My Heroes

Some people thrive on constant movement and excitement, but I think they are looking for something that is not a natural part of living, like playing video games until you can get to the top level in ten minutes every time. In the long run, who really cares?

Other people are terrified of anything unfamiliar. I understand this because I am a lot like these people. It is the fear that I might not be quite as independent and capable as I should be. Change something and I might fail and then? Well, who knows what might happen, but it might be horrible. Right?

And then there are the people who just move along, occasionally whooshing down a waterfall, or sleeping fifteen hours at one time, but mostly just doing their thing as mindfully as they possibly can.

My heroes.

The Fountain of Youth

I like to be on the edge. I do not like to walk on the edge, or sleep on the edge, or live and love on it, but I do like to step up there every so often and take a look.

Most of my life has been spent this way. I have a knack for getting myself into situations that are probably just a bit out of my reach, or my particular sphere, but that is okay.

It keeps me going, refuses to allow me to fall asleep for any extended period of time, or become set in my ways. It keeps me younger by requiring me to continue thinking, experiencing, reaching out.

Who would believe that the fountain of youth is a vision of discomfort? Too much and it turns into stress, which is a sure killer. Too little and I become Rip Van Winkle, sleeping my life away.

Subterfuge

I cannot choose my friends for other people. Mostly because they can never truly understand what it is that I see in another person. None of us can do this. Judging each other for the friends we keep is fool hardy.

At its best it may stop someone from seeing a dangerous person, but at its worst and all those places in between it usually just creates subterfuge; lies born from deceit and fear, or half lies creating camouflage for something that would be better off out in the light.

Fond Memories And Farewells

Mama's taking us to the zoo today, not Peter, Paul and Mary's, but Drake's Mama, and my sister. We went to the Saint Louis zoo at Forest Park in Missouri and it occurred to me that this may be the last time I ever come here. In fact, except when I fly out to Denver in May, I may never come back to St. Louis again.

That makes me a little sad. My father was born here, came back to go to Washington University pre-med at sixteen and brought us here many times as we were growing up. I will miss this city. It holds so many beautiful memories for me.

I came into my own here, found my soul mate here and now I move on, to the next phase of my life, much richer for having been here.

Pavarotti and Perfection

Great music is recognizable by anyone. It makes my heart leap, my breath come in short bursts, afraid that I will mask some sound with the smallest whisper of air.

Chauncey knows this. He stops, cocks his head to the left and looks at the television. The tempo picks up, the volume soars, then the words are barely audible and my eyes ache with the passion and the need to cry that is so great I cannot.

I am paralyzed by this moment.

I am watching Pavarotti, one of those little gifts I keep stashed away just for me to watch when I need to be reminded of the perfection that abounds in my world.

My Home Town

A mother's voice cries out in anguish. Her child is dead. Not only dead, but wrongly dead and wrongly judged by a world all too ready to believe in generalities.

How much easier it is to keep small towns beautiful and free from scandal than it is to face the fact that the alleys are dark and demons lurk behind every shadow. Churches are filled with the smiling faces of those whose children crucify each other with oxcycottin stuffed into the gaping mouths and hysterical eyes of those who make them jealous.

Mothers turn blind eyes on their adored children, buying them clothes and cars and video games so that they can use their own money to buy the more exotic toys of today's youth. Methodone wafts up staircases into nurseries and xanax comes in the back door with the milk.

Little girls bear children in their own likeness and little boys hang men by their heels from second story windows. The heartland needs a transplant. The hearts that beat here are on defibrillators, stopping every few minutes to refresh their delusions.

A Lack Of Song

Worrying is pointless, but there are valid reasons for trying to figure something out. Looking for solutions is not the same thing as just worrying about out comes.

My children can tell you that I am famous for loud, operatic little songs that are really only badly sung pop tunes. It is one of the ways I let off steam when they were growing up. One of the more common ones came when I was close to giving up and sang, "Life is just a bowl of cherries and I am living off the pits." Bad comedy is better than even quiet profanity.

Tonight I realized that I have not had a need to sing this particular song in over ten years. Part of that is that I would not sing around friends who made a living in music. Ego and fear go close in hand with any musical talent that I may, or may not have. A larger part is that I have had no need, because I have not felt that pressured in a very very long time.

The event I considered the second worst thing that could ever happen to me -- did. And instead of killing me, it set me free. No lesson could be more powerful.

One More Thing

I used to be the head of several civic organizations and we had a favorite phrase that said, "If you want something done right, ask a busy person."

I am as guilty as many people of putting off what I do not want to do, but I have limits and those limits keep me from having to deal with unnecessary problems. God willing and the tools are there, I get things done in a somewhat timely manner, thereby avoiding late fees, disconnects, and other unpleasant occurences.

I also find myself prone to worry about things and I dislike this trait. I feel it is simply fooling my body into thinking I am doing something worthwhile, when I am not. Avoiding it by keeping the television, or radio, running only distracts me. Running myself ragged by working, or playing, or helping people really does not help either.

It is better to just deal with a problem head on, admit the truth and suffer the consequences of pain, or the relief of knowing the truth and considering it a base from which I can begin to build a more stable foundation.

The silence is filled with possibilities once it becomes the silence and not a vat for empty actions. Recovery begins one step at a time no matter where you are going.

I can't be afraid to look at the real me reflected back. I am what I am. I am not what I was so beginning now I move forward even if it means just doing one thing differently that I know was not working before. Later on, I can do one more thing if I want.

The Earth Terrarium

God saw it and said, it is good and I wonder what he was judging it against? Are we the first, or second, or millionth?

Anything less than an actual experience with a new creation is only speculation. Until you see it up close and personally, who knows what is needed? Being god I imagine that time is irrelevant. If you are thinking like a monotheistic god, you don’t count on things like your creations recreating themselves and overflowing their little habitats. Although at the time it first happened, it must have been very awe inspiring.

Imagine how excited god must have been when he went from cutting amoebas in half, to regenerating lizard legs and finally onto getting whole trees to appear out of seeds and little surprise bundles of humanity resembling their parents. Not quite like gods, because it takes two humans to make a whole other one, but close enough to be pretty impressive. If there had been other gods, I am sure he would have been pretty proud of these accomplishments and quickly claimed the bragging rights.

Our ability to have children must have sparked the idea that we were his children. He just seems to have forgotten that there were still a lot of loose ends down here. He gave us all sorts of plants to eat, but an awful lot of them will kill us, which is probably another thing that didn’t come up until it happened since gods most likely to not have to eat, and it is very unlikely that they can be poisoned.

Then there is this idea of Father Time. Eternity doesn’t have a lot of use for minutes, or hours, or even years. However, once you throw time into the mix, all these things are pretty important to the little creations down in the earth terrarium.

So here we are, we live, we eat, we make little people and we die. How did a god who probably doesn’t do three out of four of these things even think all this up? Imagine his horror when we found ways to destroy it? He cleaned out the whole thing a couple of times, keeping the most promising ones, but here we are again.

Sometimes I wonder if he has just decided to quit enabling us and see what happens. Let us learn the hard way that there are some things you just shouldn’t do.

Eyrys

My son is graduating soon, getting his Juris Doctorate in law. He has also just put out his CD, a collection of pieces that he and two friends have put together in a surprisingly wonderful way. I say surprising only because some of his former attempts have been geared so far away from my musical niche that I couldn't quite appreciate them for the novel creations they were.

I enjoy this CD. In fact, I love this CD. The lyrics, the tunes, the little nips and tucks that surprise me here and there. The mellow beauty of a voice, or trumpet, or sliding guitar and bongos are outstandingly lovely.

It is called Eyrys, pronounced Iris after the flower that lies dormant for so long, then rises into the light to bloom in the spring.

The Collective Unconscious

I write a thot for the day. Usually I write it at night, but today it was written early in the morning. All day long I have seen the same ideas pop up everywhere, on movies, on the radio, in conversation. I swear I had no contact with any of this before I wrote my thoughts.

It would seem to prove that there is some sort of collective, or underlying unconscious that we all can tap into. Perhaps, though, it is just that the time is right for this subject to come up. If I were able to analyze all the social, economic and other data, perhaps I would see that this is a logical time for such a subject. To me, this feels more far fetched than a collective unconscious.

You might say I am just more conscious of this thought since I wrote about it and that could be correct too. I'll try again tomorrow and see if I notice the same things popping up then. I doubt I will.

Fascinating mystery for me.

It's Easier If It Shows

It is always easier for me when I can name something. A name makes it feel more official, makes me feel more comfortable doing the necessary things, justifies it in my mind when I cannot do all the things I once did, or feel I should do.

I am not sure who I am afraid of, but there is a part of me that is absolutely terrified of being a shirker, a person who doesn't pull her weight, or doesn't live up to what she professes to believe. It creates a paradoxical relationship with my self that has been around as long as I have memory of being me.

Consequently I hurt myself rather frequently doing things I know I should not do. It would be much easier to have a broken arm, leg, anything, than a torn muscle, or injured joint. It would be absolute heaven to be able to say I hurt my finger rather than my heart aches, or I feel sad, or I am too tired.

Of course I can do all these things without any fear of reprisal at all, as far as I know, so why does it feel so wrong? Why do I doubt myself and my own feelings?

The Store of Youth

I went to the little used bookstore on the square today and talked to Dana, the owner. She was pleased to get the bag of books I took in and the woman who was there was pleased to get the credits, since I won't need them when I move. I like it when things work out so neatly.

People give me books, I give them to others and I get used books for $1.34 each. I also get to spend some time talking to a well educated woman who is both intelligent and funny.

By the time I left we were both laughing and I felt ten years younger.

Stuck On Me

Sometimes it is just too late by the time I get here. I wonder if that means this becomes cheesy and meaningless, or if it means my defences are down and I am more my real self? Probably both.

Even at this age, a wise young 58, I am still learning vast quantities of things about myself, and the world, and the possibilities that lie just under the same old same old surface everyone is so used to seeing. Every so often I have a major, "Aha!" that tells me I am seeing a certain thing much later than others I know, but then I don't know what they are just learning.

Probably the best thing I can do is to quit worrying about where I am compared to other people. After all, I am stuck with me, no matter what.

Dragon Eggs

Conceived by the overwhelming power of passions blowing us back and forth into the world of archetypal light and dark, dragon eggs are jostled and churned until one of them drops from the nest and falls into our thoughts.

A tiny baby dragon hatches, nursing upon whatever self-love we have left, and begins to grow. Child of goodness and light, demon child of power, it learns to fly and then to breathe fire, becoming an archetypal creature itself.

Adopted child whose umbilical is connected to our very soul, this godly beast takes on our visage, carrying us up into the center of the silence, gobbling up darkness before it can come too close, barbecuing the rest so it becomes palatable to our human heart and cannot poison us for all eternity.

Ferocious beloved, willing to die again and again, that we might live.

Elegance

Elegance is beauty without pretense,
simplicity in its prime,
composition in its purest form.

Elegance speaks for itself,
glows from within,
withstands the test of time.

Awakening

Figuring out what the problem is -- sounds like a common sense thing to do, yet I find myself blaming it on age, poverty, or situations when it is something else altogether.

Days, even weeks disappear while I sleep, or barely exist in a fog of deathly exhaustion and then one day I take a tiny pill and find myself full of energy.

A simple over the counter pain reliever, but not the one I had been using. Who would think it could make so much difference? Chronic pain must be much more debilitating than I have allowed myself to believe.

I have been following doctor's orders, taking medicine for blood pressure and not using anything except tylenol. I was almost convinced that I was terribly depressed, or doomed to live this way for the rest of my life. Thank God I finally swallowed an Alleve.

Fly Away

What makes people so different?

I understand different cultures, different languages, different sexes, and races and personal habits, but what makes brothers and sisters from the same family have such different thoughts and ideals?

I can see a little bit of influence in birth order, or if there is a long number of years between two siblings, but those born one, two, three, four, in a house with the same two parents, eating the same foods, going to most of the same places during their formative years? How do they grow up to be so different?

It has to be that we continue to grow long beyond those so called formative years. So, then my next question is what makes some children need to fly away from the nest while others just crawl up the family tree and build nests on different branches?

I could write books on both these types, but it would still be all speculation, or perhaps just a lot of perceived personal experiences. I wouldn't really know for sure.

The Ties That Bind

A strange ennui envelopes me when I am tied in one place by so many lines that even Gulliver's plight with the Lilliputians sounds better.

The list would be so mundane that anyone reading it would simply stop in total and complete boredom. Yet it is this list that unites people on every level. The agonies of being human, perhaps the curse of Pandora, or Lilith, or Eve's transgression's in the Garden of Eden, or a plethora of other examples, that all seem to be blamed on females.

Whether or not they were actually caused by women, it has been a long time and men seem to have grabbed those magic rings and run with them quite competently throughout the ages.

Wriggling around only allows a modicum of freedom, it never seems to solve the problems.

Wisdom

I write a line and the world interprets it five different ways, each one praising me for my great insight. I am honored, but also surprised because not one of those five ways are what I was thinking about at all.

I think wisdom is more about the person hearing it than the one composing it. I am reminded of Fiddler On The Roof when Teveye says if you're rich, they think you really know. Credentials such as this are probably more common than I like to think.

Good And Evil

What is it about writing that is so fulfilling? It is not dreams of fame for me, nor is it an attempt to become rich.

I believe it is a chance to be myself, not only to ideate, but to create fantasy and dreams in a way that makes them real to me. If there is any part of me that is god-like I suspect it must be my thoughts.

My thoughts often feel like the manifestation of my soul trying desperately to be born into this world, held back only by Fear. To say, only, is minimizing that great dark force. I suspect Fear has buried more people than any war with slings and arrows, because Fear encompasses all the derision and brutality of this world with the imagined ones of the inner world.

Perhaps that is what makes writing so fulfilling. It is the age old battle between light and dark, good and evil, playing out in a field so vast no earthly being could take it on.

Children Are A Choice

I can be so naive. There really are several different worlds going on around me all the time. I had no idea that some people honestly believe they have a good life living on welfare, or that others really think that kicking in doors and hitting people with their fists is a viable alternative to reason. It amazes me how much prejudice is acceptable at a barely concealed level.

I am always surprised when parents don't go all out to rear their own child to be as well rounded as possible and don't seem to care that they could provide so many more opportunities for that child to succeed. Why have a child if you really don't want to spend time with it? Most of us no longer harbor ideas of having children to work the farm, or help out in the family business making antiques, or even join in the jovial family sting operations. So, what are they here for? Do people even think about these things?

Children are a choice now. They should come into the world loved and revered. Anything less is simply wrong. Not only is it wrong, it creates a chink in the chalice where the light can leak out and be replaced by something darker. Worse than withholding love and light from the world, is creating a vessel for their opposites.

Kaleidoscope

High upon a glacial kame, primordial waters fled in vain
Three middle aged women stand, looking out
Upon four county lines and a puppy's pout.
Eighty feet above the land, deep in grass and primordial sand.

Far below in an earthly pond, primordial ice melts in a bond.
Of rock and water joined on earth,
Struggling hard to hold its girth.
Above it all three women stand, mentally holding heart and hand.

Six young frogs below them sing with natural verve and worldly bling
Above them all up in the sky
Float fluffy hopes to catch God's eye.
A mass of atoms bouncing around in a kaleidoscope scene on primordial ground.

It is coming

I feel it deep inside of me. I cannot explain it, it is like that first sweet knowledge that you are pregnant, long before anyone can confirm it. This, though, is bittersweet, a feeling, a knowing and not knowing all at the same time.

The first silken strands of the cocoon have begun to be and it will not be long before they flutter out into this world. Insulating, protecting, giving notice that a transformation is in progress.

Inner journeys are both more exciting and more frightening than worldly ones. First of all I need to be sure they come from the light and not the ignorance of darkness. Misinformation is deadly in a life of action and free will. Even the darkness can appear to be lit from within.

If I am to change, I want it to be into a transparent creature of light, not some elegant figurine kept upon a rose until I am pinned to a board.

It can happen to you

I picked up my phone tonight and love burst upon me in every word, every tone, every nuance of a voice that made me feel like the most important person ever to step upon the earth.

I can only remember one other voice doing this and it was evidently a phase that passed quickly enough, but this voice has spent years loving me. We are tuned into each other as only mother and child can ever be. Like the fairy tale characters of old I have spent my life searching for what is already mine. Not that there could not be more, but none could be sweeter to my ears.

The Beloved

Who can embrace the beloved with both arms and still remain in the light throughout life's way? It is better to find him in the scent of the flowers and the wind, the sweet taste of my creme brulée, or the warmth of the light upon my skin. I hear his voice in the music that surrounds me and know his softness in my dreams. I have only to close my eyes and breathe gently to remember the deeply perfect imperfection of his being and how it still carries me away.

Such truth in the light of a world that values convenient falsehoods is difficult to understand, but I know no other way. I cannot live with, or without this beautiful I am whose way is so close to mine I often cannot separate the grain from the chaff.

I would rather starve along this way than give it up for something less. This precious being is as close to the light as is allowed for now and I am grateful.

Smallest Common Denominator

We have spent eons cataloging the differences in this world. Water, rock, plant, person, beast. Two legs, four legs, no legs, a million legs. Tall, short, fat, thin, straight, curly, bald. Most differences are actually pretty apparent once one starts looking.

What interests me are the commonalities. I want to find out how alike everything is, what is the smallest common denominator between the alpha and the omega.

Just Like Us

Edgar Lee Masters. I saw that name on a sign in the yard of a very small white house in Petersburg, Illinois today and I couldn't quite place him. My friend reminded me that he wrote the Spoon River Anthologies, but I still wasn't convinced. It turns out she was correct.

He had some of the very same problems I do with the quaint little villages in this world, or at least with the ones in western Illinois. These idyllic places filled with store fronts from the past and cozy little homes are not all filled with ever loving tolerant people just waiting to clasp their arms around those seeking their way.

They are often as self righteous and spiritually moribund as the fading print upon the forced and artificial signs above their shops. Behind the crisp white creases and smiling faces can be some of the most judgemental characters around.

Still, they are the descendants of our fore fathers who once settled in other small towns and founded a government of the people, by the people, for the people. As long as they are just like us.

Don't Look Back

I don't believe most people can see beyond where they are in this moment. I hear them judging others for what they did then and wonder if it would be any different without the hindsight.

I often watch the death trucks pass by me as I wait at the stop sign on Route 29. I see the hopeless faces peering out, the eyes pressed close to the slats, trying for a breath of fresh air. If my windows are open I hear their squeals of fear and pain. Of course these are only hogs, but I wonder if once those others thought, these are only Jews.

I see creatures shoved into spaces so close they can barely move, their feet scarred and blistered from unending standing in terrible places. I see others with their mouths mutilated so we can enjoy the fruits of their suffering and I wonder if those people eating fried chicken and eggs care about these poor creatures. Once upon a time it was said that slaves could not feel like we do either.

I see dogs tied out in the blistering sun and birds in cages so small they cannot fly. I see children simply fed and clothed, not cherished. I hear the screams of people being shot and tortured because we want their oil and they dare to complain. I see people killing in the name of God and I wonder how we became such an unfeeling race of creatures.

What will people think of us in the not so distant future?

All Will Be Well

I don't think giving up hope is the same thing as letting go, but it often seems to have the same results. At least as long as I give up hope without doing anything foolish.

Life comes together and generally works out in spite of all the other life going on around it. Sometimes one mess actually leads to the solving of another one.

I don't know if the Way is a maze, or a labyrinth, but whoever laid it out must be a member of the Loyal Order of the Eternal Mensa, because it is so complex and convoluted that I would not want to try and second guess it.

I just need to remember this the next time I feel panic starting to rise up and overtake me. All will be well. All will be well. All will be well.......