Today I am in Seattle. Visiting the city I lived in for eight years before moving down south to Tacoma more than two years ago. I’m sitting at The Six Arms nursing IPAs while Miral is off getting her haircut for the trip. I am trying to work on a few things that need to get done before I leave. But this time and space to be alone is bringing up too much stuff. For the first moment in what feels like months that I have been intensely focused on 'the next thing that needs to get done,' I am noticing how much I am feeling about leaving – so I have to stop what I am doing and write…
I find that getting ready to leave this place is like all life. Good-Bad. Happy-Sad. Here-Gone. But more vivid than usual. Each time I grab a glimpse of the fresh new life on the road we are about to step out into, I am simultaneously gripped by a memory of this life I plan to walk away from. Spending the day in Seattle with stops in the U-District, Ravenna, Capitol Hill, and now my old neighborhood of First Hill, it floods me. Meeting Aaron for beers here at the Six Arms to talk politics and the everyday moments of life before catching a great Alt-Country band he’s recently introduced me to. Walking past Six Arms thousands of mornings to Bauhaus Coffee for that “Triple Sixteen Ounce Soy Latte.” Biking to the U-District to buy my first pair of glacier glasses for mountain climbing. Stopping into East-West bookstore to look at the newest Dharma book everyone at the Shambhala Center is seemingly reading. Drinking at the Capitol Club with Shambhala Center friends – and work friends – and new friends. Wandering around Capitol Hill with no one to see and nothing to do but observe. Getting Pho at Than Brothers with Shambhala Center friends after sitting nynthun on Sunday morning. More than ten years have happened here. I can almost barely remember the guy who arrived here from Alabama in 1997. Well, except for the fact that his habits and foibles still emerge almost constantly. I guess I remember the guy who arrived here just fine. But man has the content changed many times over since then. There’s a line from an Indigo Girls song that says, “Every ten years or so I look back on my life and I have a good laugh.” There is plenty to laugh about in these past ten years – and often I do – but somehow, today, it feels more like sadness. Maybe it’s because I spent the morning writing a letter to some of my best Seattle friends who I’ve lost touch with these last few years. Maybe it’s just the IPAs.
Or maybe the sadness comes because it is all so intensified by leaving behind the only 100% constant companions I have had these last ten years – my cats (well, ten for Tigger and 8 for Callie, but it feels like they have both always been there). My girls. As a vegetarian, I get lots of mocking (even in Seattle!) about the silliness of feeling so much for animals. Sometimes you hear it so much that you wonder why you are so sensitive about them. But there are times when you have no doubts about the intensity of emotions they feel. When you can’t escape how clearly they are animated by the same exact – SAME EXACT – intangible unnamable Buddhanature/God/life-force that animates you. And when the love that is in your heart for them is as strong as any love that you have ever felt for anyone else.
Today we brought Callie to Alice’s house. Tigger went to Jane’s house last Saturday. They both hid in closets during the farewell – both trying to feel safe in hopes that their discomfort would go away and they would be home again. You can’t look into the scared, wondering eyes of these girls without your heart completely breaking. These same beings who greeted you each and every morning for ten years and each and every day after work for ten years and each and every time you came in from hanging out with with friends for ten years and each and every time you had nowhere to go for ten years and each and every time you felt good about what was happening in your life for ten years and each and every time you felt bad about what was happening in your life for ten years. Just there – as happy to see you and be with you as the day before. Man, they are always there. Callie rubbing her head against you like she had never felt such ecstasy– Tigger sitting on your chest and settling in with contentment like she had found God there. And here I go and choose to walk away from them for a year. CHOOSE TO. How can I do this to them?
Probably I am just projecting all over them. Tigger completely loves Jane and is already settling into her home just fine – and Jane loves “Cheryl Tiegs,” and she tells me that one of her cats has become Tigger’s BFF. Alice has had cats before – today she cried telling us the story of her last cat’s death several years ago – so I know she gets it – Callie will be loved and her home is perfect with views of trees and birds and sunshine that will come in for Callie to sprawl out in. They will both be fine. But will they wonder what happened to that guy who was always there? Will they wonder if I died? Tigger has been with me since she was days old – Callie from a few years old. Will they wonder why I abandoned them? Will I wonder why I’ve abandoned them? I already do. This sucks. It sucks like when Roo died. It sucks like when Jane and I split. It sucks like when Nana died. A sadness that comes suddenly and overwhelms me instantly.
If they realize I am gone, I hope they have some way to appreciate what I am doing. Cats are funny. Every time they have a chance to make a break from a home, they get to the door — take a few steps out – and ran back inside feeling the intensity of stepping into the unknown. They suddenly realize it is all just fine where they are and how it is. No need to take chances. But I feel the need to walk out the door right now -- like I may never get the chance again. Their decision is not wrong. I could also run back inside -- it is a really happy life here. But my decision to leave for the year is also not wrong. Yet somehow, with all that awaits me out there – a year of completely unexpected joys and disappointments, my mind already jumps ahead to coming home to them. To the anticipation of a flight from Southeast Asia landing at Sea-Tac and my heart pounding as I drive to get them. To the inability to wait even one more second to see them. There’s that video that’s gone around on Youtube of the lion being reunited with his former owners after years in the wild where the lion runs to them and jumps up on them and hugs them and shares with them what’s happened since they last were together. I don’t expect Tigger and Callie to react like that lion when I get back. But I will.
If they are still there to greet me. I have seen and heard of a lot of odd deaths this year. So I can’t pretend to know if they will be there. Tigger. Fourteen. Through so much the last two years. So close to death after eating poisoned cat food. Renal Failure. Hyperthyroid. Radiation treatment. Sub-Q fluids. Callie. Starting to show early signs of renal problems. Overweight.
Oh yeah. And me. Stepping out that door into the unknown. I can’t pretend to be 100% certain I’ll come back. I think I will. I hope I will. I have hopes for what could come later. But I also have a real sense of satisfaction of how this odd unexpected life has unfolded. The beings that have wandered into it. Tigger. Callie. Aaron. Shambhala friends. Strangers. Miral. Miral. It is an odd feeling to reach a point that you honestly know at a very deep place in your bones that if you didn’t live another day, you’d know you lived with some approximation of fullness. Even though much of it is with sadness today -- I feel very full today.
Another sip of good hoppy McMennamins IPA. Miral has just text messaged. Time to pick her up…
