There’s a whole lot of yummy goodness in Patti Digh’s Life is a Verb.  Digh jumps right in: “At some point in your life, you’ll only have thirty-seven days to live.  Maybe that day is today.  Maybe not.”  Her comments refer to the subtitle of the book, “37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally.”  The death of Digh’s stepfather “just 37 days after being diagnosed with cancer woke Patti Digh up, scared her, and made her examine her own life.”

She outlines six valuable practices (complete with stories, challenges, quotes, thoughts, and exercises) to observe during the next 37 days of your life, focusing on: intensity, inclusion, integrity, intimacy, intuition, and intention.

I’m going to give you some delicious tidbits (quotes from others included)…and that’s all you’re gonna get…because you have to pick up this book.  [LOVE the title, don’t you?]

“When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” –Tuli Kupferberg

“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”  –William James

And I’m including this poem, because I find it scrumptiously real.

“I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes”

–Kaylin Haught, “God Says Yes to Me,” from The Palm of Your Hand (1995)

“Wisdom begins with wonder.”  –Socrates

“Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.”  –Madonna

The first of many of her challenges is to dance in your car.  “While driving downtown last Wednesday, I was pondering the epistemological problems of social cognition and constructivism, the origins of values in transcendent functions, and Kantian categorical imperatives.

“Okay.  Well.  Maybe it was Johnny Depp looking transcendent in Pirates of the Caribbean that was actually on my mind as I stopped for a traffic light at the intersection of Montford and Haywood.  Suddenly a flash of movement in the car ahead brought me back from the Black Pearl, my happy pirate ship.

“Caught in the sunlight, a woman’s outline swayed back and forth so energetically that her faded Chevette was tipping left and right along with her.  I glimpsed a broad face in her rearview mirror, mouth open in some wild song, belting it out like she was on stage at the Apollo, plumb-full of unbridled joy and a force to be reckoned with.

“Hers was real movement–not those almost imperceptible toe taps or head shrugs that often harness our responses into mild appropriateness, but wild expressions of feeling and connection….

“Seeing that vehicular tango sadly reminded me of when Greg Alexander, in his tan leisure suit, took me to the junior prom.  I never danced once.  Why?  And why don’t more of us dance in our cars? Because we’re unsure?  Because people might laugh?  Because we’re too fat?  Because we don’t have rhythm?  Because we won’t look cool?

My older daughter, Emma, is a teenager now, that hypersensitive time in life when every movement (and particularly those of her parents), however small, is an opportunity for mortification.  “Don’t scratch your nose!” she hissed at me recently in Malaprop’s Bookstore.  “Stop moving!” she admonished her dad, who threatened to imitate John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever at one of her band concerts.  Our breathing in Emma’s presence can become a liability.

“Her four-year-old sister is at another stage of life, one where that kind of guardedness is unthinkable.  ‘HI!’ Tess screams at strangers as she races toward them in bright red sneakers, giving her miniscule peace sign with two stubby fingers, ‘HI!  HI!  HI!  PEACE!’  Dancing and twirling, exhaling deep belly laughs, holding like she cannot help herself, eating cake by diving headfirst into it with no hands, singing E-I-E-I-O at full tilt in grocery stores–this is her modus operandi.  She doesn’t know enough to care what other people think: we should all be so ignorant.  As American songwriter legend Woody Guthrie once said, ‘I don’t want to see the kids be grown up, I want to see the grown-ups be more like kids.’”

So true, so true.  So, maybe we should all dance in our cars.  Wouldn’t that be hilarious?  And fun?

Even better, maybe we should try the “Bust Your Toast Rule.”

This is too funny not to include, so here goes.  Story by Digh.

Digh went to a cafe with her friend David.  “Only four tables were occupied.  It was a little after 3:00 pm., so the lunch crowd was back at work and the dinner crowd was still dreaming of 5:00.”

The waiter asked if he could get them something.

“‘What I’d really love,’ I answered, ‘is a piece of toast and this side of avocado slices.’  I pointed to the menu.

“‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the waiter said, beginning a statement that would mark The End of Modern Civilization As We Know It.  ‘I’m sorry, but it’s past toast time.’

“Blink.

“‘Past toast time?’

“‘Yes, ma’am, it’s past toast time.’

“I slowly turned to look at David, who was smiling the smile of a man who is unsure what will happen next.

“‘Wow.  And here I never actually knew there was an official toast time.’

“I wonder if it is the same time across all time zones, I thought.

“The waiter nodded, now impatient, what with all my incredulous blinking cutting into his smoking break.  Evidently it’s always cigarette time.

“‘Well,’ I said sweetly, ‘I just never knew you could actually go past toast time.  Call me crazy, but it seems to me that if you have bread and a toaster, it’s pretty much always toast time.’

“Blink.

“‘Well, then,’ I responded, wondering how this would play out if I let it run its course, thinking in a yelly voice inside my head THERE’S NO ONE HERE!  IT’S NOT LIKE RUNNING THE TOASTER WILL SET YOU BACK.  I’M NOT ASKING FOR RISOTTO WITH FRESHLY SHELLED SPRING PEAS STIRRED FOR A BLOODY HOUR AND LOVINGLY TOPPED WITH RARE YET PUNGENT PARMESAN FROM A REMOTE PROVINCE OF NORTHERN ITALY WHERE MEN WEAR BERETS!  YOU HAVE THE MEANS!  YOU HAVE BREAD!  YOU HAVE A TOASTER!  YOU HAVE ELECTRICITY!  YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO CUSTOMERS!

“That’s some toast rule, I thought.

“‘I’ll just have the side of avocado slices then.’

“He blinked.  ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I’ll ask.  I don’t believe that’s possible.’  He left.

“‘What’s to ask?’ I asked David.  ‘What’s to believe?  This isn’t a religion we’re talking about–it’s avocado slices.  They are on the menu,’ I said plaintively….

“The waiter arrived back at our table.  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said with a smile, ‘but they told me that giving you avocado would break every rule known to man.’

“Every Rule Known to Man.  I couldn’t make this up.  David is my witness.  Forget my irritation at the invocation of They.  Every rule?  Every single rule?  That’s some exciting avocado.  I want me some of that avocado….

“‘But it’s on the menu,’ I said.  I pointed to the menu.  ‘Right here, see?’

“‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘but sides only come with entrees.  We can’t serve sides without entrees.’

“My Lord, there is so much I don’t know.  I am sometimes just plain overwhelmed by the fact that not only can I not remember more than three places of pi, don’t really know how to change a tire or speak Urdu, and keep losing my calendar, but somehow–how is this possible?–I have gotten to this advanced age without ever knowing sides depend on entrees.

“‘Well, then,’ I said simply.  ‘We wouldn’t want to break every rule known to man.’  He left for his Cigarette Time, which evidently extends far past Toast Time and isn’t subject to the vast vagaries of Customer Time.  I quietly reached into my bag, pulled out The Camera, and started making photographs of the menu, knowing that the Toast Rule and Side Rule would be a source of great inspiration to me much later in life, like now.

“That’s some rule, that Toast Rule.  It’s the best there is.  It’s one thing to acknowledge the absurdity of other people’s rules: it’s another thing altogether to recognize and own the absurdity of the rules that we’ve made up (helpful hint: They’re all made up, some so ingrained that we can no longer see they are Toast Rules).  So when a rule pops to the surface, see it for the Toast Rule it is, made up to serve some social norm that is itself made up–or to serve the convenience of a waiter, where waiter stands for “person” or “group.”  Toast Rules.  Girls don’t become backhoe operators, you can’t eat dessert before dinner, never wear white shoes after Labor Day, boys don’t cry; girls don’t play tuba, never whistle in the dark, don’t take wooden nickels, or marriage is the sole right of heterosexual couples.  Made up, made up, made up.  Bust your toast rules.  Because in my little universe, it’s always toast time.”

Go for it.  Bust the Toast Rule.

[Post image: Partial of Life is a Verb cover]