In the Ciiiiircle of Liiiiiife

Rituals, rituals...okay, guys. I've got a story.

So as a little kid, I think the one thing that probably drove my parents battier than anything was my affinity for having a FULL SET. If I loved something and there was a full set available, I needed it. Toys, baseball cards, stickers, books, you name it. It was nothing if there were pieces missing!

If there was a sticker book that needed 20 different animals and I could only find 19? Well, charge up the word processor, I had a letter to write to Lisa Frank. And if I had the entire 1992 Oakland A's roster cards EXCEPT for Jose Canseco? Well, I might as well trade out the whole box because what was the point of that? And if Burger King gave away Lion King toys in their kid's meals and I only had six of the seven?

Break out the phone book, Ma. I'm calling every Burger King within 20 miles. I LOVED LION KING.

I realize this sounds spoiled, but hear me out. I really loved to finish things. I loved reaching a terminal point in a collection, saying, "I am done with this. This is all I need." As I've gotten older, this has transferred over to other things (I don't collect toys anymore I SWEAR, but I do like to finish a good book/series if I start one. Good video games must be beaten. I'll usually watch an entire show well into the seasons where they "started to go downhill.")

Anyways, back to the Lion King thing.

I had all of the Lion King toys EXCEPT for Nala. And after a week of phone calls, it turned out that the only Nala in Arizona at the time was at a Burger King 45 minutes away. (Years later, I do realize that it was probably the only place that would bother to check their tub of toys on behalf of a frantic sounding 12 year old on the phone. Thanks, Paradise Valley Burger King!)

When I returned home with my prize, I staged a very public (very embarrassing, in retrospect) very joyous ritual in which I placed Nala on my desk with all the other animals. Complete with the soundtrack, of course. It was one of the proudest moments of my life up to that point: using my own money I bought more kid's meals than I could possibly want to eat, but I had the FULL SET. I did it! I completed the Circle of Life! I had a lovely bunch of coconuts toys!

And the crazy silly ritual that marked completion? It wasn't just weirdly fun, it was necessary! I remember being so happy, so proud of myself for such...uh..."hard" work.

I love seeing certain types of rituals as celebrations, symbolic and joyous celebrations of beginnings and ends. You finish writing a book, you reward yourself with the highly joyous ritual of chocolate and seven straight seasons of The West Wing (okay, that just may be my personal ritual--I like pretending that I'm as witty as Josh Lyman). You get yourself a book deal? You take yourself on a nice vacation! And if you get yourself a huge book deal? Well, by golly you better believe you're taking me.

What rituals do you reward yourself with on completion of a big task?

Postscript: In case you were wondering, it's been 18 years and I still have ALL of the toys---which are now enjoyed daily by my own kid. It's the CIIIIRRRCCCLLLEE OF LIIIIIFE (come on, you knew that was coming.)

Rituals Inside Our Minds

On the Jewish holiday Passover there is a question that is asked before a family starts to eat.

“What makes this night different than all other nights?”

Passover was always my favorite holiday growing up because, although on every night we ate, this night we ate things that meant something. We sat around the table together and talked about why they were important and why we cared and how other families had been doing the same thing for literally thousands of years. To this day Passover is the only day out of the year I eat meat. Not only because lamb is SO good but because of the symbolism of the animal sacrifice.

To me what separates a ritual from a habit is the significance we give it. We have the power to turn a simple, everyday occurrence like a family meal into something that lasts for a thousand years. And it all happens inside our heads.

Here are a few of the rituals I encounter in my daily life and the significance I see in them.

Reaching for the Moon

When I was in high school I read Howard Pyle's The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (fantastic amazing book. Go read it now.) In that book the merry men are philosophizing to each other before embarking on their day of robbing, witty comebacks', and getting into fights. Will Scarlet quotes that “He who leaps for the moon and touches it not still leaps higher than he who stoops for a penny.” To which Robin Hood, being the cheeky little bugger that he is, replies “Aye, but he who stoops for a penny still gets the penny while he who leaps for the moon gets nothing.”

Personally I agree with Scarlet on this one. I'd rather grasp for what I want and will never have than content myself with working for things I don't particularly care about because I know I can get them. So, to remind myself of this, every time I find a penny of the ground I jump up and try to touch the moon. No really, I do. Even now at twenty four years old.

Though to be honest I usually pick up the penny afterward.


Never Sit At the Same Desk Twice

Or at least, not too often. I know most people like to find one desk in a class room and sit in it every class session, and I apologize to those people who's seats I periodically steal, but . . . the same spot? Every day? At the same time? For sixteen weeks? It would drive me crazy. So rather that adopting the ritual of sitting in the same place I've adopted the ritual of stepping into the classroom and thinking for about ten seconds about where I should sit.

What does this ritual symbolize in my head? Keeping myself on my toes. Gaining new perspectives. Trying new things (baby steps ok. Escargot and bungee jumping will come later--- Actually no. No it won't. But maybe *gasp* skipping breakfast and staying out past ten will).


Masterpiece Theater and Wine

This my absolute favorite ritual. Every Sunday night at nine o clock I open up a bottle of two buck chuck and switch the channel to PBS to see what that week's Masterpiece special is (AHHHH! This Sunday is going to be the last episode of Downton Abbey. NOT FAIR). Even if I've seen it before or it's not a particularly great program I still watch it.

I usually do this with my mom (although since Downton my sister and even my thirteen year old brother have joined in. Minus the wine for the brother of course.), so in that sense this is a straight forward bonding ritual, but there is also something significant in opening wine for the occasion and in waiting for the time slot on the TV channel rather than prerecording it. It makes it a ceremony, a moment that can't be repeated throughout the rest of the week. Those few hours are a time for me to savor the last remaining moments of the weekend before going back to the same old work drill of Monday morning.


So what about you? Do you prescribe any personal meanings to the things you do throughout the week? What makes this moment different than all other moments?


Dedication

Desecrate my temple with a candle
With flames that burn beyond the final sleep
Incense drowned in a bequeathed ritual
Lit by men long dead for us to keep
Prepare me for my burial with gifts
As scalded wax drips down sacred pillars
Teach me the truths that ceremony sifts
And learn the innocence hidden by scars
Hear cries of children never born as kings
And pay homage to their everlasting sire
Screams of purity torn from time's sweltering
Defile my memory for every missing fire
Defy the spark dimmed by the fall of breath
As vibrancy passes through strains of birth

Rituals: Cleaning

This week's theme is ... RITUALS. This could be anything - morning rituals, how you eat a burrito, the most efficient way you drive home. We all have them, usually without realizing.

The ritual I'm going to share with you today is: cleaning.

So exciting, I know! I had a very hard time coming up with the ritual to share (even though this week's theme was my idea ... yeah, that was so smart of me). But cleaning is something everyone has to do, and I'll bet we all go about it differently. Some people set a day every week to clean. Some people hide things in closets or shove piles of stuff along the walls until the sheer lack of floor space FORCES them to clean (this is me a lot of times).  Some people pick up as they go because they can't stand a messy house (I envy these people!). Some people hire a cleaning person (I envy these people too!).

My husband and I have agreed that he does the dishes and I do the laundry. I absolutely hate doing the dishes, and he hates doing laundry so it worked out great. Except I'm a big slacker and we tend to have overflowing laundry bins and run out of clean pants. But as far as rituals go, here's what we do when it's time to really get down to clean:

1. Start with the easy stuff - Generally, hubs works on the dishes while I start a load of laundry. I know some people work on the hard stuff first, but for cleaning the hard stuff (steam cleaning the floors, wiping down counters, etc.) is usually buried under piles of stuff.
2. We stick together - Working together makes it not such a lonely task. And we can make sure one of us doesn't find his/her way to the couch or computer.
3. We blast the Pandora music - Everything is better when you're rocking out.
4. We take a burrito break - Cleaning really works up an appetite, and generally the solution for a hungry hungry housekeeper is a California burrito from our local Mexican food joint.
5. We tackle one area at a time - It's more satisfying to get one room nice and clean than working on every room at once, thus only making it slightly cleaner everywhere. This is easier said than done because I get distracted easy.
6. We reward ourselves with a movie - Hubs tends to fizzle long before I do, and he often tries to get me to take a break and watch a movie. So I usually say that once we're finished, the movie can be our reward.

Do you do it differently? It's a rare day that we actually clean our place from top to bottom, and we generally only get a little bit done. Perhaps just getting rid of all our junk would help!

Sorry again that this post is a bit late. I hope you all had a fabulous Valentine's Day (our at-home fondue was super delicious!).

The Rituals of Our Lives

Oh! Hi! I didn't see you there. I was too busy having deep thoughts about this week's theme: rituals.

Everyone has them. Some of us more so than others. Sometimes rituals are just cycles of life repeated in the same order, sometimes they're hallowed and sacred, and sometimes they're less than pleasant. But this week, the Alliteratus will tell you all about a ritual, or rituals, we find ourselves using in our lives.

Not every ritual has a structure. Some, like getting ready for work in the morning, seem to happen on auto-pilot. (I don't actually remember putting on my clothes this morning, but I appear to be wearing them, so that's good). Some rituals only crop up every now and then, and others aren't really rituals so much as superstition. But all of them have one thing in common-- rhythm. Rituals are the rhythm of our lives. We live our lives in cycles, circles, relationships-- and rituals. Go to sleep, wake up, get ready, leave, drive somewhere, do stuff, come home, make dinner, go to sleep.

The thing is, I find a lot of comfort in rituals. A large part of this has to do with a mental disorder I suffer from. I'll share more about that at some later date, but for right now it's enough for you to know that I have it. This disorder makes me uncomfortable with surprises, especially social ones. I have my daily ritual-- do the things that everyone else wants me to do, and then there's my free time. My free time is especially cherished, it's usually when I write, or decompress from the day by looking at pictures of cats online. If something comes along on a day when I'm really looking forward to my free time, I will do everything I can to avoid it. If a friend wants to make last minute plans, I usually can't make it. Give me a couple days' warning next time, I say.

I have a handful of very impulsive friends. They are the friends I see the least.

It's not that I don't want to spend time with them, or that I think my free time is more important than spending time with them. In fact, I often find myself sitting at home later thinking, "I should have gone. I miss ____, and it would have been fun to see them/ spend time with them."

A large part of it has to do with being physically (mentally) unable to change course on my day once I've decided what I'm going to do with it. That doesn't mean I'm inflexible; in fact, I'm far from it. And I'm not certain exactly where the threshold is. All I know is that once I've reached the point where doing ANYTHING except going home and relaxing sounds fun, I probably can't make myself do it.

I actually really hate this aspect of myself, because I know I've disappointed friends and family with it in the past. Sometimes, I do already have plans. Sometimes, they're self-imposed deadlines on a project I'm working on. Sometimes, I'm just done for the day and have already decided exactly when I'll go into shutdown mode. Either way, that ritual, of coming home and turning off-- usually after a full day of being ON-- is the one ritual I can't seem to break. At least not without warning a day or two in advance.

As for other rituals, well-- I could, quite literally, write a novel about them if I had to. It is, after all, the nature of my disease. Luckily, most of them are mental, which basically means I spend a lot of time stuck in my own head, and forgetting about real-world responsibilities. So if I've ever forgotten to email/ call/ text/ facebook/ tweet you back, I'm sorry. You deserve better. Thanks for being patient.

This was a tad more depressing and a bit more forthright than I'd planned, but you know what? I regret nothing. Sometimes, seeing a window into the head of someone you know helps you understand them a little bit more. Maybe you'll understand me a bit better after reading this.

Do you have any unbreakable rituals?