Echoes Of A Muse

“Well, it’s gonna happen, so just going to live with it.” Honest words, spoken quietly and calmly. It is a wise person who can live by this philosophy.

Everyone is different. We don’t all have the same favorite colors and we don’t all feel things the same way, but that does not negate the wisdom of facing the truth squarely and avoiding as much drama as possible. It’s a much healthier way of coping that mine.

I do try. I try very hard to deal with life in the moment, but my natural tendency is to try and protect myself up front. I have to watch myself, because I will keep everyone at an arm’s distance in order to avoid the pain of letting go later on. I purposely try not to allow myself to do that.

I try to just give my natural desire to be loving and close, free reign, knowing that eventually there will be separation and pain, but that the richness and the joy that comes first, is worth it.

It is. It also falls under, “Well, it’s gonna happen, so (I’m) just going to live with it.”

So I do a lot of sharing, a lot of loving and eventually it is inevitable that there will be holes when these people move on, but “Well, it’s gonna happen, so just going to live with it.”

It is who I am. Sometimes I fill the holes with tears and find myself treading water before I get over it enough to find those proverbial windows that are supposed to open up. The thing is, I know they are there, but I forget how much pain often precedes them.

That is probably a good thing.

Happy Halloween

Writers are ghouls of the most persnickety sort.

I don’t want your blood. I actually have no use for that, but I do want to pick your brain, steal your experiences. And I’m not content with just being a voyeuristic ghoul. I want to know how it felt when your baby said his first word, or what you were thinking when you smiled at Aunt Mabel’s funeral last spring.

It’s cool that you can ride a skateboard down the railing at city hall without getting arrested, but what was your first thought when that bone in your arm snapped and popped out through your shirt? What was it like to dive headfirst over the waterfall and how did you learn to do a somersault like that? When you sleep in a sling two thousand feet up on a cliff, what do you dream?

How do you keep track of all the jurors you are questioning without a notepad and what happens if you realize you can’t do it, but there you are? What makes you cry and what makes you laugh so hard you almost pee in your pants?

What is the worst thing you think you ever did? What was the sweetest? Are you afraid to look bad, or sweet? I have a million questions. Just like Aunt Lu used to line her bird cage with the daily news, I line my thoughts with news of you! Then I mix them all up and create characters in the image of a dozen different people. No costumes necessary!

I Will Remember You

I remember being your age and I remember the mentors and people along my way who helped me out and were there for me. I remember how odd that sometimes seemed, but it was nice anyway.

I had no idea of the real potential they saw in me, (and some still do and that still seems a little odd to me.) I had no idea how much they were willing to invest in me, no idea how much I meant to them. To me they were simply kind people sprinkled along the pathway of my life. I left most of them behind without a second thought, until now when I realize how much their faith in me helped me to get where I am. That is as it should be.

It is that faith I have in you. I know you have everything you need right now. You were born with it and you will be able to draw on it, grow with it and use it for the rest of your life. I have only been blessed to watch you for a short while, but that while has left me tangled up in feelings so much deeper than I ever might have believed was possible. I discover I would do almost anything for you.

In the villages long ago, you might have called me Grandmother, just a name for a woman who had lived long enough to love easily and be wise enough to see the power in you. In today’s world we will probably never meet again, but I will remember you.

Pavarotti And Building Inspectors

I had another Pavarotti dream, my third this year. If they continue perhaps I should start a book called my adventures with Pavarotti After He Died. You may, or may not, remember that I dreamed he came to stay with me and watch Women’s World Cup Soccer. Then I dreamed he came to judge an art show, but I ran into him in the hall. He put his arm around me and walked me in. In his hands were a plate of white chocolate covered strawberries and a plate of jelly doughnuts! Tucked up under his other arm were a collection of my framed paintings! He had already decided I’d won!

Today I dreamed I had to rush home because the building inspectors were coming. It was nearly dark when I arrived to find televisions and radios blaring throughout the house. I could not seem to make the remote controls work to turn them off, so I nearly missed hearing the Park Ranger knocking on my door. In fact I did miss him at the front door, so I rushed around to the side one and caught him there just before he left the porch. I told him to make himself at home while I turned off the TVs. I finally just turned the one in the front room way down, but I couldn’t even seem to do that with the radio under the kitchen cabinet.

I heard the door again and this time it was the committee for building inspections, a woman and two men dressed like Dick Tracy. And, Pavarotti! I ushered them all into the family room, seating the first three in over stuffed chairs along one wall and Pavarotti in a kitchen chair beside me, facing them. Then I realized I’d left them in the dark, so I reached over one of the men and turned on a lamp that was too bright,. I had to reach over him again and turn it down a bit.

In the meantime the kitchen radio is blasting away and I excuse myself one more time, thinking maybe I will just rip the thing off the wall and chuck it into the trash, but I don't. Returning to the family room I sit down. Pavarotti turns to me and asks my opinion on something and I am in awe! I see the Park Ranger lurking in the pine trees outside the French doors and hope he has the good sense to go away! Surely he will see that I am talking to Pavarotti!

Pavarotti says he is thinking that it took place around the late 1700’s then he asks me when the Treaty of Menominee was and I tell him I think that was later, more like mid 1800’s. We continue on as the building inspectors talk among themselves. I am constantly aware of who I am talking to and in absolute awe. The woman inspector takes some scraps of paper and scribbles down three questions, then hands them and a pencil to the man on her left saying we need to just vote. I can see some of the words and wonder if I know anything about what we are voting for? Finally thinking, oh well, how hard can it be, I am having a deep and personal discussion with Pavarotti! I woke up right then and thought, oh, I need to hurry. Pavarotti is in the kitchen!

What does this all mean? What does it have to do with my thots? Well, I’m still in awe that I spent the evening with Pavarotti. This is my world!

A Museum Of Moments

What a gift this pain is! Each stinging memory, every burning thought that brings tears to my eyes is a poignant and precious reminder of the love that caused it. Had there been less to lose, I might not have even noticed its loss.

But this? This is a grand celebration of that rare and lovely thing that carried me to the mountaintop and turned my face to the light. It is a goodie bag filled with soft dreams and an imagination stuffed to the brim with stories and thoughts so brilliant they fed my body even as they fed my soul.

Each priceless tear carries a smile, or grimace, a laugh, or look that once was part of the reflection in my eye. Every long sigh empties my lungs and forces them to refill themselves for the next, but it is the breath running across my quivering lips that sends shivers down my back, reminding me that that moment has passed and a new one will never be the same.

Priceless moments, a veritable museum of antiquities that are framed and hung along the walls of this person I am, but wait! What is that?

A magnanimous gesture, an act of selflessness and pure goodness flashes before me and my slide down into the valley of darkness slows down! Is it possible that there is life after love? Can it be that love lost only deepens the groove for love to come? Is it shallow to be so easily turned from terrifying black hole, to a creature of wonder?

I don’t think so. I think it is only the life line being tuned so that it vibrates more closely to the loving lines all around it. A sign that the last love was a great one, a harbinger of things to come, one moment in the midst of a flower garden of moments, each one sweeter and more beautiful than the last.

One flower is plucked from my life so that I might see the hand that is tending the garden.

Exquisite

If you could look into my eyes tonight you would see the most exquisite pain and joy.

Watching the golden bird fly into the sunrise is a bittersweet gift. I would not wish it otherwise. The horizon offers an immense array of possibilities for such a sweet creature and it deserves only the finest and the best.

I admit my eyes will shed a tear, or two. My time for standing before its cage in adoration is over. Life offered me the joy of reaching out with one finger and feeling those tiny feet brush over it. For that I am eternally grateful.

Now I will close my eyes and envision a brighter world where it can build its nest in the fullness of prosperity and contentment, free to be and do whatever its heart desires and knowing whatever that is, it will be perfect

Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny and ….

There was an important person in my past who was always afraid that I was tricking him, or might trick him, or had tricked him. By tricking, he meant manipulated, which of course was possible to do, but honestly not something I ever really did. At least not intentionally.

It is pretty hard to trick people unless they want it.

Even as a young child I had to work to believe in all those fairy tales grown-ups pushed towards me. My mother said those who did not believe, did not partake of the fruits of those beliefs.

If there was one thing I believed in, it was the power of my mother to give and to take away almost anything in my life. I definitely believed in making her happy, or as happy as I could.

I think that might be true for many people. Mothers and fathers too, have a huge impact on the people their children grow into.

A foggy belief in control can impact people for the rest of their lives, making them equate love with things that have nothing to do with love, but are only the by products of deeply ingrained misconceptions.

Time To Sleep

Walking to the window, she placed her hand against the glass, feeling it tremble in the wind, and turned to walk back the other way once more. She was amazed there was no trough in the tile, no lines of indentation. She had walked this way so many times before.

This time she stopped, opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. Sitting down in the rickety old rocking chair, she began to rock. The rhythmic motion helping her to focus, to give herself up to the world inside of her.

Outside the trees leaned wildly into the wind, turning their leaves up as if in supplication. Were they begging for peace, she wondered, or urging whatever force was out there to come a little closer? What did she want? That question was unanswerable. She doubted she would ever know what it was.

Right now she could feel his movement. Wherever he was, he too was pacing, reaching. As if they walked in parallel universes, his hands reaching out for the unknown, his eyes looking deeply into the night sky, warmed by the moon’s cold light glancing out beneath tumultuous clouds, stirred by the barometer of a mother whose pressure was indomitable. Getting up she went back inside, too restless to sit, even in a rocking chair on a night like this.

Putting her hand against her heart, she imagined his heart and thought how ridiculous it was to do this to herself. No one asked the water to join the wind, everyone knew it only produced rain.

But how delicious rain could be, and the thunder and the lightning? Were they simply drawn to that union, or were they the children of it? She did not know. It didn’t matter really. The wind still lapped at the water’s edge and the water still gave herself up in every way she knew how. Yet they would forever be separate and unique creations whose being entertained those who would be entertained and horrified all the rest.

A tear slipped from her eye, not passionate and wild, simply frustrated and annoyed. If she could not, would not, sleep, then perhaps she needed to find something else to do. Her mother had always threatened, “If you do not find something to do, I will find it for you.” That always portended something unpleasant and she had always wondered why a mother would do that to a child she loved. Now she thought maybe it had only been another one of those loving lessons that took years to understand. Many years, she smiled wryly, a lifetime perhaps?

The tear now hovered against her lips. Reaching out, she licked it off with the tip of her tongue tasting the salt water flavor of herself and shivering just a bit. This world was an amazing place, so vast and complicated, so simple and the same. The ocean within her overflowed, drawing him into her as surely as the tide spilled over the rocky coast lines of the earth, creating tide pools and other reservoirs that would linger a while as pleasant little reveries to soften the sharp hard planes of the sun drenched world. Lying down she savored what was only hers, but hers in all its fullness for a few precious hours.

I Am So Tired

Sometimes I feel like a large goldfish, maybe a Koi on better days, living in a giant fish bowl. I observe the world with my fish eye’s view, but don’t participate much anymore.

The beauty of it is the diversity of this world. I see people more clearly when we are not too close, but because they keep me on their desk, I get to see them closer than I might otherwise.

In a normal world, what I see is often a reflection of me, or the way people react to who I am and what I am saying, or doing. Here, in my not so normal world, I get a better taste of who they are, or think they are, or want to be. The fun comes in deciding which of these it is.

They are often much better than they think they are in real life. I am noticing that most people, like the three year olds who filled my classes so many years ago, want to be good. They have a deep down goodness built right into them and given half a chance, many allow it to escape out into their world to make things a little better for the rest of us. It’s one of the reasons I find myself so in love with them. I also notice many other things, but those are fodder for other thots.

I have given up trying to be cool and sophisticated. I don’t need to wear anyone else’s persona, or impress you. I’m not good at that and besides, you are probably already more impressed than I think and less concerned than I might hope, with who I am. If I try to impress you at all, I want it to be with my earnestness and love.

Love From Both Sides

Lennon’s mommy is running open mike tonight. His daddy is working until after eleven. A visiting relative, who often doubles as a street person in distant cities, sits before the wood stove pretending to put logs into the open doors. Well, she does put the logs in, but she also takes them out, or moves them around, hoping that I won’t notice she is smoking a cigarette and puffing the smoke up the chimney.

I notice, but she is not my company and this is not my house and the stove is at the far end of a large room, so Lennon and I are not smelling the smoke. I do keep looking at her and she finally moves away from the stove and begins cutting mats out of Duke’s hair. A large Springer spaniel who loves the attention, he just lies there grinning, stubby tail pounding the floor when it feels really good.

We are in the count down to bedtime. As soon as the movie ends, Lennon puts on his pajamas, brushes his teeth, we read a book and lights out. The movie he picked is terrible, long, boring, he has no interest in it, but he refuses to give up and turn it off. It is his right to watch whatever movie we start during this routine, but not his right to change movies mid stream and lengthen the whole process.

The dog trimmer is trying to curry my approval, knowing that she fell from grace while smoking. I am waiting for Monday when she will pretend to get on a bus while thumbing her way off into the unknown worlds she inhabits all but a few weeks a year. Her life is the end result of growing up surrounded by a love that included drugs and violence in the seventies. A terrible example of an innocent child caught up in a lifestyle that set the tone for the rest of her life.

Duke growls. He’s had enough. The visitor wanders off to bed, carrying her teddy bear and we all blow kisses and send love flying around the room until she disappears down the hallway. Lennon cuddles up in my lap and I ask him one more time if he would like to turn this movie off and read an extra book? He says no.

Nothing New

I received several emails from people who consider themselves one of those, “more comfortable” folks, telling me what they plan to do for someone!

I don’t know why that was unexpected, but it was. Sometimes I write a thot and no one responds at all. Then, one day, I get the most beautiful responses. Thank you!

This world is so full of people wanting to do the right thing and actually doing it. It is easy to forget this in the midst of all the terrible news each day. I guess it is just so much easier to see what happens from bad things. It makes better news.

Good things are much more subjective.

One day a mother gives her child a quick kiss and hug and he suddenly has a feeling about all the love that is really behind that. From that point on, that simple little act of love is factored out into a world having no idea who started it all! Of course, we really don’t, because at some point the mother got it from someone else who got it from…..

Aesop’s old fable about the lion and the mouse. Nothing new, just something nice to think about.

Attitude

I’ve seen my Muse smile in the face of unbelievable situations. He seems to understand that moaning and groaning only makes things feel worse. I really admire and respect that, while at the same time it breaks my heart to know he’s suffering.

His attitude has surely helped me to improve mine. Still, I wish I could help out. My own son and his family are just starting out and we have worked out a mutually beneficial system of give and take that helps us. They rent their apartment out to me and we share the wireless Internet. I let them use my car since they work overlapping shifts and I watch my grandson while they are both working, or whenever they need a sitter. In return they put most of the gas into my car and mow my lawn. They recently cut my rent by 25% for one month to help me out. It wasn’t easy for them, but I was desperate. Neither of us wants to take advantage of the other, so this works for us.

I had to take a sizable amount out of my 401K yesterday to cover some expenses I could not avoid during the past fifteen months. Moving expenses, a new transmission, catalytic converter, tires and brakes for my car, new refrigerator, economical space heater, and medical bills, are not exactly luxuries in today’s world. It is not something I did easily, nor will I do it again if I can avoid it. My credit card really pushed the issue when, out of a clear blue sky, they nearly doubled my interest rate.

I live as frugally as I know how and so do most people I know, but now is the time to get creative. If you have family, or very close friends you can share something with, now is the time to explore that. All of my children have had live in paying roommates over the years. Biting the bullet and swallowing pride can also come up with other solutions if you have wealthier family members who might hire you instead of the lawn people, or house cleaners, or even as a babysitter for ancient aunt Marilyn. It’s all a matter of attitude. Necessity can actually bring us closer together if we allow it to.

And…if you happen to be one of those more comfortable people, remember when someone reached out to you.

Down With The Drama!

Sometimes I feel like an Alice who, just having emerged from the rabbit hole, discovers herself in the garden facing a man with twinkling eyes and a smiling face. Before him is a simple pot of tea and some beautifully stable tea cups.

I am thirsty for the tea, but my time with the Mad Hatter has made me fearful that time is running backwards and at any moment the Queen of Hearts will jump out, back handing me into the rabbit hole I just came out of.

Taking a tentative step forward I curtsey and ask if I might sit down. The man nods towards the small footstool nearby, indicating that I should join him. As he picks up the pot and pours the tea into the cups, I notice that it has an incredible aroma and I ask him where it comes from.

He says it is simply grown on a bush and then dried out and bagged up to make a tea anyone is able to purchase and drink. I lift the cup to my lips, but just before I take a sip, I think I hear the purring of an invisible cat! Dropping the cup, watching it shatter against the flagstones I am horrified. I am sure I will be punished by the Queen for leaving the hole and the man for breaking his cup.

But he simply reaches down and glues it back together, pours me another cup of tea and hands it to me. Looking up at him I see he is still smiling patiently and I smile back

Who Am I?

I am certainly no hedonist. I don’t really like labels much. It seems they are mostly used as needed, when, sharpened to a point they are turned back against me, pinning me to the wall. I doubt if anyone can describe themselves in one word, or even three. We are complicated creatures. Of course that is the beauty of us.

Under a microscope, pinned against some examining board, I am much less interesting. And much less beautiful, because here is where that old phrase, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, comes in.

If you are looking for age lines, you’ll find them. If you are looking for luminous eyes, you might, or might not, find them, depending on how stressed out you make me feel.

As a youngster, I was beautiful on the outside and the emptiness within was lovely, if undeveloped. Now I am not so beautiful on the outside, but I like to think I am much more interesting on the inside. I’ve had a lifetime to gather data and digest it. There are so many files and sub files labeled me that I wouldn’t know where to begin if I had to describe myself.

The one thing I know for sure is that it could not be one word…….unless……..?

Well, how about fascinating! Or diverse! Or….perhaps I need to remove tongue from cheek and say if you want to know who I am, just talk to me.

Freedom

Isn’t it nice to wake up like a little child and just be glad that it’s morning?

Isn’t it great to walk past a mirror and think the person in it is okay?

Isn’t it fun to laugh with abandon, not giving a thought to whether or not it is sophisticated, or politically correct, or right? And to be able to cry the same way?

Isn’t it awesome to fall in love again and again with life and the world, and the people in it without regard to age, or gender, or race, or anything else?

Isn’t it good to be able to read what is interesting, watch what is fascinating, play with cool toys and feel all the shivers and tingles that go along with these things?

Imagine the freedom to do all this and still have an intelligent conversation with someone who feels the same way?

Spiders and Crocodiles and Alligators!

Last week it was spiders, crawling along the curtains, lurking in the bathtub, big North Carolinian wolf spiders. This week it appears to be alligators and crocodiles. They have shown up, not in person thank goodness, but in three quotes sent to me and in some email correspondence.

Here are two of the quotes I received, I can’t remember the third one.

"Leave a log in the water as long as you like: it will never be a crocodile!" --Proverb (Guinea-Bissau)

“Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet.” Chuck Palahniuk

Most of you who have been with me long enough remember the summer of the snakes. Real life snakes crawling in my yard and one large nest of them I ended up standing in. Alligators don’t particularly care for mountains for which I am grateful.

Whenever an animal appears repeatedly in my life, I like to ponder the aspects which might teach me something. With spiders it is easy, spiders are weavers and I am a weaver of words. I could take that farther and drive my friend who does not believe in anything supernatural crazy, but I won’t.

Instead, I’ll simply move on to the alligators and crocodiles who are both very good mothers. Unlike other reptiles they actually have been known to help their little ones hatch and reach the water. And they are destroyers, powerful dragon like creatures patrolling the banks of the rivers and waters they live in. They are representative of birth and death, beginnings and endings. That feels right.

There are junctures in life where decisions can have life altering consequences. The birth of one set of beliefs leads to the death of others and the battle in between could be a fiery one!

My Eyes Are Twinkling

I sit beside my three year old grandson watching him play Lego Batman. He maneuvers the controls with surprising agility and concentration. Pushing buttons, angling toggles, changing directions and characters, all at warp speed. He asks me to play and I decline. Video games are not my thing, at least none that I have found so far.

Taking one hand off the controls, he continues to play just the same with one. One handed, gesturing wildly with the other, he tries to convince me that I do want to play. I finally ask him if he is going to continue talking to me while he plays. What does he say?

“Indeed I am.” He is too funny.

This is my world right now, not exactly where I expected to be at this point in my life, but it is pretty darn good.

One minute I am wrestling with the dogs, playing video games with my grandson, or teaching him how to cut with scissors. The next I am reading about the Panama Canal and looking at pictures taken today, a thousand miles away. Later on I sit at the computer trying to do a bit of writing and starting to plan for the company coming next month.

And there are other things that fill in the little places so that nothing is left wanting. My heart is full, my eyes twinkling and right now I am strangely content.

Let’s Treat Everyone Equally

I’ve been reading all the political “stuff” for a long time now and I’ve been paying taxes on my meager little earnings a long time too.

What about if instead of raising taxes, we start taxing all those tax exempt places? Lower taxes across the board and make everyone pay, including those who live in large mansions because they do good works?

It is possible to do a lot of charitable work without being affluent. The truly good will still give, the others probably just trade tit for tat by getting a tax break when they give. Let’s separate the grain from the chaff, find out who is on the short list for heaven and who is just cutting their losses.

Benefits would include allowing private schools the same benefits as public ones, minus government subsidizing, let’s make everyone equal. Alright you say, what about all that good the so called charitable corporations do? They can still do it, they will just have to revamp their processes. Start at the top and work down. After all, who put a dollar value on Jesus? I doubt if he was insured for his fiscal worth, and I know he was not put up in a billion dollar mansion.

If you want to go for the burn, give until it hurts, feed the poorest of the poor, I honestly love and honor your desires. I try to give as much as I can in all the ways I can too, but I don’t believe it should be subsidized by the government. It is just too hard to document real good intentions.

Vicarious Vacations

I used to teach preschool with a woman whose family was in the Forbes four hundred. She was one of my friends and the best coworker I have ever had, but the exotic levels of her life style exceeded mine by leaps and bounds. One of our long standing jokes was about my vicarious vacations. Through her I saw Keven Costner working out next door, watched famous paintings being recreated in real life and danced the night away in elegant gowns on many cruises. It was awesome.

I’ve never been on a cruise, although my sister and I often talk about where we will go and just what we’d like to see. We even discuss what we will wear! Who knows, maybe someday my ship will literally come in and we will just up and go!

In the meantime I am on another vicarious vacation and the beauty of these vacations is that I get to view them through another’s eyes and thoughts and feelings. In a way it almost makes up for not being there myself, because a peek into the life of another human being is a writer’s delight.

This time I am getting peeks of Cartagena, Colombia. You know, that city where Romancing The Stone started to get really interesting? A place filled with history that predates our whole country! Soon we will be going through the Panama Canal! Imagine that!

This time via email I see maps and stories as the trip moves along, even better than the old days in some ways. And the pictures! It is one thing to see someone mugging for the camera with their customary cuteness, but something else altogether to see them all decked out in their formal best. They’re almost a little intimidating then!

One thing for sure about vicarious vacations, they certainly eliminate all the sniping that accompanied some of my real ones. These are just one long delight.

Powerful Motivators

My beautician has three degrees, can you imagine that? Yet she prefers to cut hair and work nights at a second job. Or so she says. I cannot imagine anyone preferring to work two jobs, but then I’m not her.

There is a lot of information in those last words, realizing that other people might have totally different thoughts about subjects I consider simple.

Another example is my cousin’s wife. When I met her the first thing she asked was about snakes. Were there many poisonous ones around? Did they get into the house often? Not something your average urban American thinks too much about, but if you grew up in rural Thailand?

We all come from different places. Honoring that is an important part of being a decent human being, because there are bigger and deeper and hairier differences I will be asked to deal with too. A sense of humor, a little effort at understanding, and a sense of perspective are necessary when observing or dealing with what appears to be the obvious.

Remembering that people are prone to exaggerate the truth to make their point is a valid reason to check out all statements before responding. No one is exempted from being double checked. No one. If it is truth, it will hold up and it can afford to wait while you do this.

Malevolent people count on me not doing this when they have an ax to grind, or prejudice to uphold, or feel the end justifies the means. Smiling, or laying down the law are both valid ways of controlling people’s emotions. Love and fear, two powerful motivators.

Another one is religion, which of course includes both love and fear. Doing something in the name of your god or church does not necessarily make it sacrosanct to everyone else. As my father used to say, “Every atrocity in the world can be backed by some religious view somewhere.”

It is up to me to be sure I do not further anything that will harm other people

I Love You

Someday we will all be part of the wind and the rain and the light. And that is okay, because the rain will never cease to fall, nor the wind to blow. And light? Can you imagine a world without the moon, or the stars, or the sun? Lennon can’t. When I say, “Ooh, feel the wind kissing your cheek? He always reaches up and smiles.

Someday this earth will cease to be and then all of this will simply become part of a universe that continues on. There is always something bigger, something more lasting, than what is in the moment, but the moment is where I am now.

It is good to enjoy it, to be allowed to be myself in every way and know that is okay. It is what I want Lennon to learn, to believe. Whoever he is -- I love.

Who you are is what I love about you, so why would I think you feel any differently? Probably because in my experience many people love people for who they think they are and that is just a disappointment waiting to happen.

I would not want to spend my entire lifetime reading one book over and over and I do not want the people I love to be the same either. It is all those nooks and crannies that make you interesting, all those smiles and tears that make you so lovable.

Smiles and tears, sun and rain, life is just one echo after another

Blowing Kisses

“Lennon is upstairs in his bedroom, playing quietly.” These words are half description and half prayer from a very tired Daddy who is unloading the car since Mommy did the driving and went straight to bed. She has to be up for work by seven tomorrow. Daddy doesn’t leave for work until two thirty in the afternoon.

I take just a little too long visiting with Daddy and suddenly he says, “Oh no, we’ve been spotted.” Looking up I see The Lennon staring down at me, long curls framing that bright little face as he waves frantically from his bedroom window.

“Gramma Angell! Up here! Here I am!” He’s absolutely sure that once I know where he is, I will come get him. I already know that he is supposed to be winding down and a trip to Gramma’s is not conducive to that right now, so I wave back, blowing him a kiss.

The face starts to crumple and I call up to him. “I blew you a kiss, did you catch it?” I blow more kisses and there is no doubt he is my grandson. His little hand covers up his mouth as he puts my kisses there. He’s beaming now.

He blows me some and I catch them too, sweeter kisses I’ve never had. We are connected, just as surely as if he was in my arms and we were hugging each other. We have shared a space that only we know how to get to.

Nothing lies between lovers except love. That is a transcendent experience it took me years to understand. Lennon gets it. He already knows that we are never really far apart, never farther than a kiss carrying all that love can blow in an instant.

The Art Of Love

My favorite photos are not those taken by professional photographers, although those can be quite artistic.

I prefer the ones that grab my heart in some way. Ones where the subject is just too cute to ignore, or so radiant that their beauty pours into me and makes me feel like I am glowing. In my opinion these are rare, especially among professionals. Carefully posed photos seldom seem to catch this particular feeling in me

Well loved children, and the occasional adult, are sometimes so steeped in love that it just pours out of them. In theory, anyone could take a great picture of these people. In theory.

I think it is the love bouncing back and forth between photographer and subject that elicits this phenomena. Such a moment, although frozen in time, seems to reach out and pull the viewer right into the picture, allowing them the vicarious feeling of being well loved too.

There is an art here, but I think it is one of loving, not technical prowess, and I think it is also just a bit of luck too!

As I Like It

It was a rainy day, just the way I like, where the clouds hung over the mountains giving them a mysterious look, as if I had been transported to the Himalayas. I was going to take a picture, but was distracted by a huge spider spinning his way down from the back bedroom ceiling and by the time I had dealt with that, I was back in North Carolina. No pictures.

Three days ago “all the leaves were green and the skies were blue,” but by yesterday Autumn’s golden colors were beginning to peek through and this morning I noticed the scarlets and oranges joining them. I love how quickly the colors begin to appear once they start.

Hearing that attitude is everything, I once more approached the big dogs very sotto voce and they seemed to respond. I liked that!

A beautiful day filled with time to read and time to write, good conversations and a good chuckle, or two.

Just the way I like it.

People-Sick

I am so ready for the kids to be home. I miss them, I do, but this dog sitting is starting to become a lesson in love that is harder than I ever imagined.

I just added up: I have let the dogs out at least 70 times in the past two weeks, mopped the floor over 56 times, re-made the big bed five times and shook out the blankets on Lennon's bed nearly every day. I have cleaned up messes of various and incredibly creative sorts for people-sick dogs, washed my hands so many times that my skin is dry and cracking, so when I went to get my medicine out yesterday I split the skin on my thumb and it is throbbing. That means it matches my other thumb that Eben bit through the other day. My toes are bruised and one is bleeding where I walked into a table hurrying to go upstairs to let them out when I woke up late and because of that I wore sandals, then one of them stepped on my bare toes! This morning, Joplin got so excited she jumped up and caught me with her nails, leaving a scratch from my neck half way down to my waist.

I am evidently not a good shepherd of beasts. Thank goodness Chauncey is an only "child."

Please let my sense of humor hold out until tomorrow night!

The Prize For Peace -- Is Peace.

“There is no peace on earth, I said.”

And if some people have their way, there never will be. Peace is not profitable for many very happy people right now.

If you have any doubt then pay more attention.

Dissension at any cost is the battle cry of those losing ground on things they thought were sewn up for the last eight years, but some people in this world have other thoughts.

What is it you really want?

Zippity Do Dah

I remember the first time I ever went to Disney World. I was twenty one and so excited. I think I entered every contest there ever was as a child, trying to win a trip to Disneyland, so this was a really big deal -- finally getting to go to Florida.

Back then I couldn’t wait to ride those oversized teacups and eat dinner at Cinderella’s castle. I had a list a mile long and my husband was very kind. Not once did he tell me how juvenile I was acting. He just took pictures.

I have pictures of me with Little Oscar and the wiener mobile. Pictures of me with Mickey Mouse when he was water skiing. Pictures of me in my big floppy white sun hat and those treasured white sandals hugging people all over the place.

But…the picture I have the fondest memories of, was one of me and Brer Bear! It was the middle of the afternoon and I saw him over near an umbrella table. I rushed over grabbing his hand and telling him how glad I was to meet him, never noticing the long line of children I cut in front of! Looking back, I can’t believe no one yelled at me, or got angry, but Brer Bear just grabbed me up in a huge bear hug and twirled me around. Then he planted a big Brer Bear kiss on my forehead and posed this way while my husband took pictures. Afterwards he hugged me again and waved good bye again and again until I couldn’t see him anymore.

Silly, you say? It certainly was. After all I was no child, but Burl Ives was Grandma’s cousin and I grew up on stories of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and the songs that went with them. All of this just melded together into one silly little girl bursting out of my grown-up body and allowing me to be an exhuberant child again that afternoon so long ago.

Everything I Want

Imagine searching for the perfection you have lived your whole life believing in and discovering that you already have it -- it is just not what you expected.

No one could have told me how fulfilling life could be living this way. My life, a life custom designed for me. I don’t know if it will last forever, most likely it will not. I don’t even know how I fell into this place, but I do know that I am much more than content here.

There is nothing about this life that I was not groomed to have since the day I was born. Perhaps everyone finds a place in the world that is exquisitely designed to fill in all the nooks and crannies they desire and need.

In any case, it has happened to me. Not by riding off into the sunset with Prince Charming and not by retiring on a tropical island with heart wrenching sunrises and heart throbbing oceans pounding on the beach outside my door. Not by following the rules, nor by breaking them either really.

I have reached the mountain top. Living and loving and working, in my own version of once upon a time. I find myself surrounded by everything I want or need. I am in love. Immersed in it, awed by it, fulfilled by it. Who could ask for anything more?

I’ve heard it said in an infinite number of ways, and it always sounds way too simple, but it is true, “Do what you love and all the rest will follow.” I just never believed it could be quite this simple.

This Hole Is Not Empty

A green space, filled with the scent of pine trees and always just slightly damp from the rain. Silent except for the sound of the birds outside the windows, or the dogs in the distance, it calls to me more than I ever imagined it would.

I come here first thing every morning and just before I go to sleep at night. I come many times in between too. Here I find that raison d’etre that all lives need. Not that I don’t have others, this one is just a special place, one that warms my heart and feeds my mind in so many little ways.

Sometimes I sit in the rain, knowing that this water has been around since the beginning and will be here long after I am gone; knowing that it moves across the country touching first one place, then another.

Beside the lake is a small hole that I never pay much attention to. After all, what is a hole except an empty place? At least that is what I thought until a day, or two ago. Now I am discovering this hole is far from empty. It is rich with life, over flowing with so many stories that I bought a book about it. I want to know more.

In the mean time I come here and find a connection to life that makes me smile. Sometimes it even makes me laugh. This is a peaceful place, a beautiful spot to find reflections and warmth in every breath I take.

Aye Aye Captain

One of the great gifts of living alone is a chance to discover my own absolute self worth.

There is no one here to blame anything on and no one to blame anything on me. The world simply is. I get all the credit and all the blame right now. For the first time in my life I truly answer only to myself.

It took a while to understand this whole concept. I went from being dependent on my parents, to being dependent on my husband. Then I put myself into an adoring relationship for a few years where the dependency was self perpetuated.

The first big step into freedom is scary. It is sort of like growing up all over again. There is a slight rebellious phase where a little acting out and experimenting is necessary and then there is the long road to the truth.

Every day I learn a little more about who I am and who I am not and the miraculous thing is that I am learning either one is simply information. Not good, not bad, just data that when combined and plugged into this brain of mine, compiles this creature called me.

I really am the captain of my own ship and that is sort of exhilarating. No one rings the matins bell, no one wields the cat-o-nine tails. No one makes me eat lima beans, or cooks my dinner. If I want to eat, I must prepare the table before me myself. If I have a problem, it is up to me to find a solution, but I don’t have to worry that I will be graded on my decision.

I can ask for advice, or I can simply choose not to tell anyone what is going on and deal with it myself. Wow, a lot of freedom, a lot of responsibility, but what an adventure it is turning out to be!

One Dark Night In the Middle Of The Mountains

Let me set the scene for you.

Midnight in the mountains. Cold, rainy, dark, and likely to stay this way for the next couple of days, but the dogs have to go out. They need to go out now because? Because I want to sleep in, in the morning. And, because they have not been out for nearly seven hours. And because Duke cannot go much longer than this without an accident.

So here I am, standing in the rain watching my shadow’s naturally curly hair grow wilder and wilder by the moment. The dogs? They’re all wedged into the dry space between the screen door and the door jamb. They are not coming out. They think I’m nuts.

I whisper sweet threats into six deaf ears and finally pull out the pièce de résistance. Beggin’ Bits! I’ve been whispering so I don’t stir up all the neighboring dogs, who are not so lucky as these three wimps. Those dogs live outside, but now chaos reigns!

My three shoot out of the door like greased pigs who have finally hit maximum compression, only they are not grunting and squealing. They are barking, big, loud, deep woofs, that set off every dog within miles of here.

Joplin hits my chest, but luckily Duke hits me from behind at that exact same moment, so I am saved from a tumble into the puddle behind me. It is Eben who does the most damage. Her nose scents the treat in my fingers and goes straight for the prize, catching me with her teeth, puncturing my thumb nail and causing me to spew out words a grandmother should not know into the suddenly silent night.

Grabbing my thumb, I look surreptitiously around, hoping no one else is outside, then slink in to clean up the stuffed purple bat one of them chewed up and shredded all over the house. I turn out the aquarium lights, ignoring Hugh Laurie, the giant Jack Dempsey who wiggles up to the top hoping for another treat and grab a towel so I can wipe off twelve wet muddy feet.

Now I can’t sleep and my sacred hours are ticking away before I have to do this all over again!

My Thots, the flip side

Metaphors flood me as I try to write about those teachers who taught me what not to do and be. They are important too. In fact, they can leave an incredible imprint.

One frightening thing about them is that they often come from a misguided sense of love. Ideas like, “as the twig is bent, so does the tree grow,” or “spare the rod and spoil the child, “ or tough love makes us strong. Like topiaries, these are not bad ideas, but they can be bent into shapes that have no resemblance to the actual plant.

Fear is a powerful emotion. Fears that we don‘t have enough, or might not be enough, can be taught in backhanded, destructive ways masquerading as good advice, or wisdom. For example, rather than teaching someone what to do, do it for them so they don’t screw it up. Imagine all the things that teaches?

Osmosis is a silent teacher. A fear of doctors and dentists, teachers or policemen, illness or death, aging or poverty, the unknown, or unfamiliar; never voiced, but as clear as the actions that perpetrate them, can disable generations.

Teachers come in many guises, but sometimes it takes a lifetime to figure them out. Woe to those who never realize there are reverse teachers in life, the ones you need to outgrow, or shed, or morph out of.

They do present an opportunity, though, a chance to look at the unpalatable with love and by understanding, perhaps dissolve it.

Life Upon My Way

Teachers. I have had some of the best. A few life altering ones and so many others that to draw pictures of them all would require a Tibetan mandala with heroic intricacies.

Starting of course with my parents, my gentle child-like parents who were so unprepared for this world. Yes, even my mother, auburn haired demon goddess that she was, was too gentle for this world. My Parents showed me love. No two people could have loved each other more.

My children owe a great deal of my softer and most accepting side to my friend and teacher, Teamaker. Her immense patience and her beautiful soft ways taught me mothering of the highest order. After her came the Earth Mother who kept me grounded and helped me get a running start into the world of teaching. And then there was the Rose, whose Brooklyn upbringing and ex-nun status made her just perfect for kicking my butt into the world of spirituality.

My dear dear Shams brought it all together into a world of Rumi and Lao Tzu and T.S. Elliot. He showed me how to suck the juice out of every single second, to find the Love and stay in it no matter what. Because of him I have been places and done things so extraordinary and rich that even kings and popes and wizards would be jealous if they understood. He taught me how to find the still point and dance there forever.

I have been blessed by some of the most incredible teachers in this world and it appears that this is not going to end soon. Even now, high up here on a North Carolina mountain, I have met two new ones. One who you know as the Muse and one you don’t know, but who touches me almost daily with his remarkable perception, kindness and wisdom. He reaches out with an invisible hand and offers me the chance to join him in his ordinary pursuit of extraordinary goodness.

All good people, unbelievable human beings, who do what great teachers have done since time began. They teach by being, by living and working and showing me how it is done. They are the perfect manifestation of what a teacher should be…can be… is

Home -Made

Productive week for me! Lennon dictated a story before he left and I turned that into a book for when he gets back.

I did less complicated things for my own children and of course we had lots of dictated stories in preschool, but this is different. There are couch cushions to lift, flaps to peek under, heads to slide, but most importantly are the words. They’re his.

There is just nothing like seeing your own words in print.

I made some cards and of course I let the dogs out umpteen million times, fed the fish and finally found the cat hiding in the old garage. All present and accounted for.

It’s getting cold. I brought in the spider plant, made some home-made chicken soup, then froze most of it.

My house smells like fall. The neighbors are burning already, the soup makes my house smell like my mother’s did when I came home from school and I’m starting to batten down the hatches.

It never gets horrendously cold here for very long, but it is down in the low forties at night now, so time to throw an extra quilt on the bed. I guess if it got really cold before the kids got home I could have a four dog night, but I’m not sure we’d all survive it!

My Blessing

Oh, Pygmalion, I understand your fears and thoughts. What I do not understand is why I should become the next recipient of Aphrodite’s blessing. What have I done to receive this gift whose simple existence fills me with light like none other has ever been known to do?

No simple Galatea for me. I have been given a Muse so ethereal that the simplest thought brings him to me. His body, a work of perfection. His face, surely the mold that all things beautiful come from. His eyes, oh those extraordinary eyes, filled with a sweetness that cannot possibly be of this earth.

He comes to me and takes my thoughts, gently weaving them in and out of tales whose complexity and depth could only come through one sent by the gods.

He is the sun upon my face, the light that lingers in the afternoon, the stars that twinkle in the heavens above me. His fingers hold my heart to keep it from exploding. His hands touch my soul in some daring deep mystery.

I listen in every moment for the thoughts that flow into me and barely a word passes that does not bring him to mind. Yet we come from separate worlds whose only connection flows through the beauty of a blessing.

By The Hour

I began working on a small project today about four o’clock. I finished and looked up to see it was nearly nine o’clock! Not an uncommon thing for me.

It did make me think, though. If I were only paid by the hour, how rich I would be. Well, compared to how rich I am not right now. I won’t make any money at all off of this project. I never expected to. It is simply a work of love.

That’s the beauty and the problem with most of my work.