Parallel Parking and Delayed Gratification

I was reflecting recently that having always wanted to be(come) a mystic, what I've been instead is a

  missed-stic. Ironically, I suspect that a big part of why I've been so unsuccessful in adult life is because as a young person, many things that were considered important came to me very easily. It's not that I never had to try. I became a decent cross-country runner and a national-level musician, and I don't think my natural talent at either of those things was very great, but--especially the music--I really really wanted it.

I suspect this will never be my street address... But interesting to have it as a nearby cross street.

Otherwise, though, I wasn't ever encouraged to put more effort in to get better at something that I wasn't naturally excellent in; there was a lot of "okay, good enough,"  coupled with some impatience on my part, along the lines of looking up the solution to the puzzle at the back of the book, or abandoning the puzzle half-done.
But the times I finished the puzzle without cheating, the time I put up the shelf for my mom, leveled it, and redid it ("no, leave it, it's fine") so that it was actually level, provoked a sweet, earthy/hearty/grounded satisfaction of a whole different order from the easy victories of perfect test scores.

I learned to drive in a European university town. This meant that parallel parking wasn't just a technicality on the driving test; it was a necessary skill most likely to be called upon every time one drove a car. In the fourteen years I've lived in the US, that skill has become far less relevant.

This afternoon I was running an errand on 4th Avenue in Tucson's University district, and the first parking spot I found was a parallel park, circumscribed both front and back. I seriously considered not even trying. My first two goes were a mess with my back to the curb, which I realized wasn't surprising since I learned to parallel park in little cars with no power steering (and my California-days Mazda was that same way--I did need to parallel park in Berkeley), whereas my Subaru is as long as a small truck and has power steering--of course I ended up overshot if my body remembered making these movements in a shorter vehicle with a tighter turning moment.

So I swung out for my third attempt...and here comes the streetcar! I would have just driven away, but the streetcar was already stopped, waiting, watching. Probably everyone on the sidewalk was watching the stopped streetcar for why it was stopped. Public humiliation, for sure... But third time turned out good--really good, right? Straight, true, close.

I almost couldn't believe I'd done it--just about had myself convinced that I wouldn't be able to. I don't consider myself mechanically skilled, or car savvy, or spatially aware. Getting to prove my negative self-talk wrong through action was an unexpected gift.

So, hang in there. Delayed gratification can be delicious.

Overdue Update! Car Trouble, Seven Pictures, Knowing What You See

Also at http://ulteriorharmony.org/?p=697 
I'm still alive, and I'm in Berkeley! I was offline for four days of the ferry from Haines to Bellingham, then some serious driving, some wonderful hospitality, and catching up with dear, dear friends whom I haven't seen in way too long. Interesting that when I was in England last fall, I found myself telling people it wouldn't be so long until the next time I saw them (it had been three years that time). And now in the Bay Area, I've been saying the same thing to my friends here. Conceptually, AZ feels so much closer to everything/everywhere. My car has come down with a bunch of fairly serious issues. I'm so glad I caught it yesterday and so grateful that my friends have a mechanic they trust who is taking care of the issues today. In my first post from the road, my lesson 2, in part, was not to over-worry about noises or smells my car may or may not have been emitting, so it's interesting that the rider to that lesson now is to follow intuition. When the road pavement was washboarded and it sounded like a blown-out tire, I was glad to recognize that there was no need to worry along those lines. On the other hand, taking my car to the mechanic this morning because "it might be nothing but it's a specific noise that happens in a specific context that wasn't happening until last night" may have averted a breakdown in the middle of nowhere.
I'm sitting here with the atlas and trying to figure out the best route from here to Bryce Canyon, where I want to stop on my way to Tucson, preparing my spirit for the next reach. 
In WA, OR, and CA the past four days have been full of torrential rain, with some thunder and lightning. Very different driving than in AK, very different flora. It was sweet to see my first palm tree a little ways north of Sacramento, my first prickly pears on the 405 west of Sacramento.
So much is different, of course. My conception of how many miles I can cover in a given time changes depending on the roads--the "220 miles = ca. 5 hours" based on Homer-to-Anchorage algorithm is gone. Stop-go traffic for over four hours in the Seattle area on Friday; three hundred miles in less than five hours on Saturday morning. 
Different, too, being in an area with fruit trees everywhere, and produce stores everywhere. I'm so habituated to there being maybe three places in town where produce is available, and that's all for about seventy miles. 

With all the friends I've visited, it's been as though no time had elapsed, although we hadn't seen each other for seven years. This gives me some hope and good feelings about preserving the precious friendships I just drove away from in AK. There is something so grounding about these enduring friendship connections: that they exist, that they continue even with nothing physical supporting them. As I pay attention to my own relationship with, orientation toward, connection with, the outside world, recently I've often become aware of being on autopilot; of looking at things and simply not knowing what I'm looking at. Without labeling, without judgment, I've been using my gift of language to put words, very very simple words, to what I'm seeing, using them as little mantras to bring myself to the present. Also, of understanding what I'm seeing to compare it to what I've seen elsewhere; to acknowledge and understand how one place differs from the next place. It is deepening my engagement with this transition, so that I'm inhabiting the place in which I currently am, rather than just blowing on through lost in my head.

Here are some pictures of what I've been seeing.
Snowy conifers from the boat:

 Snowclad mountains in the distance; snows receding in the foreground:

 Ketchikan--still in AK but a whole different climate. Mountain and ocean right there together--land at the dock and the road goes straight up. Some of the town hewn straight through native rock:

 Crocuses and buds in Ketchikan:

A standard view at an opening between two stores in Ketchikan's front. Many big generic touristy stores; many businesses closed; Ketchikan is bigger than Homer but evidently much more seasonal and dependent on the tourists on the summer cruise ships and ferries. There were a couple stores with the strident label "We are staffed by natives of Ketchikan and are open year round to serve our community," with a strong implication of all the negatives of these affirmations. Not everyone loves the tourists!

My camera didn't come out for those three days of driving and visiting. This is Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park, which I never visited when I lived there but is now the place where I reconnected with two lovely friends. 

And this is the view from my friends' porch. Oh, I spent so many hours here when I lived in Berkeley. Oh what dear friends, how good it is to see them!

More soon when I'm back on the road! And more awareness around seeing. I always hear what I'm hearing, so it's interesting to be paying more attention to seeing like this! Anyone else?

My New Car, or , The Exterior Things, and What They Carry

Well, a girl can get really chilled after a long day spent mostly in the Warthog. Phil got pretty cold too, since he accompanied me to Anchorage this time, or I him, as he headed out to Arizona for some space, sunshine, and catching up with some dear friends of ours.

Especially with snow in my boots at times, by the end of a day in and out of the car, I was so cold I did the only sensible thing--ran a sinkful of hot water, hopped up on the sink stand, and soaked my feet. With the gothic-shaped mirror, the little candle on the left, and the sconced glare of the light above, and Phil's talent for photography, I think the picture looks somewhat like one of those Renaissance paintings, almost devotional in its privacy.

Friday and Saturday were much car-searching. I'm sure Phil would rather have been doing just about any other thing, and he was so generous in helping me with this quest. For someone who is a "jack of all trades," with its "master of none" subtext, he really is very good at a lot of things, including understanding automobiles--something still inscrutable to me. Whereas I can hear all kinds of noises and subliminal noises, he can hear those noises and identify which of them may be indicating a problem, and how to slew the car around or put the brakes on suddenly or back up and then go forward to see if it'll straighten itself out. The third car we looked at has a little noise in the back: probably a rear differential issue, I parrot, never having heard of such a thing since high school booty calculus. But that third car we saw is now my car. It's another Subaru, like almost everyone in AK drives--here it is, together with the Warthog, outside our friend Lynn's home.

The engine runs quietly and makes no scary random noises. The inside of the car is sealed--no frost to scrape from the inside of the windshield! It's a little taller, and I can see much farther ahead. Great traction on the icy road, and brakes that don't slip easily. Oh, and the heat works! It gets warm; I get warm--it gets so I have to turn the heat down from max! 

Then there are other nice things like telling me the time and temperature, having many compartments in which to put things, sunroofs (yes, plural), and the wonderful tabula rasa of a clean car. This is the best car I've owned by orders of magnitude, ditto the price paid. Both measures would be nothing to most people my age, but are meaningful for me.

I'm in a very transitional period, and am choosing to invest this car with a great deal of intent and symbolic value. My best ever car...for what?

The first thing I did, even before DMV and insurance, was buy the various fluids a car needs, plus ice-scraper, cleaner, floor-mats, somewhere to put trash, a tarp to put down when dirty things go in.

It is my intention to keep this car clean and organized, even as inevitably it ends up with "stuff" in it. The "stuff" should be useful or beautiful. 

It is my intention to keep this car running well, despite my lack of knowledge of how to do this--to learn enough about what to do that at least I know when to call the doctor! So, I have an appointment with the local-to-Homer expert for as soon as I get home, to find out about the rear differential and all the rest.

Already, it is such a challenge! I set the keychain on the roof of the car, and see how easy it would be to scratch the surface with the key. I sit in the car deciding what to do next, pulling skin off my fingers, picking skin off my scalp--those flakes of skin are mess that would contribute to a general scuzzy buildup in this clean space. Also, though, I try to wash the windshield, and nothing happens. I put almost a gallon of windshield wash in the reservoir--still nothing happens. I pull up the hood again, find the hose, follow it from one end to the other, find everything connected. Now what?

If I don't want to scratch up my car, if I don't want to make a mess in it by pulling off parts of myself, where do I want to do those things? Is it ok to do them in my bed? On someone else's couch? With the windshield washer, I get my first taste of a mechanical problem with no Phil to ask for guidance, and start feeling lame and female; what do I want to do about this? 

I know I could easily scratch things up. I know I could easily make a mess. I know I could easily sit in traffic pulling pieces off myself and dropping them everywhere, gross as that sounds to me now. I know I could easily miss important symptoms and let small problems exacerbate themselves. But in recognizing how easy it would be for me to do these things, I chose to take on the discipline of not doing them; of being conscious, recurrently conscious, of the desire to keep my car beautiful and safe and in best working order.

So, am I a sellout to the superficial and exterior? If Phil is riding with me and decides he has to go dig up a tree and put it in my car, and I insist he tarp it so it stays more contained than he might think necessary, am I placing my anal and newly minted cleanliness standards above the imperative to create a forest and give trees a good life, and do so quickly? Maybe I am. But maybe I'm just creating my own boundaries and seeing how I can become a more kempt person, with a more kempt vehicle surrounding me.

And that's what it boils down to. I'm not selling out to the superficial. I'm recognizing that this car will carry me safely for many thousands of miles, spirit willing, and that if I wish to be carried safely as a precious and beloved cargo, the carrier of the cargo must be precious and beloved also. Yes, an extra expense, but as such, an expression of trust in the universe that I am carried through life safe and beautiful, beyond the hardscrabble survival level.
Otherwise: the outer reflects and reinforces the inner.

I haven't forgotten this blog. I've missed it these past days. Life in its intensity and occasional time-squished downpouring of change precluded any posts these last days. Now, in Anchorage and visiting with several different sets of wonderful friends, I begin to thread myself into space, time and connection once again. Sorry for being so behind on comment responses. 
The outer reflects and reinforces the inner.