The think it method

I used to have so many accidents as a child.  I was always the kid who spilled her hot chocolate at the lodge when I was a Brownie, or tripped playing jump rope when it was my turn to run out.

It wasn’t a whole lot better as a teenager.  I was terrified I would make some mistake in my solo at concerts and I can’t tell you how many times that happened.

I was pretty much full-grown before I realized that all those things I thought about tended to be the thing that happened.  It was almost like I was hexing myself.  As soon as that thought occurred to me I decided to try the opposite. 

Instead of, “I hope I don’t have an accident on this ice.”  I thought, “I am going to drive straight to school and it will be both safe and easy.”

It helped when I had children too.  Instead of picturing them lying beside a road somewhere I always tried to picture them driving carefully home.

It’s almost second nature now, but sometimes I still have to work at it.  It’s plain old-fashioned positive thinking, but you know what?  It really seems to work most of the time.

Method and Madness

I cannot make other people do what I want. 

I can decide what I will do.

In fact, I am responsible for both what I do and what I don’t do.  Both of these things are powerful tools when used correctly.

It is having the courage to decide what is right and what is not that is hard.  I can’t count on the world backing me up, or feeling good about everything.  All I can do is make an educated, intelligent decision and move forward.

Sometimes love makes hard decisions and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, but I can tell you one thing:  if something is not working you don’t keep doing it!

Everything takes time.  Adjusting to new rules, new routines, new apartments, can be difficult for me, so I set a time that I will live with it and then reevaluate it again. 

There will be times when something becomes obvious beyond a doubt and I have to change my mind early, but that has only happened once that I can think of. 

In the long run life is better not only when there is method, but also perseverance in the madness.

To everything there is a season

There is a time and a place for everything and until that time comes nothing much else seems to matter.

Deaf ears cannot hear.

Blind eyes cannot see.

Broken hearts grab frantically at any hope.

Until the time is right, too much of anything is not only pointless it is dangerous.  It is the trickster trying to prove something is being done that will change things, but the tea table is set with plastic food and empty cups.  It feeds a body hope until it dies of starvation.

There is a time to do nothing, a time to wait, a time to simply be there ready to pick up the pieces when all is said and done.

Out of the pieces new lives begin.

Mostly Hearsay

I find people’s need to label each other disconcerting.  It seems to be more of a comfort tactic than anything else I can figure out.

If I can name the monster it is less frightening.  If I can name the kid next door he is no longer a stranger. 

I don’t find much comfort in labels because I have mostly found them to be pretty inaccurate and dependent on so many variables.

I am an experience you may have if and when we meet. 

All the other descriptions are mostly hearsay!

I get high when I help others

I always want to think the best of the people I love.  I want to believe they are telling me the truth and that they are doing the things they say they are doing.  I want to support them as they recover and most other people do too.

There is a remarkable camaraderie in banding together to help someone.  It’s that old it takes a village to raise a child syndrome.  We like the idea that we are one big family, all willing to work together to make things right.

I want to be realistic too.  Everyone back slides and everyone deserves a second chance, maybe even a third or fourth, but there comes a point where being realistic requires exactly that.  How many times is too many?  When is it time to just step away and let the miscreant climb back up by themselves, allow them to get a feel for the rope and the work required to make it on their own?

At what point is the helping more about me than the person I think I am helping?  What do I get out of rescuing someone not once, or twice, or even twenty times?  Is my addiction rescuing them?   Am I the role model they are using to justify their behavior?

There are a million ways to justify poor choices.

The question I need to ask myself is why I am willing to sacrifice not just my own life, but the lives of the innocent children caught in the middle by aiding and abetting someone who has been given every possible chance for nearly twenty years?

It is a situation where everyone loses, again and again and again and again………..

are the luckiest people...

How anyone can believe,  that the exchange of thoughts, feelings, and ideas in writing is less whether it is written on paper and stamped and sent from hand to hand, or in an email and sent through the universe untouched by any hands except those who type them and perhaps answer them, is beyond me.

Written words escape time.  They are not bound by the frailties of human bodies, or circumstances of almost any sort.  Kept to themselves they are possibly the most honest way for two minds to meet without the encumbrances of any social mores.

Like anything else they can be used for good or bad, but to believe they are less than because they are not face-to-face is a gross misunderstanding of what is possible.  All that is not possible is physical contact.  Everything else has the possibility of being much more intimate and clear.

History is full of letter writers whose most personal thoughts are now saved for the ages.  How little we would know of real life and real people had they not written it down.  In today’s world of fantasy and film, novels and television sized reality programs, the truth of our world is twisted to entertain.  One’s personal emails and letters are not chained to this distortion.  They may be the only link to today’s actual reality for future generations.

There is a vast difference between texting that disappears and twittering that is one more form of entertainment and emails between friends, although I suppose there doesn’t have to be.

In the long run, anyone who has someone they can share their most innermost thoughts with and not be afraid of being misunderstood or given up as lost is luckier than most of the people I know.

A moment in time

Once upon a dreary Thursday…before I pondered eating or thirsting…or stealing Poe’s poetry to write My Thots, I received some other thoughts that fired me up and turned what might have been a rather dull day into a wonderful bright one.

A creative mind is amazingly prone to little black outs.  Places where what is used to write entertaining bits of flotsam is totally disconnected from its owner’s life, leaving a sort of black hole.  I suppose that is not news, nor is it unusual, but it is always a wonderful moment when I catch myself before slipping into one of those holes.

Today is one of those days!

Young minds

I love adventures!

I must admit the kinds of adventures I love now are not the same as when I was much younger.  Back then I wanted to hike into unknown places and discover strange anomalies.

I still love to venture into unknown places, but instead of forests and mountains, I have turned to buildings and books, or even the computer.  The thrill seeking feeling of sliding down a natural waterfall has been replaced with more cerebral things and there is a reason for that.  My bones and muscles are not as resilient as they once were.  A simple strain takes months even years to heal instead of weeks.

I think human beings love fear, but I also think that works against us.  We dramatize everything to make it seem more dark and complicated than it is. Every day there is a new target date for something that just might destroy the world as we know it.  Nothing like a disaster to pull people together, except….

Fear mongering scares some people much more than others.  In an attempt to sound all knowing and wise beyond comprehension people have talked about the computer like it is big brother’s first step into the house.  It might be, but there is no reason it has to be.  The computer only has the power you give it.

You can pretty much do what you like on the Internet and as long as you don’t give anyone your charge card numbers, or bank information, financially you are pretty safe.  You just don’t get something for nothing.  You have to pay for it, so one way to be sure you are safe, if you are worried about that, it to play it safe.  Just look. Beyond that you need to be careful, but it is a choice.

It is the same thing when using your own computer.  When I got mine the man told me I couldn’t do anything to it that would hurt it and I immediately locked the whole thing completely up.  But he was right.  He fixed it and it was just like new.  After a while I became so confident that I discovered even I could fix a lot of things the same way Grandpa fixed cars and small appliances, by fiddling around and trying different things.

My eighteen-month-old granddaughter looks at a computer the same way she looks at her building blocks.  She watches for clues about how to use it, then digs in.  She isn’t really allowed to do that yet.  Children must be watched because they can connect with unsavory sorts online, but other than that a computer is so easy a child can use it.  And they do!

A computer can bring the world to an invalid who might be starving for some kind of intellectual stimulation, or social interaction.  It’s a shame when fear gets in the way of that.  Everyone should have this window to the world and I think in the future it will be as natural to have a computer as it is to have a telephone.

No one will be forced to sit mindlessly in front of a television, they will have something that responds to what they do and that will keep minds young much longer.

Beware of the human

 

All the talk about love, charity and happiness sort of falls short when I look at what people really say and do and appear to want. 

It’s a good gig, this loving goodness and kindness, but it appears that it is also just that for a great many people.  Otherwise no one would care about most of the stuff I see listed under the guise of news.

A man sings the Star Spangled Banner at a sports event and it is billed as the absolute worst.  I listened to it and found it better than many of the mangled, “creative” versions I’ve heard so many times before. 

The lives and loves of anyone in the public eye are scrutinized for any possible foible or flaw regardless of whatever else is going on. 

It is the person who does the most dastardly deed who is apparently most news worthy.

I’d like to think all of this is because we just take goodness for granted, or assume that good things, or at least, worthy things, people are doing are so well known and understood we don’t want or need to know about them, but I know that isn’t true.

We are the same people who sat in the Coliseums of the past and flocked to hangings, burnings and eviscerations.  Frightening little beasts.

The missing link

I am missing something.  I’m not quite sure what it is, but there is a fundamental piece of wisdom that the universe is trying to impart that is not getting through.

I look at my granddaughter.  Her first impulse is to hug something or kiss it.  Of course you will say she is not quite two so she doesn’t know how dangerous the world is.  That is true, but her very nature is to be kind and loving. 

Imagine a generation of children who remain that way.  They eat and play and take what they need without any thought of hoarding unneeded stuff or finding one up-man-ship a satisfying way of being. 

Instead of finding joy in winning, coming in first awakens a need to help the other person reach the same level.  Instead of feeling anger when hurt, pain awakens the consciousness to how others are experiencing hurtful things and creates a place to repair whatever caused that hurt.

It’s not the American way.  We are hardscrabble folks who get to the top by climbing over every obstacle, even the people.  Now the top is starting to crumble, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could open our eyes to the beauty of that valley below where life doesn’t have to be one long moment of clinging to the edge by our fingernails while rocks poke us and people stomp on our fingers?

It’s dangerous to think that way.  Our very nature as animals says it is a dog eat dog world and the theory of survival of the fittest is how evolution weeds out the weak, but maybe someday we can rise above our animal instincts and become truly civilized.

The definition of strong has changed some from simply having the strongest muscles to having the strongest mind too.  Maybe that means there is hope for us yet.

Ready for transport

If I were a star ship my dreams would be the transporter room.

What a room that is!  It not only takes me to different locations, it transports me forwards and backwards in time and improvises scenarios based on both the past and the future.  Sort of a transporter-holodeck all wrapped up into one.

The bad thing is that I don’t get to program what goes on.  I have to take potluck and lately the pot has been a bit dark.  Last night I couldn’t tell if there were cobwebs hanging from the walls and ceilings or if they were rotted netting that was disintegrating from time and dust.  Neither one was particularly wonderful to think about.

A dream like that really holds me back. 

I leave the transporter room carrying a sort of smoggy cloud that hangs over me even when I open my computer and gaze out at the rest of the world, making it hard to write happy little thoughts.

I wrote several this morning.  In fact there was a virtual buffet of thots added to my computer this morning!  But not one was really palatable enough to send out into the world. 

I know some people can direct their dreams.  I can influence mine, but I don’t seem to have the final power of directory.  Assuming they are more than an undigested bit of beef, or histrionics contrived to get my own way, my dreams have decided to go where no one wants to go…

Back into the past to clean out the cobwebs, no matter what they are made of...

 

What do you think

I’ve always wondered how people know what is good.

I don’t mean good and evil type good.  I mean good movies, good books, good looks.

Obviously some of it is simply preference and some of it is giving over the decision to a person who appears better qualified to make that decision, but there are an awful lot of people who don’t seem to think about it like I do.   They appear to “know” right away what is good and what is not.

I am never absolutely sure anything I do will be perceived as good or worthy.  In fact I am often at odds with judgments on my own work.  What I think is truly good can be dismissed by other people without even a wink in my direction and what I think is good, but not my best can be lauded beyond my understanding.

This is one of the more disturbing parts of creating anything I think, trying to figure out where that line is drawn and how.  Sometimes I wish there was a list of absolutes for excellence and there is, but it surely isn’t long enough because, as far as I can figure out, it is mostly technical.  The interesting part is never really defined so that I can understand it.

I suppose that is the difference between artists and others.  The artist just does what they do no matter what.  Emily Dickinson wrote poetry.  Musicians play their music even when no one is listening.  Van Gogh kept on painting.  Writers keep on writing.

Maybe the real gauge is not what other’s think but what I think... but that opens a whole new set of thoughts.

Listen to the children

So many things to learn and I am still learning from the children.  They are the most reliable you know.  The things that come through those mouths seldom have hidden meanings.

To be childlike is perhaps the greatest thing there is.

It is not the same thing as ignorance, or being daft.  It is a clarity of thought that is as yet unmarked by a need or even knowledge of control.

Children will tell tiny lies to keep out of trouble, but they are usually so blatant they are almost truthful in their saying.

The important things come out with no plotting or planning  what so ever.

One on one

Anyone who knows me knows that I like to keep things simple.  It is almost a compulsion on my part.  Remember that old saying that was popular in the eighties?  “The winner is the one who dies with the most (quilting material, dolls, coins, whatever thing it was you collected.)”  I am not that person.

I do have and like “things,” but not for the sake of having a bunch of them.  One is usually enough.  Two feels burdensome to me and three is overwhelming.  On the flip side, I may use enough words talking about that one thing or all my “things” that you’d think I have a million.

I do have a lot of books, most of them out in North Carolina, although my bookshelves are gathering stacks again, and I do have a lot of pictures.  Those are about the only “things” I collect and even they must be something I love.

For me life is like a canvas and since I am not good at painting lots of things, I need each canvas to really focus on and set apart what is on it.  I have a small sort of étagère and each shelf has one object set off by one other.  I could sit and gaze at these for hours.  Putting fifty things of similar quality and style would only make me avoid the confusion of looking at them.

I feel the same way about people.  My favorite way to enjoy people is one at a time.  I appreciate a group of like minds occasionally, or find it entertaining to go somewhere with a group, but if I really like you and want to spend time with you, I prefer it to be alone.

There is no competition when there are just two of us.  I can give you all my attention.  Enjoy all of your little nuances.  If I honestly like you, I want to be alone with you, it is an entirely different perspective.

On the flip side there are people I never want to be alone with!

One on one

Anyone who knows me knows that I like to keep things simple.  It is almost a compulsion on my part.  Remember that old saying that was popular in the eighties?  “The winner is the one who dies with the most (quilting material, dolls, coins, whatever thing it was you collected.)”  I am not that person.

I do have and like “things,” but not for the sake of having a bunch of them.  One is usually enough.  Two feels burdensome to me and three is overwhelming.  On the flip side, I may use enough words talking about that one thing or all my “things” that you’d think I have a million.

I do have a lot of books, most of them out in North Carolina, although my bookshelves are gathering stacks again, and I do have a lot of pictures.  Those are about the only “things” I collect and even they must be something I love.

For me life is like a canvas and since I am not good at painting lots of things, I need each canvas to really focus on and set apart what is on it.  I have a small sort of étagère and each shelf has one object set off by one other.  I could sit and gaze at these for hours.  Putting fifty things of similar quality and style would only make me avoid the confusion of looking at them.

I feel the same way about people.  My favorite way to enjoy people is one at a time.  I appreciate a group of like minds occasionally, or find it entertaining to go somewhere with a group, but if I really like you and want to spend time with you, I prefer it to be alone.

There is no competition when there are just two of us.  I can give you all my attention.  Enjoy all of your little nuances.  If I honestly like you, I want to be alone with you, it is an entirely different perspective.

On the flip side there are people I never want to be alone with!

Just wanted to let you know....

Words are important to me.  Like using just the right amount of salt and pepper, the right word enhances what I want to convey and the wrong one absolutely destroys the message.

For example: if someone is having a really bad day and I want to comment, how do I say what I am thinking as concisely as possible without losing the oomph behind the words?

The reasons for being concise in today’s social networking world are numerous, but the feelings are just as deep and broad as ever.

My first thoughts are things like:  poor baby, or I’m sorry sweet pea, but these are too personal for public consumption.

Next come:  that’s awful, or oh no, but these are reruns of other’s words and I am loathe to do that.

Finally come the alliterative ones, but it turns out that there is really nothing alliterative that says what I want to say and goes with Wednesday.

So I scrap concise and refraining from public personal declarations; I stop worrying about repeating what others have already said and even give up on clever things like alliteration or some other kind of tricky combination…

Then I write a whole thot about it and hope the feelings are understood.

Philosophy in a nutty shell

We human beings seem to love little phrases that simplify life down to a philosophy based on five words or less.  No pain, no gain.  Go with the flow.  Rise to the occasion.

Not bad ways to perk up a bad moment or two, but rather risky in the long run, because we also have a tendency to read more into these little bits of flotsam than is there.

Then things like no pain, no gain, become twisted into suffering is good for the soul, or what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, or follow the crowd, or living in the here and now precludes having to plan for anything.  Like modern art these things may be intriguing, but I have to ask myself, “Am I really wanting to base a lifetime of living on such simplistic philosophies?”

The answer is pretty clear for me.  I do not.  It may be enough to just do it when I buy a pair of athletic shoes, but if I am perched on the edge of a precipice and considering making a leap of faith, do I really want to just do it? 

Pain doesn’t guarantee gain, suffering sometimes produces twisted souls and following the crowd can be dangerous, boring and counter productive.  Even blooming where you are planted is not always the best advice.  There are times when you need to get out of Dodge!

If you need to narrow life down to a catchphrase I suppose I would pick, “Think!”  But even using that as a springboard for everything is still pretty risky.  The way is simply not that simple!

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” 

Home

There’s no place like home.  There’s no place like home!  There’s really no place like home!

Once I figured out where home really was, I couldn’t believe how good it was.

It’s the place where my bed holds my pillow and my chair is so familiar I would recognize it in the middle of the night with both eyes closed.

Only at home can I let down my hair even when I hardly have any, or enjoy the silence even when I’m lonely.

Home is where I find myself when my heart overflows and the pictures in my head are brighter and bigger and better than anywhere else!

Home is here!

I come to the garden...

Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of being able to be myself!

Imagine being able to tear down all facades, rip off all the masks and know that I am not only acceptable, but wanted!

Places like this are islands in the insanity of living and my chain of islands is slightly larger than it used to be.  For that I am so grateful.  

Here's hoping that you find these little gardens of serenity in your life also!

 

an undigested bit of beef....

Did you ever dream you might be taking life too literally?

Last night I dreamed I was at the zoo with a large tour group made up of all my family and friends and you wouldn’t believe who I believed were some of my friends!

I sneaked away from the group with my friend John who used to be a conductor.  He just leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Shall we step outside during the intermission?”  And when I nodded, he added. “And not come back?”

We discovered a trap door and climbed up into a huge attic that had a grand piano sitting right in the middle of it.  He told me to play and I said I couldn’t.  That was par for the course and I played anyway, also par for the course, except that he turned the pages.  It was some kind of sheet music and there were problems.  First of all the piano was so quiet I could barely hear it, but most of all, when he turned the pages the music turned into real sheets that slipped out and covered up the piano and made playing impossible. 

I couldn’t bear it so we stopped just as the tour group passed close by.  I joined it and we started seeing cages full of baby bears, all wearing tracking collars.  I wondered why bears in a zoo needed those when one of them scrunched down like a mouse and squeezed out from under the glass front of his cage!  Now I realized there were bears loose all over the place!  I was terrified, but no one else seemed to notice.

One of the bears kept coming towards me and he cut me off from the rest of the group.  I realized this was because he was a tracking bear and I scooted down a ramp in what now appeared to a huge building full of different levels, moving escalators and staircases, kind of like an industrial mall, or Alcatraz instead of a zoo.

Lest you think this dream went on forever I found myself in a small room with lots of other parents and Whoopi Goldberg, another one of my “friends!”  She told us she could teach us to handle our cubs more effectively and would call each of us when it was our turn.  All we had to do was write down our phone number and give it back to her.  She passed out wrinkled up baggies and magic markers for this purpose and I spent the rest of the dream trying to remember my telephone number and write it down on a wrinkled piece of plastic with a marker that barely made a mark and when it did, my hand smeared it, or erased it almost immediately.  But I kept trying.  Not because I had any cubs, but I desperately wanted to talk to Whoopi!

Cozy

I live in a cozy, and cozy is a euphemism for teeny tiny, apartment.  Three people in here are like putting three guinea pigs in a one-hamster cage and due to the impending snowstorm,  I had two guests.

Since they are family, each one has their own idiosyncrasies, which makes it more interesting.  We found ourselves packed head to tail in the living room trying to eat dinner, watch television, and play Words With Friends on three separate devices, mine being the largest, my computer.

It was like living on an electrical octopus.  Cords ran everywhere as each person tried to charge up his or her electronic devices, but the good thing was that I could turn the heat off.  I now know that my apartment heats up quite nicely on three human bodies.  No furnace required.

Sleeping was interesting.  One person couldn’t sleep with any noise or light.  Another needed the television on and I escaped to my bedroom leaving them to battle it out.  Until….I woke up in the middle of the night.  It seems infomercials are twice as loud as regular programming and Carol Burnett’s voice isn’t half as funny when you can’t see her and are trying to sleep.

Both of my guests slept like the dead while I skulked around the dark living room trying to find the remote control for the TV.  I thought if I woke no one up – no one would miss the television.  The remote was nowhere in sight and I was reluctant to go rummaging through someone else’s clothing and bedding while they were asleep.  I went back to bed, but it was useless.  I had to get up and go back for a second look.

This time my guest woke up and obligingly turned off the TV before going back to sleep almost instantly.  I, on the other hand was now up.  I tried to sleep.  I read.  I played with my teddy bear.  I lay there in the dark waiting to see when the snow started outside.

I fell asleep just as they got up.  I never heard them leave, but they’re coming back tonight.

Variety is not always the spice of life

There are people in this world I always look forward to seeing and hearing from and there are others I do not.

I think the difference is in the way we communicate.

Thinking about some people doesn’t affect me one way or another.  They are people I interact with on some level that is simply utilitarian, or at least innocuous enough that they elicit no real feelings.

Thinking about others fills me with warmth.  These are the people I find interesting and responsive, the ones who are a joy to talk with or be around.

But there are some people who are so evasive and unreliable they can ruin my day with a single sentence.  They seldom call unless they want something from me and even if I say they can have it, they may not show up to get it, leaving me waiting and waiting and waiting.   If they do show up, they may not be the least bit appreciative or truly open and friendly.  I dread these interactions.

Today I am waiting.

Fatal Attractions

Some people attract bad luck like a magnet does iron filings.

If there are two possibilities, these people always seem to land on the worst one.  Hands down, they are guaranteed to have trouble!

I used to think they were just unlucky, but after today I really do believe that there are people who almost prefer the hard way. 

Rather than choose to walk uphill for a short time, they live their entire lives in a skid down a rocky slope, proclaiming how much they like it as they tear the skin from their bones and drag their children behind them.

And even when they claim to hate something, they just keep on doing the same things over and over again.

You'd think they would, at least, want to set their children free.  Instead they build monuments to the disasters in their lives and bow before them with great sincerity.

Our language is so different that we cannot even communicate.  I don't know how to help them.  Maybe they don't want help.  

Could this be true?  

What in the world!

Living consciously is a great eye opener.  I notice things I might have let pass me by before!  Strange coincidences occur all the time and whether I choose to believe they are synchronicity or flukes doesn’t really matter.  What does matter is that they happen.

They happen with such regularity that I am often embarrassed to tell even my bestest friend in all the world.

George Burns said everyone needs a reason to get out of bed.  Well, I need more than a reason, sometimes I need someone to come over and hoist me up!  Whatever the reasons for that are, this morning was one of those days when I really needed to be up and going and just couldn’t make myself stir.  Suddenly, right at the exact time I had planned on getting up, my cell phone dinged.  It was a totally unexpected text from my friend at a time neither one of us would normally have been communicating, just saying, “Have a good day.”  Simple.  But exactly what I needed when I needed it.  I leaped from my bed looking for my glasses so I could read it.  I was up!

Last night I was watching a television program when suddenly my thoughts turned to a subject that was totally out of context.  It was a strange and compelling thought that made me get up and go do something that made no real sense until later in the evening when I talked to my friend.

This all happened in the last fifteen hours, but it is the story of my life.  Who needs fairytales and epic adventures when the real world is like this!

This land is your land…..

Anyone who might really solve the problems that plague our country will never be popular enough to be elected.

As much as most Americans claim to want a balanced budget, a real solution for world peace and equality for all, when push comes to shove they tend to vote for the things that please them more personally.

Personal agendas sabotage big decisions.  That is why we elect people to make those decisions for us.  I suspect our system was never perfect, but that it worked a little better in the beginning than it does now.

With all of the electronic media making every promise, smile, taunt and charismatic appeal available to everyone who can vote, we eliminate the small town knowledge that illuminated a man’s footprints back in the earliest days of our country.  Most, if not all, of our presidential candidates are politicians, men whose job it is to be liked.

Honestly, the more people who like you, the less likely you are to be standing on solid ground when it comes to unpopular topics.

We’ve dug in so deep now I don’t know what the solution is.

Nothing mechanical about me

Sometimes life overwhelms me! 

Lately, though, it has been a good kind of overwhelming.  So many people that when I go to sleep I dream about them, but in that crazy jigsaw way of looking at things that only dreams have.

Imagine a house with three bedrooms in one hallway, one from each of three different homes you have lived in!  Or that after writing a paper, I had a friend who is an English Professor read it and he signed a long cash register receipt stating that he had no reason to state it was an “equitable and worthy paper, before I turned it in to my teacher.”  Or that my grandson, who was still a baby, couldn’t talk yet but could walk and was going to kindergarten.  Or my dog learned to go to the bathroom in a doggie pottie that attached to the wall somehow.

Then came the emotions!  I was mad at my sister because she gave me a room where my queen sized bed wouldn’t fit and she was so mad at me she crushed out her cigarette on my table, in my cupcake and right in the middle of my mashed potatoes!  In the real world my sister has never even contemplated smoking a cigarette!  And the professor who was checking my paper?  He invented some kind of pneumatic suction machine to suck the wrong letters out of my writing.  It had one for big letters and one for small ones.  The big one exploded!  I was so terrified I woke up.

I went back to sleep and my dog started teaching me Spanish only I couldn’t understand him so he tried singing it to me and when I couldn’t get that he went to the bathroom on the floor underneath his potty machine.

Nights like this just wear me out.  They have just enough familiar faces, both human and canine that I wake up unsure if it was a dream.  I looked at my door and wondered where I was!  I haven’t been this lost since the old days when our family used to go on vacation.

I need a little knob that turns down my imagination!

Brie and berries

Having my first dinner party of the year, but it’s really lunch.  Either one in my space is going to be close! 

I don’t have to worry about seating.  There are just enough seats for those coming and barely enough space to set out the food.  No worrying about place settings either, they will all be in your lap!

I am having fun playing with the menu.  Last night I dipped strawberries in chocolate, but due to lack of space I did them on the computer desk.  Well, that and I was playing Words With Friends too.  A little chocolate sweetens up the monitor.

This morning I am baking a brie and blackberry appetizer.  There is no room for error here.  It had better turn out!

Of course in the end it won’t matter as long as we all have fun!

Now

Life is good!

When I just sit back and enjoy what is, then the now becomes better and better.

No striving to make it perfect.

No need to direct every move.

There is a certain amount of planning, but that is usually part of the fun for me.  I like to think I am ready for those surprises that come out of nowhere, no matter what they are.

But if I’m not?  Why let let that ruin now?

It’s the now that really counts!

A new year, a new way of being?

For every new year resolution that comes around to stay I suspect there are ten that gently fade away into the land of good intentions gone.  Not gone awry, or gone bad, or even gone crazy – just gone.  Lost.  Forgotten.

In my experience things change, but they seldom change overnight.

Change that lasts comes slowly.  It creeps up and burrows in when I least expect it and often don’t even notice in the beginning.

If I wasn’t an inveterate saver of correspondence and everything else written I might not ever know when some things began or others ended.  But I am one of those hoarders of ideas who likes to go back and look at things that seemed irrelevant at the time.

I like pondering why this thing took root and that one didn’t and my stash of all things written is a good place to study that.

I began last year thinking I had given up much and was carefully working my way into the rut where I would spend the rest of my life.

I begin this one knowing there are not gonna be any ruts in my life.  I’m just not a rutting person.  I may begin them, but in the end I always fly up into the air and float away.  It’s not determination on my part, or conscientious attention, or any other grandiose explanation of why I am who I am that defines me.

I really just am what I am and no amount of anything is likely to change it for too long.

That thought used to bother me when it slipped into the edges of my thoughts, but I think the time has come to just accept it, maybe even celebrate it a little.  I met another one of my species this year and I think, just maybe, we’re uniquely okay!

 

I'm a big kid now

My hope comes through the eyes of children, both big and small.

They see the important things, the details that matter.

Loving, caring, dreaming, being, forgiving, in the eyes of a child anything is possible. 

Their magic is still strong and they believe.

A perfectly beautiful moment

Every so often common sense dictates letting go and starting over

I think people tend to believe this mostly means material things, but I think it needs to go farther than that.

The material things may seem difficult to let go of, but they are things other people can forcibly take away from me, so they were never really mine in the first place.

Letting go of what is only mine is much harder.

Thoughts, fears, habits, prejudices, grudges, all those negative things that can ruin a perfectly beautiful moment from the inside out, are much harder to dispose of.

Even tradition can be a bad thing if it becomes so deeply ingrained that I can’t see over the edges of the rut it leaves me in.

This year I want to concentrate on the beauty of the moment unhampered by past negativity.  I know it won’t be as easy as I want it to be so I have a plan.  Not a really new plan, but one I intend to focus on more intensely this year.

Each time a negative thought rears its ugly head I hope I am able to recognize it and then blow it away on the next breath as something I no longer need.