Kelly Defined

The hardest thing in the whole world to be is:

Myself.

From day one when I entered this world I was dropped into one category after another.

Born in the United States of America, in a small town in the heartland to very comfortable parents who lived rather conservative lifestyles, there were many expectations for me.

Before I was a year old I was being gently molded into a creature expected to wear certain clothes in specific colors and play with toys chosen to enhance what everyone assumed were my natural talents.

School carried on the traditions of teaching me those things considered important for one of my gender and expected educational opportunities.

I was allowed to be anything I liked, but the underlying threat of misery was subtly there in thought, word, and deed, in society, on the television and everywhere I went, if I didn’t fit into some already designed slot.

As a teen I discovered rebelling was part of growing up and I was given the freedom to be a rebel like everyone else.  I could wear my hair in the rebel forms; dress in appropriate socially unacceptable garb, and even participate in predictable forums of protests.

Even when choosing alternate life styles there is a tendency to fall into patterns that the world understands.  There are athletes, scholars, blue collar workers, white collar workers, masculine, feminine, rebels, libertines, conservatives, liberals, loose, up tight --  there are expectations for nearly everything!

What would happen if someone merely wanted to be who they are?  It takes not only courage, but intelligence and great insight to be something not already designed by a world that’s been at it since time began.

To be something that has no name or title or description except Kelly Smith is almost impossible.  The world wants Kelly defined!

Who are the people in your neighborhood

There have been a couple of incredible synchronistic moments in my life during the last two days.  Moments that simply highlight how small my world has become.

Yesterday when the vcr ate my Steel Magnolia tape I used the computer to locate a DVD in a local store.  At the store, holding that DVD, I met a woman with a little boy, who gushed, “I love that movie.  That is how Jackson here, (she held up her little boy’s hand) got his name.”

And as she shared this information with me I received a text from Louisiana, in fact from the very town in Louisiana, where that movie was made!

Imagine that!

Today, I, who am often a very solitary person, went to the cinema to see a scary movie with four of my nearest and dearest.  Afterwards we took a pizza home and sat around playing a Scrabble like game.  Instead of playing it on a board, we played it on a computer and cell phones. 

I ended up going home so I could use my own computer to play and once I was on line, found myself playing with several other people including my brother’s stepdaughter who lives near San Diego.

As I completed my turn with her, my brother called and I ended up talking to his wife who was simultaneously texting her daughter while the daughter and I played the game on the computer!

The circle of life expands to unite people all over the world while technology shrinks communication down to small town standards.  Everyone is my roommate or neighbor now!

Bedrock Blessings

If I told you a time was coming when you were going to have to give up, or lose, nearly everything, but you could choose to hang on to three things.  What would they be?  They cannot be people.

I think I would choose:

My imagination.

My ability to love.

My faith.

With these three things I believe I might be able to rise from the ashes and build a tolerable, even wonderful life.  I’m sure there are other things.  These are just some that have served me well.

They are also things it would be hard to take away from me.

 

It's coming

The parties get bigger and better, but the attendance grows smaller and smaller. 

Dancing to the echoes of lessons past, I am reminded that when anything becomes top heavy, it tumbles over

And when the bottom collapses, no matter how elite the top is, it will not be far behind.

It’s the law of gravity.

And believe me, it’s grave out there.

If you run into Mother Goose, tell her...

If Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall in today’s world, all the king’s horses would rush in to stomp those pieces into bone meal before they even thought about putting him together again.

That’s what we do with our elected officials today.  We build walls around them so if a good egg falls off we have a scapegoat to trample on.

And yet, Taffy, who stole the piece of beef, would get to eat his beef, leaving me only a marrow bone and chances are good he would be re-elected tomorrow if he only professed to be against abortion and same sex marriage.  

 If I beat him over the head with that bone?  He lives for that!  It takes the attention off what he is really doing, which is probably even more heinous than the ticket he ran on.

We still don’t know for sure which knave ate the tarts or what happened to those poor birds they tried to bake into a pie, but it’s pretty certain that these things just go on and on and as long as we make them cute and talk about them in small rhyming words the majority of people will go on nodding and smiling and voting just like they’ve always done…

Whether it worked or not.

Reality verses Reputation

Just got my third prescription for my first pair of glasses!

Hope this one works!

But it is a lesson in quality no matter what happens.

The best place in town, heck the state if you believe what I hear,  seemed to lack both the ability and the desire to get it right and the cheapest place in town bent over backwards to make sure it was done properly.

There is much to be said for honest goodwill and a willingness to insist on quality work.

Don't Squirrel Things Away

Screen screen in front of me who’s gonna read my next story?

Not quite poetically perfect, but you get the point.

Writing is one of those things best done because you love it.  Any other reason will leave you wanting.

I do love writing.  I love the doing of it probably more than anything else!  I get to create a situation any way I like about anything I want anywhere I want.  What’s not to like about that?

Now if I had to pay the rent or feed myself or actually be responsible for anything with my writing, I think that might take a lot of the joy out of it.  Then the tendency might be to write what I think other people want to read.

The problem with that is who knows what “other” people want?  When I start writing like that, no one is likely to be thrilled.

So, I write just like I always have, then I close my eyes and push the button and off it goes into the big world.  Like an acorn blowing off into the wind, no one really knows what is going to happen to it.  Chances are pretty good, it will just end up where most of the others do to be devoured by the same little squirrels day after day.

But hey, squirrels are cute and loyal and I like them!

Unlike a cache of nuts, a cache of stories doesn't do anyone any good.  It just leaves me wanting.

"And the things I (dream) come true" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olfw2vFFQFc

If you are like me you have been daydreaming since the day you first discovered you weren’t tired enough to take a nap.  In order to pass the time without going bananas, this becomes “create my own world” time.

The characters in my daydreams have retained a sort of continuity throughout the years.

One day my best friend is three years old and living next door to my three-year-old imaginary house.  The next decade bestest is twelve years old and part of my junior high fantasy friends.  Eventually he becomes the stock character for whatever the play of the moment is.  He has a personality, a repertoire of reliable behaviors, a way of communicating that is warm and friendly, brave and bold.

In short, he is the perfect friend, willing to be loved and babied, capable of being fierce and dependable.  Always willing to go out there and have those adventures I would be terrified to have in real life. 

He is the safest, most fun, most perfect person I know, because……..well, because I created him!  He is nothing but a figment of my imagination, carefully designed and honed to be the best friend ever.

And then, one day, he steps out of those daydreams and I have to ask myself, “Does love really make you real?”

Where does the time go?

There aren’t enough hours in the day!

I look up and it is almost six AM and I realize the night is over before I have even begun to sleep!

Where did the time go?

I got up to go to bed at nine PM, but the phone rang.  I talked to my sister then thought I should answer my email and catch up on the scrabble games I am playing with people on line and that led to updating my Facebook photo link and working on my story.

Then in the middle of that I got distracted and began working on a scarf I am knitting which made me think of another pattern I wanted to try out before I made it for Christmas and by the time I had figured that pattern out it was late!

Or early?

I will never understand people who say they are bored!  I have books to read, chores to do, and a million other things to fill my days.  I haven’t played the piano in weeks, or my flute in months.  There are tons of movies I want to watch and even a few radio shows I have missed!

Time goes faster every year.  If my life is like a ball of string, it is unraveling at mach speed…

But the journey is so amazing I don’t want to miss a thing!

Let Me Out!

I have been changing tires on my car more often than I change the shoes on my feet!

I just had my third flat tire in less than two months!

This might be understandable if my tires were older, which they are not, or if I lived in a construction zone, which I kind of do, but not really.  It is more of a deconstruction zone where they are cutting down trees and tearing out bushes.

Two of my tires had gashes in them.  One had something resembling a tooth!  Two required a tow truck to come change the tire.  One did not.

All required buying a new tire and today that meant sitting at Wal-Mart from 1:30 until 4:00!  I still don’t know why it took so long.

I bought that tire protection thingee, but so far the brand new tires are not the flat ones, so it has cost me to replace each one.

This is an expensive game and I haven't figured out all the ins and outs of it yet.  But I wouldn't mind quitting before I figure out all the rules.

Listen

We all dance to our own tune

Because no matter how hard we try it is the only one we really hear

Some people believe if they dance faster it changes things

And some believe if they can count the steps it controls things

A few even think if they stand still nothing happens

But the truth is

We all dance to our own tune

Leap Of Faith

The book fair is at our elementary school this week.  Children may purchase books and they can make up a wish list for their parents who will be coming to the parent teacher conferences on Friday.

I watched one little girl reaching for a paper to record her wish list when a friend piped up.  “I thought you said your parents didn’t have any money.”

“They don’t.”  She replied.

“Then why are you wishing for anything?”  Her friend asked.

“I can still wish!”  The plucky little child answered.

“Oh!”

We all grow up being taught a way of thinking and doing things and for some of us those things don’t change much for the rest of our lives.  We just keep on thinking and doing things the way we’ve always done them.

There comes a time when we have the opportunity to go beyond what we already know and learn something more, but that requires several things to occur.

We have to notice the moment: be aware of it: and be able to take the leap over the chasm of what forever was and what might be.

It takes courage and will power, a willingness to experience the discomfort that comes whenever anything new replaces something old.

No matter what else happens, a better, stronger, person lands on the other side.

A feather in my cap

JAC is more of an inspiration in my life than you might believe.  Most people would not think that two creatures who live their lives in such different ways could be so close.

One of us is often off gallivanting around the country while the other lives rather quietly, pretty much confined by circumstances to a much more traditional life.

JAC teaches me things others have tried and failed at for years and he does it mostly by example.  His enthusiasm and joie de vive spill over onto me almost daily.

One of the most recent things he has taught me is that birds of a feather flock together, which means that if those around me do not exactly enthrall me, perhaps I need to stop and take stock of who I am.

And the flip side of that is that if I find myself surrounded by people I am in awe of; I need to remember that I am there too! 

Who could have guessed that someone so small could make such huge contributions to my life.

Focus

There is never enough time for all the important parts of life.

Knowing this is what makes every single moment so precious.

Every word, every hug, every kiss, every glimpse into another man’s soul is a glimpse of the face of God.

When this doesn’t describe my world I need to refocus.

An afternoon drumming in the heartland.

The spider weaves her story, catching glimpses of light that I might miss if I, too, am not caught up in her web and yet my dance is not one of calm reserve.

I shove the bits and pieces of invisible silk away as the sage carries my spirit up and away and the drum evens out the tempo of my heart so that it beats in tandem with that of others who also sit in a circle around this old oak tree.

In the distance three dogs watch us, one with a blue ball in his mouth, a doggie pacifier, calming him down as the air reverberates with unusual sounds.

A woman with bells on her ankles sings to the earth and another holds an ancient Hopewell pipe unearthed from the ground nearby, a reminder of when her home was built here so many years ago. 

Mocking birds sing, blue jays chatter and the wind soughs across the rough hewn hills in gusty sighs.

There is no formula for communing with either people or nature, but today is a good day.

The sweetness of life

I love picnics and baseball games and playing Upwords. 

And I love talking to friends and family, in person, on the phone! 

And sometimes I just get to do so many wonderful things that I don't know where to start talking about it all.


Today was one of those times.

Tomorrow will be another, I am sure!

How can life be so sweet?

Who I am

I know me better than you might think, but there are some things I don't seem to be able to do anything about.

I still get tongue tied when I have the chance to meet people I am in awe of, or respect, or just plain admire.

It used to embarrass me no end, but now I just accept that it is part and parcel of who I am.

I guess the best thing I can say about it is that if you talk to me and I sound like a star struck kid -- well, I am.

Different

I notice that my canary, Jac, always eats when I do.  My dogs and cats used to do that too.  I’m not sure what that means, but it seems to suggest to me that there is something important about eating together, something that is more than a nicety, or human custom.

It also tells me that Jac is aware of what I do and much more sentient than most people might think.

Human beings have a tendency to believe that small things don’t feel as much as big ones.

Well, now I think about it.  Human beings have had a tendency to believe that only adult people of the same gender, economic bracket, color, culture and size and ideologies are truly sentient. 

Everyone else is “different,” usually meaning sub standard in some way.  And that goes both ways, snobs and reverse snobs!

In fact, there were so many differences that came to mind I had trouble deciding which ones to list!

Maybe it’s time we started focusing on what we have in common.  That seems like a much less daunting task.

Of course, once you start something like that, you never know how huge it might become.

At my mercy

There is a sweetness in trust.

My bird, Jac, really isn’t afraid of me.  He doesn’t let me hold him, or touch him, but that is his nature.  He also does not flutter wildly about when I reach into his cage and in fact, sometimes he comes up close as if to see better.

He is totally at my mercy.  I doubt if he really understands that, but his very life depends on me taking care of his needs.

That kind of need can overwhelm me if I think about it too much.  I understood that when I had children.  My love for them and the knowledge that the quality of their entire lives lay within the boundaries of what I could do for them was sometimes frightening.

Every bit of food I put in front of them, every word I did, or did not, teach them, every opportunity I presented, or denied them, altered the course of their existence and they, like little birds, simply opened themselves up and devoured whatever it was I gave them.

They trusted me to love them enough to give them only the best and I did my best to try and do that.

I wasn’t perfect by a long shot.  No one ever is, but at least I understood the importance of what was happening. 

Trust is the ultimate gift.

Be careful what you ask for

The Center for Clinical Intervention Research at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark wrote, “we believe that politicians and regulatory authorities should wake up to their responsibility to allow only safe products on the market,"

They are talking about over the counter vitamins and supplements and at least part of their reasoning is based on a slightly higher death rate for women using these supplements.  (40.8 compared to 39.8 of the 12, 769 women in the study)

Not a very large margin to begin with and perhaps these women were already ill which is why they were dosing, or possibly over dosing on such supplements.

Regardless of why it is, I think the dangers of regulating these things far out weighs the danger of allowing people to choose for themselves. 

Put a warning sign above the shelves if you like, but don’t think regulation is for the good of the people.  It just transfers the profits from these supplements so that the average person must pay doctors to prescribe them, insurance companies to help pay for them, and big pharmaceutical companies to dole them out.

I use three over the counter supplements that I know for a fact do work for exactly what I take them for.  They cost very little and solve big problems.

All regulating does is give control of that drug to the big pharmaceutical companies who can then charge horrendous amounts for what cost pennies today.  It is not in our best interests.  It is in the best interests of big business.

I see the light

There is a color of light that calls to me.  I don’t see it very often anymore, but when I do it is usually through the window of some place at night.  It is that bright yellow incandescence that could be so stark and awful.  It can speak of poverty and bare bulbs, of basement lights and strictly utilitarian lights.  

As a child it was the light that hung above our back landing welcoming our family home from long vacations, or late night excursions, a harbinger of love and safety and togetherness.

At school it lit up the hallways after band contests when we scurried out to find our parents waiting for us outside under the big greenish lights in the school driveway.

At my grandmother’s big house it was the kitchen light, a bright bulb creating an island of warmth above the old oak table, a place to make strawberry sodas and giggle over spending the night.

  

In my first apartment it was the first thing I wanted to cover up.  I went out and bought a cheap plastic shade to disguise it, a round orange ball of a shade with fake cut away trim on the outside.  I just screwed the bulb in and it held the whole thing above my head on the ceiling and I felt very much the happy homemaker.

The night I found out I was going to be divorced I drove through town looking through my tears at that light in the windows of homes, aching for the wholeness I thought I was losing.

It is a shade of light that speaks to me of nostalgia and home.

No Easy Answers

People have written to ask where, or with whom, I think my home is.

You would think that someone my age would have all the answers to things like this, but I don’t.

I was sitting in my apartment a few days ago and it suddenly struck me how much I loved where I was.  Not the apartment complex, or the city, just the room where my own “things” surrounded me.

Now that makes sense for a woman in her sixties, but not really when you consider that almost all of my “things” are less than two years old.  Other than my books, my music, my pillow and sheets, some jewelry and a few small objets d'art everything here is new.

I am not surrounded by a lifetime of memories, or family antiques.  Other than an overstuffed couch and chair, my furniture is simple, stark and modern, more utilitarian than stylish.

Somehow, for me,  “home” is a state of mind more than anything else and that state changes quite frequently.

The constants are the people I write to nearly every day, those connections of the mind and heart that tie me to this earth.  Other than that, I’m not sure where home is.

Ask me the same question tomorrow and I might have a different answer.

 

Take Me Home

There is a great song with a line that grabbed me the very first time I heard it and it has stuck with me every since. 

“Your face in silhouette, the closest place I can ever get, to home.”

The quest for home drives all of us whether we know it, or admit it, or not.

And finding that home requires an honest knowledge of who I am more than anything else in the world.

The Next Step

Sifting my actual words and thoughts out from among the scrambled words that pour out of me is often tantamount to excavating some distant archeological site.

The last thing I want to do is shake the foundations of the truly secure and cause their tried and true structures to come crashing down.

Believing I am capable of that, displays an incredible amount of hubris and ego, but I am much more likely to fell an enormous cathedral held up by faulty flying buttresses than a humble adobe cottage, by the removal of one single block.

Or in other words, people who believe in ghosts will probably survive meeting one no matter how terrible it is and how afraid they are, but a person who absolutely knows there is no such thing doesn’t have a ghost of a chance if he meets one.

The way is already littered with the casualties of those who are one brick short and those whose feet are so solidly planted in an immutable belief system that even a tsunami cannot hope to sweep away.

I don’t want to add to it.  I much prefer to just shuffle along meeting those who are able to rise from the ashes with a simple appreciation for taking the next step.

The day I realized that this is once upon a time and we are the heroes and gods and goddesses who sit upon Mt. Olympus, was the day I knew all was well and all was truly well.

Silliness Is

Silliness is good for the soul.

I can’t prove that, but I am fairly certain it is a fact of life.

Taking myself too seriously has never particularly paid off and believe me, I have put a lot of effort into it!

Supposing that we are never closer to our soul than when we are born, I am sure that I enjoyed those first three years immensely.

I was certainly silly, laughing until I sometimes cried, giggling over my own bad jokes, repeating the same inane action or words over and over and over – just to see the people around me smile.

Now I realize these same things are not funny when you are three times taller than you used to be and twenty times older; but like everything else, silliness evolves and refines itself with age.

And I need to laugh just as much now as then – maybe more!

Alone

I think one of the blessings of this world is that I almost never feel alone.

In most moments I am engaged in thoughts that tie me to other people’s thoughts and even my own in either the past, or the future.

Trying to explain that is difficult.  The best way I know how to do it is to say, imagine this world as one large aquarium.  Whenever anyone moves there is a ripple effect that slowly makes its way through the entire area.

Long after I have forgotten I moved, someone else is feeling the effects.

Likewise, as I contemplate some future action, even if it is only a thought, I generate something that stirs things around.

I am pretty independent, a true loner by some people’s standards.  I need a lot of time to process life and that is best done without the company of too many people, but no one is truly alone.  We are all dependent upon the actions of all the other people.

Loneliness is a state of mind more than anything.  The truth is I have never been more alone than I sometimes feel in a crowd of people, nor more connected than I have sometimes felt sitting here writing to someone on my computer.

Rocking the boat

The story is told that when I was a very young child my mother told me not to touch the stove.  It was hot!

I, of course, had to touch it and immediately discovered it was not hot.  Of course it wasn’t -- not all the time, but that had not been part of the admonition from my mother.

In the epiphany of that moment I learned that much of what people told me was not true.

Of course I paid a terrible price for it later on when I touched the stove again and this time the red-hot burner left its mark on my palm.  I was set up for that as are all people fed partial truths in an attempt to control them.  

Under estimating the intelligence of others in a desire to control them, even if it seems it is for their own benefit, makes way for an astounding amount of pain in this world.

There are hosts of politicians and others who count on us not thinking.  They rely on our early training to just do as we are told in spite of everything else.

It is easier to go with the flow, run with the pack, be part of the herd.  It is easier to blindly follow everyone else than to think, or rock the boat.

Imagine a world where no one rocks the boat to wake up the sleeping herd before they sail right over the waterfall.

Yep, imagine that.

On a rock by the lake

Here, in the wasteland of my dotage, I am starving and no amount of commandeered bravado will change that.

The mountains and the water, two end posts that tether me by some indescribable force to myself are missing and that umbilical manufactured by my memories is thinning in a terrifyingly quick fashion.

I see the mirages, and the scent of their ephemeral promise leads me forth into the misty eyed night where all things are possible, but to dream still leaves me starving.

Like some land locked mermaid I soak in the bath looking for cloud banks of mountains from the windows of my mind.   Knowing that relief is coming.  Knowing that once more I will sit in the night watching the leather winged bats zooming over rising fog fingers from the security of my own porch.

And as they feed upon the mosquitoes and moths in the starry sea that surrounds them; I will feed upon the reflections of a pond where the moon smiles up at me and feeds me silence in loving spoonfuls. 

Love reaches out, offering me a hand, keeping me afloat in the arid nothingness of an existence where I have stranded myself; promising me that soon the waiting will be rewarded.

And for a while, the smiles are no longer commandeered.

 

Deep Thoughts

I was watching a young woman wobble down the sidewalk on her high heeled, thick soled shoes and thinking no man in his right mind would ever wear something like that.  I quickly slipped into a silent rant about how these shoes make a woman look and how vulnerable she is when hobbled by them.  I was almost into that part of the rant where only men would design such things when I came across an article for women.

The article had hints for luring men into their presence.  (I think it actually said if you want to be noticed.)

According to this article you should try to make sure you are looking up at him, because that will make a guy feel tall and strong.

He will see you as 5 to 12 pounds thinner and 5 years younger if you wear spicy perfume and still manage to smell like grapefruit.  And wearing red is good because female monkeys flush red when they are ready to mate.  (Really it said this.)

Whisper in his right ear because he is more likely to respond positively to what you say there since this ear is connected to the left-brain, which absorbs information.

Oh yeah, and wear high heels so you look long, lean and like you have little feet.  Those little feet somehow make your face look prettier.

So, what I want to know is: do you have to continue to sit whispering into his right ear, eating grapefruit and keeping him hungry in order to maintain such a deeply thoughtful relationship?  And when you stand up on those long lean legs in the high heels on your tiny feet, how low do you have to stoop in order to look up into his face?

On a more positive note, perhaps the right ear thing might be useful for peace negotiators to know.

What will be, will be.

In the end it doesn’t matter what I think, or want to think, the truth will prevail. 

Global warming?  Ozone layers?  Deforestation?  Space?  God?  And a million other things?

In the end “what will be, will be,” as the old song goes.  You really can’t fool Mother Nature.

It seems you can fool human beings.  Once upon a time isn’t just for little girls anymore.  We have become a species whose hubris is so huge that we think we can reinvent reality.

And you can...

... but eventually time wins out.