Frida

Is there a spiritual path without suffering? If Donald Trump was really comfortable with abundance, would he still be going for the comb over?

I see the movie Frida, about the famous painter, and don't like it so much. The pain she went through and all that painting that came out of her as a result is amazing. The amazing thing is, that it is true. I watch as she paints in different positions as she is ill when she is young and bedridden again when she is old. At one point there is a mirror above her bed that she does her self-portraits from. The movie really "soft sells" a lot of her story. The real tale is even more amazing. She had polio as a young child and that point is glossed over and merely hinted at in the film. I know I am fortunate to never have faced something like that. Frida marries someone whom she loves very much and he is so very unfaithful. I look up Diego Rivera's biography and discover that he was even a cannibal at one point in his lifetime. That was also mentioned directly by his character in the film but I thought he was just being sexy! I realize how lucky I am to be a single woman who never married a cannibal. My cat runs to the door as though timed by my emotional breakthrough and wants to go out again. It seems I do have my share of domestic responsibilities but they are small and furry.
My cat, who never went to law school, is a brilliant manipulator. He gets thrown out when he scratches something he is not supposed to. We keep him in at night so he does not get feline HIV. There is no vaccine for that yet, and the cat fighting usually leads to blood. He wants to go out at night so he scratches something he is not supposed to. I scold him. He runs to the door looking at the knob hoping to get thrown out. He loves to fight, and when I don't let him, he seems to suffer. Thomas can look very woeful appearing to suffer from great agony and then sleep it off the next second. I have to admire his flexibility.

The last sale for a few weeks is in the morning on Saturday and is very early. The snow was falling and it was wet. I have been out in the drizzle all day and look as wet as my cat who loves the rain. The temperatures were at freezing. The weatherman says that it is going to be icing up overnight and more snow in the morning. I cross the sale off my list of things to do since I will never be able to make the journey in that kind of weather. The sale is an hour-and-a-half away and I want to go. Part of me is too tired to go though. I wake up late the next morning with a cold and body aches. It turns out that my sister-in-law is not going to be around on Sunday which my brother forgot to mention. This means I am also the chef of the day and now the party is today.

I take a nice long bath, or I plan on one but the water runs cold for some reason that is not yet determined. I feel cold and my cat wants to go out. I throw him out before he scratches something he is not supposed to. The draft from the cold day makes me feel a bit more of a chill. I notice it is not too icy like the weatherman said it would be and I could have gone to the sale anyway had I felt better and not had to cook for a party. I hop into bed to attempt to warm up. Then it hits me. I don't have a cold at all! This symptoms are all allergies! Not the one for un-necessary suffering, I take an allergy pill, three aspirin, put several drops in my eyes and have some vitamin C for good measure. I could really use another nap.

The party is a success. I have more wine, coffee, fattening food, ice cream, cake and lots of good conversation. God, I hope I am not too decadent! I also have more aspirin and another allergy pill. Everyone keeps raving about my carrot parsnip soup. I thought it was "ok" and wonder if my taste buds are functioning correctly. Maybe I really do have a cold? The next day people are calling and talking about the darn carrot parsnip soup. "How do you make that?" they ask. When I tasted it I made a mental note not to make it again. I must have been mistaken.

Suffering... It strikes me as strange that people would need to inflict pain upon themselves at all. Simply living life has hit me with larger objects that I could bear to purposely subject myself to. I won't bore you with the obvious, since I have mentioned it so many times before. I won't even mention the time the bull was behind me and breathing like a locomotive with the sound of his hooves pounding the earth. There was not enough time to look and see what this was like. I was busy leaving and looking takes time. I did not take the time to get scared, think or any of those suffering paths. I ran and jumped for my life. It was a personal little marathon that is hard to forget. It might have even been a personal record, but there was no timer present.

Life is not all suffering either. Sometimes it is darn good and we can spend our moments happily running and jumping just as a simple challenge. As a matter of fact when I am going through the phases of death and review, I will probably note that I had more than my fair share of chocolate and sunny days spent outside. That is very nice. We all have the scars from our suffering and mine are not so bad or at least I have seen worse. There have been years spent at other businesses where I did not have a window or any light from the outside. These positions were not as long lived, but they were long enough. Imagine, that much of the people in the "civilized world" work that way!


Working is not suffering but book sales are not all fun and dancing. I once had a stack of books fall on my face getting a black eye. Another woman intimated to me that she had someone drop a book on her toe and it broke. (The toe broke... The book could have been a tragedy too depending upon the title.) She prevailed through the whole sale and bought her books. The physician later proclaimed her toe broken and taped it up. One man screamed, "DON'T TOUCH ME!" to one of the dealers who was flipping books next to him. In his lightly southern, slow but sarcastic nasal tone the dealer responded, "Sir, you should not come to book sales if you do not want to be touched." The rest of us laughed hysterically because it is true. If you don't like a crowd, the book tent is not the place to be. Everyone ends up being quite jostled with lots of polite "excuse me" notes being sung into the air. I noticed the man looked as though we were all laughing at him. He was suffering. I have learned a lot about human nature. I see one grown man push another and yell, "That is pushing... Look it up!'

They say you can learn from suffering and I believe I do, but I don't want to. I continue to express that I have enough character and I simply can't use anymore. I am not sure how much more character the others around me can stand. (Denial is suffering in itself and will always pop back later.) After a day of volleying for position, lugging 40 pound cases of books around, and nasty looks from the postal patrons behind me in line, I just don't feel the need to whip myself. Suffering is reading a lousy book or one with a poor ending. Suffering is a book without a plot if it is never broken out of or non-fiction with all the facts incorrectly presented as though they were true. Or maybe suffering is cultural like being Irish. My family is Irish and every time I see Irish films they seem to end with a lot of suffering still going on. Someone told me those French films often end without endings. Everyone just drives off at the end at the point that seems to be the middle of the movie to the viewer. I was disappointed enough when the guy in "Phone Booth" got away. Suffering is watching the whole movie and THEN realizing it was bad. That is why we have to change before it is too late.

I have been very sick, so very ill, that I could not stand it. I have also had times when I have just been plain, run of the mill, ill and just slept the whole thing off. There are people who drive me crazy and people I love so they can drive me mad. I enjoy one comment about a person who experienced enlightenment and was so wonderful until he spent a few days with his mother. Somewhere, right this very moment, there is a kid who lost their dog. I lost a few cats growing up so I know how that poor kid feels. War, death, pain and torture do not come out as the most fearful items on our nightmare lists. Public speaking does. Can you imagine that? Unless your public speech is in front of a firing squad it cannot be so bad... can it? There are acts so horrible, I cannot even begin to mention them. That is only because I choose not to but I am sure you are keeping a few of them out of your mind right now. We just can't stand to have them sit in our heads. I am just glad that, chances are, these acts have nothing to do with book dealing. I did read a few occasions of book dealers and enthusiasts being crushed by their own book shelves. Now that is tragic.

So I think the suffering is there for us and it challenges us to go past it and find the treasure and make it into a rare book. This is the book that always sells no matter how many times you buy it and how many copies there are available on the market. Everyone always wants a copy too or is looking for one. It never becomes a common book and is always unique to the reader so it stays current in discussions and in the media. They always have good endings. Be sure to secure your book shelves too. Mine are nailed to strong structural beams.

I have had plenty of great sales in my business days so far. There are sunny days when everyone is nice and there is a floral scent in the air. At one particular sale this month, I was the only dealer in attendance. That was sweet and I was able to take my time and read all the titles. At most sales, no one breaks there toe or gets a black eye as far as I know. On a majority of the days I get up feeling good and looking forward to the journey and a nice piece of chocolate. There is no way I am going to whip myself, especially on those good days, but if it works as well as the real stuff, I would see the point.