Homage to Helen.

I went cross-country skiing today. This was the second time I went out this year. New snow was on the ground and the trails were freshly groomed.

It is so lovely to go out skiing under those conditions. Twenty-eight degrees, no wind, fresh snow and freshly groomed trails. As I waxed up my old wooden skis I remembered Helen Johnson. She was the mother of my long-lost boyfriend Dave. She was the first person to show me how to ski, some thirty years ago. I absolutely loved it and have been doing it ever since.

Helen died last September. And with each crisp breath I took and every stride of the skis across the path I remembered little things about Helen.

She had a big smile. She made you feel like you were OK. Even when you felt like the biggest reddest puffiest zit right in the middle of somebody’s nose. She was very matter-of-fact about things. And she’d narrate little factoids as you did little duties. Like as we were changing out of our sweaty long underwear she said: “It’s good to put these in the wash right away, because sweat doesn’t smell when it’s wet, only when you let it dry, that’s when it gets stinky.”

She was full of all kinds of little facts. Dave took after her that way somewhat. But of course Helen was wise and much more learned.

When a woman looks back on her tangled life and finds little golden nuggets gifted from other women, especially strong, wise, women, she knows true gratitude. The appreciation I have for the type of woman Helen modeled for me has no bounds. I only wish I’d had more appreciation for her at the time. I only wish I’d have seen her brilliant and complex fabric through the shadows of my naïve teenage egocentricity.

But now I can see it. I can see it in the snow covered vista before me, and in the clouds of my frozen breath. It is a warmth in this oft times cold and heartless world. It is a gift that gives over and over again. My heart can only place it with all that I know as love.

exposition de réalité

Our TV culture lets us abandon our little realities for a few hours every night and live vicariously in some one else’s.

There was the sitcom in the 70s and the game shows in the 90s and now the "reality" shows. I find this term laughable. Just because it is unscripted it is considered reality!

Reality is the fabric of our experience. In that sense every show we watch is "reality." Aren’t we at least stars in our own reality-based show?

Isn't the term "reality show" oxymoronic?

What is the limit of our reality? How does it bend with our perception? My reality is quite different than my husband’s although we share the same living space and family members. If you asked either of us what reality is, you would get very different answers.

So what is this illusive “real?” This abstract everyday experience? What levels it as fixed, permanent, or immovable?

Is it no longer real once the moment has passed and only memory can beckon it back again?

Reality.



I’m concluding, for this moment, that to me reality is like biting into a lemon. For that instant you are completely there. Your senses surround the tartness of the lemon juice and the spongy texture of the rind and the beautiful lemon smell, the acidic mist stinging your eyes, and the juice running down your chin.

Is it possible to slow down reality? Or to put reality on TV? Once it is over for the actors in such a farce is it still real? Like Plato’s allegory of the cave, the shapes dance and we name them, but we cannot hold them. We are all prisoners of our limited perceptions. Our limited realities.

But what is casting the shadows? Well we don’t even know to ask that question until we know that they are shadows! Until we become enlightened to the fact that they are shadows — to us they are real! Shadows are our reality.

Isn’t the reality show like the shadows on the cave wall? Shouldn’t we be asking from what is that shadow cast?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=judvPqMY8I0&feature=related

The spare is flat

It's a grey and gloomy day. Halloween is nigh. My mood is cloudy too.

My emotions are taking a toll on me lately. I am doing compulsive things, like buying stuff on ebay that I don't need, spending money I don't have. All the things I've drawn on to get me through these dark days in the past aren't working.

Here I sit with my past in the present. Here I sit and dream of what might have been. Here I sit in the present thinking that maybe tomorrow I can be what I've always wanted to be. But then reality bites me and I wake up and know that dreaming isn't going to make anything so.

Every cliché bangs against my brain, as I think, and obsess, and fry each and every working brain cell with inane thoughts of how I screwed everything in my life up.

I'm falling and there's no net.

The best is yet to come

I’ve been thinking a lot about loss lately. Thinking about the loss of friends, the loss of youth, and the loss of faith among other things. It’s beginning to become clearer to me that life seems to be all about loss.

Does this sound too depressing?

I started out so wide-eyed and optimistic. I’m still optimistic, but it’s tempered with the knowledge that everything comes to an end. And endings, in my experience aren’t very happy things.

My son just graduated from high school. He’s off into the world. No more snuggles, or hugs and kisses – the sweetest kind. Loss. My friend just died, no more fun talks with Dorothy. Loss. My nephew died, my father died, my mother is in a nursing home. As the years have gone so have most of my friends. Lost to one thing or another -- death, marriage, jobs, or insanity. Pets. Gone.

How does one keep up a life where loss doesn’t catch up to you? How fast do you have to keep running? How does one cope with such massive loss – feeling gratitude that you aren’t one of the lost?

Does this sound too depressing?

I mean, I think, for the most part, I’m still an optimist. I just can’t toss myself whole-heartedly into something anymore. I don’t have the energy because the reservations about the eventual loss drain any potential enthusiasm.

I just watched Fahrenheit 911 the other night. The show opened with scenes from the inaugural parade in 2001 for President George W. Bush. It reminded me not of a celebratory event, but of the classic funeral scene from a Hollywood movie. The black limousines, the black trench coats, the black umbrellas, the rain, the gray skies. It was all so depressing. It culminates with the hearse pulling straight up to the White House. After the events that transpired over the past five years, I saw something of a funeral for our democracy in those minutes. I saw the death of my foundation for believing this country I live in was something special. More loss.

As I climb up in my years here on earth, I’m going through physical loss too --loss of my eyesight, loss of my voice, loss of strength, and loss of self-awareness. Like the fact that I don’t look anything like I think I look anymore. What a shock to see myself in photos. I have to look twice and then I'm aghast when I realize that impish crone is actually me!

So why do we perpetuate this myth -- this happy family idea? From where does it come? Aren’t families just rife with loss? Is there something about loss that we enjoy? Is it because the feeling of togetherness for the brief time it lasts is better than the pain of the loss altogether?

I had this tune running through my head the other day. The name of it is: The best is yet to come. I don’t know who wrote it, but it has been performed by all the greats; Sinatra, Bennett, Peggy Lee… I looked it up on “Youtube” in an effort to indulge the tune floating around inside my head.

I found a version by Peggy Lee. It was great. Then I went and found one by Tony Bennett that was recorded on the Don Imus show on MSNBC. It was great too. But I noticed a ticker tape of copy running across the bottom of the screen throughout the performance. That copy reported about how the Korean government had just tested a nuclear device and it went on an on about the caliber of that device compared to the one dropped on Japan in WWII.

It was so ironic to juxtapose that news with the lyrics of the song Tony Bennett was singing. It illustrated to me the nature of our general mentality in America these days. We’re all just singing along to a happy tune on the radio, while we clean up the corpses of yet another war. The innocent hearts concealed in the flesh and blood littering the globe. (literally fiddling while Rome burns!)

Is the best really yet to come?
How could it get any worse?
(please don't answer that!)


(Tony Bennett on youtube singing: The best is yet to come
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeeX_HX0hwI
--copy and paste)

The "N" word

Last Sunday in church our interim pastor decided to use the “N” word in his sermon. As soon as he said it I went into a mild state of shock, my brain unable to hear any more of his words as I reeled from the jolt of that powerfully charged word. After I recovered somewhat, I tried to listen to the rest of his words, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt that a justification was somewhere to be had. But I came up short in that search.

After the service I approached my dear friend who is in a biracial marriage. Her husband just happened to be in church that morning too, but I’m not as close to him as he is rather shy, and I wanted to be sure I wasn't just overreacting. So I asked her what she thought about the sermon. She said; “You mean the “N” word?” I acknowledged that was what I meant. She said that she had been unnerved by his use of that word too. We both tended to apologize for the pastor, saying we thought we understood what he meant, but that it just wasn’t really clear in the sermon, and didn’t justify his use of the “N” word for effect.

We met with him this morning after Thursday morning prayer group and he said that someone had actually said the phrase to him that he repeated in his sermon. He explained that he was trying to draw a parallel between Jesus being scolded for having contact with the pharisees and tax collecters and the way people treated him as he was trying to do the Lord’s work in an inner city environment. [People called him a; “N----- lover.”]

The question of the power of a single word comes into play. After all it is just a word isn’t it? As I have reflected upon this issue I have come to the conclusion that a word isn’t just a word. A word is a symbol for a concept. It is a neat little cognitive package that we slip ideas into and deliver to whomever will listen. Through continual use in a specific way, those symbols come to be known not only literally, but emotionally. So to drop the “N” word in the context of the sermon, believing that it is of no consequence other than to illustrate an allusion to the persecution Christ experienced, is at best naïve and at worst an unimaginative solution to communicating this concept. For with the saying of that word, most minds reel and lose a sense of the direction the sermon was taking, undermining the whole point of the sermon.

What did my friend’s husband think of it? She said she talked to him after they returned home and he said that he had hated it being mentioned in the context of the sermon. They had hoped that the one place they wouldn’t have to hear that word was in the church.

It was nice the pastor sat down with us so we could help each other through this. Since this happened I’ve been thinking left and right about the use of words and their potential to elicit and invoke. In the Bible John says that Jesus is the Word made flesh. That is pretty powerful. That in and of itself is pretty noble testimony as to the power of words.

John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

__________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs
(strange fruit; Billie Holiday)

Now Playing! One night only!

The Perseid meteor showers were last Sunday night. We woke up and went out to try to see them. We sat there for a few minutes staring up at the sky. It was beautiful. Even though we weren't away from the city as the pro's advised for best viewing, it was pretty dark and we were confident we'd see some.

Sure enough, a few minutes into the watching, I saw a shooting star. Then Art saw one. Then I saw another and Art saw two more. But after that – nothing!

We started to get anxious as these really weird clouds started rolling in. We lamented; "Oh great! We won't get to see the meteor showers because it's getting so cloudy. We might as well go in." We started gathering up our stuff and began to head for the house.

As we walked toward the door, we kept looking up, trying to catch one or two more falling stars before calling it a night. But as we gazed up at the sky we both began to realize that even though the clouds weren’t why we were out there, they actually looked quite amazing!

We decided to go back, sit down, relax, and watched these cotton candy clouds stretch over the expanse of the night sky. They were a thin mesh and you could still kind of see the stars through them as they brightened the sky. Kind of like the opposite of a shadow. Their configurations were joyfully amusing and silently awe inspiring.

Because we were so focused on what we were expecting to see, we both realized that we had almost missed out on something quite alarmingly beautiful. We could have easily meandered back into the house, disappointed that the clouds rolled in keeping us from seeing the meteor showers, and sadly crawled into bed, bereft about what we might’ve seen. But then we would have missed the suspended constellations of water crystals floating quietly overhead, stretching in and out of whimsy and abstraction. Never to be seen again!

We'll meet again

My friend Dorothy died today. It was expected. She had stage-3 lung cancer. The treatments were too much for her. So she ended them and decided to die with the dignity and grace in which she lived her life.

She entered hospice a little over a week ago. So many friends came to see her there that it actually overwhelmed her daughter. I managed to go there once to visit and the next day to take her a painting I did of some holly hocks. She couldn’t have real flowers because they affected her breathing. She was happy to get the painting, I didn’t stay long, but I told her that I loved her, and she said she would see me soon.

I stayed away these last few days trying not to interfere with the family’s time to be alone with her. But I craved her company. I will miss her. Even though she was probably almost 30 years my senior, she was a kindred spirit. I used to visit her in her little house and just chat and joke and tell her about all my misbegotten exploits. She had a great laugh.

She was the type that got that little mischievous twinkle in her eyes and I knew she understood the crazy point I was trying to convey. She’d nod and then say something to make me laugh. I only knew Dorothy a short time, but she totally stole my heart. When I gave her the flower painting she said; “I wish we’d have met sooner.” I agree Dorothy, I agree.

But then, how many people have we known for twenty, even thirty years, and we only speak to them randomly and sporadically at best. Sometimes they reach out from the past and blast our present with a flush of love so full it’s a little unsettling, but no less profound. So I think whether it is a year or thirty that we've known someone, when they’re a true kindred spirit, the connection is unbreakable. No matter how much time goes by, it’s there — even death can’t make it fade.

That’s the weird thing — it doesn’t change. It doesn’t lessen in intensity, it buzzes like a cicada on a humid fall evening. Undiminished, the love just persists. And even though it is extremely painful, I think I prefer the pain of love and chasm of loss to the alternative. And I wish, with all my heart, that I am able to say those three precious words to all those who make my life complete, fracture it irreparably, and leave it for other realms — either expectedly or in a mercilessly abrupt way.

Au revoir Dorothy; we'll meet again.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Drw4aZhdT8
(Vera Lynn singing; We'll meet again on YouTube)

Vera Lynn in the 40's

ne cede malis

Yeild not to misfortunes.

Now... and forever

Living in the moment requires much more energy than just coasting along with the continuance. Focusing on the moment takes time, and by the time you’ve focused, that moment is passed, and there’s another to contemplate.

But then there’s an extra-contemplative place — that zone of comprehension. It mingles with the now, but transcends through the time of now to the forever of eternal truth.

This is a quiet internal space, measured by nothing but heartbeat and breath. Similar to the vast expanse of the night sky with myriad starlight points twinkling, or to the rhythm of the ocean tide as it crawls up the beach and then recedes.

It is also the expanse I see in my son’s beaming face as he splashes in the pool. The future I see in his crystal blue eyes — the innocence and the hope. The intra-telescopic conversion of the physical into the metaphysical, where all that lofty psycho-babble actually starts to make sense.

I finally see, that now, and forever, are not two separate things — they are one. This moment, dropped upon the next is merely an extra extent of that same continuing experiential expanse.

tender mercy on a toy box lid

I was lucky. I had a good childhood. I mean the early part. Where everything is controlled and you don’t know any better than to go along with it all. Every once-in-a-while I get a small glimpse of what it was like way back then. My memory is triggered by something Simon brings home, or says, or plays with.

That's what happened this morning. Simon brought out a puzzle that had the map of the United States on it. All at once, the aperture of my memory widened and I looked through the dusty lens, and saw my father’s hand holding a black felt-tipped pen. He was pointing at the state of Wisconsin in an outline map of the US. It was printed on the cardboard lid of a toy box he’d brought home and assembled for me. He was showing me where Madison was, and as he pointed it out, he carefully, and deliberately set the felt-tip of the pen down in the lower part of that outline right in the center and drew a bold black dot.

At that moment I became aware of a larger world. A world surrounding that little dot that signified where I stood in it. My awareness telescoped out from that dot onto a greater understanding of the world and my place in it. That dot seemed to exclaim; "Here I am world!"

How I loved that toy box. Not because it was anything special, but because my dad made it seem special by taking the time to show me that aspect of the map. Even though it was just cardboard, probably nothing more than the type of file box you get for a few bucks at Staples — it comes flat and you fold it into a box — but now, for some reason, it was imbued with extra aspect because of the loving gesture my father had made.

I can’t remember the room that box was in. I can’t remember any of the toys I put in that box. Nor can I remember what the sides looked like, but I can remember the lid of that box. It was white with a simple black outline of the US on it. The sides of the cardboard turned down and under helping to stiffen its structure a bit. Within the graphic of the US spanning the cover in thick black outlines, there in Wisconsin, from that day forward was the dot my dad made on the first day he gave it to me. I can still see it as it looked after a while of being used, it had become concave with a striation of wrinkles set across the map, as if the rocky mountains and the appellation mountains each turned 90 degrees and now met and stretched east to west across the center of the country.

To me that dot was a stroke of genius. It elevated that mass-produced, cardboard toy chest to a work of art. The box was no longer contained in three dimensions. It had length, width, depth, and then also some sort of other worldly tangent. This tangent magnified and embellished its otherwise inanimate existence into a documentary of a tender mercy. A mercy that wouldn’t be exactly apparent or understood at the time, but that would play so brilliantly in years long beyond the physical existence of that cardboard toy box lid. A mercy that only seemed special at the time, but grows as I age into a softer and absolute pure gift of love.

That dot is like a button that sets off that memory. A memory I had no words for at that age, just a warm feeling. He gave me a gift of love and knowledge. What better gift can a father give a daughter?

I only hope I can leave little droplets of love and mercy in Simon’s memory as my father did for me. I cherish those tomes of sensation from long, long, ago.

Too much of a good thing

This weekend I had gotten the kitchen somewhat cleaner than I usually do, so I decided it would be nice to bake some bread. The weather was nice, not too humid, and not too cool — just right for baking bread. I thought I could mix up the batch of dough and while it was on its first rise, Simon and I could go for a nice little bike ride. When we returned, I could get him in bed, and then finish up the bread. It was about 4:30 pm when I started getting the ingredients together.

I found I needed a few things for the recipe, so I packed Simon up and we headed off to the grocery store. I knew I had enough whole-wheat flour to complete the recipe, but this little voice inside me asked me to consider buying another five lb. bag — so I wouldn’t be totally out of flour when I was done with this batch of bread. When I saw the price I decided against it. Boy would I regret that! I also recalled that the last time I baked this bread I bought two half-gallons of milk from Walgreen's. So that's what I did at this store, I bought two half-gallons of milk. Simon was climbing everywhere and not listening to my corralling efforts as I tried to remember what else I had needed. I grabbed a pound of butter and dragged Simon to the checkout counter with me. I wouldn't buy him the candy-coated super sugar breakfast bites that he so coveted and there was no mistaking his extreme disappointment as we left the store — In fact, I'm sure everyone in the store could hear how disappointed Simon was.

It had been a while since I made bread and I wanted to make sure the yeast I had in the fridge was still viable. I had read a few recipes that talked about testing the yeast before going to the expense of making the dough only to find that it was dead and your loaves could now only be used to construct that patio in your backyard. I ripped the packets open and stirred them into a teacup of warm water. The little yeasties started to expel their gas right away, so I knew I had good yeast. Excellent.

The only problem with this whole "testing the yeast" idea was that the recipe I was going to use called for dissolving the yeast in half of the cold milk and then adding the other half of the milk warmed to the solution. Now with the yeast activated and happy in the warm water, I worried that if I put it into the cold milk like the recipe dictated I would kill the now happy and thriving yeast. I decided I'd better warm up all the milk and just skip the first part where I dissolve the yeast in one quart of cold milk. I quickly poured the other half-gallon into a pan and warmed it on the stove and added it to the first cold half-gallon in the bowl. Wow, that bowl was really full of milk, I didn’t remember it filling the bowl quite that much. Did the bowl get smaller? Oh well, my memory is really starting to fade lately, so I disregarded that confusion as just bad recollection — cranial cobwebs.

I quickly put the yeast in and it still seemed to thrive — I could see the bubbles forming. I started adding the whole-wheat flour. It wasn’t thickening up like I remembered it had the times I'd used this recipe before. I decided to check the recipe. Two quarts of milk! Not two half-gallons of milk! Yikes! Now I’d need ten pounds of flour instead of five. I recalled my little intuitive voice talking to me earlier at the grocery store and me blowing it off. Now it was giggling over in the corner watching my face shrivel with disappointment. I only had so long to keep the yeast alive. Now I had a bowl full of milk, yeast, and flour, but not enough flour to make dough. What could I do?

I started grabbing stuff like wheat germ and oatmeal and generously adding it to the mixture to try to create bulk, trying to dry it up a bit, but it hardly had any impact. I used all the oatmeal, and all the wheat germ but still had soup instead of dough. I couldn’t avoid it; I had to get more flour some how! My mind started racing. I really needed to get to the store or I’d have a disaster on my hands, not only the expense of the lost ingredients but the lost bread! We’d still need to buy bread after I’d tossed all the milk, wheat germ, oatmeal, and flour.

The first time I went to the store, Simon was already climbing all over, asking for this and that, fussing and generally being pesky. So I really wasn’t up for the challenge of dragging him back to Copps’ just to buy a bag of flour. I thought about my neighbors. They are so nice, but I am always asking them for things. This was just too much. My friend who lives on the next block might have some, but she’s always busy with her kids, I didn’t want to put her out. Then I thought that maybe Walgreen’s would have some flour, it would probably be expensive, and probably not be whole-wheat, but then again, I could just run out there quick while Simon sits mesmerized by the Maisé DVD. So that’s what I decided to do. Walgreen’s is only around the block. I went as fast as I could. When I returned, Simon still sat silently in the chair, his gaze fixed on the television set. It was now around 6:30 pm.

I took the $2.69 bag of All-Purpose White flour and started pouring it into the bowl. At one point I had to transfer half of the mush over to a second bowl because I no longer had enough room to stir in the flour. I put the rest into the mixing bowl of my new KitchenAid Expensive mixer that hasn’t been used since I bought it — and I've been wondering why I bought it, it seems so extravagant — could this be the reason? (That’s another story.) I put the dough hook in and ran it on low while I stirred the second bowl adding more and more flour to the sloppy concoction. What a sticky, gooey, mess!

By this time the table, bowls, walls, and floors had some form of dough on them. Clouds of flour dust filled the air and I wondered how I'd ever be able to clean this gargantuan mess up! I was worried I'd end up with a strange form of wall paper paste instead of bread dough. In that case I'd have to rush out and pick out some paper and start redecorating instead of baking bread.

Eventually the dough became stiff enough to turn out onto the table. So I scraped it off the sides of the bowl and onto the tabletop. I started kneading it and it was really wet, but eventually it became like good dough should be—soft and not sticky. Meanwhile the dough in the blender kept turning. I added more and more flour to that. After about ten more minutes it too became the right consistency to turn out onto the table and knead into dough. I was happy that at least I’d gotten it this far!

I gently placed the two dough blobs into greased bowls for the doubling in size rise. I put damp towels over them to try to avoid the dough drying and crusting over on the top where it is exposed to the air. But right away they became cool and I think the cool damp towels impeded the yeast from rising because after an hour there was no real progress with the rise. So I replaced the damp cool towels with dry ones and turned the oven on the lowest that it would go, opened the oven door, shut the kitchen windows, and waited for the dough to start doubling in size. It's now about 8:30 pm, Simon's bedtime. No bike ride tonight.

It really took a long time to see any significant enlargement of the dough. By this time Simon was in bed sleeping. I was trying to stay up by watching some crummy TV show. Finally around 11 pm I could see some real progress and decided to punch the dough down and put it in the pans for the second rise before cooking. This turned out to be a little challenging because I didn’t’ have enough bread pans. I had eight loaves and four pans. Fortunately I had two small pans usually used for banana breads and then I managed to let two loaves rise outside the pan. By about 11:45 the first six were ready to bake. Once in the oven they rose and crusted nicely. They were cooking very well. The last two loaves had to wait to go into the oven until 12:30 am. They didn’t do as well, but they are edible.

So now I seem to have too much of a good thing. All because I was a little too worried about the yeast. I set my mind towards saving the yeast and almost lost the whole batch of dough. I also lost a whole night with my son Simon, because it was too late to go on the bike ride when I finally set the dough out to rise.

Alas, I learned once again the folly in preoccupation with one particular aspect of an operation. I got so involved with worrying about losing something small that I ended up losing many more precious things while my head was turned. I’ll never have that time with Simon back, that’s what I should’ve been coveting, and not a silly packet of yeast or even a batch of bread.

So you can just call me the oaf with the loaf.

I'm full

I'm full of all the political TV propoganda. I'm full of George Bush and John Roberts and Dick Cheney. I'm full of the senators that promise some change and end up letting go. I'm full of the fear mongers. I'm full of the cell phones and the internet. I'm full of the high fructose corn syrup in all the cheap food. I'm full of my job taking up all my time. I'm full of cars and gasoline. I'm full of the cost of dying. I'm full of the nursing homes "helping" the elderly. I'm full of the Israeli bias. I'm full of video games. I'm full of obsession. I'm full of denial. I'm full of jingoistic bigots worried about immigration. I'm full of people being killed in Iraq in the name of freedom. I'm full of TV evangelists spewing more lies, cloaked in Jesus Christ's promise. I'm full of the schools letting army recruters in because they are afraid to loose federal funding. I'm full of it all. I'm full of athletes that are so rich they could buy a small country. I'm full of families so poor they sell their children into slavery. I'm full of the false promises and the lies. I'm full of fast food decaying our culture. I'm full of the doctors and nurses inside established health care "systems." (Simon in his 5-yr-old way, once called it hell care -- I agree.) I'm full of the staus quo. I'm full of the rich not caring about anything else but getting richer. Maybe I'm full of s***, all I know is sadly, I'm full of everything but love.

thoughts while riding the bus

Now that my son has graduated high school I find myself hoping and praying that he will find his way in this confusing world. I long for him to become a responsible man, but not sell his soul to the powers that prey on the common man. All my life I have been struggling to become wealthy in one respect or another, and failed all attempts in everyway. All I've managed to do is put myself deeper in debt. For some reason success does not come easily to me, or I fail to recognize it when it does.

Oh well, there's really no controlling things. Everytime I get to a point where I think things are lining up to actually start back up out of the hole, there is a charge that pops up; I get a speeding ticket ($160), I break my tooth ($700 + ins.), The car breaks down ($678). Well there's no fooling the forces of the universe is there, when something is meant to be it happens. I want to find a way to choose something!

Yes, we get lots of choices in our lives, but the really big ones we have nothing to do with, do we? Who our parents are, where we are born, how wealthy we are, how many brothers and sisters we have, what we look like, our physical health. Much of this world is set. We are cast forth from these beginnings. We are a daisy if we are born a daisy, and we won't likely become a rose. All we can hope for is to be the best daisy we can be. But daisies get eaten by the horses, and trampled by the dogs. Daisies are picked and wilt away. But each year the daisies return for more. Just so they can wave in the wind and bask in the sunshine of a beautiful and warm June day.

I'm supposed to be happy being a daisy. But I'm not. I want to be more. I waste all my precious daisy time wanting to be something other than I am. But something in me keeps telling me that it just might be possible. It might be possible to break out of the daisy mold and be more of a rose, or a climbing vine... maybe one that produces good fruit. But then the other side comes in and says I shouldn't try to be something I'm not, I should be happy with who I am and live that to the fullest, because while I'm here on this earth, if I spend all my time trying to be something I'm not, I'm actually missing who I am this very moment.

This is all very confusing. It is also somewhat depressing.
So where is all the sunshine? And how will this help my son?

Tickets and ticks

I love Lake Superior. I haven’t been up there for a while, so when it came time to plan a camping trip, I thought it would be nice to take Simon and Art to one of the State Parks up there so they could see how beautiful it is.

We set out on the road about 2 hours late, but got up there in plenty of time to set up camp and settle in for the night. We stayed at Amnicon Falls State Park. The campsite was nice, but I found it hard to sleep because I could hear the sounds of the highway and the blaring horns of the diesel freight engines as they passed through and the banging as they were coupling and uncoupling through the night.

The next day we woke up and prepared for a day in the woods. We went for a long walk in the woods and along the river where the falls were. The falls were very beautiful. When we were done there, we stopped and gathered some kindling for the fire in the form of pinecones and needles. When we got back to camp it looked as though it might rain, so we covered the kindling and firewood and just as we got to the car it started pouring rain.

We went into Superior and visited K-mart, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army Store. We bought stuff. Then it was time to go back to the camp. It was still raining. By the time we got back to camp, the rain ended and the sun actually peeked through. I played guitar for a while and then Art played and we had fun. I tried to cook on the grill, but the fire was not cooperating. I barely got things going. We managed to eat a little and then everyone retired into the tent. We needed to get Simon to sleep. So we all slept. Art and I woke up and went out and looked at the stars for a while. They were very beautiful.

The next morning we went out and it looked like it was going to rain again. I was a little frustrated by the weather. So I said to Art that we might leave and go to a different camp over in Bayfield. It was very windy. I decided to make a fire according to an idea I had gotten while I was observing the extinguishing effects of the fire pit the night before. I figured that I’d need to build kind of an oven type fire. That is where you build a miniature log cabin in the fire pit. I used 10 logs. Then I stuffed the middle with needles and pinecones and with the help of a little lighter fluid got the thing going. Boy did that baby burn nice. It was a perfect oven. The only problem was that we were out of things to cook on the fire. I hadn’t planned for this trip very well as far as supplies go.

I decided we could go after the fire went out. That was around 12:30. So we packed up and left. We decided to have lunch at a little place called the Rustic Roost. It was really good. We splurged a bit on lunch, with both Art and I having the Walleye. After that we were off to Bayfield.

As I hit the road, Art and I talked about how good the lunch was and how clean the bathrooms were. As I coasted down the hill a few miles along the way, I saw a State Trooper’s Squad tucked behind a little knoll off to the left side of the road. I hadn’t been paying attention to my speed so I quick looked at my speedometer as I put my foot on the break. Oh my Gosh! I was going 70 mph. I was sure I would be stopped, and sure enough the trooper pulled out behind me and began to use his radio. He was checking my registration. He turned on his rollers. I pulled over and waited.

The trooper was nice enough. He informed me I was speeding. I knew this. I babbled about how I never speed intentionally and I always use my cruise control to safeguard against doing such a thing. I was so upset and scared. I worried about the expense of the speeding ticket, and I worried about my insurance rates going up. He went back to his vehicle with my driver’s license. As I waited for him to come back I began to cry and told Art how sorry I was.

When the trooper came back he had a bunch of papers in his hand. In a few seconds I would find out how much this was going to cost me. I felt a little mad about it and felt it was kind of unjust because I had tried to be so conscientious about my speed and then it seemed the moment I let down my guard all hell breaks loose. He told me that my vehicle registration had expired in April and I hadn’t renewed it. That was news to me. I thought to myself, “Oh god, here it comes…” Then he said; “I’m just going to give you a warning on this.” “Thank you, sir.” I said. Then he said; “Here’s the expensive part. I’m going to give you a ticket for going 70mph in a 55mph zone. I’m not going to double it for being in a construction zone. Technically it is a construction zone, but because there are no workers out here I decided to waive that addition to the fine.” “Thank you, sir.” I said again, with tiny little halelujiahs under my breath. “But the fine is $160.80 for the speeding…” and he went on with all the technicalities. I just wanted to go home.

Eventually it was time to pull out onto the road and go along our way. That nice lunch was turning summer salts in my stomach now and I was inconsolable. Fortunately, Simon slept through the whole incident, and Art remained silent. When we got to Bayfield, I just wanted to get a soda and use the restroom. I was still shaky and just wanted to go home. I showed Art the town and Simon just wanted to go on the ferry ride. Well, I had just spent all the extra money for a ferry ride in the form of ticket. So I had to say: “No.” Simon cried. But we eventually got back on the road south.

We stopped for a few minutes on the lakeshore and played in the sand with Simon. We took off our shoes and waded in the cold Lake Superior surf. We found driftwood in all kinds of interesting shapes. There was one of the stump of a tree with the roots fanning out like an octopus! There was another I scavanged to take home with us, it looked like a fox. It was very calming. I was starting to relax.

As we descended the upper peninsula and passed the outpost for the rangers of the National Forest I longed to take Simon and Art to see the beautiful campsite where I had a spiritual awakening. Art agreed and we went down there and decided to camp there that night. I was so happy. It was just as I remembered it. There was a tiny little beach and Simon just wanted to play in the warm surf. So I pulled the car in and we set up the tent and began to change into our swimming suits. Art was waiting and when Simon and I came back from putting our suits on, Art noticed a bug stuck to his leg. It was a tick! Yuck! The wind was blowing so hard at both sites; I think the ticks were just flying around in the air. It was inevitable there would be some tick action that day.

The problem with this tick was that it was embedded in his leg already. He couldn’t pull it out. I couldn’t pull it out. I thought that maybe using a match would get the ugly thing out of his leg, so I proceeded to light a match and blow it out and then stick the hot match head right onto the tick. It didn’t work the first time so I tried it again. Art said that that hurt a lot and I could see he was burning, and it wasn’t really helping to get the tick out, so I didn’t do that anymore. I just grabbed the tick and pulled. Its body broke off of its head. I had the body in my hand, and the head was still on his leg. Then I pulled on that dang head until it came out. I was so relieved. I thought that it was a deer tick so I took a piece of paper and folded the 2 pieces into the paper to keep to show to the doctor.

After that we walked over to the beach, a little freaked out by the whole incident, but determined to have a good time with Simon. I decided as long as we were all in our suits we should look for more ticks on each other. Sure enough there was one on Simon’s back, the same size as the one on Art. This took a little tug to remove, but wasn’t as hard as the one on Art’s leg. I found another one on Art that came off easy, and he found one on me that came off easy. Then we felt good and played for a while in the water. Before we came out I thought I saw something on Simon. It was another tick. But this one was caramel color and very small. I tugged and it came off of him relatively easy. I was sure this last tick was a deer tick, the ones that carry Lyme disease.

Then I saw all of these small little blood spots on his scalp. This freaked me out. I said to Art; “Let’s just go home, I won’t be able to sleep knowing Simon might have Lyme disease, and if we go now, maybe we can get him in a shower before things get too bad.” Art agreed and we packed up the tent and started for home.

The trip home was uneventful and we arrived at around 1am. I took Simon in the bath and scrubbed him from head to toe, inspecting for bugs. I didn’t find any. I was so happy. I put him to bed and the exhausted little fellow was sleeping in five minutes. Then I took a shower and settled into my nice soft, tick free bed.

It felt good to be home. It felt good to feel good. And the day of tickets and ticks was over. Thank goodness!

pumping and coasting

I live on a hill. So when I decided to try to start riding my bike again there was no way I could get around having to pump really hard to get up the hill. Sure, when I start out I get to coast really fast down the hill. Then I ride around for a while and eventually it is time to come back home. It's time to ride my bike up that nasty hill.

When I complain about this to my friends they say; "Why don't you just get off the bike and walk it up the hill?" And my answer is; “it’s not that simple!” To me, getting off the bike and walking it up the hill means that the hill has won. It means I'm not strong enough to take on that hill. It means I'm a wimp, a failure.

That brings out the larger issue of my self-esteem. Surely a secure individual wouldn’t find a problem with getting off the bike and walking it up the hill. Only a person with issues around self-worth and competence would find this hard to do. Someone with a problem admitting weakness would worry about being caught walking their bike up the hill.

What is it I’m afraid of? Being weaker than someone? Do I really believe I am stronger than everyone? Do I really think I would ever be the strongest? Am I afraid of losing to the hill? So what is this inferiority complex that sends me into this self-destructive behavior? When did it start? From what does it originate? Is it just part of me?

It is so funny to think of how much insanity guides us through each day. Our own little foibles send us into decisions that have little to do with reality and a lot to do with our whole pathetic self-construct. Still, even though I know all this, I am repulsed by the thought of walking that darn bike up the hill!

So now, I’ve injured my knee. And because I’ve injured my knee, I may not be able to ride my bike for a while at all. Is that self-sabotage or what? I am faced with a hill that is larger than the one my house sits upon. I am looking up the cliff of my self-doubt and fears of being inferior. That most definitely is a hill I should get off and walk up.

Sketchbooks

I’ve been sketching since I was a little girl. It always got me lots of attention. “Look! She can draw!” The kids at school would say when we were in art class, followed by; “I can’t even draw stick men!”

That was a great feeling. I used my “artist” card to get me friends, money, and attention. I got awards. I thought I was really something great. I had visions of becoming the next Van Gogh. I proceeded to live my life the way the biographies of all the famous artists told me they lived -- confused, and tortured with self-importance.

It took a few years, but I came to realize that the artists I had idolized were romanticized in those books. I didn’t need to be sick to be a great artist I just needed to practice art. So I stopped trying to be great and just tried to draw. I bought sketchbooks and drew cover to cover. Sometimes the art was good, sometimes terrible, sometimes magically and surprisingly inspired. They were diaries of a sort. I collected scraps from the dust left behind by everyday life in the pages of these little sketchbooks.

My father drew for a living -- exploded views of machine parts, floor plans for houses, an occasional cartoon. I looked up to him. I wanted to be just like him. His mother was an artist. We had some of her work in the house -- an oil painting of the field by her farm and sketches of horses and the farm hands. The idea of inheriting something from my ancestors was so exciting, I felt like I was part of a something big, lovely, and ancient.

Now my father is gone. He died 5 years ago. But I still warmly remember him sharing little intimacies about art with me. He’d show me how to use a drafting pencil, how to keep things neat, and helped me find subjects to draw. There were also times he helped me with the messes I made making art, like the time I spilled India ink on the basement carpet. I ran up to get him to help me remove it before my mom found out. He was concerned and said he didn’t know how to get it out; “…that stuff is just like paint!” And just as those words came out of his mouth I saw the light bulb go off in his head and he ran and got the turpentine and cleaned the ink up for me. My mother was never the wiser. Now that’s a great dad -- a kindred spirit!

Over the years I have lost my desire to become a famous and great artist. I have broadened my scope in the world and realized there are so many gifted artists out there, and more being born everyday, many, many, many more times talented than I. Competing with the world for something like that became pointless. I no longer desired that type of recognition. But I still wanted to draw.

Other things changed about art as I got older too. The definition of an artist changed. When I was young, I thought an artist was someone who could draw images that resembled a subject being viewed by the artist, but as time went on and I learned more and more about art, an artist became someone who interprets reality and creates things that come from that experience, or well, just performing something. It was very confusing. So I gave up my dreams, because my art had little or no creativity. But I kept drawing in my little sketchbooks. Now I have so many, and I’m afraid to throw them away. I try to keep them in tact. But like me, the covers are fraying a bit and some of the pencil is fading away.

Eventually, I went to school for commercial art and now I work as a graphic designer. It is sort of a cast away position for a person like me. I’m still someone who can draw, but doesn't get art. I got a BFA from UW-Madison in 1999 when I was 41, but I can't get into graduate school -- I think because I don't get art. I don't understand the academic nature of it, and I obvoiusly don't come by it naturally.

I go through periods where I sketch everyday, and months where I don’t sketch at all. But it's always there -- the drawing, the image making, and the love affair with line. The compulsion and desire to mock the images I see in the world at large, to capture them in the net of my sketchbook, like so many odd and exotic butterflies scooped up in the web of memory and romance, never goes away. I pin each precious glimpse inside the velvet pages of my sketchbooks. A physical impression of time spent here on earth. Each winged page is evidence of being, with no judgment or confusion. They are tickets back in time; I can pop them open and be transported into times of love, anger, happiness, or confusion.

What a great gift my ancestors have blessed me with -- a synergy between the eye and the hand. Too bad I muddled it up for a while with unrealistic expectations. My attitude made it almost impossible for me to do art at all. I see this gift now in simpler terms. I see it as a vehicle, a passage, a door. And now the door is wide open. The breeze can blow in whatever images it likes. The sun is shining and the butterflies are floating in, out, and all around, beyond the constraints of time and space and most liberating of all, beyond the constraints of my own debilitating pathos.

to suffer love

The loss of a loved one is an immense burden to bear. My nephew died of a drug over dose a few years back. It hurts like it was yesterday. It doesn’t seem any more real to me now than it did when it first happened. My grief hasn’t diminished, but the way I express that grief has. Now instead of railing and twisting on the floor, I sit at my computer and compose a poem, or put a post on my blog. That must be Grace.

I loved my nephew so much, that I feel a certain betrayal in his dying. I am angry that he was so incredibly stupid as to put himself in so much danger. I suffer his loss, through my deep love for him. As I’ve grown older I’ve become more aware of the delicate thread our lives truly hang upon, torn as easily as a tiny spider’s web by a careless passerby.

Love on the other hand is strong as steel. At first it flows and glows like molten lava, but as it cools it hardens and holds fast. If you experience love, it is impossible not to understand Grace. Because in order to love, it seems we need heapin’ helpins' of Grace. Otherwise, I think love might kill us.

Doesn’t that sound weird? Love? That great, wonderful, soft, warm, fuzzy feeling we can’t get enough of? Well think about it for a second. Love really isn’t that much fun. If we never loved, we’d never know loss. Oh and how loss hurts. And isn’t loss only weathered through Grace? How would we ever climb out of the abyss of loss if it wasn’t for Grace?

Grace is like the epidural of loss. You still feel something, but the impact is greatly diminished and there is at least an appreciation -- if not a vague understanding -- of the mystery of it all.

And speaking of epidurals, having children is the most masochistic thing one could possibly do in terms of love. Just looking at them sometimes breaks your heart. They are so splendid and divine while they quietly sleep -- in a smelly diaper.

So it may sound strange to say one suffers love, but how else does one know love until they suffer for it? Until the majesty of grace lays to rest the grief and despair felt when one loses a beloved to death, or the world and time.

Even just a fight with one you love brings grief and pain. It feels like a loss. It feels like something’s been severed. We try to love so perfectly. We try to love so selflessly. We try to love so preciously. But when we truly love, we lose a lot. It is required. We lose our selves. We triumph and then we bleed. And then we need Grace.

Grace is a pillar to lean against, a mother’s lap in which to lay your drowsy head. Isn’t that love? And don’t we suffer it sublimely?

Tolerance

This past week I’ve ridden my bike to work everyday. Well actually, I ride my bike a little to the bus stop and then I take the bus the rest of the way. But I’m not using my car! And eventually I think I will be riding more bike and less bus.

On my way home Monday night I eagerly got off the bus, took my bike out of the carrier and started down the bike trail. I felt so relaxed and the lilac fragrance was a beautiful reminder of spring. Aaaahhh! What a great alternative to driving. No traffic backups, no angry drivers. This is the way to go!

As I went down the trail, I shifted a little because the strap on my backpack was cutting into my shoulder causing my arm to go numb. As I did this my bike wobbled a little and I veered slightly toward the middle of the path. Then a guy going pretty fast yelled: “Stay to the right!” I was startled by his voice and as he sped by me I called back to him: “Passing on the left.” Because that line is more near what I am used to bikers saying when they pass you on the trail. I felt he was rude and anger began to well up within me.

In addition to the anger I immediately went into this routine of self-assessment (defense) that flows over me anytime someone judges me like that. I thought about how I always tried to keep right. And why just when he was silently speeding up on me did my bike swerve just a little – enough to freak him out. But if I were to defend myself in that way, no one would really believe me. I wondered if I was now branded as a “bad bike path rider”. I felt that title would be unreasonable and unjust. Besides, he should have slowed as he approached another rider on the path, because you never know what might happen as you pass, it’s best to err on the side of caution.

So I felt unfairly judged and his intolerance infuriated me. I launched into a mental diatribe about how, ever since Money Magazine voted Madison a top ten city in which to live, all these high profile “A-type” personalities have been moving in and taking over, making it not so "top ten" anymore. I cursed about that a bit, I cursed at him, and generally felt crummy. My relaxing bike path ride at the end of a stressful workday was now angry, vexed, and exhausting. I couldn’t smell the lilacs anymore, all I could smell was the rancid odor of the lagoon. My knees started aching. I was so mad about how intolerant he was.

Why couldn’t he just have been nicer to me? Did he think he owned the world? Just because he wanted to use the bike path as his personal racetrack didn’t mean everyone else needed to get out of his way! Why was he in such a hurry anyway? The whole idea of the bike path was a relaxing way to get from here to there, not to make it another expressway, where you have road rage on a bike instead of a car. Boy was that guy ever missing the point! What a jerk!

Then there was a flash of light off the lagoon as I rounded the corner by the bridge. All I could see was a washed out view of the scene around me. It was very hard to navigate the tediously narrow sidewalk area of the bridge. All my attention went into trying to keep myself balanced so I wouldn't fall into the road.

As I passed the spot in the road where the blinding reflection was shining and came into regular vision again, I realized I had also been blinded by intolerance. I was being just as intolerant of the guy on the bike, as he had been of me. I needed to forgive him, not judge him. In addition, I needed to accept that I wasn’t perfect, and even though I try very hard to be cautious on the bike path and follow all the rules, there are some coincidences that will occur that will make me look like less than a perfect bike path rider. I've come to the conclusion that the worst thing I could do was to internalize that man’s behavior and behave just like him.

Happy Birthday!

I used to get a real kick out of my birthday. It was such a fun day, I got presents and my mom baked me a really nice cakes with candles and stuff. Even now that I'm older I always manage to have some fun on my birthday. Although I have to buy my own presents and make my own cake, it makes me feel special for just the day — plus — an added bonus of doing it all yourself is that you can decide how many candles to display on the top of the cake! My birthday is always extra fun because it comes right next to the 4th of July so I get a paid holiday from work and there’s always a fireworks display!

But recently there has been a pall cast over my once happy birth date. I found out that I not only share my birthday with Ringo Starr and Burt Ward (Robin on the Batman TV series) I also share it with a most loathsome public figure. So now, when I think of my birthday, I think of him. I try not to, but it is there, throbbing under the surface like puss in an infected cut. I tell myself; “At least it’s not the same year.” But that is of little consolation. I fear that somehow we are linked, that we are the same because we share the same birth date. I fear I am more like him than I want to be. I fear that the only thing people will ever remember about me is that I had the same birthday as him.

I am a social justice person. I’m not a perfect social justice person, I do stupid things that don’t help the problems we have all the time. But I try to vote with people who claim to want to use our tax dollars for the common good. One of my least favorite public policies is the waging of war. The only people who would wage war are those who would profit from it. The profit could be monetary, or political, but they reap the spoils. This person wages war. This person stands to profit from oil revenues as soon as he manages to strong-arm the Iraqis into signing over most of the rights to their sovereign reserves.

The whole thing is sick. Americans like myself have to sit by and pay for him to profit using our hard earned money through income taxes we pay. He mortgages our future and the futures of our children to pay for a war that looks as though in the end will profit only him and the 1% of Americans like him! Each day more and more men and women, someone’s son, daughter, sister, brother, mother, father, uncle, or aunt dies for his policies of greed and aggression. Each day he gets away with more graft and thievery. I wonder what the world will be like when he's through with it. It physically disturbs me.

So now when I think of my birthday, I grimace and get a terribly fowl taste in my mouth. Not because I am steadily getting older and older, but because of having to share it with such a Golum-esque character such as him. I feel I have no choice but to try to forgive him because this anger I feel for him is so toxic it is eating me alive — but isn’t that what true evil will do? For instance: as I drove in to work today I was thinking; "I wish he would eat this war and choke on his so-called power". — See what I mean? —

This is one of my birthday buds! I can't dis him like that! Does this mean I have the potential to be evil like him? Well if I look at it honestly, I guess the answer is yes. I assume we all have the potential to be really evil. Given the right circumstances, the right bunch of sycophants around us, and the right amount of money, we all have that potential. So after all, I guess we really aren't that much different.

Adagio Sostenuto

When I was about 16 I theorized that the reason old people drove so slowly was that as you get older life speeds up. So these old drivers perceived the world speeding by them, when really they were not going very fast at all — relative to conventional perception or “the standard of youth”.

Now that I am 48 I see I wasn’t so far off. I’m pretty sure in 30 years I’ll be hanging on for dear life as I drive 25 mph in a 45 mph zone.

What I didn’t realize as a budding philosopher of 16, was that the increase in speed wasn’t just going to apply to driving. Each day life in general speeds by faster and faster. There is less and less time to savor the beauty of life. A year melts away like butter in a hot frying pan. Seasons flip by as if on fast forward!

After a day of desperately trying to muster the strength to catch up — keeping up is an ambition which has long since been cast aside— I find myself stumbling. By 9 pm I’m plodding into the bedroom and aching as I put on my jammies. I feel like the Tin Woodsman in the Wizard of Oz, I want to squeak; “Oil can, oil can!” (Oil can what?)

I want to slow everything down! Adagio Sostenuto! My son is 18 for god’s sake! Where did all that time go? I just saw him wobbling around the church parking lot on his bike the first time he rode it without training wheels. My dad’s gone, my mom’s rotting away in a nursing home. I think about the Peggy Lee song, Is that all there is?; But the refrain in that song mentions; …“If that’s all there is, then let’s keep dancing, let’s break out the booze, and have a ball…”

Well I don’t drink, but I do dance. And I think of life as The Big Dance. Maybe not all of us are so beautiful when we dance, but there is a tune of some sort we hear that moves us. So maybe I’d write; …then let’s keep dancing, don’t drift off and snooze, but have a ball… Because from what I’ve experienced, life just flows like a raging river. It kind of fools you when you're young and looks like a trickling stream, but as time goes by it builds and builds until it is torrential. You start out dangling your bare feet in a sweet little brook in the shade of a beautiful oak tree, watching the tadpoles wiggle around against the brown mud below and you end up hanging on for dear life with the whitewater spinning and plunging you violently through each day. It’s hard to keep dancing that fast. You want it to slow down, but there are no brakes on a boat.

Spooky Stories

When you’re young, it’s fun to hear stories about ghosts and goblins. It’s fun to watch spooky movies, even dress up like monsters on Halloween. It's exciting to be scared! As time goes by, maturity sets in and those horror movie things don’t scare you like they used to when you were little. Now other things scare you, and it's no longer so exciting to be scared.

Now that I'm older the thing that scares me most in the world is… change.

Spooky isn’t it? Creepy, crawly, change! The scariest thing about change is that it hits you when you least expect it. There you are getting ready for bed, you lift up the cover and yikes! Out jumps change. Same thing happens at work. You happily go off to work each day, helping your nice boss get things done, and then one day your boss gets a new job. Poof! He's gone! AAAAAAAAAAaaaaayeeeeEEEE! (that's a scream) Where did they go? It's just plain weird.

No doubt about it, change is very scary.

What’s even scarier is when change comes to more than one major thing in you life at the same time. It’s like the rug is pulled out from under your whole routine. Dust is flying and your once comfortable stocking feet become ice skates on the slippery wooden floor. Yikes! Looking at all of this scary change optimistically can be really challenging when you are air born and facing an unpleasant impact with a hardwood floor. All you can really contemplate about the immediate future is just how much it’s really gonna hurt.

And does it ever!

There you are, a tangled lump of humanity, heaped up in the middle of a bare hardwood floor, a pile of dust on your head and up your nose. Your head throbs, your knees ache, and you think your arm is broken — not to mention your heart. At first you lie there in agony wondering when the paramedics will come. But after a while you realize you have no choice but to get up, dust yourself off, and head toward the nearest first aide station for a little TLC.

It's nice when the person leaving your life helps administer that TLC. They can help you ease up off the cold, hard floor and turn your mind's eye to a less bitter, loathsome perspective. Rather than Nightmare on Elm Street, maybe it’s just a Rear Window. It’s tough to see it that way at first, but eventually it gets a bit easier. You just hope that you have enough time to find your center before the next scary surprise comes and knocks you off balance and sends you back to that hardwood floor.

Eventually you're able to shine a light into all the spooky corners of those sinister changes that so afflicted your reality. You rip the mask off of those monstrously menacing changes that seemed so threatening and expose them as shadowy exaggerations of a much meeker reality. Then you look down and find that you are standing on a new rug — a little different than the one you stood upon before, but just as good — and even though your knees still ache, your arm's in a sling — we won't even talk about your heart — you find yourself getting curious about the future and all its possibilities.

So now that the scary part is over, you can peel your hands away from your face, raise your head and bid your dear friends adieu, with love, fondness, and well wishes. Then you can start picking out curtains to match that new rug.


(Goodbye Bruce you will be missed. Oh, and congratulations.)

Fatality

There was an accident on the beltline this morning. A car crossed the medium and slammed head on into two cars coming from the other direction. A semi parked across the lanes to prevent further chaos. One person died at the scene, two others were badly hurt.

They were just going about their day, expecting to arrive as usual. They woke up, took a shower, got dressed, packed their lunch, and went out the door. Expecting to arrive safely. Expecting to do what they normally do every day. Just driving along on a brilliant sunny spring morning — maybe they were listening to the radio and singing along as they drove — expecting everything to go smoothly.

If they’d known what was going to happen to them, would they have done anything differently? Would they have savored the moments a little more closely? Would they have hugged their kids a little longer and a little more tightly? Would they have taken the time to smell the fresh spring air?

We expect to get up each day and have a normal day. Why shouldn’t we expect so much? We live in America after all. We don’t have to worry about air strikes or suicide bombers or sniper attacks or shoulder fired rockets. We don’t have to worry about how we are going to fill our guts, our gas tanks, or get clean water to drink or wash ourselves with, or have a car to drive, or passable roads to drive them on.

A few people in this country do still struggle to find decent living conditions. They are the less “productive” members of society, the elderly, the mentally ill, people who are physically handicapped. Because they are perceived to be unable to contribute to our GNP, they are marginalized and left to fend for their selves or the mercy of charity. They struggle on the fringes of our society and live as if they were in a third world country.

The people caught in this fringe society cannot expect to ride on the roads, get good health care, have a living wage job, or even a warm place to sleep at night. Do we realize how lucky we are? What are we chasing when we speed down the beltline at 80 mph plus? Is it the promise of more? The promise of better?

Last night after I was done swimming laps, I walked out of the building and the beautiful warm spring breeze surrounded me. The smell of honeysuckle accompanied that air and as I looked out at the sky I saw the most beautiful remnant of a sunset, just barely visible in the western sky. I took a deep steady breath through my nose and shut my eyes. I tried to be totally in the moment. And I thought how lucky I was to have lived the life I have had. And I thought about my car (that runs) and my house and my family. I thought of all the interesting people I have known throughout my years here on earth. I thought that if I died tomorrow I’d be so lucky to have led this crazy life.

[It's not like this is a new thought or anything, it's just that it's good to remember this as we spend each precious breath. Each breath is golden. Each breath is a gift. How often do we act like the swine that this gorgeous world's pearls are cast before? How often do we grunt and snort at the idea of getting up, getting out, and enjoying this world? We who ignore the splendor of a sunset but pay attention to the garish and vituperative television set? (Matthew 7:6: Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.)]

The next moment I opened my eyes. A fiery spark appeared toward the southern part of my vision. It arched across the sky toward that dissolving sunset. It left a trail of embers as it shot across the heavens and I thought I could actually hear it sizzle as it became first brighter as it arced downward, and then ashen as it burned out. It was so thrillingly beautiful. It wasn’t so fleeting an apparition such as a typical shooting start might be. It lasted long enough, that if someone had been with me, I could have said; “Look! A falling star!” and they would’ve been able to catch sight of it.

That shooting star was like a signal flare. Not to warn me off, but to acknowledge my acceptance of the true brevity of our time here, and my thankfulness for the fortune that I am afforded. I saw that beautiful sign because I took the time to stop, look up, and look beyond the rattling cage we sometimes let our culture lock us inside.

I wonder who else was given the gift of that heavenly sight last night? Who else looked up at just that very second and saw that lovely ephemeral arc of light splash across the ocean blue sky. I wonder if by chance one of the victims involved in that horrible crash on the beltline this morning saw it. I wonder if at that very instant, they thought about how lucky they were.

It's probably nothing

It’s hard to feel OK when you have an ultrasound wand probing certain private areas of your anatomy, searching for something that’s probably nothing. You lie there staring at the darkened ceiling, where some conscientious but insensitive clinic employee placed a horrible poster of a pile of frogs with big buggy red eyes, and they are all staring down at you, watching you squirm.

Multiple frogs, multiple cells, reproducing like -- frogs -- malignant, and metastasizing! The anxiety builds to a crescendo. Out comes one tear, and then another, it wants to rain, but your eyes squeeze tight.

You try to hide the fact that you are scared to death. You try to find something to hold on to, something to stabilize things. There's only the stupid hospital gown wadded up in your fists.

Then it's over and the very nice attendant tells you that the doctors will appraise the images and you'll be notified of the results in a few days.

The phone rings, and it's the doctor. The instant you hear her voice you remember she said that if everything were OK the clinic would send a letter, but if they found something, she’d call.

So there it is. Now you have to go in for more tests. But try not to panic, because it’s probably nothing.

Hearing the “C” word is a punch in the gut. It deploys the air bag between the reality that is your life up until that point and the concrete pylon of an illness that is impossible to steer around. For a second there is hyper reality, then mist. When the mist clears the world is a different place altogether, complete with hospital waiting rooms, solemn doctors mumbling quietly as they consult over images of your internal organs, and big decisions.

But until you know for sure, you have to add; “It’s probably nothing” every time you speak about it -- because you don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily.

The fact is you are alarmed. You are VERY alarmed! There is a clanging bell reverberating in your skull 24 hours a day. Your eyes are wide open with fear. Your mouth is dry and cottony. Your conversation is disjointed, truncated by a mind preoccupied and exhausted.

You feel so crazy, because after all, it’s probably nothing.

stage fright

Even though my doctor told me not to sing until my vocal chords heal, I just had to sing a rendition of Elvis Costello’s ballad Alison for my boss’s going away party last week. It was a tribute I could not forgo, no matter how impaired my vocal.

I was in the midst of a bad cold with lots of congestion in the week leading up to the performance -- just a few days before I had no voice at all. Which meant I had to rely heavily on my breath for projection of the notes and words. This turned out to be not such a bad thing.

Getting up on stage was something else again. Boy do I have stage fright. I’m so scared I physically shake, my palms sweat, and my heart races. I think I’m scared of being judged harshly. Which reveals, I think, that I must tend to judge others very harshly. Otherwise, why would I be so scared?

One thing that trying to overcome stage fright does do – that to me is totally unexpected – it makes me less judgmental! Every time I go up and stand before a mass of people and bare my soul, and ultimately screw it up, it makes me less apt to judge other people unduly. It gives me empathy. It also makes me totally happy.

I’m not sure why going up on stage and laying it all out there makes me so happy. Maybe because it is so “in the moment”, or maybe because each time I do it I feel I have overcome such a great barrier in my own psychic pathology that I feel like Rocky or something.

Whatever the reason, it is cathartic. It suspends time and turmoil, treading into that floating consciousness somewhere between my feet on the stage and my head floating out to Jupiter. On the backbeat of course! Leaving every earthly care somewhere down along the curb and gutter.

I closed my eyes and left the room while I stood there on stage. Behind my eyelids I found an ecstatic phantasm of presence in the absence. My heart slowed to the beat of the music, and I waited for my turn of the rope and jumped in. I sang my heart out.

I belted every line. I hit those notes out to the audience like a major league batter. And it seemed every one was at least a base hit. It was like I grew and grew and grew, until I was too big for the room. I expanded to the ceiling and out into the crowd. What a feeling!

Then when the song ended, I landed. I shrunk back to normal size and fumbled my way back into the tables and chairs, tinkling glass, and the drone of the gossiping crowd. Did they applaud? I haven’t any idea. I was not in the room.

My boss liked it though. That was enough.
Farewell friend, and good luck.

Mother's Day

My mom fell and cut her head open at the nursing home last week. The person in charge of that stuff called me and left a message on my phone at work. She wanted me to call her back. The only problem was, when she said the number, she garbled the last two digits in the phone number, making a return call impossible.

When I got to work this morning, she had left another message. That made me happy, I thought I’d be able to call her back! But she garbled the same two digits of the number and I still was unable to call back.

The guilt factor concerning my mother is very high and rising every moment. I haven’t been to see her since before I got this bad cold on Tuesday the 10th of April – it’s now the 25th. Being sick has drained me real bad -- and I really wouldn’t want her to catch it. Add to that fact, that my boss at work has left for a great new job and my work future is uncertain. Not to mention that the doctor wants to have me checked for uterine cancer. Oh, and did I mention menopause?

Crummy things seem to be piling up. And it feels more like piling on. Some days I don’t know if I can go on -- the foot, the throat, the female organs, the hormones, the mom, the boss, the job (not to mention the things I’m not mentioning!) -- but what choice do I have?

My youngest son turned 5 years old yesterday. That was big. He was so excited. He bounced around the room just like Tigger from the Pooh books. And even though we kept it simple, he was elated. That kid is some kind of blessing. He’s such a bright beacon. He warms the cockles of my heart (whatever those are).

I was 43 when he was born. It didn’t seem to be such a feat at the time, but now as he grows I’m learning that physically I am just not up to the task sometimes. I hope I don’t leave him before he grows up. But who has that choice anyway? We do what we can to try to stay healthy, and we fail miserably. Then we try again, and we fail again. The most we can hope for is a net success as time goes by.

My oldest son turns 18 on Saturday. He is so beautiful. He is awesome -- in every sense of the word. He brings me great joy and also great fear. I so want his life to be better than mine. Not due to material possessions, but due to better choices. I hope I have given him some good tools for his earthly toolbox to help him build, and as needed, repair his life.

Like I said, my mom fell and cracked her head open at the nursing home. It took 13 staples to put her back together. The fact that I haven’t been to see her for two weeks is starting to dangle over my neck like a guillotine. She’s my mother after all. I’m sure they think I’m indifferent to the whole thing since I haven’t called them back. I wish they knew that I only have the area code and the first 5 digits of the phone number.

Visiting my mother is somewhat like mounting the executioner’s block. It’s a very solemn affair -- she’s the one with the axe and hood. I am the one who will soon be fragmented, fractured, and succumb. So with each day I fail to visit her, the blade rises, and the anxiety grows – I both detest and desire an audience with her. It’s really quite sick -- there are not enough staples to fix what's broken in me -- but it is non-negotiable, she’s my mother.

Maybe the number is in the book.

vocal theropy

In addition to everything else, I have a condition known to doctors as GERDS. Gastro esophageal reflux disease. Acid reflux. Symptoms of this being that I've a sore throat all of the time. In addition my vocal chords are swollen, so my voice becomes weak and I get hoarse very easily.

In order to help strengthen my voice I've been assigned a vocal therapy doctor. If you were to ask me what she looked like, I would have to say my first impression is of a young Mrs. Claus. She has clear shiny skin, plump, rosey cheeks, and light complexion all around. She seems to be about 28 but is a bona fide PhD and very good at what she does, so I suspect she is older than 28, maybe a young looking 33. Never the less, she has a gentle build. Quite heavy, as am I, but you don't get that impression from her, she doesn't "seem" that fat. Maybe it's the lab coat. But I notice she has some weight because when we do the exercises I have to look at her abdomen to see the technique she is teaching and there is a considerable amount of padding there. Despite this, I am for some reason not comfortable describing her as a large woman. She just doesn't seem that big. Her voice is light and feathery. It rides on her breath and floats around you head. She has a tendency to tilt her head back and look down her nose at you.

Maybe I just perceive this because these vocal therapy sessions have been closer to psychotherapy sessions. Getting to the bottom of my vocal problems ostensibly lies in getting to the bottom of my emotional problems. My psyche. My apoplectic, unanswered neurosis. She doesn't have enough time! But she pops some terse observations in just for good measure.

On the first appointment she said to me; "I'm worried about your mental state, you seem to be very anxious. You have issues with your singing. You identify with it too much. Your singing isn't who you are, it is just a way you can express who you are." That caught me by surprise; I thought this was voice therapy. Maybe she just likes to tease the tears out of people. But I held back. Then she gave me some exercises to practice.

On the second appointment she said to me; "You have to throw your desire to sing away. You must let it go, or you won't have it. And you must be willing to see your life without your voice. Find other forms of expression. Let your voice go." (Who is this person? Yoda!)

I had to sit back a bit. She is talking about my singing voice right? The thing I do every minute of every day. Singing, my primary form of self-indulgence. How fearful it was to think of my life without singing going on in my head all the time. I began to cry. Not gushing, but just enough fear surfaced to pop a flow of tears from my ever-widening ducts. She had struck a chord. She had grabbed the dagger, flexed back her arm and set the thing directly into my heart. She seemed sadistically satisfied. Then she gave me some new exercises to practice.

On the third appointment she said to me; "You talk too much and don't say anything. You have to be more deliberate. You have to learn to use your instrument sparingly. You will use it up too soon the way you go at it. And, your voice is coming straight from your vocal folds, not your breath as it should." Then she talked to me about breathing, and gave me some more exercises.

So she was going to show me how to breathe? Hadn't I been doing that already? Wouldn't I be dead if I couldn't breathe?

Well, you know how we women suck in our bellies all the time to try to look 10 pounds thinner? What's the point when you're 250 pounds! But for some reason I still do it. And I found out that doesn't help your breath so much. She taught me to open up my middle section and let the air get down low into my diaphragm area. Then to push up and send the breath out, up the air pipe, past the vocal folds, onto the roof of my mouth, and past my upper teeth into the world. She had me add a sound to it and wanted me to feel the vibration just behind my upper front teeth. Resonance, she called it. It was like saying OM! And we repeated it over and over until I began to get it working more naturally. By that time I had a buzz and was feeling very euphoric, having just meditated. It helped me calm down. I could feel my center for a few seconds. And within that center there was no fear. What a relief!

I liked that. And even though she kind of pissed me off with the remark about my talking, she was redeemed with the teaching of the breath. Now I am practicing daily, for varying lengths of time. Slowly expanding in and down and then slowly contracting up and out.

Learning how to breathe.

painting

Sometimes there's a color all over your walls that's just not reflecting the real you. You look at the walls and you think; "This is just too bright, it's really not me anymore. What was I thinking when I painted them this color!" So you decide to cover over the bad color choice and put up something that really reflects who you are.

Choosing that color isn't always so simple. Do you want a warm or cool hue? Dark tone or light tint? Flat, Satin, Semi-gloss, or Enamel? Maybe you want a glaze over the primary color with a little rag rolling. It's all possible with a little patience and mental discipline. So you go to the hardware store and order the paint, custom mixed, just for your new look! Then you check it and if it looks OK, you cart it home and prepare to brush it on.

It's one thing to choose a new color, and it's another to actually apply it to the walls. Sometimes the walls are so full of dirt and grime you have to go at it with a scrubber to get all the scum to come off so the new paint will actually stick! The wall has dings and dents that you have to carefully cover with spackle, smooth, sand and prime before you can apply the new paint. In some places, especially the corners, there are cobwebs and an occasional spider lurking therein.

One coat is seldom adequate, most times two is needed, once in a while it takes three. But there are always areas you just can't cover up no matter how many coats of paint you put over them. Those just become part of the wall-scape and you have to learn to love them and live with them. Or better yet, work around them and integrate them into the overall look of the room!

Now before all this rejuvenation can take place there are obstacles you need to deal with that are in the room itself. You have to try to move the furniture away from the walls and find a way to cover it so it doesn't get all full of drips and splatters. This maneuver presents a new set of problems. It reveals all the clutter you've stowed away in all the little cubbie holes that makes the furniture so heavy you can't possibly move it away from the wall until you remove the excess.

And if you decide not to move that really heavy piece and just paint up to the edges, you will always know that the old color still exists behind that huge hutch or entertainment center, and someday, it will have to be moved revealing that old unsightly patch of wall. Who knows what could be festering behind that old over-stuffed hutch anyway, better to get in there and deal with it now before it grows unmanageable.

When all the obstacles are overcome, what a great feeling to have nice new walls surrounding you. A new perspective on the world, a new vantage point to observe your life. And now the spiders can move back in.