Divinely Discontent
creative nonfiction by Lisa Friedlander
From the UNH’s Browne Center we walked in silence to the lotus pond: a heartless pool of drowned trees. Here blackened conifers and birch disintegrate, their crowns and limbs dropping into the basin. At last, every decapitated trunk will collapse into the pond’s shallow silk, embraced by the pink lotuses. With their retinue of companionate birds and amphibians, the flowers will reign more grandly, as if they had always been there. They will claim and bless the soft scarf of sky toward which the trees had reached so patiently, some for over a hundred years.
Call me the queen of unmindful happiness. Often, I revel in patches of thought that grow weedy and blur as I jog or drive past cruel beauties like the lotus pond. Neither mindful nor present, the Zen of my nose, my eyes and my ears dull to a trance. In a somnambulist’s haze, I drift on rafts of ideas, buoyant, and sedated in the half light of walking or showering or waiting till eight to watch TV. I have not achieved oneness with anything, only disappeared entirely: slipped from my body, moods, and orientation in time and space. In the here of chaos-consciousness, a sneaky spider weaves together disparate experiences, visions, unexamined tales, dream sequences, long gone songs. This web of trippy stupor, of quiescence attracts me. I shoo none of it away for a chance at infinite consciousness.
“Aware” and “awake” blink green for mindful living; we should extol aliveness in the moment where past tickertape narratives no longer squeeze our hearts with their unrequited loves and bets gone south. But I have a neighborly relationship to the future families of if-only and when-I. They serve generous portions of beer and chocolate.
The gurus say, “Engage your gaze, open your ears, and breathe in the scents of now, and silence that “monkey chatter,” because the brain, apparently, does not know what it is doing! It needs to shut up. Mulling, musing, rolling around in that manure of thoughts will hold transcendence hostage, and happiness will sink from a five-star to a three-star rating, the kind one will take but might also leave for something else: More mindful. More serene.
Of course, a miraculous ductwork of senses connects us to our surround in the most intimate, vibrant way. We have bodies. Bodies house both the sensory infrastructure as well as those mischievous minds that sometimes stay up all night and shiver or party, and then hope, even pray, we will function the next day.
Bodies ebb and flow within a relentless tide of discontent and satisfaction. We want food, warmth, movement, sleep, refreshment, contact, entertainment, a great half-pounder of something meaty and profound--with or without the bun—sometimes well done, sometimes rare. Who does not fill and empty, wake and sleep, focus, fall into distraction, apply effort, relax?
“The essence of man is discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without the beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.”—Jose Ortega y Gasset
My mother died midsentence. She thought she had a few more years, so left the world unprepared, determined not to finish what she started. Amazon had received her order for the next book club title, and two Sunday papers—the Boston Globe and the New York Times—came as always to the stoop outside her front door. She had penciled in an appointment for one of her few remaining therapy clients, as well as her piano tuner, for the week following her death. She’d even circled the Matisse exhibit on the MFA circular, though it would have meant attending in a wheelchair. At 88 she still had ambitions: baby showers, marriages, graduations, holidays to celebrate; new books; interpreting the political turbulence pre-election; courses to take at the lifelong learning center; and lots more conversations with us about technology, history, literature, music, and how was your week dear?
“Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.” –John Steinbeck
She floated away like a helium balloon let go by accident. No goodbyes, no final words or last-minute wisdom. Just her small arthritic fingers lightly on the covers; soft hair—some white, some honeyed brown--fanned on the pillow. The bookcase clock facing her so she could know the time of day or night, as a theoretical construct, when her body had given up all meals and routines.
**********************
At several minutes past nine on Wednesday July 26th I walked out of my office. As I approached my car a woman pulled into the nearly empty parking lot in a silver Volvo sedan and pushed open her door. Leaning against it, she looked up; then at me.
“Look! The international space station is passing overhead.” And sure enough, a barely discernible dark shape with a dazzlingly bright light arced noiselessly overhead.
“My friends think I’m a little crazy,” she said, to which I responded: “Maybe that’s a good thing, a little craziness.”
“I’ve done this before. It only takes six minutes for that space station to cross the sky.”
As I drove home I thought of Keenan, telling me that afternoon about stopping at an adult book store on his way home, where a woman, a stranger, and he had locked eyes. He perused the store and circled back to catch her gaze again. They went into a booth at the back and had sex, just like in a movie. He said that: “just like in a movie.” And I brought up something about goal gradients--the way anticipation quickens the pulse and thickens the breath, adds weight to your foot on the gas pedal as you near the prize. . . in my case the cheap tacos I lusted for on my way home, tasting minimally better than their grease stained wrappers, those crisp corn clefts layered with runny meat, wilted lettuce, shredded cheese and a lopsided blob of sour cream. I should have brought with me shelled pistachios and banana, my stomach retaliating with pricks of guilt.
Only six minutes to cross the sky, to have sex with a stranger, to fill a fast-food hunger. A little crazy. The length of time to bait or quell temptation. Oh, restless passenger, desire. You appear wherever you see an empty seat, a blank page; I could go on and on.
**********************
As long as my mother lived she kept a one cup coffee maker, and in the guest bathroom a box of tampons for any visiting woman in need. My mother was a woman with whom you could cry or bleed. Three days before she died the hospice social worker, Marianne, came to visit and they sat together in the bedroom. I heard Marianne ask, Do you know what’s happening? I peeked in to see my mother nod, but as their visit ended my mother grabbed her hand and asked, Will I see you again?
Marianne said she’d like that and rejoined my three sisters and me for more conversation in my mother’s living room where the four of us made camp for the two weeks our mother lay dying. When Marianne got up to leave, we all noticed the bright red stain on the white couch–a mid century piece of furniture bought shortly after my parents moved into their first home, but that had been reupholstered twice since then. Embarrassed, Marianne apologized profusely, unexpectedly menstruating at just that moment.
“It’s actually perfect,” I said. “My mother would be happy for you to have this.” I got Marianne the just-in-case tampon from the guest bathroom, then daubed at the blood on the white couch with cold water and dish detergent. The blood faded, then disappeared more quickly than I had imagined. It was a time of fading after all, of disappearance.
This is one of the reasons I write. A lot. A physical thing, like chewing gum or fiddling with hair. My hands tap-tap on the keyboard. Much fumbling and tripping occurs, but occasionally a piece of choreography feels like real dancing. All the tiny muscles of the hands coordinate, their actions attenuating through biceps, shoulders, and neck. The words hold on to impressions, thoughts, questions, at least for a little while.
Two days before my mother died she said again, but this time grabbing my hand, “I’m not ready.”
I gently massaged her hand; said, “I know.”
I love Frances Mayes’ ‘Sister Cat’ poem, its knowing discontent.
“Cat stands at the fridge,
Cries loudly for milk.
But I’ve filled her bowl. . .
She. . .
Doesn’t drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
When it is on. . . .
She wants. Milk
Beyond milk. World beyond
This one, she cries.”
We seekers, antithetically propertied, toggle and knot, delay and propel. Just put one foot in front of the other even when the path attenuates without ever seeming to end. Because it does not end really, just for me, just for you. Turn side to side. See, there are plenty of charms and a great assortment of lost causes to employ you, confuse you, keep you wanting even when the fog is fast moving, looking more and more like you.
Call me the queen of unmindful happiness. Often, I revel in patches of thought that grow weedy and blur as I jog or drive past cruel beauties like the lotus pond. Neither mindful nor present, the Zen of my nose, my eyes and my ears dull to a trance. In a somnambulist’s haze, I drift on rafts of ideas, buoyant, and sedated in the half light of walking or showering or waiting till eight to watch TV. I have not achieved oneness with anything, only disappeared entirely: slipped from my body, moods, and orientation in time and space. In the here of chaos-consciousness, a sneaky spider weaves together disparate experiences, visions, unexamined tales, dream sequences, long gone songs. This web of trippy stupor, of quiescence attracts me. I shoo none of it away for a chance at infinite consciousness.
“Aware” and “awake” blink green for mindful living; we should extol aliveness in the moment where past tickertape narratives no longer squeeze our hearts with their unrequited loves and bets gone south. But I have a neighborly relationship to the future families of if-only and when-I. They serve generous portions of beer and chocolate.
The gurus say, “Engage your gaze, open your ears, and breathe in the scents of now, and silence that “monkey chatter,” because the brain, apparently, does not know what it is doing! It needs to shut up. Mulling, musing, rolling around in that manure of thoughts will hold transcendence hostage, and happiness will sink from a five-star to a three-star rating, the kind one will take but might also leave for something else: More mindful. More serene.
Of course, a miraculous ductwork of senses connects us to our surround in the most intimate, vibrant way. We have bodies. Bodies house both the sensory infrastructure as well as those mischievous minds that sometimes stay up all night and shiver or party, and then hope, even pray, we will function the next day.
Bodies ebb and flow within a relentless tide of discontent and satisfaction. We want food, warmth, movement, sleep, refreshment, contact, entertainment, a great half-pounder of something meaty and profound--with or without the bun—sometimes well done, sometimes rare. Who does not fill and empty, wake and sleep, focus, fall into distraction, apply effort, relax?
“The essence of man is discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without the beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.”—Jose Ortega y Gasset
My mother died midsentence. She thought she had a few more years, so left the world unprepared, determined not to finish what she started. Amazon had received her order for the next book club title, and two Sunday papers—the Boston Globe and the New York Times—came as always to the stoop outside her front door. She had penciled in an appointment for one of her few remaining therapy clients, as well as her piano tuner, for the week following her death. She’d even circled the Matisse exhibit on the MFA circular, though it would have meant attending in a wheelchair. At 88 she still had ambitions: baby showers, marriages, graduations, holidays to celebrate; new books; interpreting the political turbulence pre-election; courses to take at the lifelong learning center; and lots more conversations with us about technology, history, literature, music, and how was your week dear?
“Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.” –John Steinbeck
She floated away like a helium balloon let go by accident. No goodbyes, no final words or last-minute wisdom. Just her small arthritic fingers lightly on the covers; soft hair—some white, some honeyed brown--fanned on the pillow. The bookcase clock facing her so she could know the time of day or night, as a theoretical construct, when her body had given up all meals and routines.
**********************
At several minutes past nine on Wednesday July 26th I walked out of my office. As I approached my car a woman pulled into the nearly empty parking lot in a silver Volvo sedan and pushed open her door. Leaning against it, she looked up; then at me.
“Look! The international space station is passing overhead.” And sure enough, a barely discernible dark shape with a dazzlingly bright light arced noiselessly overhead.
“My friends think I’m a little crazy,” she said, to which I responded: “Maybe that’s a good thing, a little craziness.”
“I’ve done this before. It only takes six minutes for that space station to cross the sky.”
As I drove home I thought of Keenan, telling me that afternoon about stopping at an adult book store on his way home, where a woman, a stranger, and he had locked eyes. He perused the store and circled back to catch her gaze again. They went into a booth at the back and had sex, just like in a movie. He said that: “just like in a movie.” And I brought up something about goal gradients--the way anticipation quickens the pulse and thickens the breath, adds weight to your foot on the gas pedal as you near the prize. . . in my case the cheap tacos I lusted for on my way home, tasting minimally better than their grease stained wrappers, those crisp corn clefts layered with runny meat, wilted lettuce, shredded cheese and a lopsided blob of sour cream. I should have brought with me shelled pistachios and banana, my stomach retaliating with pricks of guilt.
Only six minutes to cross the sky, to have sex with a stranger, to fill a fast-food hunger. A little crazy. The length of time to bait or quell temptation. Oh, restless passenger, desire. You appear wherever you see an empty seat, a blank page; I could go on and on.
**********************
As long as my mother lived she kept a one cup coffee maker, and in the guest bathroom a box of tampons for any visiting woman in need. My mother was a woman with whom you could cry or bleed. Three days before she died the hospice social worker, Marianne, came to visit and they sat together in the bedroom. I heard Marianne ask, Do you know what’s happening? I peeked in to see my mother nod, but as their visit ended my mother grabbed her hand and asked, Will I see you again?
Marianne said she’d like that and rejoined my three sisters and me for more conversation in my mother’s living room where the four of us made camp for the two weeks our mother lay dying. When Marianne got up to leave, we all noticed the bright red stain on the white couch–a mid century piece of furniture bought shortly after my parents moved into their first home, but that had been reupholstered twice since then. Embarrassed, Marianne apologized profusely, unexpectedly menstruating at just that moment.
“It’s actually perfect,” I said. “My mother would be happy for you to have this.” I got Marianne the just-in-case tampon from the guest bathroom, then daubed at the blood on the white couch with cold water and dish detergent. The blood faded, then disappeared more quickly than I had imagined. It was a time of fading after all, of disappearance.
This is one of the reasons I write. A lot. A physical thing, like chewing gum or fiddling with hair. My hands tap-tap on the keyboard. Much fumbling and tripping occurs, but occasionally a piece of choreography feels like real dancing. All the tiny muscles of the hands coordinate, their actions attenuating through biceps, shoulders, and neck. The words hold on to impressions, thoughts, questions, at least for a little while.
Two days before my mother died she said again, but this time grabbing my hand, “I’m not ready.”
I gently massaged her hand; said, “I know.”
I love Frances Mayes’ ‘Sister Cat’ poem, its knowing discontent.
“Cat stands at the fridge,
Cries loudly for milk.
But I’ve filled her bowl. . .
She. . .
Doesn’t drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
When it is on. . . .
She wants. Milk
Beyond milk. World beyond
This one, she cries.”
We seekers, antithetically propertied, toggle and knot, delay and propel. Just put one foot in front of the other even when the path attenuates without ever seeming to end. Because it does not end really, just for me, just for you. Turn side to side. See, there are plenty of charms and a great assortment of lost causes to employ you, confuse you, keep you wanting even when the fog is fast moving, looking more and more like you.
About the writer
Lisa Friedlander, MA, MSW, MFA, outs herself as an old lady and queen of short projects. Age, and wisdom if one is lucky, removes skin after skin like a snake sheds. Lisa works as a therapist, gratefully acknowledging the enormous privilege of sharing in the most intimate stories of others, and the mutuality of becoming characters in each other’s worlds, where we must act on and with each other—emotionally, socially, and politically. Aging comes with its own marginality, its encroaching invisibility, and its graying into shadow. What a gift to speak from this shadow, with a still small but rebellious voice.
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