Managing the many human obligations – with help from a spring meditation

My mind is drawing a blank: good for a Buddhist, bad for a blogger. Actually, my head is way too full: corralling many details. And our basement flooded in last night's torrents of rain, so we literally had to sweep water down the drain, under the ground. Ground water. It's an interesting form of zen practice.

How to be mindful when you have a head full of strands to connect? That's the challenge of our time, but probably of earlier times, too, in different ways. Wanting to empty the head, the cup, the vessel, the calendar, in order to fill it with something fresh. To experience completion and calm. To tap into the flow state of mental wonder and emotional beauty. To find time to reset.

What do you do – to pause, complete, move on, renew, manage the many human obligations? Give me a tip...

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In the meantime, voting closes today over at SAFE: Soap Artisan Friends of Etsy, where there is a poetry writing contest going on. Soapmakers have written poetry in the hopes of scoring some soap supplies. I love this poem by Laura Natusch of Urban Eden; run over there and give her a vote!

(Here is a little "How to Vote" tutorial: First you click on comments. Then you post a comment saying who you vote for. You'll have to do the word verification thingie. And then – this might be the tricky part – you need to choose an identity. This was easy for me because I have both a blogger account and a google account. If you don't, you'll have to register to be able to post. That involves choosing an online identity and giving them an e-mail address – so they know it's not the same person voting more than once. If you've ever made a comment here at elenabella, you're all set up: just use that process. If you are new to this, once you vote over at SAFE, you'll be all set to join the comment gallery over here – which would be terrific!)

An interesting thing about switching to only bars of handmade soap – not only are they wonderful for your skin, but they seem to last much longer than those liquid soaps in plastic dispensers. I see them as good luck talismans for self and household care. Maybe for mindfulness, too, especially when combined with meditations such as the one below.

Gardener's Poem:The Week Before Easter

Walking up Mountain Avenue
With my green plastic watering can,
I head towards the FRESH community garden,
Passing the abandoned pickle factory
And the stoop of a white, wind-chimed two-decker
Where two girls on cell phones
Unfurl their bare arms.

Salsa from the Super Fiesta Market
Mingles with sparrow song

And I think of the squirrel who, earlier this morning,
Raided my compost pile, burying her face
In an avocado with such bliss

That, reading the sign in front of the Madry Temple Church,
I can almost believe
No bunny loves you like Jesus.

Maybe today the pac choi will have sprouted?

Dandelions muscle their way through cracked sidewalks.
Forsythia swells yellow

And when, in my raised bed I find
Not pac choi, but pea seeds
Wrinkling their noses in the unexpectedly dry air,
I tuck them back under their blanket of soil,
Telling them, "Hush. Be patient. Wait
'Til you see what's coming."

Laura Natusch 

May Day – and Happy Birthday, Jade!

May Day was one of my favorite holidays as a child, though there wasn't much to it, except the story of May Day as a holiday celebrated by my mother. When she was young, children made little May baskets out of paper, filled them with flowers, and left them as gifts on the door handles of neighbors' houses. I wished we celebrated that way too, and a few times, with mom's guidance, we did. I remember making a May basket for my beloved first grade teacher, Nila Boehmke, a couple of years after I left her class, filling it with grass, lilies of the valley, and violets.

Soapmaker Laura (who is also a playwright) made the wonderful carrot soap I'm now using, purchased on Etsy at Urban Eden. She recently posted a recipe for candied violets on her facebook page, along with the photo above:

The easiest is to brush lightly whipped egg whites onto freshly picked violets, then sprinkle them with superfine sugar. Set them on wax or parchment paper for at least a day to dry.

I've seen other recipes involving bleach to avoid salmonella, but I didn't bother because I'd rather eat fresh local egg whites than bleach. And there's another method involving sugar syrup instead of egg whites, but it's a little more complicated.

I've read it's best to pick the violets early in the morning.

Our yard is currently filled with blue and yellow violets, lilies of the valley, and a few sweet dandelions. Here is more from Laura about violets:

What else can you do with violets besides candying them? Eat the fresh leaves and flowers (super high in Vitamins A and C), make violet tea (leaves and flowers) and make skin-soothing salves from the leaf--especially if combined with plantain leaves. But avoid them if you're allergic to aspirin: some of their soothing qualities come from their high salicylic acid content.

These days, May Day is sweet for another reason – it is the birthday of our youngest niece Jade, lover of toads (and all animals), musician, and visual artist. Here's a beautiful photo my mother took of Jade with one of her toads – and a big shout out to her!

It's perfect that Jade was born on May Day, as she has an instinct to make gifts and other things from materials offered by the natural world – pine cones, shells, stones, and flowers. I wish I could sit with her today at a big table, making May baskets, learning more about her toads, and taking a walk, collecting treasures.

Personal Service Trumps Customer Service

I recently clicked onto Etsy and found a pair of earrings I liked, from Laura at Urban Eden Designs. On Etsy you can always contact the seller and learn a bit more about their wares, or ask for customization.

Laura's profile reveals that she's an art school graduate who sometimes makes music or writes, and who also creates really nice small batch body care products (loaded with olive oil, shea butter, and no added fragrance, hurrah), upcycled kimono silk eye pillows, and other artisan goods for sale on-line and at her local farmers' market.

I ordered a couple of pairs of earrings and the package arrived yesterday, complete with a note thanking me for choosing these from among the so many options available in our super-abundant world.

Laura's earrings come mounted on little handpainted cards, which I will keep for their charm factor. They lured me in because of the rolled up words and images out of which they are made, from pages in magazines.

This made me think about how every single experience I've had on Etsy has been a happy one, involving personal service and attention to detail. I'm not a terribly high maintenance customer in any context, but there is an extra dimension to this form of commerce that makes it so much more satisfying than just snagging (for example) assembly-line earrings from a big box store.

After taking a look at elenabella, Laura sent me this message:

"You have gotten me to thinking about funding for the arts, and how it creates jobs. My husband builds harpsichords for a living. His main customers are professional musicians--who don't have venues without funding--and universities, whose endowments have all shrunk dramatically. So you just motivated me to write a letter explaining what arts funding does for us."

Personal service trumps even the best customer service. It's a little less anonymous, and reveals more about the underpinnings of our economy and our lives.