Washing Dishes Is Never Just Washing Dishes
On a normal day, you’d call it washing the dishes. You’d call it despair. And then, to be more specific, you’d whittle that down to something called loneliness. You’d take it for granted that you miss someone and that would be your problem. On a normal day, you’d call it washing the dishes and you’d be so attached to your sadness that you’d forget to ask questions.
But today, like every day, is not normal. Today, as you rinse the blue plate, you’re reminded of that Shunryu Suzuki bit about the waterfall. How can you be a person washing dishes when you’re a drop of water coming down from a high mountain? The feeling doesn’t change. But it’s a new story. Being a drop of water is difficult.
There’s a subtle shade of relief in being a drop of water but it doesn’t last. An elegant metaphor you read 16 years ago is not the answer. Today, nimbly, you keep moving. You realize that what—on a normal day—you would usually call “loneliness” is actually the frantic buzz of a fly with its wings all spider webbed. But even though you’re trapped, you know you can’t stay. Because a little girl in Japan is weeping. Did she wake from a nightmare? Is she an orphan? You can't know. But perhaps you are, in a way not yet articulated by the scientific method, a receptacle for her grief.
You look out the window. You see through the window. You wonder if you yourself are made of glass and on the verge of shattering. Isn’t loneliness more aptly described as an empty place where the wind blows through? For awhile. But then it’s the price you pay for an intimacy that blurs the distinction between persons. And then it’s penance for the boy you punched—you broke his glasses—so many years ago or the man you killed so many lives ago in that bar when the law was upheld with knives. A witch’s hex or a little demon dragging you down to the underworld, clutching at your legs.
You don’t know what’s wrong with you. But your lack of certainty regarding causation is not a case for meaninglessness. It’s quite the opposite. A lack of certainty clears the place where meanings fill, full of meanings, meaningful. There are answers. But they’re bursting with questions and today it occurs to you that your suffering resides only in your certainty about its source, that there’s joy to be found in moving along as you dry the blue plate and wonder.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Reader Comments (10)
'There are answers. But they’re bursting with questions...'
this.
thank you.
Yeah. This.
"A lack of certainty clears the place where meanings fill, full of meanings, meaningful."
I clicked over to that bit about the waterfall and loved it. Love this post, too.
I've a thing about the term "washing the dishes." In my very first rehab, I was a complete idiot who didn't understand what was going on or why I was there. 24 years old. Hooked up with a fellow-patient, Eli. We started fucking on day 8, but didn't get caught. He looked at me once and solemnly said, "I work as a hooker." And was shocked that I was fine with it .. wasn't til months later I learnt he meant with men and not with women. Whatever .. I was still fine with it. Point is, in that stupid rehab where I learnt nothing and wasted everybodys time ... Eli turned to me one day as he washed the dishes.
"You know, I think being here has taught me .. that when I'm washing the dishes, to just wash the dishes. Not think about how broke I am or how fucked up or any of the shit that's in my head. I'm just going to wash the dishes."
It was my first ever insight into any form of Buddhism, and cracked open my Catholic mind.
I think of it often, have never forgotten it. Or him.
this is essence (economically spoken), and i love it.
You are loved. Held in the mind of others, constantly. Mine and C's included. This is everything, at bottom.
(And yes, I know you weren't looking for a response or reassurance in that sense. But I feel compelled to say things.)
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
Awesome.
I'm so thankful that my friend kept insisting I read your blog. Your words make me feel less mired in my self-imposed solitude.
I can't stand, I can't stand losin...
Washing dishes is also great for when you order too much food and don't have enough cash.