Scientific Ink

Author: Dunrie

  • How I learned when to meditate

    I have had a meditation practice for several years now. I’ve been daily on weekdays for some time, long enough now that I think I might be addicted to it. This isn’t a bad addiction, a compulsion I need to shake, but it is interesting to notice my dependence, especially on something that has sometimes been a struggle for me.

    I have sometimes treated meditation like exercise, something that I will schedule and put myself through, because I know it is good for me. Like exercise, it hasn’t always been something I’ve loved for itself. During meditation, I sometimes clock-watch (like I might at the gym on a machine). I know it is good for me because of how I feel afterwards. I feel gentle, open, soft, and supported. I feel whole. But sometimes, during a meditation, the stress of just sitting there can be hard for me to bear. 

    A few weeks ago, I went up north with my family for a week. I made sure I meditated every day, but I was up there with kids, and wasn’t the earliest riser, and there is a lot of pressure to all be together for a big breakfast. So I felt rushed in the mornings and I did not take the time to meditate, Instead, I’d come downstairs to join the family for breakfast, my rhythm thrown off. I would then try to slip in a meditation during the late afternoon. While I still meditated each day, I noticed myself being grumpy, ill-tempered, and downright cranky until I had my meditation. The stuff I thought, the stuff I said. Yikes.

    I finally noticed the pattern. I noticed I didn’t like what was coming into my thoughts, and what was coming out of my mouth. So, I decided to change. I switched up my schedule, I resolved that no matter how late I slept, I would not come downstairs until I was finished. After my morning meditation, I felt more resilient and friendly towards everyone. It sounds obvious, now that I write it, but I had to learn through experimentation that I needed to meditate in the morning.

    Next I will experiment with duration.

  • Needing bread in response to a death in the family

    Last week, in the middle of a workday, I got a call about a death in the family. I was shocked and sad – Somboun, the guy who died, was young, in his thirties, my husband’s age or so, and seemed in full health. He slipped away in his sleep, without warning.

    I was busy, out of the office and about 10 minutes from a client meeting, so after a few quick moments of talking to family, I had to put on my game face and focus on the client and the project. After the meeting, I had the ride back to the office to think and talk, more phone time, and then a little bit of decompressing with the other riders in the car. I talked about my relationship with him, about his relationship to the family, about meeting him and what he was like.

    When we got back to the office, to the hub-bub of lunchtime and visitors, I was ready to shut down completely. I think I’d finally had enough time for it to sink in. The funny thing is, I really, really wanted bread. I had a salad, dressing, and some lovely smoked trout Dave had brought back from up north, but I wanted salt and crust and chew. So, I went out and got a Zingerman’s sea salt bagel. I never eat the salt bagels, tho I love salt, they’re usually too salty for me.  

    Usually I bolt my food, unhealthy I know. It’s just before I notice, I’ve eaten it all up. This time, I sat alone, not wanting to be social, and chewed thoughtfully. Perhaps in response to the news of the death, I was really able to focus on the taste of the food, its texture, the crunchy and sharp arugula, the bite of the garlic in the dressing, and thick and chewy bagel.

    Nothing like the shock of mortality to make being alive so tactile.

  • My Tweetcloud by tweetclouds and tweetstats

    I had some fun playing around with word clouds from my own twitter streams. Here’s a kind of random comparison of my tweet cloud from two applications – tweetclouds.com and tweetstats.com.

    Tweetcloud
    My tweetcloud seems pretty biased towards recent tweets – see “staycation”? I only said it once, just recently. looks like I retweet a fair bit, and that I talk a lot about gardening, soup, and yoga.
    Make your own tweetcloud.

    OK onto tweetstats. My tweetstats tweetcloud seems less centered on my last few tweets. “Ann Arbor” and “yoga” are less prominent, and “work” is more prominent. “client” “day” “home” “new” “time” “today” “work” and “www” seem prominent. I’m also noticing “tired” in there, and “tea”.
    Dunrie tweetcloud via tweetstats

  • A party on the block (gratitude #29)

    The 600 block of South First Street had a block party last Sunday (6/22/2008). Wendy, my across the street neighbor, organized it by gaining the signatures needed to get the permit from the city to close the street. We live on the block of First Street where it goes from 1 way to 2 way. Much of the traffic that zooms down First turns onto Madison before our block, but we are close to downtown, and we do get a fair number of cars on our block. So, when they put up the barricades to close the street, the quiet was noticeable. And then came the kids. From the corner house, from across the street, from neighboring blocks.

    They came with wheeled vehicles of all sorts – bicycles with training wheels, tricycles, bicycles, scooters, and a funky skateboard with an axle in the center. But there were no cars. We pulled some tables into the middle of the closed street, and as the kids did their bicycle/tricycle/scooter laps in the street, we set up a table of snacks and drinks. The cookies and the cupcakes went first, individually taken by kids looking thrilled to be getting dessert before dinner. Each one that grabbed a cupcake seemed to be waiting for one of the adults to insist they put it down and eat their veggies.

    Then the squirt guns came out, and the hoses, and the kids formed some loose teams and had a water fight. The adults only interfered when the shenanigans got too close to the adults and the food table, but otherwise the water war raged at the north end of the block. Adults of grandparental age marveled at the way the girls and boys played together – said it wasn’t like the old days. Later, after our neighbor Georgia created a geyser with Mentos and Diet Coke the gangs of kids broke into gender groups – the girls skipped rope and the boys continued to beat on the plastic 2-liter container.

    We met one neighbor for the first time, and we’ve been here for almost 8 years now. And, we got to know other neighbors better, not only those on our block, but also neighbors who live on nearby blocks. What fun.

    In the week since the party, I’ve been looking for people on the block, looking to say hello and continue the conversation. Looks like 8 hours of no cars and some food on the street has started to coalesce some neighbors into a neighborhood. Thanks Wendy!

  • My most amazing bridesmaid’s dress (gratitude #28)

    Everyone complains about bridesmaid’s dresses. I’ve bought some pastel tiered wedding-cake-esque “wonders” that immediately went into the “for Kiwanis” pile after the event. But I did get one dress, for my sister’s wedding, that has become my go-to dress for formal events and weddings since.

    bridesmaids and the brideMy sister is a pragmatic woman. When she got married, 11 years ago in May, she asked her bridesmaids to wear an off-the-rack dress. The Talbot’s dress she chose was a formal black dress, with a keyhole back and two discreet bows one on each side of the keyhole. The dress fit all the bridesmaids well, which was amazing considering that we ranged in size from 5’0″ to 6’2″ and in figure from hourglass to rangy. I think my mom did a bit of alteration to make the dress fall nicely on me, but overall it was a great deal.

    Well, my friend Vici got married last week, and, over a decade later, I was able to pull out that dress for another wedding. Thanks Chris!

  • Garden visitor (gratitude #27)

    So, I’ve been contemplating doing some landscape work on the backyard. The grass is dying (grubs, I think), the deck is too small for the table and the grill we have on it, and the random plantings (my fault) and the bi-level deck and backyard (inherited from the previous owners) feels like there’s too much going on in a small space. I’ve had it.

    So, I called in the professionals. I am getting quotes from a couple of different landscape architecture firms to redesign our backyard. A representative of one came out today, and we discussed several things. I got excited. Finally, the backyard of my dreams was about to hatch. However, translating this to my skeptical and more financially responsible husband didn’t go so well tonight. So, I felt a bit bruised and sulky, but the two of us went to our backyard and wandered around our small downtown yard, trying to think about next steps.

    I was fretting over this and that, weeding here and there, and then Dave said “is that a real moth?”. There was a huge Cecropia silkmoth, Hyalophora cecropia, just hanging out on our bee balm. It gripped the bee balm stem delicately in its full regalia -fuzzy striped russet, black, and white body, gigantic russet, brown, grey, and white wings, glorious feathered black antennae. And of course, the engineer saw it, not the biologist, cause the biologist was all bent out of shape. And it was sitting there, with grace and beauty, quietly yet quite firmly directly refuting my assertion that my backyard wasn’t terrific.

    Moth on Monarda
    Cecropia moth on my bee balm

    I still have a few ideas about improving the yard, but the moth drove the sulkiness away. Hard to complain about the garden when it is pulling in such lovely fans.