Books

How long does it take to read a book? In my case some of them require about 42 years!

Like I have said before, I am a late bloomer!

I remember two courses, well really two teachers, very distinctly. One taught freshman English and we read short stories. Our textbook was later removed from the curriculum because her boy friend compiled it and it eventually earned the somewhat dubious title of "dirtiest textbook." I only remember two things from that course. One was that a short story should be able to be read in three hours or less. The other was that a story about a spot on a woman's underwear was incredibly boring.

The other class I remember was one I was so excited about before it started and really dreaded before it ended. It was an American Literature class where we touched on what seemed like a hundred authors and never really had time to read and learn about any of them. The professor would drone on and on and we would all sit there sort of stupidly staring at him. My problem is that I don't learn very much this way.

I don't know if it is a learning disability, or a stubborn streak, but if you don't engage me in some way, or I can't find a way to engage myself, I don't retain much. As nerve wracking as it might be, I do better when I think I must contribute. It was a shaming and shameful situation for me. I failed that class!

Worse, I thought it meant I could not read many very great American authors and never again did I pick up one of their books -- until lately.

It was very difficult for me as I struggled through Faulkner's, The Unvanquished. No less difficult for me to read Sanctuary, but I loved James Agee's, A Death In The Family and devoured his book, The Morning Watch. Now I am eagerly beginning Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

Why this sudden surge in something I studiously avoided for so many years?

That's easy. I have someone who knows how to engage me! Someone who cares enough and is willing to take the time to point me in the right direction and then lead me there with enticing bits of information in the beginning. Now I trust him and just dive right in wherever he points. What felt so foreign and difficult before now seems rich and intriguing.

A good teacher is worth his weight in gold or whatever else you value. In fact, he is really priceless. He has given me not just the ability and desire to read the words of great people, but he has opened the way for me to want to continue doing this for as long as I live.

Meeting The Master

I love to read and I do a fair amount of it.

I also like mysteries. Not the kind you read like Agatha Christie particularly, but real ones. I was always very good at playing Clue, or Electronic Detective. I just have a nose for ferreting out what other people often miss.

And...and this is a pretty big part of who I am....I like it when things in my life turn out to be romantic adventures. I don't mean love trysts, but events that turn out to be connected in unexpected wonderful ways.

Imagine corresponding with someone in a chat room and enjoying their company. Eventually the two of you share regular emails and then that person gives me a link where I can read some of his anonymous work. I do just that and am enchanted by many of his stories. They are so much better than 99% of the other stories I read there. They have a particular style and charm that flows through them, not because I know this person, but because I like the work.

In return he reads and critiques some of the stories I have written.

One day we are discussing authors whose works we both love and the name of someone I have never heard of comes up. I ask my friend to recommend one of this new-to-me author's books and he suggests two of them. Of course I go straight to Amazon.com and look some of these books up.

Now the wonder begins to bud. There are books on Amazon where you can "peek inside" and I take advantage of these. It is like getting a tiny taste, but I realize these have a familiar after taste. Something about them sparks feelings of deja vu, so I go back and read them again.

One morning I wake up with one of those aha moments and rush to read some of my friend's anonymous stories again.

Could it be? Is it possible?

I dare not break this spell, this dream come true, because it would be like all fairy tales. The minute the maiden opens the box, or the hero takes a bite of the apple, or turns around to stare into the face first hand -- the enchantment crumbles and disappears like dust in the desert of once upon a times.

Waves

Sometimes I feel like an ocean, big, strong, and filled with undulating waves that flow across my being and face in ways I have no control over.

Deep down inside of me are things going on all the time, some of them funny, others not so funny, and no matter which one it is, they can change the way people see me.

I run into people everywhere I am and sometimes I just want to engulf them in my arms, wrap them up and hold them close, but occasionally there are a few I'd like to dump on some far distant shore and hope they go away.

In ways and for reasons I don't understand I often have a big impact on those around me. It makes me conscious that I have a responsibility that goes beyond myself. It doesn't always make me nice to be around.

Sometimes I just feel lost and alone. Who would believe that, when I touch so many places, so many people, but it's true. The moon draws me in, the sun draws me up and my tears are such a part of me even I don't always know they are here.

My world is what it is and I deal with it the best way I know how.

Don't we all? Do we have any choice?

We do.

Just not the ones that always seem the most obvious.

Jacob's Ladder

I would like to think that everyone is as honorable and honest as they appear to be, but most of us are simply human. We have high ideals and fall far short of them with every step. Not everyone though.

Even though no one is perfect, there are people who truly strive to maintain that perfection and idealistic style that often slips away with the loss of innocence.

Their motives remain pure even as the world bombards them with envy, hate and injustice. Better than child-like, because that implies a lack of knowledge and this is not the case. Intelligent beyond the norm and so empathetic that it is amazing they survive; they become the beacons that show the rest of us how it is done.

Most of us don't see them though and when we do it is often difficult to believe what we see.

My own beliefs, my own inhibitions and character flaws blind me to what is right before my eyes.

Until, if I am very lucky, one day there is a flash of recognition that tears open a whole new way of seeing. A dream that reveals the truth so solidly it carries over into my waking life. A bright spot that flutters before me, shining and leading me along the way as no one else ever has.

Such a moment, such a friend, such an experience leaves me forever changed.

Thoughts

I see a group of high school boys going to the funeral of one of their team mates. My heart aches for them. This boy was not doing anything wrong. He was just in a truck that lost control and skidded on the ice on the way to a basketball game. Not that it would matter even if it was different.

It is so hard to bury a child. It's hard to bury anyone. Those first feelings that now this person will never experience all the beautiful life experiences he might have rise up soon to be replaced with something even more difficult, how much he is missed. I think that is what makes funerals hard.

Death is almost inconceivable. How can someone who was such a part of my life not be here anymore? I see him and yet he isn't here. That thought came to me at my own mother's funeral. I had to explain to my young children where Grammy went. It was hard. I did it, but I cried. I was heartbroken, so heartbroken I didn't even try to figure out why, but my son, who was eight years old at the time said it perfectly. "We're sad because we miss her."

It doesn't matter how many times I look at death's face and I have done it more often lately, I still find it a difficult concept. Once again I fall back on the words of one of my sons, who when he looked at his grandmother's face at the funeral home said, "You're right, she's not there."

The idea that some spark, something we call a soul, something I can't touch, or measure, see, or hang onto, lights up this shell that has a name so dear to me is hard to understand, but maybe not for the very young who have so little control over their world anyway. And maybe more so for teenagers. They are just discovering how much control they do have over their lives and then this happens.

Life is such a long winding pathway and when it loops back like it did today it brings up so many feelings. Feelings. Another one of those elusive concepts to ponder on.

The Fairytale

The candle bursts into a fiery splash just before it dims and goes out. How often have I seen this? How comforting this is. The warmth, the richness, the fairytale brightness is exciting even knowing that it may be a precursor to some unknown state.

If this moment seems too good to be true, who am I to judge it?

Rather than claim some sophisticated knowledge I don't have I would rather bask in it; take at face value the beauty and the mystery of this moment and enjoy the adventure while it is mine.

Whatever the reason, if there even is a reason, I am so blessed by this time in my life I can hardly believe it is real.

But it is as real as the moment.

Dive In!

I am in awe of those people who go on to learn things way beyond what is required in school. Whatever it is that sparks their interest seems to keep them younger than other people.

Curiosity is bright and beautiful. It may be what killed the cat, but I'll tell you this; I'd rather be out there climbing trees and leaping through the air after invisible mice than sitting inside a dark little hole eating earthworms.

Of course if you are a connoisseur of earthworms, filled with wonder at anything that can grow two tails and amazed at the way something can stretch out to be so long, then maybe that hole is full of more light than I thought. I just don't know these things until I go snooping around.

Some people spend their entire lives researching things, these are the most curious people of all!

If you get a chance to crawl inside their heads I say go for it! Who knows what amazing sights are in there? Incredible things have flown out of those minds. Things like airplanes and quantum physics, novels and journals, paintings and even toasters! It's a toy box like you've never dreamed of.

Wouldn't you like to play in there too?

I Don't Get It

It never fails to amaze me when I send out something that I have written. I never have a clue what to expect in return. Sometimes people get so angry about something that does not seem inflammatory to me at all and other times I hear what wonderful things I did. It is kind of like making a dinner out of whatever is in the house and reading about it the next day.

I read that I used things I've barely heard of to create tastes I hardly know exist and ultimately provided a treat for the diners that is really wonderful. I am honored. I am excited. I am lost, because I have no idea how it happened, or how to re-create it in the future. Sometimes even after reading about it, I don't know what I did.

It is not false modesty to say I don't get it, because I really don't.

Worse if I try to re-create it, I worry that I may come across like those kids on television who are so precocious they are unbelievable and in the end not very entertaining. I don't know why, but it is so hard for me to accept it when I hear good things about me, or my work.

It is easy if it is about your work. It seems as clear as day when I think about what you do, but after all you are really good at what you do. You seem to have the education, the training, the experience, the proof that what you do is right and good and fascinating to me. I don't know where to find that for myself.

Until I do I rely on you to keep me straight, to always tell me the truth. I trust you not to let ego get in your way, or my feelings either.

Everyone needs a muse and an editor.

Life

One of the beautiful perks about loving someone is the way their joy pours over into mine.

What an amazing way to live.

Holding On

Funny how I have a feel for my body. I can feel the beginning of a cold sore in time to take the medicine to hold it at bay. I can feel allergies just as they start to manifest.

There are some things I can't hold off though. I can feel them coming on, but it is like grabbing at the wind. All I can do is try to get more rest and hope it goes away.

I wonder if dying is like that?

At the very end will I feel insubstantial, like a mirage, and then somehow I will step through the veil and the mystery may be over?

Or perhaps it will just be beginning?

A Hundred Names

I grew up in a time when many children were forced into Sunday School, or religious training of some sort whether they liked it or not. My earliest memory of church was sitting on a shiny white pew watching the blood of me dripping beautifully down onto that pristine whiteness; dropping in tiny circles until my mother realized I had a nosebleed and pressed my father's handkerchief against my nose, impeding my breathing and making me feel acutely uncomfortable.

Later, whenever my grandmother had me, she took me to Baptist Sunday School and it was there I have my first memory of Jesus. I was still very young, perhaps three, and I thought Jesus was the calf standing beside the sheep and a baby in a box full of straw. I didn't know why they called him the lamb when he was so obviously the calf and I wasn't sure why Jesus loved me, but the Bible told me so. I knew the Bible was a book and I liked books.

After that there were scattered, odd attempts to bring us up as the Episcopalians we were supposed to be, except neither of my parents really was that anymore, so we were sent with the priest's wife on some Sundays where I fell in love with the song, Onward Christian Soldiers, and I liked it when we went up to the front of the church and the priest touched my head and made me feel special. I spent quite a bit of time marching around back then, imagining saving people from terrible things.

By the time I was twelve I took myself to the Presbyterian Church across the street from a house we had moved into. They promised a white Bible to any child who had perfect attendance and I wanted that book so badly I never missed one Sunday, but I didn't get the book. It seemed your parents had to be members of the church for that to happen. I was disappointed, but we moved to a tiny town where my father taught after that and I got myself and my siblings all involved in another Presbyterian Church there. It was a small white clapboard building that wanted me to play my violin at the Christmas service. It was also here that my brother used to sit in the congregation and shoot rubber bands at the minister during the sermons until someone figured out he was the one doing it.

We moved back into the city shortly after that and I became a candy striper at the local hospital run by Franciscans. I fell in love with some of the younger sisters who lived at the mother house where we went for picnics and one of them who played guitar and sang with us died there after nursing the people in the tb clinic. It was about this time I decided to collect saints! I would look up their stories and carefully write them down, secreting them in the bottom of my desk drawer and bringing them out to pour over them as only a romantic teenager can do. I wanted desperately to be a saint, to rescue people and die bravely for a cause. I also wanted to live in the mother house with its castle like atmosphere and fairytale round top doors. I loved the smell of incense and the soft singing of the sisters there. I liked the idea of community, but I wasn't Catholic and no one took me seriously and we moved again.

I went to Catholic folk mass in college and married a man who was still serving at Epsicopal weddings and services as an altar boy while we were dating. I loved standing by his side in church, singing the hymns when the huge pipe organ filled the room with music and sunlight flooded it through the stained glass windows. There was another family there and it felt like we were a real family, spending many hours and days together in rituals as old as the church. It was a heady thing for a long time. I taught Sunday School and the children grew up and I grew with them until suddenly I felt awkward and often at odds with the very people who had been my surrogate family. Growing pains, I know that now.

And now? Now I believe in a beautiful order to this universe. I believe there is something so great I will never understand it. I am awed by the miraculous manifestation of these things I see around me, the bird songs, and the seeds that produce mighty oaks. I cry when I hear the song at the hospital that signifies a new baby has been born. How that tiny human being came to be fills me with constant wonder. My life is as full of wonder as it was when I was a child and first heard about the blood of Christ as I watched the stark and awful beauty of the red blood falling onto the white pew.

There are a hundred names for this and none of them is really right, or wrong. It is as incomprehensible now as it was when I was two, or three, or, I suspect it will be if I live to six hundred years old.

It is awe and wonder, joy and fear. It is not knowing and loving that not knowing.

Where Does The Time Go?

I am noticing that as technology advances and we have more and more efficient ways to do things: washing clothes, vacuuming rugs, checking out books, microwaving food, we don't ever seem to come out ahead time-wise.

For every advance in labor saving devices that is made, I notice an increase in something else. Now we have more clothes than most of us ever wear. We vacuum carpets more often than we beat those old carpets on the clothesline. We run reports on everything because now it's in the computer we can, and we often go out to buy food because it feels faster and easier than cooking it at all.

Any time saved is soon filled with more detailed tasks. Life doesn't get simpler, it becomes more complicated.

It is as if human beings need to be frenetically busy. Once that meant looking for food to eat and firewood for fires that could protect and keep us warm. Now it is such a tangled maze that people die. Not because we don't have food, or can't cure an illness, but because we have devised the idea that since scavenging for food and staying alive is no longer limited by nature's bounty, or man's skill, it must be limited by something else.

We have learned to do all sorts of things, but the basics haven't changed. People still die for lack of food and medical care. People still freeze to death and die from heat stroke. People still kill themselves trying to do more than time allows. It doesn't appear to me that we have really made much progress at all. We have only created the possibilities.

Someone needs to teach us how to take advantage of them for the good of all people.

Fragile Perfection

Perspective changes all the time. Relationships change all the time. Everything changes in every moment in some way, but the true test of anything's value is what happens with that change.

Some will blow away in the space of a breath, like a feather in the wind. Others will slide out of sight like a piece of loose ice on a frozen lake.

A few, though, will burrow down a little farther with each tiny nudge until they take up permanent residence deep inside of me. These are the ones that become a part of me: the ones I hold closest to my heart: the ones I must learn not to hold onto too tightly for fear of damaging their fragile perfection: the ones that need room to grow in order to thrive.

They are those tiny voices that urge me to keep going, striving to become a better me in whatever way I can.

A People Tale

I have a tendency for the dramatic -- to say the least. When I am happy; I am very very happy and when I am sad I am almost disconsolate. I also tend to look at my life as some sort of fairytale, or story that has suddenly built to a climax. The prince is at the door and he comes bearing gifts that touch me to the very core of my being.

So now, in all the stories I know, it is time for some tension, for some unknown thing to suddenly throw a cloud over all this unimaginable beauty and turn Camelot into a place where storm clouds gather and lightning crashes and either I die, or the prince disappears into the charms of some evil magician. Either of those things seems as bad as the other.

I tremble in the knowledge that it is almost time for me to put on my Joan of Arc armor and set off to solve these problem that don't even exist yet! There is not even a harbinger of these things in the sweet air that surrounds me from the time I open my eyes in the morning until I close them at night. And even in slumber, in those hours when morpheus comes to taunt some people, I dream of dancing orcas and smiling sea turtles with the prince behind me weaving tales of joy and possibilities.

No child lives a sweeter, or more perfect life and yet I see the storm clouds gathering in my peripheral vision and ask myself why?

It is actually a simple answer, one I hate to admit. In the past the jester always wore a mask, a dark mime whose actions were never quite what they seemed and I was always sitting there, smiling up at him when the mask fell and the grim reality of his deceit fell on me like some meteor flashing from the sky to crush the joy and trust and beauty from my bones, leaving me flat and empty like an orange peel whose sweet juice and flesh has been consumed.

But I am older now. Wiser I think and it is time to put this all behind me.

If I die tomorrow I only mourn the tears of those who might miss me and if the prince is turned into a vase of stunning lapis lazuli, then I will simply spend the rest of my life searching for the charm to set him free. I can see it now, a room filled with lovely vases: each one holding the essence of some charmed creature: each one as stunning in its own way as all the others, but I shall recognize the prince because when I gaze into his center I will see my face.

And then I will simply fill him up and drink from that vessel, knowing that whatever is good and pure, sweet and whole will become part of me forever more. And one day, if I learn the correct words, find the right magic, sing the right songs, he will emerge from me whole and perfect once more and those parts of us will face eternity with the confidence I find so lacking in myself here and now.

Attraction

The world is an amazing place. There is an order I don't even pretend to understand and often don't notice, but it is miraculous and it is real!

In a field full of flowers somehow the butterflies and bees and hummingbirds all seem to know which flowers are there just for them and they navigate right towards them.

Why then would I be so surprised when people do the same thing?

Signals Of Strength

I am thinking tonight of how much strength it takes to be in this world. It doesn't matter how old you are, or how young you are, the world will eventually ask you for more than you think you have the strength, or the courage, or even the love to give, but don't be fooled. You have it.

Deep inside of you is a pool that is so beautiful and so unique and so full. It shines in your eyes. I can see it there when I look. It comes through your words. I hear it there when I listen and read. It is in the way you walk through life and the way you face death, both others and your own.

I have a friend who says that crying is a signal of strength and I hope he is right, because sometimes all I have are my tears.

They take me through the awe and the terror, the pain and the passion and those are not just alliterative words that sound good here. They are simple truths.

Tonight I cry because I can't be strong enough to do all those things I want to do, because I have been given so many blessings, because I am so weak and sometimes feel so powerless and because I feel so much love that sometimes it just hurts.

Strength is almost never an option. It always seems to be a demand, no matter what comes up; and I will deal with it in the best way I know how. There really isn't anything else I can do.

The Play

A new generation is entering their thirties now and as I watch them I remember being that age myself.

I thought I was so old, so grown-up, so ready to do all those things I saw ahead of me. But I also felt so young, so not ready to step into the shoes of my parents and those people who went before me. I wondered where their confidence, their strength, their seemingly vast wisdom came from?

Now I look at this new generation I wonder the same things. The seem so young, so vulnerable and innocent in many ways, but in others they seem to have that confidence and strength I felt I lacked.

Perhaps it is only the difference between being there myself and watching other people. Perhaps they look at me and see some of those things I saw in my parents and elders.

I love these kids coming up, they fill me with hope as surely as much of world fills me with despair. I suppose that is the story of Sir Galahad and Sir Lancelot, the story of the young Arthur coming of age. Our myths just keep repeating themselves over and over. Only the costumes and terminology changes, but the quest is always the same.

The Terrible Truth

I have refrained from writing about what happened in Arizona until now. I get way too worked up about politics and my ranting has not changed anything yet that I know of. I like to think my work has sometimes made a difference, but onto tonight's thot.

I saw the picture of Christina Green's family and it broke my heart. The mother looked lost, her brother was trying so hard to understand and be brave and the father sat between them trying to hold his family together in unthinkable circumstances. What a true tragedy it is when a child becomes caught up in the political games of adults.

It is sad. It is wrong, but it is not a fluke. Children die every day because people feel violence is the way to solve problems, because they believe that there are things that make killing, even children, worth it, because they think money and borders are more important than lives.

If we are honest, perhaps Christina's death will open our eyes and her death will bring about a change that could immortalize her forever. I would love that, but I doubt it will happen. Our memories are selective and short.

In truth, what man, or woman, is not some body's child? It would not matter to me if my child was nine, or ninety, his death would devastate me. My love does not grow less as my child grows bigger, or older and I doubt if many others feel much differently. Which one of us would trade our older child's life for Christina's?

The man who shot her and the others in Arizona was most likely mad, but he was mad in a society that breeds and grooms violence. If that doesn't change nothing else will.

The Loom Of Life

Nightmares.

What is the difference between a dream and a nightmare? I think it is the feeling behind them. A scene the evokes terror in me, might not effect you at all and vice versa.

Feelings are the most amazing part of living, they color life the way a good artist changes a childish red circle into a delicious looking apple. Each stroke of the brush, each highlight, or shadow, each nuance of color enriches what the eye sees. Not that there was anything wrong with the red circle, just that the end product has so much more going on.

I am a bundle of feelings tucked neatly into a human shape. Others may be just the opposite, I don't know. I don't know most other people well enough to figure these things out.

When I am concerned about something it can sap every bit of strength I have and leave me so exhausted I can barely move and then when I dream; I have nightmares.

Tonight I dreamed someone sneaked in and put my beautiful, regal, innocent German Shepherd into the dryer and turned it on. I found him in time, but when I tried to tell my parents they just didn't understand my concern. They said the dog was okay. I found him in time. They didn't see my world felt unsafe and that made it even less safe. I was afraid whoever did that might get my little Chauncey next and he would not survive it.

Just a dream, but where did it come from? What strange feelings wove themselves into the shape of dogs and dryers and parents from my past? And who took that cloth and twisted it, turned it, waved it around so that it intercepted today?

I am who I always was.

Amazing

Isn't today's world technologically amazing?

This morning I emailed back and forth with a man in Scotland. This afternoon I talked in a chat room with people from all over the United States and England. This evening I talked with my son while watching my granddaughter play with her toys on Skype. And tonight I talked on my cell phone with my sister in another city.

I can remember when making a long distance call had to be quick, to the point, and rare. It cost a fortune and was done in person through an operator.

In between all of this I printed out copies of my work from emails on my own printer, including a photograph! It was cheaper to print one photograph here, but it is still most cost efficient to go somewhere and have it done if I have a lot of pictures.

I remember using an old black typewriter that had to be punched with a considerable amount of force in junior high and a Brownie camera that was a pain to load and whose film had to be taken to a drug store to develop.

I remember when adding machines had long rows of numbers from 0 to 9 and a handle I pulled down between each set!

I can jump in an airplane and be in Denver in four hours when people used to take months to get there in wagons and probably never saw their families again because it was so far.

We live in such a small world now and things are so much simpler and cheaper than they once were. It seems we should be able to do something great with all this time and efficiency. Instead, though, we seem to want to complicate things and that is a shame in my opinion.

I want the world to be simple and loving. I want the innocence I find in my world to be everywhere. I want people to be truthful and straight forward. I want to hug you and for you to know right down to the center of your bones that it is only because I care. I want bullying and posturing and greed to disappear.

I want our values to grow as much as our technology.

Through The Years

Everywhere I look I see red! No I'm not angry. I like red, deep, old fashioned, sort of Ukrainian red. Here it is balanced out by black and whites and accented with touches of old world gold. For some reason it brings me comfort, a deep sense of belonging here.

As a very young child I loved pink, then I loved red because my Grandma loved red. To me red meant Grandma and anything she loved, I loved. That lasted until my teens when I had a few years of rebellion. For that little bit of time I didn't want to be like Grandma, or any other adult I knew. I really was a bit angry then. My family had moved so many times I felt dislocated, like I didn't belong anywhere.

The good part of that was that I discovered I loved deep forest greens and so many shades of blue. It was like the world opened its arms to me and said, "Come, be angry with man if you must, but look at me!"

Later on I had my purple period, once more deep, dark velvety purple, no half way colors for me. I love the jewel tones, the regal colors the ones that take my breath away.

I never could paint with water colors, they were not brilliant enough to suit me. I like the old oil paints and now simply the acrylics. I have left so much behind me that sometimes I feel like a new person here, but I'm not new.

I have thoughts that wind in and out of the maze of my life, thoughts that remind me of how much I have seen and done and heard and... thought. I am like a well. Reflecting the sky and the trees, the purple mountains majesty and all those thing that were once just words. Now everything has meaning and feeling.

I am filled up and brimming with colors.

A Pocketful

I seldom do things halfway. If I am sad, or happy, feeling silly, or god forbid, in love, the world is pretty much guaranteed to know it!

I may be embarrassed about it later, or not. I may regret it later, usually not. I'm just one of those people who seem to leap into life with both feet and if life includes stuffing those feet in my mouth, well, I have a big mouth.

The only things I ever regret are when I inadvertently hurt someone, or once in a blue blue moon do it on purpose. If I could take those things back, I would, but life is like the Internet and as a friend once told me, once it's out there, you'll never be sure you got it all back. Because of that I am perfecting the art of apologizing.

As for the rest of it? I don't really mind living passionately. It's really the only way I know.

There was a time when I tended to be a bit more melodramatic, kind of like a mime in fast forward, but I think I've become a bit more sedate now that I'm older. Perhaps I only talk more and gesture less, so it's just different, but it's still the best I can do.

The one thing you can be sure of if you know me well, is that I'm usually just on the edge of my comfort zone -- it's where I am most comfortable! It's the only place to be actually, right between here and now with a lick and a promise, a pocketful of good intentions and a whole lot of love.

Tonight

I listen to the silence of this night, the simple silence, so full of nothingness that I feel a need to fill it.

I sigh until the sound of my sighs becomes the low moan of the wind over the moors of some far distant land.

I cry until my tears fill the valleys, flood the seas, wash over the mountains.

I pace until the earth is cleaved in two and out of the center rises a golden dragon breathing fire and weeping pearls into the seas that rage between the two halves.

Swooping down he faces me and I see those amazing green eyes gazing into mine, feel his breath hot against my cheek, see my reflection in his golden scales.

He is me at my finest, what I could be, or could have been, or might have been, or even may still be, but he is the best and I don't believe I am.

I am his shadow, the part that never quite stepped out into the light.

Only he doesn't believe that.

And I don't believe him.

But I do believe in him.

A Matter Of The Heart

"Helloooooooooooooooo"

With email I expect almost instantaneous delivery, but that really depends on where the person on the other end is. It's kind of like living in a mountain valley. I stand on an outcropping, looking down over the trees and the rocks, the rills and tiny homes scattered here or there and call out.

My voice echoes through space, catching the ear of those tuned in to listen for it, but not necessarily everyone. Someone sleeping snugly in their bed probably does not want to hear me until they are up and at em. Others toiling away at tasks that cause them to pant with exertion may not hear me over their own work and still others caught up in their own thoughts, have simply lost touch with this world for a few peaceful and blessed moments.

And I, not wanting to disturb the student, or the one at prayer, do not always send my thoughts sailing out into the ether either.

It is always a decision for me, a careful weighing of want over what might be best. I do not want to be a distraction, but neither do I want to appear to be ignoring someone when I am not. Sometimes I just wish we could all go back to what I believe we might have had in our earliest evolutions.

The other day while riding in the car listening to News, Blues and All That Jazz, I suddenly heard my son's voice say, "Mom!" It was as clear as day. As if he was right outside the window of my car, which of course he was not. I haven't had that happen since years ago when he was a teenager in trouble. I had always told my children if they ever needed me and couldn't use a phone, I believed if they thought really hard, I would hear them. That time, long ago, I did hear him. On three separate occasions I heard his voice call out to me. Always it was just, "Mom!" So, this time I called right away on my cell phone and he didn't answer. It turned out he was napping and not in trouble at all,, but I don't regret the phone call.

That kind of communication comes from the heart. It's better than an email in some ways although it appears to be a little more iffy and discretionary. Today I tend to rely on email. But when I hear, or read, that helloooooooooooooooo, know that I was already thinking of you and just wondering if I should write. I still don't want to interrupt your process with my words, still want you to feel free to put all your thoughts into what you are doing, but still have not forgotten you for a moment.

I suppose it's all a matter of heart, no matter how I look at it, write it, say it, or even think it.

Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...you'll hear it when the time is right.

Free At Last

I am at a place in my life where everything I do is pretty much by choice and I can't say I'm unhappy about that.

So many of the young people are still out there struggling, trying to make the right decisions thinking, possibly correctly, that their future relies on this.

I remember times when I had to create a picture of myself, a marketable persona that was the best representation of me I could come up with. When that works, it feels pretty good. When it doesn't it feels really personal.

I suppose in the end it is all part of being. Trees and mountains face the wind and the rain, the lightning and the resulting fires. People face each other.

I don't know if trees cry or mountains sing, but I know people do and there is nothing more beautiful than honest tears or sincerely joyful singing. As long as it is done with a full and honest heart there is growth and that's all life is about anyway.

It is my job to learn and learn and learn, until one day I just out grow this body and spring into the universe, free at last!

Space

Space, the final frontier, if you are a trekie and even if you aren't.

It is the space between us that makes us who we are.

We give each other the only real things we have, ourselves. And then we back off and allow each other the space to do those things that are necessary to be ourselves. That part is often the hardest. It is also the most loving, in my humble opinion.

My joy comes in the moment, in the love and wonder, the awe and appreciation of each moment. Only when I start grasping at it do I lose it and feel sorrow, or fear. Clinging to joy is like clinging to sunshine, it just can't be done, not for real, because the joy becomes overshadowed by the fear of losing it and is lost.

The best I can do is send you light and love everytime I think of you, allow myself the joy of that. The rest is up to you.

I like to think of you joyful and at peace. I like to think of you fulfilling your dreams and desires. Part of mine are doing that, but it is not everything.

Everything is so immense! It comes to me in the whiff of fresh air in the hallway, the strange little bird song on a gray wintery day, on the pages of a book written before I was born. Everything is you and not you, me and not me. Everything is the space between the time I write, I love you always and you write I love you forever.

This living is so simply complicated, woven by some wind charmer whose threads are too fine to discern.

Driving Along In My Automobile

Driving along the highway today I saw the name of a very nice woodsy suburb I once would have given anything to live in. It embodied everything I thought I wanted in life.

And furthermore I had friends who moved there while we were all still quite young. They built their dream house, reared their children there and then I realized something with kind of a shock.

Now they are no longer there! They retired a few years ago and moved back to Colorado where they were originally from. So much for the longetivity of dreams.

All those "things" that seemed so important when I was young don't impress me much anymore. They are still very nice things and they are still very coveted things, that has not changed.

I have changed.

Part of it is that my children are grown up. I don't need five bedrooms anymore, nor do I have any need for a gigantic pool that takes up the whole back yard. Some people still do need these things, but I don't. I don't entertain anymore, at least not more than a handful of folks at a time and none of us want to put our aging bodies out there in swimsuits in the burning sunshine for the world to ogle anymore. There will be no more dream groups gathering in my family room, or journey-ers traveling on my floor to the sound of a Native American Drum. I'm not organizing parents against anything now, nor trying to bring recycling into my neighborhood. I've done all these things. I'm doing different things now.

When did I change so much?

Oh the people we know!

I received this true set of stories from a very reliable source and since I am so late with today's thot, I am sharing it with you! Enjoy, it is about as close as any of us will ever get to the world of, well, multi-talented people who are there when it counts without any expectations of glory and fame.

I know you always love a good Father ( ) story so last night right before I left he showed up to make some pictures of a quadropalegic friend blowing out the candles on his 80th birthday cake (no small feat since he can't move his head) and we started talking. It always amazes me how much ( ) enjoys listening to people tell stories no matter how mundane. He was laughing as I told him about the time I got hit by a car on my bike and flipped over the hood to the shock of the driver, or fell out of a tree when I was young and it reminded him of this time he was in Guatamala. He was being chased by the drug cartel and he had to leap off his horse and slide down the mountain with his knapsack in one hand and gun in the other raised over his head as he slid through volcanic dust to hide in the sticks until the military rescued him. When he got home his sister was pulling out his laundry and was terrified when she saw the holey blood soaked bottom of his pants (she is a doctor and thought he had been shot in his rear). Interesting story (Very Indiana Jones) but then he asked if I had ever heard his 9/11 buttermilk story.

It started when he was working in south Chicago. The Steel Workers Union had hired him to go in undercover to assess the working conditions at an iron ore smelting factory. The people supervising the furnaces above where they produce the coke for the iron, walk catwalks above the giant furnaces and have to wear wooden shoes because anything else gets too hot to stand, and the fumes are overwhelming and toxic. It's so hot that any sort of breathing mask or respirator is unbearable to wear. To compensate old timers would ingest buttermilk, the fat of which would absorb the carbon molecules and at the end of each 90 minute shift they regurgitate it along with the majority of the toxins.

So when he went to New York to work disaster relief and ground zero after 9/11 officials were having severe problems having enough proper equipment for rescue workers. Not only were there not enough respirators they clogged easily and were very uncomfortable. ( ) marches into the Mayors office amidst all the tumult and confusion and asks the mayor if he knows where he can find buttermilk. I can imagine their reaction at this time of crisis but in the end they find him a supplier in an Italian company in Jersey. "You want what? buttermilk? How much?" again slightly baffled, but the next day, and every day after that, at the aid station where workers were being organized a semi truck arrived filled with half gallon jugs of buttermilk. ( ) proceeded to teach them how to swallow the buttermilk tensing their chest and holding it above their stomach so that it coated properly, and then how to regurgitate it at the end of each day. The doctors said nothing but quietly shook their heads and it seems the buttermilk defense of toxic fumes never made any headlines.

How can this guy listen to stories about me falling out of a tree with such interest? Anyway I thought you would enjoy that.

Stirring The Pot

Reaching down with my long wooden spoon, I stir the pot.

Round and round, mixing up a medley of flavors in this stock.

"A little bit of this, a little bit of that," a memory, a thought, an experience from the past

It begins to bubble and brew, things are cooking, melding together, rising to the top,

Things that are strong and make me cry, sweet and cause me to smile, bitter and make me wince.

The aroma fills the room and sometimes I am overwhelmed.

Dredging things up is not as easy as it seems, there are things that should be allowed to settle.

Still, I stir the pot.

The Truth of You

The veracity of this moment relies upon the truth of you. You who have filled me to the brim with all your dreams and hopes. Reaching out to me with a complete lack of guile, or deception of any sort, leaving me balanced on this pin point of eternity. A place where time stops and there is no place at all.

The gift of you set me upon the fire and I am burning with the desire to be me, to find within myself the purity and innocence of you. To become consecrated by the belief that I can be as clear as the light calling the lotus to rise up from the darkness and the earth to rise green from the very depths of her own being.

Consumed, everything burned away except my essence, I rise like steam above a teapot brewing divine ambrosia.

Look at me! Pass your hand through me! Inhale me!

Clarified and set free, the gift of you gave me, me.

Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Steam

I drove home a few minutes ago through a drizzling, cold rain, Chauncey snuggled down in the back seat, windshield wipers working away, windows still filled with lamplight in most of the houses and I was filled with a warmth that had nothing to do with the few sips of wine I tasted to toast in the New Year.

I'm almost sure that if you saw me I might have been glowing from the inside out.

This evening I welcomed the new year with my daughter and her family, kissing my beautiful granddaughter's lovely hair just as the clock struck twelve. This afternoon, I heard from my bestest friend in words that gave me a genuine smile that lasted for hours. Coming home I checked my mailbox to discover a letter from my other granddaughter's parents along with pictures of me and her together when they were here.

In the last week I have talked to, or been with old friends, my grandson and son, my sister, brother and others who brighten my world and remind me how sweet my life is.

During the last ten years I have been a continuing doubting Thomas, always thinking things couldn't get any better, but they do. How could I possibly have understood that so many trials and tribulations could bring forth so much joy?

I am learning where my strengths lie, where to turn when I need a hand over the part that's a little too steep, when to lie back and wait when the going is too rough, when to dig in my heels and surge forward no matter what. I am becoming me, a real person and I have to chuckle because the truth is not far from that old velveteen rabbit's story, love really does seem to make me real anyway.

And love is pouring into my life like the rain that fell from the sky tonight.