January has been hard on the Learning Institute's classes at Bard. I wanted to take Buddha's Four Noble Truths, but the classes kept being canceled, rescheduled, so I ended up only attending two...I guess I only will find out about the first noble truth, something I already suspected. Our instructor presented us to Buddha in a strong Italian accent. He had a nervous little habit of giggling at what seemed the most inappropriate times, which surprised me but made me smile more than once. The 1st great noble truth to get back to it, is "suffering" and we suffer said Buddha, because we get too attached to life and that is why we suffer. "Greatest pleasure gives you greatest pain" (giggle). I remember Aunt Lillian telling Maria, "I never knew the pleasure of having children," here she looked knowingly, "but I never had the pain that comes with raising a family." Aunt Lillian must have known Buddha. Nietzsche was quoted by the professor more than once...my favorite, the familiar, "that what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger" (giggle). I have thought of that quote many times in the last months. But to get back to suffering, we suffer because of our physical wants, our mental wants, our attachments (greed) and our spiritual suffering, our hunger for eternity (giggle). He continued that our needs have dominated our lives, we need more and more...actually, we really need less and less. Here the professor referred to today's economy, our living beyond our means, and said we may learn the hard way to need less and less (giggle). Made me think of St. Francis and even Cat Stevens in his song "Moonshadow" and if I ever lose my eyes, if my colors all run dry, I won't have to see anymore, or if I ever lose my mouth, all my teeth both north and south, I won't have to talk anymore. Cat Stevens, like Aunt Lillian must have known Buddha. So here I am stuck in the house, the yard an ice skating rink, not able to find out the other noble truths, or how to get out of suffering, other than death (my giggle). Oh, well that what doesn't kill us....we're getting stronger every day in this January of below zero weather, snow, ice and cancelled classes.

This morning the thermometer in the front window read minus 12. The sun was not yet up, but already the cardinals were searching in the snow for left over seeds from the day before. The red birds are always my first visitors. Soon, the blue jays, sparrows, chickadees and more were arriving and I pulled on my boots, jipped up my coat, wrapped a scarf around my face, put on Aunt Lillian's hat and went out to feed the birds. My glasses actually frosted up, not steamed, but iced and my eyelids stuck together with frost. I filled the feeders, threw corn on the ground and hurried back inside. Sitting in the rocker in the window, thankfully holding my hot cup of coffee, I saw something I had never seen before. The sun was coming up, it lit up the trees, made the cardinals look even redder and the snow turned a golden color. Years back we had a nest of baby blue jays in the front tree and the babies were adorable, fluffy and fat, noisy and bratty, a handful for their poor parents. Anyway, these grown blue jays outside today were all fluffy, like baby blue jays, using this technique to keep warm. The rising sun had a strange affect on the blue jays, I swear they became religious. As the sun rose, they quieted down completely, left the food, found a branch and faced the sun...each of them did this. They were probably just trying to use the first sun for warmth, but I swear to God, it looked like they were praying. And they probably were in their own bird way, saying "look the sun, we survived that long, God awful night. Hallelujia". So I looked at the fluffy, for once quiet blue jays, thanking the sun or maybe just using the sun and I smiled. The news this morning was filled with pictures of the plane down in the Hudson River, people lining the wings, crowded together, having survived the crash while the plane slowly sank. One woman interviewed said it gave her a lot to think about, why did 155 people survive an almost certain death. She was quoted as saying, "There must be a reason we lived, something we must do before we do die". Like the birds, she was just thankful to be here another day. You can learn an awful lot from the birds.