Growth

I am always surprised at the room there is for growth.

I usually find ways to circumvent what I am not good at, often without even realizing I'm doing it.

For example, before spell check, if I couldn't spell a word, I would usually just use another word. If I'm not sure how to write about something? I simply write about something else!

It's kind of a lazy man's approach to things, but I don't even realize I'm doing it most of the time. It has just become a habit. One that makes me look like I know more than I do, because I avoid those things I am uncomfortable with, or unfamiliar with.

Imagination is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it is important to go beyond that and actually put a little work into what I'm doing. A little extra thought, a little more research, a request for help, it all fleshes out my life as well as my writing.

Empty Thoughts

How much is enough?

Of what?

Of anything!

How do you know when it is time to stop, or time to empty something out, or time to quit filling it up?

There are so many things in this world that it is amazing we ever learn everything we need to know.

I'd like to believe that I learned everything I needed in kindergarten.

I just don't think it's quite that easy.

Extraordinary Moments

I am one of those lucky people who life seems to be filled with one extraordinary moment after another.

There is a tendency in our culture to focus on the bad things, but I prefer these others. Anyone would.

They are those moments in films when the light is diffused and the music builds to a crescendo filled with timpani and french horns and my hearts beats louder than all of it; and they are the moments when only the crickets chirp and the moon lies lazily over a landscape I know stretches around the world. Moments when a single voice whispers in my ear telling me unbelievable things. Beautiful and sweet words fill my mind and my breath catches in my throat.

I hold each one so close it melds into my heart and then, with the exquisite poignancy of a single tear, release it; leaving room for the next moment and whatever it will bring with it.

It took me a while to learn that I can no more hold onto what is not mine than I can trap sunshine in a box for tomorrow, but I can remember its warmth and the way it lit up my world today.

Who I Am

I am intrigued by mottoes, those tiny statements that represent a family's code for living, or a business's code of ethics.

That a formula for living can be written in so few words fascinates me.

One part of our family can be traced back to the Boyd's, whose motto is, "I trust." I didn't know that most of my life, but it sure fits me.

Of course most of us can make anything fit if we want to. Our ability to morph backwards, or use hindsight to make the present fit the lofty stories from the past is legendary.

We are all familiar with the stalwart father who says, "I had to walk ten miles to school. Uphill. Both ways!" Don't laugh too soon, or dismiss that too easily!

In part we do it to encourage the next generation, but in part we do it because it feels good! If I can't be all that I want to be right now, it's nice to think that once I was all that I wanted, or want now, back then.

It's harmless. In fact it makes me a better story teller and might even give me the confidence to go forward and really be that now if I can convince myself the foundation is already there.

The danger comes when those who look up to us think it's true. Imagine how dismal life might seem to someone who is struggling with their own reality if they think their role model, or hero, or father, was always strong, or beautiful, or brilliant.

My heroes are those people who had to overcome things and turned out strong enough to tell me the truth. I love the vulnerability of real strength. There is something comforting in the knowledge that this moment has more to do with who I am than who I was.

Love

Love is a strange creature.

It tags around behind me even when I go into the swamp and find myself mired down in muck.

It listens to me when I sing bad songs badly and play worse ones worse.

It hears my nightmares and marvels over my dreams.

It rejoices when I succeed and cries with me when I fail.

It sticks by me even when I'm wrong and doesn't care if my clothes don't fit.

I don't have to impress it because its impression is based on things much deeper than that

and I don't have to earn it, because there is no way to earn love at all.

Love is simply the most beautiful gift in the world.

Relax

Change, that eternal frontier.

A moment in time when Shiva dances away the old moment and a new one comes in.

A place marker delineating a space for growth. Alterations in time that indicate God, or fate, or man, or some unpredictable force is acting upon the present just before the future steps up.

It is understandably often a stressful time.

The less aware I am of cause and effect, the simpler it might be to accept it, but in the same vein of thought, the more I realize how powerless I am, the more frightening it might be.

Or, for people of faith, this yielding or giving up of power, can be freeing!

The idea that what will be, will be, or "que sera sera" walks a fine line between doing nothing and doing just enough. It's that question that is as old as man's first thought. You've got to "know when to pass, know when to fold."

Experience either builds my confidence up in my ability to choose, or it convinces me that I am inept at it.

Believing it is okay to be wrong, gives me an opportunity to learn something new and as long as I live through it, there will be other chances.

So perhaps the question really is, "to be, or not to be." Everything else will work itself out in the long run.

Heaven

I think the secret to life is finding those things that truly make me happy.

Not riding a roller coaster, leaping off of high buildings happy, but content; things that make getting out of bed worthwhile in the morning.

For the first time in my life I am often finding myself tired in the late evening, around ten, or eleven, and waking up at six or seven in the morning. I don't know why this sudden shift. I was a chronic insomniac even as a young child, but I think it has something to do with the pressure being off.

For over six months I have only gone to bed if I am tired, knowing that if I can't sleep I can just get back up. Likewise, I don't have to get up to walk the dog, or go to work, or fix breakfast for anyone. I get up because I am not tired, because I am ready to do something I love and if I get tired? I know I can lie back down!

There is no pressure, even from myself, to conform to anyone else's schedule and I am incredibly sensitive to other people's needs, so that is truly a boon.

I live in the best of all worlds right now. I am able to do mostly those things I love to do and do them in increments that make them exceedingly enjoyable to me!

I think maybe my version of heaven is pretty close to the way I live right now. With only a few tweaks my life is perfect. There are some things I would change, but hey, this is my life, not my eternity, so that isn't too bad!

It has taken me over sixty years to realize that life, unfettered by expectations, seems to have the ability to tune itself to the right frequency.

That is truly faith.

What If

What is your biggest regret?

I saw a small video where they asked people that and it made me think.

Regrets are funny things, because they really don't do much good other than taking up space that better things might occupy. Still, I suppose knowing one person's regret might help another person decide to do something differently when they have a choice to make.

I think my biggest regret might be not becoming an independent single human being with a life of my own before choosing to settle down with another person.

No matter how wonderful a relationship is, it changes the way I do things, the way I act upon things, the way I think about things.

Maybe other people are different, but I tend to lose myself in relationships and the more I love, the more I am wanting and willing to give up. That is not a bad thing at all, but I believe it is better done when one really knows what she is giving up.

Watching some young people now I realize it is not necessary to give up yourself in order to have all those things I had and wanted. If I had known then what I know now I could have had both. It would have been different, but it would not have been exclusive.

The panic with which our generation found themselves diving into relationships might have come through our parents who grew up during depressions and world wars, or perhaps it was only a local tradition, but only one person counseled me to wait and I didn't believe her. She was my future mother-in-law and I thought she was so old she had simply forgotten what it was like to be young.

I don't think she ever forgot. I wish I had understood that then. I wish I had had less ego and more independence, but better late than never. My life is so rich and full now and perhaps it wouldn't have been this way now if I had done things differently in the beginning.

Past Scents

I remember waking up to the smell of Monday morning laundry

Clorox and the thrub, thrub, thrubbing of the old wringer washer

Grape jelly on toast, crumbs caught on an old cookie tray

You washing sheets with a big stick before hanging them out to dry.

Ben gay smeared on a furrowed brow, tied up in a cotton scarf

You taught me life in a class I couldn’t play hooky from

Trudging forward, determined, focused, never straying

Hanging sheets one after the other and forcing the lines up with poles to hold them.

Guilty of the jelly joys smeared over my face, flinging crumbs with carefree zest

Bittersweet pleasure watering my eyes, but never questioning your wisdom

I swept up the remains of my sins with a broom twice as tall as I was.

Memories burned into my nose from fumes that produced pristine white sheets.

Your words were gospel. Your actions more sacred even than that.

Adoring you, sopping up jelly and soap, sweeping up crumbs, holding clothespins

Pressing my nose into its soft surface as you put on your face and left for work.

I wished I was a sheet, pressed close to your chest, left warm in the sun.

Isn't It Enough?

People wait for the rapture, or the new millenia, or the end of the world, or sanctioned miracles.

Isn't it enough that the sun comes up every day and the tides ebb and flow?

Isn't it enough that babies grow inside of mothers and are born with so many moving parts, all coordinated to work together and grow!

What do I make of a tree whose leaves sprout every year and fall off and then grow again the next year?

How do I explain the way my breath catches in my throat when I see a wild bear stand up on its haunches and sniff the air in real life?

Imagine a full blown rose coming up out of the ground on that thorny stem!

Or six bright red cardinals taking flight from an evergreen tree on a snowy day!

That I exist at all seems to be a miracle to me!

Going Home

Back to basics. No matter what I do, where I go, it always comes back to a few basic things.

I am who I am.

Being true to myself is more important than anything else I do.

I've had amazing teachers. Each one makes me want to be them.

I want to be you! I want to be so many things I am not, but that doesn't matter. It only matters that I understand who I am and find the value in that.

Common sense tells me that I will never fly like a bird, or breathe under water like a fish. I cannot light up whole universes like a sun, or draw the seas up to the shore. But I can learn to soar, to submerge myself in my own unconscious. I can find the light in the center that warms me through and through and I can draw from my own strength to do the things I am fit to do with amazing regularity.

It seems my journey upon this way is always to be looking for the way home. This ache I feel, the emptiness, the homesickness must be what pulls the salmon upstream, or the butterflies to Mexico. Sometimes it wrings me inside out and sometimes it carries me along like a feather on the wind, but it never deserts me for very long.

Sometimes I think I have found it, this place called home, but then the old hunger reappears, the stick rises into the air and I move onward following a carrot I can't see, or hear, or smell, but whose presence I know is here.

Bilingual Living

I was thinking about pets, about the way we treat them. More specifically I was thinking about the way I treat my pets, or have treated them over the years.

Then I began to wonder what it would be like to be a pet.

Imagine someone suddenly scooping you up wherever you are and giving you this big hug! Or being picked up and put in someone's lap and having your back rubbed!

It sounds sort of heavenly.

Yet along with that goes never quite understanding exactly what your owner means when she talks to you and not being able to voice a preference for food. Your eagerness to please could be misunderstood for rowdiness and your tastes for being obstinate.

Left alone you might be given a book to read, but what if it isn't one you are particularly interested in? And your freedom to come and go depends on who opens the door to what. Your freedom for everything depends on the whims of your owner. It's kind of like being a child.

I suppose it is no wonder that last night I dreamed my friend was my pet, curled up naked on my lap like a large puppy as I petted its back. Dreams are like three dimensional movies allowing me to live out my thoughts sometimes, but they always take it a step too far. This large pet would never look up. I could never see its face, look into its eyes.

I sat there stroking its smooth skinned back and realized I didn't want to own it. I just wanted to love it and I was confused. I didn't know quite how to do that.

With pets I assume their thinking is very limited, but what if it isn't? What if the question to this whole living thing is understanding that everything thinks in its own way and everything is; and just because I can't comprehend that doesn't let me off the hook?

Peace on earth might turn out to be understanding that. We might speak English, or Dutch, or Mongolian, but what we really need to speak is love.

Clutter

How do you live?

What are the colors you surround yourself with?

How do you arrange your possessions? What is the center of your room, your focus? Is there more than one center?

Homes reflect the lives of their people in their squareness, or concentric circles, or even total chaotic-ness.

Usually it is the simplicity that attracts me, but there is an intrigue in the busy corners, those nooks and crannies where the odds and ends of life are stored.

Simplicity can be a value, or a facade. It's hard to tell sometimes.

In a large space, my belongings stand out, each one a single statement about who I am.

In a smaller space these same belongings meld together like some sort of impressionist's depiction.

Either way it really is in the clutter that you find all my ins and outs; all those little idiosyncrasies that define the more complicated parts of me that I couldn't bear to part with.

You can define me by what I have and what I don't have, what I keep and what I give away.

Lost

I am empty.

For maybe the first time in my whole life I am empty!

I pour words in, but I think they are just running straight through and falling out some invisible hole in my thoughts that I can't find.

I wrap myself in music, but somehow I fall out and I can't hold on tight enough to get back in.

I watch movies on Netflix, but I fail to imprint.

Is this a writer's block? It doesn't feel blocky and solid. It feels slippery and elusive.

It's not like I'm up against a brick wall. Rather it is like there is no wall at all, no foundation, no structure, no anything.

I stare at the blank screen. Place my fingers on keys so well used that many of the letters are worn off. But there is a short somewhere. My mind is out of ink or maybe the power is turned off.

I think I am missing. Not here. If you find me somewhere please send me back.

Lost: one writer with brown hair and hazel eyes looking for vowels a through y and a few good consonants.

The Right Answer

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth....

That sounds so straightforward and simple.

Life, at least my life, is never quite that way.

Truth has many aspects.

All of them open to interpretation, mine and yours.

I used to think it depended on how honest one wanted to be.

Now I think it is more complicated.

Many questions fly pointlessly into this world. The asker has no real desire to hear the answer and especially not the long, complicated, intense, real answer.

So called polite inquiries and social customs are often thoughtlessly rude ways to fill a space in time. I think a smiling nod acknowledging each other is infinitely better than a "How are you?" when you really don't care to know.

It's one of those customs that confuse children because it is basically an acceptably dishonest one. We were told as children to be honest. We were also told if someone asks you how you are, you say fine, because they really don't want to know. Imagine that!

Not everyone is that way, but how do you know the difference? In which split second can you size up a situation and an entire complex person and know if they are being polite, kissing up, or really caring? And this is the simplest level of communication!

Imagine things like: "Is it a good book?" "Do you work?" "What happened?" "Do you believe in God?"

Very young children sometimes open our eyes to the complicated webs we weave around what appear to be simple truths in life.

I once taught a toddler a nursery rhyme that went God made the sun, God made the trees, God made you and God made me. It was a long time ago, but I have never forgotten the response. He said it, paused, thought about it and then asked, "Which God was that?"

For some that seems like a crazy question, but even great theologian's don't seem to agree on these things. We just all seem to assume we are right.

Gabriel's Song

I watched the movie, "As It Is In Heaven," today.

It was in Swedish so I had to read subtitles, but that didn't bother me. It takes me about two minutes reading subtitles before I believe that I am fluent in whatever language is being spoken!

And whatever language the words are in does not affect the sound of the music. The music in this film is lovely. The story is even better.

A famous conductor has a heart attack and goes back to live in the village of his childhood where he was bullied by some other boys. Once he arrives he ends up directing the church choir for a rather typical group of people who become increasingly important as the movie moves on.

There is a vulnerability to each one as their humanity unravels and they become like family members, lovable in spite of their flaws.

There are some novel approaches in this film that keep it far away from the soap opera it sounds like and the end, although patently real, it is heartwarming.

I loved it.

Mighty Like A Rose

I dreamed that the answers are all here!

All around me is everything I ever wanted to know

I only need to find a way to hear it, or see it, or feel it!

As a young child I used to look for the hidden pictures.

As an art student I learned to look for the different hues.

Playing music taught my ears to listen for certain instruments and rhythms

It is all here!

My heart is learning to find the love,

My brain to hear the truth.

I may be a late bloomer, but like the rose

When my time comes

I think I will be magnificent,

Because you are!

Absolute Freedom

Living life instead of just watching it has always been the way to go, but there is something to be said for vicarious living too.

I don't mean on television where there is no interaction, where life is canned into neat little segments that can be opened and reheated as desired.

I mean the kind of vicarious living that involves sharing from both sides, a sort of tennis match that is played back and forth, accompanied by shouts of success and groans of anguish.

The kind of living where my thoughts and yours mix and mingle until we don't know whose is whose, a sort of mind meld that cannot be defined by space or time.

We both bring different things to this picnic, but all of it is fresh and whole and ripe with feelings:

Redefining the word relationship into an exquisite anomaly that allows me to sit down to tea with a crystal teapot whose blooming flower will shared by a Poet Laureate:

Opening doors to worlds we are too old, or too young, to pass through alone:

Eliminating that arch enemy of life in this world, loneliness among crowds.

Vicarious living attached only to absolute freedom.

The closest thing to being one there is.

When The Well Runs Dry

When the well seems to be empty I need to look closer,

Just closing my eyes and reaching in doesn't always work.

It could be I need to go deeper.

It could be there is even a whirlpool down there and somehow I'm reaching right into the middle

Mistaking the eye of a raging storm for that deceptively empty feeling.

Success isn't usually just a matter of luck

It is a combination of hard work and perseverance.

When that seems easy, I am lucky.

When it doesn't?

That speaks more about who I am than the well.

Loving

Friends are the foundation of a good life

Supporting me when I need them

Harassing me when I need it

Loving me in spite of everything I do.

But sometimes I just need to hold my own world up

With my own two hands

Stand under my own umbrella because I am holding it

And love them back -- from a far.

One Fine Moment

Sometimes the lion lies down with the lamb and sometimes he eats him. Sometimes you can run with wolves and sometimes they run you down. Sometimes brother bear has you to dinner and sometimes he has you for dinner.

The rest of life isn't much different. Every moment in life from my first breath to my last is a series of events that bounce off of each other, changing what happens by what may be random luck, or perhaps good or bad judgement.

I think we tend to become confused when considering these things. Mixing up ideas of niceness and morality with physical laws makes people wonder why bad things happen to good people.

When I eat a burger at the local fast food place I never stop and ask myself, "Was this cow a good cow, or a bad one?" I just chow down.

One thoughtless act may be all it takes.

Night Sounds

Invading the stillness
they come
shrilly blunted yips and yaps
air hounds, flapping in packs above my home here in the heartland
hunting
not for rabbits but rare bits
cat tails whose fur has yet to burst forth and fly like tiny white fairies
bullfrogs, ancient croaking light houses, calling them in
landing, ten, twenty at a time, beginning the Beguine
slow rolling of hips dancing on waves rocked by prairie winds
songs accompanied by love calls for those who straggle behind
until, at last, every one has landed
and a sacred silence ushers in the sun
just before the great cacophony breaks the fast
surging out of the water, waddling across dew streaked grass
snapping up bits and bites, honking jokes back and forth
hard to reconcile with those noble creatures in the night sky.

The Passion

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim".
-- Lyndon B. Johnson

A friend sent this quote to me a while ago and it has stuck with me. It says a lot about who we are, a nation of people who love bad news.

You just can't make it bad enough for many of us.

It's like a cosmic game of telephone played by a million people. Each one adding their darkest and most negative thought to spice it up along the way until the truth is buried so deeply that if it ever existed at all, we would be hard put to recognize it now.

I used to wonder who these people were who wanted all this gore and goo, but after looking at modern society from the grass roots on up to that orb we all moon over, I have decided we are them.

There are people who base their entire ideology on keeping things stirred up. Give them what they ask for and the problem morphs immediately into something else. There is barely a breath in between. They want the passion, the drama, the blood dripping from some human body and by golly it they don't get it one way, they'll get it another!

I say, "sunshine!" You say, "sunburn!" I say, "relax." You say, "indolent."

There is a place for righteous indignation, but it isn't in every moment.

Pick your battles, don't let them pick you.

Invisible Walls

There is something I call terminal meanness. It is that deep inborn part of someone that blinds them to what they are doing.

I honestly don't know whether it is learned, or simply a part of the genetic make up.

I do know it causes more misery in this world than is necessary.

It skews judgment beyond rationality.

Sometimes I think it is selfishness wearing armor. Other times I think it is insecurity in wolf's clothing. I know it is Fear no matter what else it might be.

I call it meanness because the actions that come out of it hurt people deeply, even if they are not meant to.

I call it terminal because, like anything that is persistent, it continually erodes everything around it. From the inside out it destroys.

More vicious than any virus, I don't think anyone has really found a cure for it. You can't pop a pill to get rid of it and you can't fix something you don't believe is there.

The Way Things Are

My being seems to have its own sense of timing. If I can allow that to take its course, it is amazing what I can do. It's when I try to squeeze my ability to learn, or my capacity for perseverance, or my desire to please someone else, into a space that isn't ready for it, that I fail. And when I fail? I can do it pretty spectacularly!

I'm never proud of failing. In fact, I am so miserable that I try to avoid it at almost any cost. In the past I have been known to avoid things completely because I thought I would not be good at them. I have also been known to hide my failures behind all sorts of things, bluffs, half truths, avoidance, whatever was necessary.

I'm not sure what the reasons for all this were. I could point fingers for the rest of my life, but they would just be more ways to avoid the issues.

Instead I've tried to be a little more pro active. I've conquered many of my fears, maybe just once, or for a while, but it's a start. I'm not quite so afraid of spiders and snakes and I've managed to carve out a life all my own -- on my own. Now I am doing some of the finer things.

I have been reading books I thought I could never read. Sometimes it's taken me months, something that would never have worked if I were in class, but my teacher is kind. And now I am, at long last, learning Spanish! Not much, just a little every day. Right now all I can ask is what is that?

But that is a pretty useful phrase! You see that wouldn't have pleased me ten years ago. Then I would have needed to be in a class, taking tests, being monitored and pushed and I would have been a wreck. Now I am just thrilled with what I can do! With a tour group of ninos and ninas I can now point to a wing and say "?Que es eso?" Then I can say, "Eso es un wing (or wheel, or pitot tube!)" I may mistakes, but we can all laugh at them. They need the English words and I want the Spanish ones!

Children are so forgiving. They appreciate the attempt.

My Ivory Tower

My great room is great only in the comfort I find here. Each piece of it was carefully purchased, put together and decorated last Fall, which is relatively unusual for someone my age. Other than the books I brought with me and three small sculptures, everything else is new.

The bedroom is not much different. My small television, my clothing, my CD's and DVD s, a dresser of mine that my sister had, my jewelry box, my musical instruments and one photo are the only old pieces in my possession. It is strange to think of a lifetime of living whittled down to this and yet... it is the essence of me.

Oh yes, there is the large orange juice can from 1982, covered in faded green construction paper and carefully decorated in black marker that I received for Mother's Day that year from my oldest son. It is filled with pens, pencils, one nail file and four treasured bookmarks given to me by dear friends over the years. My digital camera that is one of my favorite toys and a Limoges hat pin holder with my great grandmother's hatpins in it are here; as is one small covered Wedge wood trinket dish and a small rock with a turtle carved into the top of it.

It seems I have a lot more than I thought. Even someone who thinks she has, and indeed really has, down sized her life drastically, still owns more than much of the world. Perhaps that is why I do not feel any sense of loss for what is no longer in my possession. It is still so much.

As I sit here surrounded on six sides by plaster walls, cottage cheese ceilings and carpeted floors my world floats around me in thoughts reproduced on this computer and sent out into a world that sends back so much! I think the ability to write and share this world is what feeds me. My work at the museum and school are the dessert that really top everything off.

I often find myself looking out the window and thinking that this is my ivory tower and what a comfortable one it has become.

Form Two Lines Please

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Can you wring water from a turnip? That phrase can be used two ways. It can imply that you are simply very frugal, or it can imply that you can drain every last drop out of something.

In our world today there are the gimme folks, the ones who are out to get everything they can, figuring if it is there, it is theirs for the taking. These people know every in and out in Government tax right offs, breaks and hand outs. It doesn't matter which end of the income spectrum they are on, they don't leave one drop for anyone else if they can get it first. They aren't much for sharing anything. They work for themselves.

Then there are the other gimme folks, the ones who say: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless,tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" That might sound familiar to you. It should. It is a poem by Emma Lazarus mounted on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty and it speaks to a different mind set.

These two groups are not divided by how rich they are, or how good a pedigree they have. It is not the car they drive, nor the clothes they wear that sets them apart. It is not the size of their bank accounts, nor lack of that same thing. It is a mind set that says everyone who thinks they are better than everyone else stand over here and everyone who really believes we are all one family, stand over here.

Of course most people will say they are the latter group, but don't listen to what they say. Look at what they do. There are a million excuses for taking more than your share, or believing your share should be greater than others. Most of them put you in the first group.

I say that as long as one child goes to bed hungry, or one man doing his best has no place to sleep, or one woman doing her best cannot get the medical care she needs, this world is running lopsided and we all need to step back and reassess who we are and how we express it.