorized me. More than the Edgar Allen Poe book I got for Christmas the same year. So while my sister took a somewhat less traumatic path down ‘Alice’s’ road, I have stood firm and resolute against drugs and anyone who uses them. But they are everywhere.

I boarded the Blue line today to go see the sand sculptures at Revere Beach. The train was packed with a mixture of airport passengers and beach goers, three of which were stoned out of their mind. I sat a few seats up and across from them and watched in morbid fascination. They looked the very part that you expect drug users to look. Snaggled tooth and crazy snake eyes, mouth gaping open and delayed motions. When one woman would try to look up and focus, tremors raced through my body. I felt as if I were sitting with the devil himself.

At one point the man dropped a pill on the floor and it rolled between me and a young guy sitting across from me. The man teetered over to grab it off the sticky dirty floor of the subway car and popped it into his mouth. And they talked about their kids. They were somebody’s parents!

So it can almost be easy to be repulsed by this kind of drug user. But what about my co-workers who openly talk about smoking pot? Or getting wasted the night before? Or how about an article I just read from a journalist who went to a famous celebrity party and talked candidly about how everyone, EVERYONE does drugs? The article made me want to boycott movies for the rest of my life except movies are my drug.

And mostly it just makes me so, so, sad. I love having the control to move my fingers and talk and think clearly and to sleep and wake according to a natural rhythm. I can’t imagine taking something that takes that away from me.

I will never be curious to try drugs, but I am curious to know why others use them. I’m also curious to know why any adult thought these books were appropriate for a 4th grader.?.

My Happy Place

There is something about an animal that makes my heart happy and puts a smile on my face. It can be the wide long space between two big eyes on the nose of a cow, the spunky frolic of a spring lamb, or a cat’s paw curled over the eyes during a nap, and almost everything about a dog.

Tuesday was a windy day in Boston. Women walking down the sidewalk had to walk with hands holding down summer skirts, stray Metro newspapers blew in circles, eyes squinted against blowing sand, and one man kited down Boylston with a homemade sail attached to a skateboard. It was no tropical storm on the horizon, but just a summer wind blowing through town.

Walking past the held down skirts, swirling newspapers and avoiding the parasailing skateboard, I passed by a man walking a dog. It was a shaggy sort of dog like an English sheepdog. Shorn down in the spring, his growing coat was blowing in the wind. He had the look of a dog sticking his head out a moving car window. Eyes squinting with a happy look, a grin on the face, fur blowing back in the breeze. He trotted down the sidewalk like a Muppet on a field trip.

A few stressful situations into the week, I tried to find my happy place. Meditate. Focus. Relax. With out provocation, the image of the breezy Boylston street dog pops into my mind and I instantly smile. Disarming who ever was on the other side of the stressing situation. Oh, if only I could pet that dog!