Why Fidgety Pilgrim?

When the road ends, and the goal is gained, the pilgrim finds that he has traveled only from himself to himself.   - Sri Sathya Sai Baba

   When I finally decided to quit dallying and launch this blog, I gave careful consideration to what the blog would be about.  Then I scoured the dictionary and thesaurus for the right descriptive words.  Very deliberately, I chose 'Fidgety Pilgrim' from the list of finalists.

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   The separate, often disparate, elements that make me who I am are completely commingled.  They are woven together like the shadows of trees that splash across my favorite trail through the forest, or like the colorful threads that make up a Navajo rug.  When I try to isolate one strand - say, my need for travel, the 47 bits twined around it spring loose.  This often makes it difficult for me explain myself succinctly to others.

* * * * * * * *

I am fidgety because I am a pilgrim.  
To me, pilgrims are seekers, relentlessly questing after what is most meaningful to them.
Therefore, I stay in motion.  
Seeking.
I seek to assuage my curious nature.  
I seek answers to many, many questions.  
I seek adventure.  
I seek healing.  
I seek peace, the deep inner kind.  
I seek spiritual knowledge within and beyond the bounds of organized religions.

* * * * * * * *

   Throughout my life, my fidgety nature has strolled hand in hand with the desire to embrace this life, to search this beautiful world and find where I fit into it.  When I go anywhere, whether through cornfields, beside oceans, along river gorges, or over mountain passes, all that I see is sacred and amazing.  I move from place to place because I can't - won't - rest until I have seen it all, experienced it firsthand, and found the place that suits me best.

* * * * * * * *

   Until a few years ago, I equated contentment with boredom, and being rooted in one place with complacency.  Having never lived anywhere long enough to feel a true part of a community, the idea of living in a place where people knew me by name when I walked down the street made me twitch.  I was terrified that staying in one place would make me jaded, perhaps even cause me to lose my sense of wonder.
   Each time I plotted another move, I held in my head an image of the person I would become once the move was complete.  If I worked harder (or not as hard), made more money (or had better quality of life outside of work), exercised more, dressed better, had more friends, found that ideal relationship...then I'd be happy, and stay put for a while.
   ...And six months later there I'd be.  Restless again, repeating the same patterns, living the same life in different surroundings.  Still just as fidgety as ever.  Still waiting for that big spark of something - anything - to come along, to ignite my imagination and propel me toward the next great thing.

* * * * * * * *

   It's summer of 2004.  I have lived in Arizona for two years.  I've spent a great deal of my time here alternately second-guessing my decision to leave Chicago, and wondering whether I should go back to Chicago.  In other words, letting what I've chosen to leave behind put a damper on my enjoyment of what is right in front of me.
   I'm resuming my regularly scheduled life - and working a new job - after spending the spring in Illinois, helping my Mom care for my Dad.  
   Now it's the second or third week of August.  I am driving home from work.  The top is down on my Jeep.  It is hot out, in the high 90s, but there are brief pockets of delicious coolness whenever I pass into shade.  Monsoon season is winding down; an earlier shower has left a smattering of clouds hanging over the egdes of the Verde Valley.  The sun feels so fine against my skin.
   I crest a hill from which I can see for miles around.  At a glance I recognize the red rock formations of Sedona, Cocks Comb Butte, Doe Mesa, Bear Mountain, Casner Mountain, Black Mountain, House Mountain, Mingus...  
   For a moment I am quietly pleased.  It is the first time in my life I've lived in a place where I can name nearly every geographic feature I see.  
   On impulse, I pull off the highway and follow a primitive ranch road up through juniper and pinon trees to the top of a neighboring hill.  I stop the truck and cut the engine.  Climb up on the roll bar to get the full panoramic view.
   I sit there for a while, gazing at the natural spectacle surrounding me.  
   I reflect on the months that have passed since my Dad's death.  I think about how much I miss his smile, his perspective.  
   I think about my Mom, adjusting to life alone after nearly forty-three years of marriage.
   I think about how happy I am to be settling back into a routine with the boyfriend, the dogs, the cat.
   That's when it strikes me, with the full force of the desert sun:  In that moment, I am content.  
   The sensation is foreign, but I like it.  
   I like our weird little guest-house apartment, like our crazy landlady, like my job and the people I work with, like getting up before dawn to the sound of coyotes howling in the ravine, like driving under the brilliant stars to brew coffee for my customers - most of whom I like a lot, like driving home through the early afternoon heat, like napping with the pets or lounging by the pool till the boyfriend comes home from his job.   
   For a brief moment, it feels as if I've found everything I've been seeking.  


   Within a month, I am offered my old job in Chicago.  

House Mountain

Black Mountain

Sedona's Red Rock Wilderness.  Doe Mesa flat, low, and red on the left

Pilgrim

Pilgrim:  1.) A person who journeys, especially a long distance, to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion.
(Dictionary.com Unabridged.  Source location, the Random House Dictionary)

The year 2003 is drawing to a close.  I've traveled from Flagstaff to the Midwest for the holidays, to visit family.  Now it's New Year's Eve and I'm in Chicago to spend a few days at my best friend's house before flying west again.


I don't go in for big celebrations at the new year.  There are usually too many amateurs out, too many drunks, and - in the neighborhood where I used to live - too many guns being shot into the air when the clock strikes twelve.  


Betty and I are in her old white Chevy Caprice, driving north on Lake Shore Drive.  It's still relatively early.  We exit the Drive at Irving Park and go west for a mile or two, then circle a block to the south and start searching for parking.  Luckily, the Parking Gods are smiling on us this evening - we find a space a mere two blocks from our destination.


We walk through the brisk winter air to an unassuming brick building on a primarily residential street.  Snowflakes tickle the parts of my face that are not tucked into a coat or scarf.  Several people join us on the sidewalk.  We nod to them, open the heavy wood door with the glass panes, and enter the steamy warmth of the building.


Inside, we remove our shoes before proceeding into the main lobby.  Betty slides hers into the last open slot in the built-in cubby holes provided.  I add mine to the growing jumble of footwear on the floor.  Racks have been provided for coats, but I leave mine on.  Sometimes the room is on the drafty side.  Betty sees someone she knows and goes to say hello.  I drift into the small bookstore.


Soon Betty returns and we walk up the carpeted stairs.  We greet and take programs from the quiet man stationed at the top, then enter a small foyer.  It is crowded with chairs that spill out from the main sanctuary:  the overflow seating.  Passing into the larger room, Betty and I recall the first year we attended this New Year's event.  The room was unheated and half painted.  There were cushions on the floor for the thirty or forty participants who had braved the brutal cold to show up.


Now, nearly a decade later, the event is at capacity and the decor is more elaborate.  The walls are saffron, trimmed with an earthy shade of red at the columns.  The high ceiling is painted a vibrant blue.  Prayer flags and bright paper lanterns hang from the ceiling.  The statues on the altar gleam.  A priest wearing loose grey garments lights sticks of incense and places them in shiny bowls along the front edge of the altar.


As the air fills with the sweet scent of cinnamon and jasmine, we find seats about halfway up the aisle and settle in.  I read over the program.  In the eight or nine years we've been attending, very little has changed in the content of the ceremony we are here to take part in.  There will be meditation, recitations, chanting, a dharma talk by one of the sangha leaders.  Then each of us will set fire to the past year.


Betty and I are at the the Zen Buddhist Temple.  As the annual Kindling Light of Wisdom Mind ceremony begins, I pull a folded piece of paper from my coat pocket and worry it between my fingers.  For a brief moment I am impatient.  I want to get the preliminaries out of the way and get right to the good stuff.  Then I remember where I am.  I am only supposed to be here, now.  I slip the paper into my pocket.  Take a deep breath to quiet my mind.


This New Year's Eve ceremony is built around the idea of forgiveness and letting go, for the purpose of clearing space in your life for the coming year.  Each participant is given paper and pencil and asked to list people they feel have wronged them, or those they have wronged, since January first.


In the past I've waited till the ceremony was underway to write my list, and not had enough time to finish.  This year, I have been giving the list some consideration since Christmas Eve.  I wrote it earlier in the day during a moment of calm.  When the call comes for the congregants to make their lists I think of a few more additions.  I'm still scribbling as we line up around the edge of the sanctuary.  One by one we make our way to the altar, where the monks stand in front of brass bowls half full of water.


The sameness of this ritual from year to year comforts and grounds me in ways that few things can.  It is one of the best ways for me to chart my internal progress.  The first year Betty and I attended, I struggled during the meditation and chanting.  I lost my place frequently as my mind wandered in circles.  My list was made up mostly of people I felt had wronged me.  This year, I stay with the chants more easily and retain focus during meditation.  The list I cradle between my palms is largely comprised of those I feel I've wronged through my actions or words.


I bow to the monk and hand her my list.  She smiles and holds the paper to the flame.  I watch as the list is consumed by fire, then as the ashes are swallowed up by the water.  Pressing my empty hands together, I bow to her again before turning away.  I feel lighter as I walk down the aisle.  My pilgrimage for this year is complete.

Painted wood statue, Seattle Asian Art Museum

Fidgety

Fidget:  To move about restlessly, nervously or impatiently.  (Dictionary.com Unabridged.  Source location, Random House, Inc.)

When I lived in Chicago I went to Lincoln Park Zoo a couple times a year.  I'd wander past the gorillas, elephants and kangaroos, watching the animals watch the people watch them.  Usually I ended up in the big cat house, with the tigers, jaguars and lions.


The territories of Siberian tigers can be as large as 4000 square miles.  They have been known to travel as much as 650 miles over the course of just a few days.  Typical territory size for African lions is up to 300 square miles.  Cheetahs range an average territory of 120 square miles.  Depending on the area in which a jaguar lives, its territory can be from five square miles up to more than 100 miles.


Yet here were these cats, in glass-fronted lairs not much bigger than the living room at my house.  They had access to slightly larger outdoor accommodations, of course, but many times when I was there they were in the cages.  They looked placid, even bored.  But they paced.  Incessantly.  As if they knew the enclosures weren't really strong enough to hold them, and were mulling over various plans for dramatic escapes.


Anyone observing me would notice that my natural demeanor is one of calm.  I'm laid back.  Kind of quiet.  Maybe even a little bit aloof at times.  I am patient.  I can spend hours absorbed in tedious tasks that others would quickly abandon out of boredom and frustration.


Inside, I'm a lot like those big cats at the zoo.  Restless.  Calculating.  Plotting my escape, my next big more.


All during the 1990's, while I lived in Chicago, I spent every spare moment scouring the length and breadth of the city.  On foot, I meandered through the neighborhoods, soaking in the architecture and observing the people.  I walked for hours in every type up weather, stopping once in a while to window-shop or refresh myself at a cafe.


I drove, too, expanding my range in ever-widening circles.  In the old green Buick Skylark, the two-tone gray Blazer, and later the Jeep, I made countless trips up and down Lake Shore Drive; all around the Loop; out through the blighted, then gentrified West Side; north to Rogers Park, Evanston, and on up Route 41 into Wisconsin; south through Bronzeville, Kenwood, Hyde Park, South Shore and the Stony Island corridor; east into northwest Indiana or southwest Michigan.


And I moved.  I had dreamed about living in Chicago since I was in grade school.  Once I became an actual resident of the city, I was determined to sample life in as many neighborhoods as I could.  I started out in Rogers Park, near the Stack and Steaks at Clark and Devon.  Moved with a roommate to her mom's condo on Lake Shore Drive in Wrigleyville while her mom was between 'real' tenants.  Shared an apartment on Ainslie in Lincoln Square with one of the groomers who worked for me at the pet supply boutique I co-owned.  Lived in a tiny basement studio just off Dearborn in the Gold Coast, to be closer to the shop.  Found a bigger place a few blocks away, on the third floor of a Victorian rowhouse in Old Town.  From there I moved to East Rogers Park, so I could live across the street from Lake Michigan without having to pay an arm and a leg in rent.


I made those six moves, plus a few short hops, between January, 1991 and February of 1995.  In those days, all my possessions fit into the back seat and trunk of my Buick.  I didn't own anything I couldn't lift and/or carry up and down stairs by myself.


A year later, I moved in at my best friend's house on the South Side for what was supposed to be a couple months.  A couple months turned into six years.  My time there still holds the record for the longest I've spent at one address in my adult life.


I don't think I was aware at the time, but I used the moving was a way to shake things up, to keep things interesting when I felt too hemmed in by circumstances or city life.  Living in different places satisfied my curiosity about what life was like over there, and over there.  Moving my possessions from one place to another soothed my roving, gypsy soul in ways nothing else could at the time.


In the end, it wasn't enough.  The moving, the walking, the driving:  none of it was enough to keep me from feeling like those big cats at the zoo.