Discovery Buddha

I've been listening to podcasts by Gil Fronsdal from the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City. I have never practiced what I consider "real" Zen meditation even though I have read or listened to many materials by Thich Nhat Han, Pema Chodrom and Joko Beck. I don't think I'm up to the reality of the meditations, let alone the retreats, but I can handle walking meditation and try to practice mindfulness.

I've made a few stabs at developing a meditation practice over the years. I studied yoga at an old-style 1970's center, with orange thick-pile carpet and an actual yogi who visited from time to time from his retreat on Mount Palomar.

Once when I tried to explain my progress with mediation with a teacher, I compared my experience to being how I feel when I play the piano or write or listen to an amazing piece of music like a Beethoven string quartet. The teacher had a funny expression. It took me a while to figure out that for me maybe it was best to stick with music and writing to bring me a feeling of peace and flow and quiet, softened focus -- and not feel too bad about my inability to empty my mind while sitting cross-legged on the floor.

This week I listened to a talk called Sun Buddha, Moon Buddha. Gil explained that the Sun Buddha is eternal and lasts forever. The Moon Buddha lasts only the cycle of a moon. He used this dichotomy to talk about the need to accept the situation and work you are given.

When I listened to the talk I was in the middle of a several day project of writing several discovery motions. For those not familiar with litigation, discovery is the time-consuming process of exchanging information and "discovering" facts about the other party's case. It leads to the delivery of dozens of boxes of documents that need to be reviewed and digested. And when we think someone hasn't given us everything we asked for, we complain to the court in the form of a motion. So that's what I was doing this week. It's tedious and yet pretty important.

So I realized that for this week at least it is my role to be a Discovery Buddha. Applying that label helped me focus better on the work at hand and keep my butt in the chair until I was done.

God, I Hope I Get It

I think of myself as one of the most risk-adverse people I know. I never took time off to backpack around the world. I never experimented with drugs. I've never even had a variable rate mortgage. Instead, I went to school, I went to work, I paid my bills.

But now I'm reconsidering that view of myself. This week I watched "Every Little Step," a documentary about the recent revival of "A Chorus Line" set against an exploration of the original production.

I saw the revival in New York a few years ago. But I also saw the original production at the Schubert when I was in high school. When "A Chorus Line" first came to prominence I was already deeply and truly bitten by the dance bug. I spent nearly every day after school taking class at American Ballet Theatre. Perfecting a triple pirouette was all I could think about, when I should have been worrying about my SATs. When I went to see "A Chorus Line" with my friends from high school, I most likely had my dance bag on my shoulder and pink tights on under my jeans.

After the show finished, when everyone had that flushed, amazed look from having briefly entered another world, I had a "see what I mean?" reaction. I already felt like I lived in that world.

But I didn't. I was a student at Stuyvesant, New York's famous "public prep" school, and was hoping to go to a "serious" college. I was tongue-tied and insecure about my looks and my body and was never going to be a professional dancer.

So what made me go uptown after school every day and take my place at the barre, wearing just the thinnest layers of nylon and exposing all of my physical faults to a room of not exactly sympathetic eyes?

I don't know.

As I watched the movie this week I started thinking about all of the other risky things I've done --

-- leaving my family in New York to go to college in California, knowing I would never go back to New York
-- leaving my first job in Silicon Valley to go to law school with less than $1,000 in savings
-- deciding there was no reason I shouldn't become a partner in a major law firm and work on intellectual property matters during the internet boom, when I had two children under age ten
-- resigning from that same law firm ten years later to write a book
-- taking on an entirely new area of law when the book was done, during the worst recession the country has seen in my lifetime

Maybe I'm a contrarian. Maybe I don't like being told I can't do something that intrigues me. Maybe I don't like being defined by one phrase or word -- "the smart girl," "the mother," "the lawyer."

Maybe I'm a lot more attracted to risk than I ever imagined. Maybe I just define risk in a different way than most people.

I'm back

I joined a new writing group last week. It's an on-going group and there are two new people this time.

I think it will be just what I need right now. We do writing exercises, can choose to read or not, and can sign up for critiques if we want them. No big pressure but I really liked the energy of the group.

One of the things we did in the first class was to set objectives for the next ten weeks. My top two objectives are to re-find a habit of writing and to set some objectives for myself. As I was making my list a character crossed my mind. He was intriguing and I couldn't remember where I knew him from at first. Then I remembered I had written half a short story about him. It was a short story that I really liked. I had even gone to L.A. and taken pictures of apartment houses where I thought he would live. And I felt the little flicker of artistic interest in me -- for the first time in a long time.

Then I thought of another half-written story.

I realized I have no idea what is in my own computer.

So now I know that one of the first things I need to do is take inventory and figure out what to leave as is, what to pick up again, and what should never see the light of day. Maybe my year off from writing was a good thing. I will certainly have distance and hopefully a more objective eye about the things I wrote before. We will just have to see.

The "K" List for 2010 -- My Favorite Books

This is a New Year's tradition for me. Here is my list of the 15 books I liked best in 2010. The order is the order in which I read them. Questions welcome.

The Good Soldiers – David Finkel
Sarah’s Key – Tatiana De Rosnay
In the Woods – Tana French
Blame – Michelle Huneven
The Days of Abandonment – Elena Ferrante
Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House – Meghan Daum
Purge – Sofi Oksanen
Lost Hearts in Italy – Andrea Leee
Changing Light – Nora Gallagher
The Widow Clicquot – Tilar Mazzeo
The Lotus Eaters – Tatjana Soli
Paris Stories – Mavis Gallant
Seventh Heaven – Alice Hoffman
The Ghosts of Belfast – Stuart Neville
The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachman