Stinging Bits Of Doubt

Work through the stinging bits of doubt.
They nip at the beautiful sphere we create, puncturing it slowly until it collapses under its own weight. I stare at it, deflated and crumbled as candlelight still flickers- the glow reminding me of what we could have made. I see my reflection on its distorted shiny surface. 
Work through the stinging bit of doubt.
They come up like weeds and sometimes I confuse them for tiny flowers and I let them open. Only when their faces shine up at me do I realize my mistake and see the death skulls laughing. But by that time I am far away and lost, floating on my wooden canoe. 
Out to sea I remember shore. Far away there is a house and a garden. Far away a sage bush goes to seed. Far away is a protector, but I can no longer see him beyond the horizon.
My habits have carried me out here and water spills in over the side. Salt oozes up my leg and I begin to crack. 
But there you are, holding the door open once again. The pathways are slightly more narrow now and the flowers have lost their scent, but here we are again in the dim afternoon light. The present is open and wide and we look into it with wide glittering eyes.
Once again we had stood on the edge, once again we clawed our way back from the crashing waves. Here we are again, a circuit of energy between us tasting of love.
Try to remember to breathe you caution. Next time breathe into the stinging bits of doubt, send some air into the caves. 

Piano Practice

She drove to his house as she did every Thursday and Friday afternoon. He lived on a peaceful tree lined street where none of the inhabitants knew of hunger or felt the fear of F16’s flying overhead. The children grew up playing soccer and learning instruments. He got out of school at three o’clock, and she always tried to arrive a couple minutes before him. She was pulling into the driveway and she saw him standing by the neighbors trash cans with his friend Jack from across the street. She waved to him and he raised his arm, moving it, yet it could not be described as a wave, there was no greeting or friendliness within the movement, it was more something his body did to shrug off the forwarded hello. He walked towards the front door where she was just turning the copper key into the top lock. Entering the house, he threw off his backpack and slid off his shoes and walked away, leaving them in front of the door.
"I have a lot of piano work to do, but I’m hungry too."
"Your hungry? you want some curry?"
"yes, please."
She took off her shoes by the front door and went to the kitchen in her wool socks to the sounds of an unlearned wedding march. She wondered why his teacher had selected that particular piece for him to learn. She grabbed a white ceramic bowl from the cupboard and scooped some rice from the cooker into it and got out the container of curry his grandmother had made the previous day. The bowl spun in the microwave and she munched on cold purple grapes while she waited for the seconds to pass. Dooot! Dooot! Doooot! The food was hot and she put the steaming bowl on the marble countertop, it smelled so good. She went down the hall and towards the sound of the crashing keys and inglorious notes. The boy was crouching on the piano bench, his toes the only part of his body making contact with the shiny black bench. He looked up as she approached and stopped playing. "Is that the way you’re supposed to sit?"
"Okay…" he said with a groan and then sat half on the bench and half on his heels.
"No, sit the way your teacher would want you to."
And he slouched more, but sat on his butt.
"the food’s ready."
"Ahhhhh!!! I’m never going to have this perfect by Monday!"
"why does it need to be perfect by Monday?….oh, that’s when your class is?"
"Yeah"
"But you don’t have a performance or anything?"
"No, but this needs to be really good because I never have it good when I go there and I have martial arts class later and then I have to do homework and we’re leaving to go skiing on Friday and we’ll be gone all weekend!" He looked like he was going to cry, his head was dropped low to his chin. "I need to practice this for hours!"
"You’ll have time to practice and do martial arts and your homework if you don’t watch any TV."
"That’s not true" his voice turned authoritative, like a child king. "Homework takes me a couple hours, dinner takes an hour, I won’t get home from martial arts ‘til 6 and I also have to go buy some books."
"Okay, look…look at me…look at me" she touched his shoulder. "You won’t be able to do any of those things if you freak out. You don’t need to cry. Are you hungry?"
"Yes"
"Okay, why don’t you go eat, the curry’s hot. Then, do your homework before martial arts, you’ll go to marts, and you’ll be home by six. I really don’t think it takes you an hour to eat dinner, but even so, you’ll have time afterwards to practice and all your homework will be taken care of."
"Yeah, but I go to bed at 8:30 and I start getting ready for bed at 8:15."
"Well, if you just want to make up excuses…."
"Yeah, but…"
"Look," she touched his hair compassionately, "the worse thing is to start crying and getting yourself all worked up. You’re freaking out instead of doing the small things you need to do. If you want to be able to do it all, then you should start by eating and then doing your homework."
"Okay," he walked defeated into the kitchen, his footsteps pounding on the hardwood floor. He started gobbling his food and glancing every couple of seconds to the clock on the wall.
"Hey, I don’t want you to choke. You can do everything and do it well and not sloppy. Chew your food, okay? It’s not going to be good if you do everything fast and sloppy. Do you want something to drink?"
"Yes, please"
She poured him some grape juice and went to sit at her computer in the other room. Ten minutes passed…she was typing an email…
"You forgot I have to get books!" he called from the other room.
"what?"
"you forgot I have to go get books later tonight, so I’ll have even less time to practice."
"if you want to keep making excuses up, then I’m not sure what to say. Are you doing your homework?"
"yeah"
"well, keep working on it and stop getting ahead of yourself."
An hour and a half passed, he had finished his homework and had changed into his martial arts uniform. He was sitting on the couch fifteen minutes before they had to leave.
"What happened to practicing?"
"I just want to relax for a couple minutes."
"oh."
She took him to martial arts and then back home. His mother’s car was in the driveway. She opened the front door and he charged through.
"MOM!! We need to go buy books!"
"Oh," she turned to him a little surprised, "You want to go before dinner?"
"yeah"
"okay." She got her keys and they said goodbye. She left as well, saying she would see them tomorrow.
Friday arrived and both of his parents were home preparing for their ski trip. She made the boy a sandwich and then he sat in front of the TV. He stayed there for hours, watching the military channel and simultaneously reading a book. Then, he went downstairs and closed the computer room door. His mother called to him from the hall without opening the door.
"Dad and I are going to your brother’s soccer game, you should practice piano."
"Okay," he said. But he did not remerge from the room ‘til almost 5:45 and there was a tentative plan to leave for the mountains at 6pm. He came out from the computer room to use the bathroom.
She looked up from her computer when she saw him in the hall, "what happened to playing the piano? You were practically crying about it yesterday?"
"Oh yeah," he said. He shrugged his shoulders and went downstairs again without an explanation or second thought.
On Thursday, he had felt an urgency, a need to act. Perhaps it was just brought about by the responsibility he had to his teacher, the same way he was compelled to do his homework, not brought about by an internal desire, but familial pressure. But he had felt the urgency, the knowledge there was barely enough time to do it all. Friday, he had forgotten all about it, he had fallen asleep to any pressure or need and allowed himself to drift through hours without a second thought to his goal. When the urgency is clear, it is the time to act. The window of opportunity passes all too quickly.

Discipline

For her, discipline used to be synonymous with punishment. In the world of the little girl, discipline was her mother with furious eyes and steaming anger quickly approaching her with a large wooden spoon. With every swat on her fleshy buttocks, her first understanding of discipline was etched.
When she began school, discipline took on a new dimension. It meant studying over books and doing homework. At first, she didn’t think the work was too hard and she liked filling out the answers in the appropriate lines. There was a sense of satisfaction in completing her assignments, a wholeness in the activity her young self enjoyed.
In middle school, the concepts became more difficult. It required an effort, the work required studying and practice and review. She tried her very best to get good grades, she wanted the praise of her parents when the report card was sent home, she wanted to see their smiles, their approving nods and hugs.
Then came high school, harder still, demanding even more effort. She struggled with her geometry class, all of the formulas and angles and numbers, it was all so conceptual and none of it came easy…she fought to understand it but her effort did not result in good grades. She remembers the day she brought home the first "D" on her report card. She thought it would be the end of the world. She imagined the look of disappointment in her mother's eyes and the gruff tone of her father's voice. "No! Not a D!" Maybe they would go get the spoon again. Walking home that afternoon, she berated herself for not trying harder.
To her surprise, her parents, although not pleased with her grade, were understanding. Perhaps sympathetic from their own memories of geometry, they encouraged her to try her best and to not bring anything lower than a "C" on future report cards. She was stunned by their reaction. She interpreted their understanding as a license to goof off. There were no consequences, no beatings, not even a harsh tone from her father and because of this, because there was no punishment, any sense of self discipline she had once had to get good grades flew out the window.
She spent the rest of her time in high school doing the minimum amount of work required to get a "C" on her report cards. She developed a consistent habit of giving the least amount of effort and energy to her tasks and skated just above the rim of failing. Even today, she recalls bragging to her friends that all she had to do was listen in class and she could get a "C" on a test. She never took one single book home. She didn’t study or spend her weekends trying to grasp the difficult texts of literature or the new ideas presented to her in classes. She took pride in her lack of effort. She wore it like a pretty new dress, with her head up and chest out.
Not any more. Instead of the badge of honor, she holds the memories of her past like the painful glimpses of a diseased relative. She thinks often of her moment of realization back in high school, the moment her machine smiled and took over and battled down the weaker part within her that wanted to work and complete tasks and feel the palpable sense of wholeness before beginning on the next project. That day of the "D," her machine won, the lazy and sloppy machine won. Sometimes she spends whole afternoons imagining what would have happened if she had tried harder…she probably could have gotten all "A’s." Maybe she could have gone on to college and become a doctor. If she had made different choices, maybe she could have been better able to provide for herself and her family. Maybe she could have avoided living in cockroach ridden apartments and living off Kraft Macaroni & Cheese made without the milk and butter, made with only water.
But snapping out of her afternoons of despair, she remembers that looking back with regret is only another way to avoid the work of the moment. There is no way to affect the lazy machine of the past, but now, she can begin to rein in the deeply ingrained habits of half-hearted effort and learn the delicate art of true discipline.

She might never be a doctor or a lawyer, she might never have a high paying job or a lavish house in the hills, but the material benefits of a lifetime of good grades would not bring her any closer to wakefulness. The obvious consequences of lazy habits and bad grades were monetary, she did manual labor and assembly line work, and came home to a crumbling apartment. It is not the financial reality of her life she needs to change, but the deep negative habits of laziness, learned young and practiced often.
Her machine will fight and the undisciplined robot must learn to push through the desire to goof off or fantasize about a future that never was. The work begins now. New habits are forged with sweat and persistence and, sometimes, a rapidly beating heart. Discipline does not come naturally or easily. It is a delicately crafted inner art form that can take years and lifetimes to master, but each step taken today is an effort in the right direction. Slowly and delicately, she can begin to move towards a new kind of discipline, without fear, without the weight of past failures, without the promise of future delights. Somewhere beyond these barriers, the real work begins.