Marching to the beat of the Falun Gong

I don't know if the Chinese really will take over the world. But one day last week, they took over my neighborhood.

I was on my way home from the grocery store, taking the hair pin turn onto my hillside street, only to find the access blocked by an old white station wagon. The driver was letting out an Asian man and woman in their twenties. As soon as their feet hit the ground, they raced to my car and knocked on the window, brandishing brochures for Shen Yun, an entertainment in the grand Chinese tradition. Music, dance, spectacle, culture, acrobats, something for the whole family. I rolled down my window. It was evident from our brief interaction that these folks spoke not a word of English beyond the two or three they'd learned by rote. "No, thank you" wasn't registering, so I smiled and took the pamphlet.

An hour later, I set out for my hill walk. Everywhere I went, I encountered Chinese folks with minimal English skills, handing out the same four-color brochures. And they weren't all determined young adults in their twenties. I saw a couple of old ladies huffing and puffing up the high-grade hills, putting handouts in every mailbox. I walked fast but one intrepid woman caught up with me. Though I shook my head no, she kept trying to foist the handout on me, so I defaulted to international sign language. I pointed to my chest for I. Then, I did the walking sign with my fingers. Next, I did the thumb and index around the eyes binocular sign. I ended by pointing to the brochure. I. Go. See. Program. She nodded solemnly, once, and walked away. Thrilled by my own non-verbal communication skills, I did a preemptive strike, in international sign language, on the next two brochure distributors I ran into. Unfortunately, they looked at me as though I were insane. Eventually, I reached higher ground and stopped running into Shen Yun canvasers.

The first thing I did when I got home was get my google on. I thought Shen Yun might be fun holiday night on the town for the nuclear fam. Since we're all rigorously unsentimental, secular contrarians, A Christmas Carol does not do it for us. (This year, we sprang for a night of satire with John Oliver and a bluesy new year's shindig with the Tedeschi Trucks band). Besides, I was curious. There was money and a sense of mission behind this Shen Yun advertising push and I wondered whether this was some kind of good will PR initiative on the part of the Chinese government. In the days that followed, I would see buses role by with Shen Yun bus sides, billboards along 101 and a plethora of newspaper ads. If it was a Chinese PR effort, they were spending beaucoup bucks.

My assumptions were proven to be horse pucky when I found this internet article from the Chicago Chinese Consulate. The article is enititled Shen Yun, a Political Tool of Falun Gong. According to the writer, a functionary at the Chicago Chinese consulate, the performance depicts the Chinese authorities as persecutors of Falun Gong practitioners. Which of course is the truth. The Chinese have arrested some 30,000 of their Falun Gong practicing compatriots.

Anyway, in uptight, indignant prose, the consulate spokesperson dissects every aspect of the performance and how it besmirches China's reputation. Here's an excerpt:
"In the name of promoting "traditional culture", Shen Yun Performing Arts presents these shows for more than merely cheating the audience into the theater. By publicizing the "persecution" on Falun Gong, it plans to make the show into an important platform for Falun Gong organization to publicize its cultic theories and to propagandize the heretical ideas of Li Hongzhi in the name of promoting "divine culture" so as to appeal to good-natured Chinese and foreign audiences not knowing the truth and to realize their evil purpose of exerting mind control over them."

Got that? It's quite a rant. You can't help but wonder whether the guy is a true believer or just angling to climb up the party hierarchy.

I am familiar with Falun Gongers - I grew up in DC and spent a long stretch of time there as an adult. There were always a handful of Falun Gong protesters on the small grass circle in the middle of the roundabout mid-Connecticut Avenue, in front of the Chinese embassy. I couldn't find a photo of those little gatherings online, but here is a protest at the Mall in DC.


China, like all totalitarian states, doesn't recognize the right to assembly unless it's a government-organized shindig. Churches, clubs, political groups, any entity in which a group of people might band together and exchange ideas, is suspect. Falun Gong is especially threatening because there has been a personality cult around its founder, Li Hongzhi. Li is thought to be living in New York city with his wife and daughter since 1998, but has disappeared from the public eye. Falun Gong, which combines elements of Buddhism, Taoism and Qigong breathing and meditation, is his creation. And there is no doubt that Li has some strange beliefs, and some reactionary ones.

• The goal of this take on Qi Gong, an ancient Chinese practice based on the idea of energy flowing through the body, is for the practitioner to gain enlightenment and immortality. And that would be physical immortality. Li maintains that if they just practice hard and long enough, old women will start menstruating again and old men will see their ear hair fall out. (OK, so I made up the part about the ear hair).

• True believers don't need science or medicine. Li can heal anyone who really has faith in Falun Gong – unless you have a terminal illness or are mentally ill, in which case, he won't attempt to cure you because you can't focus enough to practice.

• Cultivating Falon Gong means you get a Falun, a colorful wheel representing the universe, installed in your lower abdomen. (Sorry, I searched in vain for information on the actual installation process, or whether you can call SEARS to schedule it.) Although the wheel is represented as a colorful circle containing a backwards swaztika, it is not a physical object. (If it were real, some hipster would have had one implanted in his navel by now).The metaphysical wheel absorbs energy from the universe when it rotates clockwise. When it rotates counter clockwise, it releases waste material, which makes me wonder whether one poops more post falun-implantation.

• Aliens have infiltrated the human population and are responsible for most technological innovation. They control us and are developing cloning so they can eventually replace us.

• Affection, love and friendship are all "sentimentality". The Falun Gong practitioner must relinquish human affection in order to "practice cultivation".

• Homosexuality and interracial marriage are immoral and there are different heavens for people of different races, at least for those slackers who are unable to achieve immortality through their practice. Not sure where the biracial people end up.

• In order to cultivate his or her "supernormal energy", the practitioner must do the Five Exercises, a series of tai chi- like moves.

• This is the final period of the Last Havoc.
Okay, I'll give them that one.

Since 1989, he Chinese government has been persecuting Falun Gong practitioners through the use of propaganda, arrest, re-education, imprisonment and torture. It's hard to understand why. Certainly, Li's flock shares some loopy and reprehensible views regarding science, race and sexuality, but that fails to explain why the Chinese government finds them so threatening. The Falun gang is non-materialistic, non-violent and apolitical. Rather than seek to change the reality of life under Communist rule, they live in their own alternate reality. The Falunites are not dangerous dissidents, oppressed creative geniuses or passionate revolutionaries. They are gentle, harmless goofballs with a right to their wacky beliefs and ritual workout sessions. All they claim to seek is "Truthfulness, forbearance and compassion." And of course, Enlightenment.

Here in the United States, we have formed a government based on a different type of Enlightenment, that of 18th century European humanists like the French Philosopher, Voltaire. A fellow whose most famous quote captures the essence of a free society. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Kind of how I feel about Falun Gong.

Links:

Saved by a DVD

No, we're not political.

Oh yes, you are..

Wild Turkey

I can only think of two reasons a person would decide not to live in the Oakland Hills. If you have children, the first is a biggie – the school system. Budgets have been eviscerated and teachers laid off, and there's no silver lining. The other reason is as sensible as it is theoretical. The peaceful, eminently walkable Oakland Hills, with their Eucalyptus Groves, backyard redwood trees, forest fauna and breathtaking views of San Francisco Bay, sit right atop the dreaded Hayward Fault. Personally, I realize parking my butt here is seismically unwise but I love it – the cool, moist air, the 6-point buck preening on the patio, the occasional, environmentally incorrect whiff of woodsmoke from a neighbor's fireplace, the dense fog giving way to sharp blue skies. Since we moved here from Orinda last Summer, I've been getting my exercise climbing the steep, meandering streets, staking out my new territory.

I was on one of these exploratory ventures, walking briskly, mindful of the waning day, when I came upon a flock of wild turkeys. It wasn't my first turkey encounter. A few weeks earlier, I had stopped to observe two adult birds and a couple of chicken-sized young'uns pecking around someone's front yard. When I pulled out my cell to photograph them, it spooked one of the youngsters. He darted under a car and immediately got stuck. For five long minutes, I could hear him flapping his wings and peeping hysterically. I was just looking around for a stick to try and nudge him to freedom when he managed to extricate himself from the undercarriage.

This time, there were at least a dozen birds milling about, mostly hens. (Immature male turkeys are known as jakes, and adult males are called toms or gobblers).They had taken over the backyard and carport of a small home along the road and were puttering around like they owned the place. Their muted black and brown plumage blended into the mulch and fallen leaves, but their fuschia faces screamed dinosaur. It's a family resemblance: turkeys descend from carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods. Over hundreds of thousands of years, theropods got smaller, developed feathers and evolved into the first birds.

So what are those strange growths on the turkeys' faces? Or rather, on the male turkey's faces. The female,or hen, has a more discrete, pointy profile and a bluish head. The long, flabby red thing that hangs from a Tom turkey's forehead is a snood. The fleshy crimson blob that covers his neck is a wattle, and the bumpy, wart-like growths that give the wattle its texture are caruncles. Snoods and wattles function a bit like mood rings. When the Tom is hot to trot, his facial nasty bits get engorged with blood and becomes bright red. But if he catches sight of a coyote, or maybe a rifle-toting human, his snood and wattle go blue with fear. And if the Tom isn't feeling well because, maybe, somebody told him his brother was on the menu for Thanksgiving, that jiggly face and neck fade to a pale pinky beige.


This is also a snood. They were big in the forties so they're way overdue for a comeback. This could be your chance to be a trend-setter.


This is also a wattle. On humans, it is not considered sexy.


This is not a waddle. I think it's a case of testicular migration.

Turkeys are sexually dimorphic, meaning the genders are two different sizes. The male can be formidable – larger and brighter in color than the female, and weighing as much as 38 pounds (The biggest wild turkey ever recorded). Turkey hens are daintier, maxing out at around 12 pounds. While turkeys all have 3-toed feet, the toms have an extra "toe", really more of a sharp spur behind each of their lower legs, which they use for fighting. Male turkeys also have a "beard", a tuft of hair-like feathers that grows from the center of their breast. 10-20% of females have a much smaller version of this same feature. Whether the bearded ladies are feistier, I do not know. Both hens and toms have the amazing ability to rotate their heads 360 degrees, like in The Exorcist, minus the projectile vomiting.

After my turkey encounter, I don't need to do research to tell you that they have a wide vocabulary. They cluck, yelp, coo, purr, cackle and tweet. The Toms can also make drumming and spitting sounds using organs in their chests called air sacs. (Air sacs supplement the lungs and all birds have them, because flight requires a high metabolic rate and extra oxygen). The one thing I didn't hear any of my neighborhood turkeys do was gobble. As it turns out, only the males gobble, and only when they are in the mood for love.

Male turkeys are polygamous and mate with as many females as they can. Don't tell the kiddies, but the classic turkey silhouette that's a mainstay of elementary school art projects is actually a turkey come-on. They fan out their tail feathers and puff out their chests to show off their beards and impress the hens. Toms are total bros and like to do their strutting in pairs, usually a dominant bird and a more passive one. The top tom gets the hot hen, and his sidekick gets her girlfriend with the beard. After mating, the females make nests in shallow holes in the ground, which they cover with vegetation. They lay one egg a day over the course of 10-14 days. Once the "poults" hatch, they leave the nest within 24 hours, never to return.

Like their number one predator, man, turkeys are omnivorous. They eat all kinds of plant parts, from tree bark to grasses, seeds, nuts and berries. They have a fondness for insects, and will occasionally consume amphibians and small reptiles. The wild turkey population of the United States is estimated at around 7 million, and as their natural territory shrinks, they are moving to the suburbs. A backyard bird feeder is like a candy store to a turkey, and once he starts pecking round your yard, he will quickly take over and invite all his friends. They'll poop where they please, snack on your flowers and vegetables, scratch up your car and patio furniture and maybe even go after your dog. If turkeys get over their fear of humans, they can get nasty and have been known to attack people – not unreasonable behavior considering our annual November ritual. But now that they're starting to organize, they just might put Thanksgiving out of business. I hear the National Wild Turkey Federation has thousands of members.

Pix from my turkey encounter











Side Dishes

Yes, they really do descend from dinosaurs

Take pride in your wattle

This claims to be the National Wild Turkey Federation, but the members are all human.

Reporter gets attacked by wild turkey

Shake, Rattle, Rock and Roll

Every region has its disasters. Tornadoes in the Midwest. Hurricanes in the South. Firestorms in the Southwest and the Republican congress in Washington DC. Since I live in the Bay Area, I'm supposed to be worried about earthquakes, which I confess, I am not. We are among the 90% of local idiots who are totally unprepared for The Big One. We don’t have an emergency water supply. Our stash of canned goods consists of smoked oysters, water chestnuts and anchovies. I’m sure there’s a flash light in the house somewhere, but I’m equally certain it’s out of batteries.

It’s easy to live in denial when you’re married to a native who thinks the best thing to do when a quake hits is jump into bed and get busy “so you can really feel the earth move.” In truth, we haven't had a single seismic event since we moved out to NorCal four years ago. When the Virginia quake hit last month, I was almost jealous. Gargoyles were tumbling off the National Cathedral while the ground here in the nation's earthquake capital remained calm as a meditating monk. You'd never know our place in the Oakland Hills was barely a mile from the Hayward fault.


With the Hayward to the west and the San Andreas Fault to the east, San Francisco Bay is the meat in a seismic sandwich. The San Andreas is a locked fault, which means the pressure between two opposed tectonic plates is equalized. If one of them suddenly gives, the consequences could be catastrophic. The Hayward fault, on the other hand, is a strike-slip fault, where two plates move past each other at a rate of a quarter of an inch a year, in a phenomenon known as fault creep. You can see evidence of this geological migration all over the East Bay.

Having lulled myself into a false state of seismic security, I was typing away in my home office. It was a glorious, sunny afternoon and I bitterly resented having to stay indoors and work. I was tweaking a hospital brochure when a sound like a distant door slamming jolted me out of my seat. Then, the shaking began. My heart upped its pumping. I felt a throbbing in my eardrums as the blood rushed to my head. A decorative tin toppled off an end table. Windows rattled and the dishes clattered in the cupboards. The whole thing lasted about 20 seconds. If it's true that animals can predict earthquakes, then my dog is either an idiot or one cool customer. He was at my feet, gnawing on a rib bone when the quake hit. He never even looked up.

Within seconds, everyone was on Facebook. (OK, everybody over 40. Everybody else was on Twitter). "Did you feel it?" " We sure did." "That was a good one." "4.0, I looked it up."

No damages, no new cracks in the wall. Just Mother Nature reminding everyone one who's boss. But I had a decision to make because that night, we had tickets to see Paul Simon at UC Berkeley's Greek Theater. The campus literally straddles the fault line and there was a good chance we would be experiencing aftershocks, or worse, another quake.

Built in 1903 with a donation from William Randolph Hearst, the Greek Theater is an outdoor venue with 8,500 uncomfortable cement seats. If you're smart and thrifty, you sit on the steep hill facing the theater. Get there early and you have a decent view from the lawn seats closest to the stage. Plus, you can enjoy a picnic along with the concert. Do your best to ignore the fact that the Greek sits just east of the Hayward Fault and has an official seismic rating of "very poor". (One block over, the Cal Memorial Stadium, where the Golden Bears play football, is literally bisected by the fault, which runs goalpost to goalpost. I think their seismic rating is "abysmal." Or maybe "horrendous.")

In the end, we took our chances. My husband would never have let me chicken out anyway. Paul Simon had a solid opening act, a very young folk singing duo called the Secret Sisters. They were a little too hillbilly for my spouse, but I enjoyed them. We were finishing our steak and gorgonzola salads when the Sisters left the stage. We sprawled out on the grass and got comfortable as we waited for the main attraction.

At precisely 8:16 pm,right before Paul and his band came out, the ground beneath our bottoms heaved again. We felt like fleas being shaken off by a giant dog. The aftershock, as we later found out, was a 3.9 on the Richter scale. The crowd roared and applauded, and five minutes later, Paul Simon arrived on stage. With a little help from Mother Nature, he rocked the house.


Find Berkeley on the map and travel down the red fault line towards Oakland. The area with a little yellow circle is about where we are - we have a head-on view of the Bay Bridge. I have no idea why the map maker created that circle, and I'm not sure I want to know.


Examples of "fault creep"

Extra Credit Reading:

•More about fault creep

•Bay Area Quake 101 I learned from my hair dresser that the entire U C Berkeley Geology Department lives in a section of the Berkeley Hills near Indian Rock Park. That's where the bedrock is, which means when the big one hits, the ground will not liquefy under your home.

Work in Progress

Artwork by Junior

If my son's adolescence had a theme song, it would be this. I only speak, of course, from my perspective. From his vantage point, that theme song would probably be a track from a subgenre of one of the 100+ varieties of metal music.* Or a meandering modal jazz meditation by John Zorn. Or maybe one of the Tuvan throat singing ditties he so enjoys practicing at the dinner table no matter how many times we beg him to stop. But I digress.

Suffice to say that it's been quite a ride, but he seems to be getting it out of his system, whatever "it" may be. The kid is serious about music and art and has enrolled in community college. In addition to the evening classes scheduled for working people and night owls (guess which one he is?) the boy actually signed up for a 10 a.m. class. Better yet, he manages to get himself out of bed for it, although he's as irascible as a grizzly coming out of hibernation and has to brush his teeth in the car.

In the immortal words of Bob, "Baby steps, baby steps." Thus it was that my son and I recently spent an afternoon together without a single skirmish. Less a baby step than a huge leap forward, since this is something we have not managed, or even attempted to do, in at least six years.

Since the boy is studying cubism in art class, I suggested we go see the Picasso exhibit at the De Young in Golden Gate Park. To my surprise, he agreed. We had a nice lunch in the museum cafeteria and then hit the exhibit. The young Artiste's comments were insightful, visually sophisticated and funny. At one point, he stopped to point out the fact that one of the Picasso drawings looked a lot like George W. Bush. The woman behind us chortled – it was true.

We followed our foray into high culture with a pop culture festival in Little Japan. The event consisted of numerous tchotchke booths selling manga, assorted pokeman-like objects and wigs in purple, pink and teal. Chubby young women wandered around in stylized sailor suits and Little Bo Peep outfits. Their boyfriends were in costume too, but I'm too Japanese Pop Culture challenged to understand what they were wearing or why.

The kid and I concurred that we couldn't relate to people who dress like anime characters when it's neither Tokyo nor Halloween. Since he normally makes a point of arguing the opposite of everything I say, this was a definite breakthrough. We even agreed on a CD to listen to on the ride home, David Bowie's Hunky Dory, which he had bought me that week as a gift, just because.

Maybe none of this sounds at all remarkable to you. And maybe you haven't spent the past six years attempting to raise a "troubled teen." Maybe you've never sat around helplessly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Believe me, there's always another shoe. It's as though you'd given birth to a centipede.

My husband and I have been through enough drama for three separate movies on the Life Time channel. Except actual life doesn't come with a remote control, and our trial-by-teen has left me looking a hell of a lot more shopworn than Debra Messing. My current appearance is more akin to Weeping Woman, Picasso's famous portrait of Dora Maar.

Like my son, I'm developing a newfound appreciation for cubism.



*A sampling of metal genres and sub-genres: Heavy/Traditional, Speed/Thrash, Death, Black, Orchestrated/Symphonic, Power, Doom, Progressive, Gothic, Electronic, Folk/Viking, Blackened Death Metal (not to be confused with blackened redfish), Symphonic Power Metal, Melodic Death Metal (Melodic? Really?), Grindcore, Technical Death Metal, American Hardcore and many, many, more. All loud, ugly, testosterone-driven and beloved of adolescent boys and homicidal Scandinavians.

Holding my breath

Some things are inevitable. For example, when I ordered a dinner-sized Mediterranean salad with teeny tiny olives lurking under the lettuce, it was inevitable that I would crack a tooth. And when we lived under an enormous hundred-year oak that tilted protectively toward our house, it was inevitable that hurricane winds would blow it down on the roof. It was also inevitable that the insurance would find a way to screw us (actually two ways). Now that I live in the stunning, best-kept-secret Oakland Hills, it is inevitable that my dog will get royally skunked.

I first became aware of the danger while walking Winston before bed. It gets really dark up here - streetlights are about as rare as Republicans in Berkeley. If there's no moon out, you just stumble through the night until some motion detector flashes its disapproval at you. My dog and I were making our way toward a lamppost 100 yards away when a long black shadow undulated across the illuminated section of road. It moved with the fluidity of an animated ink blot being painted by some unseen hand. Too small to be a cat or a racoon, too big to be a possum, or a rat. Winston barked and lunged and pulled on his leash but I held on tight. The shadowy creature paused, stuck its tail up into the air like an exclamation point and trotted off. A skunk for sure.

Fair game as far as my yorkie is concerned. Rodents are his calling. His ancestors were bred to control the rat population in the Yorkshire coal mines. Small mammals to Yorkshire terriers are like catnip to cats. And Winston is no Paris Hilton purse pet. He's big boned and well fed and perfectly capable of taking on a skunk. Or so he thinks.

Until I moved to the Oakland Hills, I had only had one experience with skunk proliferation, on a hike in Point Reyes. It was a foggy, monochromatic day, but the skunks were in high spirits. Maybe it was mating season. They were leaping vertically out of the brush all around me, their little black and white coats a stark contrast to the drab, dry grasses. I was reminded of one of those kiddy arcade games, where you have to smack down a plastic critter before he retreats into the console and another one pops out. I don't know if the skunk-folk around here wish they were back in the wild, but they seem pretty well-adapted to me. I have yet to walk Winston without running into them. Darting out from under my car, conferring in pairs in the middle of the road, sashaying across the street like they own the neighborhood. Even when they're keeping a low profile, I get olfactory reminders of their presence, a whiff of angry skunk or a blast of dead skunk in the middle of the road.

Anyway, I want to be prepared, so I went down to the local pet supply and asked for emergency deskunking supplies. They were sold out – the entire shelf was empty. The girl at the register told me it's hard to keep up with the demand. At least three skunked dogs are brought in for a bath every week.

Like I said, it's inevitable – Winston is overdue.

My Electronic Lover

Advertising, which, by the way, is my trade, first violated my privacy when I was in my early forties. I had had a miscarriage and I took it really hard. Exactly a month before what would have been my due date, a FREE carton of Similac was delivered to my door. It was a mind fuck I did not need as I was just getting over the initial event when the mail man dropped off my FREE formula.

Target marketing, of course, is not exactly news. I remember when I first started out in advertising, back in the late 80s, I learned, to my horror, that I was a" Volvo-White-Wine-And-Brie." That was an early inkling that I wasn't nearly as special as I'd like to think.

Fast forward to the golden age of electronic marketing. Now, the targeting isn't just more precise, it's instantaneous. Recently, I googled a mental illness because I was worried about a loved one (who thankfully is fine). For the next month, every time I went online, I was greeted with adds for brain drugs to treat the condition.

I work at home and am on Facebook and Linked In quite a bit. Since I am naturally gregarious, I must take my mind out for the occasional walk. As a result, the entire web knows my business. Lets say I recommend a book on Linked In. The next time I go on Amazon, that book is in my face, along with others featuring similar subject matter, or by the same author. "Buy me, buy me!" they scream. But I am so creeped out, I'm not buying any of it. (And like most people waiting for the other economic Doc Martin to fall, I'm not buying much of anything).

Sometimes, the targeting doesn't work because it equates curiosity with sustained interest. Like when I went to Sarah Palin's Facebook page, out of sheer voyeurism. I got my comeuppance. For days, I was bombarded with mega churches and right wing political stuff. It was as though my computer were possessed by demons. Finally, I got smart and started clicking offensive.

Most of the time, the spiders do their job with graceful diligence. I sign every lefty-environmento-human-rights'ish petition that comes across my mailbox. And I admit, I have been lured into buying a concert ticket or two – my enthusiasm for music trumps the creep out factor. But damned if those bloody algorithms don't know me better than my husband does. The roots folk music, the spas I'll never frequent but like to read about. Never in a million years would the dear man send me a link to that dramatic Canadian Inn on a forlorn spit of rock overlooking the Pacific. You can almost hear the crash of the surf. " I am so there," I call out to my nameless, faceless electronic lover.

But whether it's through intrusive advertising, or whether we are willful participants in helping Pandora suss out our exact musical tastes, having one's mind mined on a regular basis, and being fed so many spot-on bits of bait, does bring up questions of identity. Certainly, it's disturbing to think that one's personal take on life could be reduced to an algorithm.Our tastes and opinions are why we dress and look the way we do, have the friends, romantic partners and careers we have. They are one of the filters through which we view the world.

My husband always says I'm so predictable. My electronic lover thinks so too.

Om Out of Range

Meet Baba Orum. Not his real name. In fact, I have no clue who this guy is, but I've taken enough yoga clases to tell you that he is floating on a lotus blossom. India's version of the waterlily, the lotus is a swamp flower and a symbol of purity and transcendence. Note that Baba is draped in orange, the color of enlightenment. Why Baba has racing stripes on his forehead, I do not know. What I do know is if I am to ever start meditating, it can't be under the tutelage of someone who would photoshop himself onto a flower, like a big old bearded bumble bee.

I need to start meditating. I have an unquiet mind, a truckload of guilt and an unlimited capacity for worrying. A person like me should meditate or she will drive herself and others insane. But I am a die-hard Western rationalist and I require the right class. I ruled out doing the David Lynch Transcendental thing because the franchise aspect creeps me out (as does David Lynch). I also decided against the "immersions" held at several of the yoga studios I frequent because they were too steeped in Hinduism and I am not about to start worshiping the elephant god. Finally, I lucked into the perfect teacher for me. One of my yoga instructors, a gentleman with a doctorate in psychology from an Ivy League School, who studied under Jonathan Kabat-Zinn. In addition to the impeccable credentials, he has a calm voice and a pleasant yogic demeanor. And while I'm not in the market and he's not on my team, he is easy on the eyes.

Class is every Wednesday evening. There are a dozen other students. Two are seekers, building on a yogic or Buddhist base. One woman is clinically depressed. Two more are stay-at-home moms for whom a candle-lit bubble bath is no longer sufficient sanctuary. Others are looking for a mind-over-matter approach to chronic physical pain, or simply a way to deal with life's constant barrage of tsuris*. We do an hour of meditation and or yoga and then we have a 15 minute break with thoughtfully provided snacks and water, followed by another hour of discussion.

Now here I will reveal how far I am from achieving enlightenment. Or even equanimity, which may be the same thing.

There is a lady in the class who consistently interferes with my mindfulness. She suffers from depression and likes to talk about it, in rushed, anxious sentences that trail off because she's already off on another tangent that will fizzle out the same way. She is also, poor thing, a relentless Debbie Downer. At break time, she found out another student was from New York and went straight to "Where were you on 911?" Turns out the other lady was a block away and had to run for her life, a story she may not have wanted to revisit in meditation class. But as 911 Lady gamely started telling her story, and we all respectfully turned to listen, Annoying Woman interrupted to tell us how SHE was on 45th street watching it on TV and everything felt so distant it was like it wasn't happening. (Apparently she's both depressed and a narcissist – if it's not happening to HER, it's just not happening). End of break, Thank God.

The second half of class, our teacher started to get all scientific and neurological. The subject was stress, and he was explaining how the stress hormone cortisol destroys the brain five ways. (As a boomer, I am finding it really hard not to make a Wonder Bread joke here.) I was silently calculating who, between me and my husband, has more stress-induced holes in their grey matter when Annoying Woman jumped in with both feet. She had a thought about the cerebral cortex she simply must share. Her own cerebral cortex took more twists and turns than a roller coaster as she shared for the duration of the class. The teacher demonstrated compassion and yogic tolerance and let her ramble while I tried really, really hard to get my loving kindness on.

I emailed our guru a few days later:

I am really enjoying your class, and am ambivalent about writing this email. However, I was frustrated by the way the lady with depression took over the second half of class last week. Stress is THE reason I am in your class, and I was enjoying your presentation - especially since I am one of those nerdy Western types you mentioned who appreciate scientific explanations. It felt like she hijacked the class, and frankly, I know she means well and is a vulnerable person, but half the time I have no idea what she is talking about, and I'm not sure she does either. Ironically, I was finding myself getting stressed out by the fact that she wouldn't stop talking, and I wanted to get back to what YOU had to say.

I realize some of this is me. I am a fast-talking, high strung, impatient, cut-to-the-chase East Coast person and I am working on that. And I know complaining about this lady is not a manifestation of tolerance and empathy. I also understand that some student participation is nurturing and productive in the context of your class. But I wonder if there is a way you might reign her in gently next time she goes off on one of her tangents.

Looking forward to your next class.

Here is his response:

Thank you for sharing your feedback. It can be stressful to feel things not going as we anticipate or desire them to go. (Duh). The main message of the class is to practice acceptance. This is just how things are going right now. Can I release my need for them to be other than they are. Can I detach my happiness wagon from them being somehow different, and be content and at peace with how they are. (OK, I get that. I'm working on it. I just have to FIND my happiness wagon first. I'm not sure where I parked it). Hearing people speak more than you'd prefer or on topics that seem out of context is a great opportunity for you to apply to the mindfulness tool of acceptance. (True, but I would rather hear the person I paid $450 to for meditation classes). I'm glad you are enjoying the class and finding benefit in the neuroscience studies described. (No, dude, because I didn't get to hear you describe them). Hope your home practice is going well. As a way of extending the topic of this email, notice this week other places where you are feeling stressed out by people talking out of turn or generally things not going as you expect or want. (Actually, I'd be more likely to notice if the stress suddenly stopped). Practice playing your acceptance card in those situations. (My new mantra: it is what it is). And notice if it helps alleviate the stress you are experiencing. It's a practice. Old habits die hard. Be patient, and just practice with it. It gets easier over time.

He is right, of course. My bitching goes against the purpose of the class, and my lack of tolerance is borderline intolerable. Ultimately, it worked out. There were three sessions left - Annoying Woman missed the next one and was uncharacteristically subdued during the final class. I was looking forward to the grand finale, a full-day silent retreat including meditation, yoga and a walk in the woods. Alas, it was not to be. I had a heinous cold and couldn't stop coughing. Down dog and shivasana are potentially plegm-producing activities that would have kept me hacking all day, which would have meant no silent retreat for anyone. So of course, I did not go. I get to make it up at the end of our teacher's next series.

In the meantime, I have been practicing mindfulness, the beginner's way, lying on my back and focusing on my body and breath. I think it must be helping because my husband now reminds me, on a daily basis, that it's time to go meditate.

I'm trying not to take it personally.

*Tsuris - yiddish for problems great and small.

In a flash

The first time I saw a streak of light in my peripheral vision, I thought it was the arc of a falling meteor. Before I could focus on it, the light was gone. And then it came again, and again, always on the far left side of my visual field. Over the next few days, I realized that I was experiencing some kind of occular phenomenon. The flashes were most visible in the dark and they increased in frequency and intensity and began to look more like lightning than shooting stars. Even during the day, I would occasionally blink and glimpse a burst of light and a negative image of a blood vessel under my eyelid. I also felt some irritation in the affected corner of my eye, as though something were stuck under the lid. Sometimes I would wake up in the morning with a bright red eyeball.

Naturally, I called my fabulous eye doctor. She didn't like the sound of what I was describing and told me to seet a retina specialist without delay. Being a reasonably smart cookie, I went to the Internet and looked up my symptoms. It could be retinal detachment, which is not a good thing. However, blindness usually occurs within 24 hours or so of the retina detaching, and I had been having symptoms for several weeks. More likely, my symptoms were due to posterior vitreous detachment. This happens with, ahem, age. The vitreous gel that fills up your eye ball starts to thicken or shrink, form little clumps, and pull away from the retina. While posterior vitreous detachment can lead to retinal detachment, it usually is just another annoying sign of physical deterioration they forgot to mention in the annual health issue of Parade magazine.

I have a PPO and pay through the proverbial nose for catastrophic coverage, with a $5,000 deductible. (Actually, since the passage of the healthcare bill, I have had four rate increases to my husband's five. The insurance industry is making up for having to cover people with preexisting conditions by gouging the self-insured.). So I selected a group practice of retina specialists and was given an appointment with the aptly named Dr. Light.* (Dr. Light the retina expert. Almost as good as Dr. Bottoms the gyne, Dr. Head the Shrink, and of course, the renowned proctologist, Dr. Seymour Butz).

After his charming assistant dilated my pupil, Dr. Light breezed in and examined me. He was a young man of few words. Very few words. Look left, look right, look up, look down. He gave me an abbreviated explanation of the abbreviated explanation I just gave you: " You have posterior vitreous detachment. It puts you at risk for retinal detachment, so if your vision becomes blurred or you start to see a rain of floaters, come in immediately. I expect you may start seeing flashes in your other eye but you don't have to come in if that happens. Nice meeting you. Bye bye."

I asked about the redness and gritty sensation. It was nothing, he saw nothing, there was nothing to worry about. To mark a definitive end to our visit, he put out his hand and shook mine and then marched swiftly out the door before I could ask any more questions. After all, it was just a routine diagnosis. For him.

For me, it meant resigning myself to random flashes in my left eye, the visual equivalent of tinnitus. And now, I was being told that the lights would eventually spread to my right eye. Oh yeah, and if my vision ever suddenly goes south while I am climbing Mt. Everest, hiking the wilds of Patagonia, or driving the Paris-Dakar race, I won't be able to make it to the emergency room in time. Which means I'll have to learn to accessorize with eye patches. So thanks, doc, for your compassion and understanding.



Meanwhile, the gritty sensation of having something stuck in my eye didn't go away, and I kept waking up with that scarifying red eyeball. Since Dr. Light had nothing illuminating to say about this, I decided to see a different ophthalmologist - a generalist. Now, I could have, and probably should have gone to my fabulous eye doctor, but she is a fifty minute drive away, and I had a lot of work. Instead, I tried somebody new near home. In order to get back to my desk as quickly as possible, I made the first appointment of the day: 8:50.

The new eye guy's lobby was huge - never a good sign - and despite having the day's "first appointment" time, I waited a good half hour. Then, off to an examining room where I parked my butt for another 15 minutes before a technician came in to administer the requisite dilating drops and vision tests. After that, I got moved to a cramped little seating area outside the examination rooms where I waited for an additional hour. Two elderly French ladies were already sitting there, a mother and daughter. The mother looked to be well into her nineties. They told me they had been sitting here in the wait-some-more room for over thirty minutes, which probably amounted to a fiftieth of the older lady's remaining life span.

It was 11:00 before I finally got to see the doctor. (As far as I know, the two French ladies are still there. I hope someone is feeding them). Two hours and ten minutes had elapsed. Exactly the amount of time it would have taken to drive to my regular doc's, be seen immediately and drive home. I wanted to give Dr. Wait-In-My-Lobby-'Til -You-Grow-Cataracts** the benefit of the doubt. Surely something unusual had caused the delay - car crash, food poisoning, pink eye epidemic? "So," I said, "Guess you must be understaffed today?" Nope. Just another busy day at the office.

It turned out my irritated eye had nothing to do with the posterior vitreous detachment. Still, the famed retinologist Dr. Light had missed something rather basic. Although I had complained about the discomfort and redness in my left eye, he never bothered to look for the cause. A blocked pore at the base of one of my eyelashes had formed a little bump, like a grain of sand under my eyelid. Sounds simple, but eye doctors, like all other medical specialists, have now become so vertical in their expertise that a retina guy can't diagnose a clogged eyelash.

Dr. Overbook'em-And-Let'em-Rot*** prescribed a daily lash and lid scrub with Cetaphil, eyes shut tight, followed by five minutes of a hot towel on my face to loosen up the blocked eyelash root. He never apologized for the two hour wait, but he did try to talk me into coming back in three months for an eye exam.

I'm afraid he's going to have to wait.

*not his real name, but close.

** Also not his real name.

*** Should be his real name.

Parking While Black in Orinda, Part Deux

If you have not read Parking While Black in Orinda, please read that first so I don't have to recap the whole ugly story. Suffice to say that the African American cleaning people we hired were humiliated by the Orinda police, for no ostensible reason, right in front of our house and our neighbors. Now, we had been stewing over this for days and my husband decided to go to the police station and talk to them about it. At the very least, we hoped to find out which neighbor had called the police and why.

Calmly and politely, my husband recapped the entire story to the friendly station clerk. In the course of the conversation, he managed to learn that there was no record of a call or complaint pertaining to the cleaners (We had suspected an unfriendly, suspicious neighbor across the street). Of course, the only conclusion we could draw was that the police noticed two people driving while black, followed them to our house and harassed them, just because.

The police chief was unavailable to talk, but after about twelve minutes a sergeant came out. The kind of big mean SOB who thrives on having authority over people. My husband started to recount what had happened. Unfortunately, having just told the story to the clerk, he had gotten himself worked up all over again. He is sixty one, and had witnessed two people his age, plus or minus two years, falling apart in our kitchen. He still gets emotional every time he talks about it. So when asked to describe the officer who came to the door, he took an unnecessary tangent and replied "I see him all the time outside Starbucks, drinking lattes. He likes to ogle my daughter." That was all it took to set the Sergeant off. "I don't need you. " the officer bellowed. "Who needs you? Get the hell out of my station."

Shocked at the way he was being addressed, my husband sprang from his chair with such vigor that he knocked it over. "Pick it up! You pick that up." the policeman roared. "And get the hell out of here." But my husband had worked himself up and wouldn't back down. "You're just like them - You're all the same. I just want to know, do you have a policy of stopping people for parking while black, for driving while black?"

At that, the enraged cop ordered my husband to leave, escorted him out of the police station and followed him to the parking lot, badgering him the entire time. And then the guy did something truly astounding: he threatened us. "Don't bother calling us if anything happens. If you have a burglary or something. Because we're not coming out."

"Don't worry," my old man shot back. "Someone could be killing me, and I still wouldn't want you to come out."

Now that is what I call a positive police presence. You treat visitors like criminals and residents like crap. Did my husband lose his cool? A little. Who wouldn't? That was a disgusting thing to witness and it happened right in front of our house. Not only was it racial profiling, it was STOOPID racial profiling: they harassed two people in their sixties with buckets and mops and wouldn't drop it after we vouched for them. And now, to top it all off, Orinda's finest, who technically work for us and whose salaries we help pay, have abdicated their responsibility to protect us.

Cross-pollination

If you like this blog, you might like my other blog too. If I haven't posted here in a while, chances are I've posted there instead.