Tied up in knots

Though today, again, is cool and gray with intermittent drizzle, yesterday was a spectacular day in Portland -- almost tropical, as you can see from this image, shot around the corner from a darling gallery recommended to me by a friend and fellow art-lover...

The galleries I visited were truly inspiring, and I came home (after stopping to pick up some foodstuffs for the kids) to discover that their cleaning lady had locked the house after finishing for the day, and I had no way to get in (and no access to the lunch I had impetuously postponed in order to get more gallery time.)

It's amazing how such small glitches in plans can incite a sudden shift in mood, so it was with a somewhat guilty conscience that I read in Kornfield's Wise Heart this morning about the monk who would deliberately make his students walk miles, barefoot, in the heat, or keep them all night telling them stories, and then poke at them when they whined.

We're supposed to be above all this -- or at least apart from it, somehow; to accept what life throws us with a grin, understanding that what lies beneath the reaction is constant; that suffering is all a result of the attitude we hold toward the disturbance.

So.  Duly noted, Mr. Kornfield.  Duly noted, also, the immediate tensing of the shoulders and degradation of language as I wandered around the outside of this mansion of a house, trying each door with no success...

I've been editing the poems from my poetry blog, attempting to turn them into some semblance of an ordered, cohesive collection by sorting their subjects.  Not surprisingly, there's a significant number of poems that I can file under the subject heading, "Not yet enlightened."

(PS: I drove to the kids' school and got the older one out of class, explained the problem, and borrowed the key -- so not only did I get that belated lunch (which did a lot for my mood) but I also got dinner done on time.  So it all turned out great.  And it often does.  Why, then, do we get so tied up in knots?