From the bottom of my heart

She nudges him.  He pushes her.  She laughs too loud.  He speaks as if orating in an auditorium.  I am annoyed.  They stop to hug and wrestle and act, poorly I may add, so the world will notice them and I have to wonder.  What do they want me to notice?

That they have found one another?  I’m not so sure that is any great coup, but perhaps to them it is.  Each of us seems to be constantly searching. 

I wonder about that too.  Are we looking for some missing part, or perhaps just something to enhance what we have?  What do we expect from these connections everyone seems wildly bent on achieving?

There are worse things than being alone and an awful lot of “couples” can tell you what they are.

Reality is much harder to deal with than happily ever after, because what makes people “happy” changes quite frequently and what sounds good in theory can get old fast.

Loving someone else is almost impossible if you've got to jump hurdles and leap tall buildings to get past yourself.  Self love, self understanding, needs to come first.  Once you know who you are, you are ready to get to know someone else.  After all, you can’t really love anyone from the bottom of your heart until you’ve been there.

Packing

I was in third grade when our teacher read Mary Poppins to us for the very first time.  There was no movie out so everything came straight from the pages of that book, through my teacher’s voice and into my imagination.

I dreamed of it for weeks!  I wanted to grow up to be just like her.  I tried to imagine what kind of magic I would pack.

There, laid out on my bed, ready to go would be:

One hundred cuddles, neatly folded

Two boxes of kisses, carefully labeled for night nights, boo boos, and all other occasions

One bottle of medicine that cures everything and tastes like everyone’s favorite thing

A jar of special wishes

One bottomless toy bag filled with things straight from a child’s dreams

A pair of socks, some underclothes and a jacket!

What more could I possibly need?

Except maybe a picnic hamper that never runs out!

Life is about change

I watched the most delightful movie tonight, The Best Marigold Hotel, and I moved from an unaccustomed bad place back into the good place I generally live in anymore.

I have lost 75 pounds and a great deal of extraneous baggage over the past two years and this movie just brought it all into focus.  “All will be well in the end and if all is not well, then it isn’t the end yet!”  And, “Sometimes what we are most afraid of is not that things will not change but that they will.  Life is about change.”  Neither one of these sentences is an exact quote, but the gist is here.

I blew my diet watching this movie, not because of the movie, but because of the feelings that preceded it.  Normally that would send me into a real funk, but not tonight.  Tonight I feel so good!

I put the movie on pause, jumped in my car and made a quick trip to the third world Kroger where I bought two boxes of the most decadent, perfect, delicious, outrageous ice cream bars they make.  Then I came home and ate one box while I finished the movie.

I’ll share the other box with my daughter and my sister tomorrow after lunch.  Then on Monday night I will pack my car and set off on my first real adventure in several years!  It has been a long time coming, but so worth the wait.

If you do not hear from me much next week please do not be concerned.  Know that I am out gathering thots and getting ready for whatever’s coming next.

Perception

Sometimes a door closes so quietly I think it is still open.

That is a scary phenomenon because if I don’t know it is closed I may walk right into it, or worse! 

Of course there is always the possibility that I am overreacting.  Every time I run into a wall I can think there is a closed door when I am only in the wrong place!

Not knowing is the worst thing of all.  It makes me inch along like a snail trying to distinguish between doors I closed, doors someone else closed and wondering if I am only lost.

Mute with wonder

I wish I could separate my life into neat little packets.  It would be so much easier to remember things, to learn them and relate them to the things I am supposed to. 

But my life is always spherical, whole, filled with depth and nuances and memories.  I don’t remember a line here or a word there.  I remember the feeling, the picture, the scene that soaked me up.  I remember moments from before one might think it possible, but I have trouble remembering the name of the person I met yesterday.

Each moment draws me in when I recall it and I melt slowly into thoughts of other times, similar places, familiar feelings.  It is all much too complicated to put down in one line or less.  Usually not even possible to mold into one thot or less!

I roll along “like a rolling stone” gathering mossy bits of history and songs and poetry and books and films and babbling, not like the mynah bird who is only repeating what it has heard, but like a pin cushion pierced by a million pins who is mute with wonder.

Childish people

I will now write my thot

You will see something new

Two Things.  And I call them

Thot One and Thot Two!

A little play on Dr. Seuss, but you’d be surprised how much of my life is inspired by books for children.  I actually do have two stock places saved for writing thots on my computer and I really do call them thot1 and thot2, because they are places where I can jot down ideas as well as flesh them out.

You can bamboozle a lot of adults with a mish mash of words.  Use enough of them, or make them big enough or long enough and some folks think you really know!

Young children cut to the chase.  They aren’t afraid to say, “What do you mean?”  Or, “Huh?”  They aren’t reluctant to giggle when they think you are trying to be funny and fool them either, but they are kind.

We seem to be born with the ability to see through to the truth and love people for who they are.  Then the world slowly chisels that part off and puts a coat of veneer over what is left.

There are a few people who manage to avoid this and I adore them!  If you can earn your place in the adult world without losing your sense of truth and love and beauty you are truly one of the best.

Time Warp

I am finding life very frustrating right now.  I’ve lost the same three pounds and gained them back again, over and over for nearly three weeks.  Time is crawling by in what almost seems reverse motion.  Money is flying out the door like gnats seeking out new bananas.  It feels like my shirts are getting shorter and my jeans tighter.

My audio book died while I was walking three blocks from home and the school needs me to fill in for people who are on vacation.  Even the regular book I am reading seems to be stuck in a morbid place that is going nowhere.

I am caught in a vicious time warp, an Alice in Wonderland type place that tests my patience and perseverance.  Once more I find myself chanting the old familiar mantra.

“This too will pass.”

I don’t want to wish my life away, but I’m willing to give up this little piece of it where I do not appear to be accomplishing anything useful, or good, or even fun.

I wish I could just go to sleep and wake up next Tuesday.

Stress

No one else can define my stress. 

No one else can define my stress.

It bears repeating, because I am a creature who is easily stressed.  I was the kid who was always sick by the time we left for vacation because I was so excited about it for too long.  I was the mom who slept even less than her baby because I just knew he was going to wake up as soon I fell asleep.  It took me so long to do that that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I am often tired on mornings when I need to rise early, because I lie awake the night before thinking, “I need to sleep!”

No one needs to tell me these things are counter intuitive to my health.  I know it!  And that old GI Joe cartoon that said, “Knowing is half the battle” was only half right!  I’ve known all these things for years and I’ve tried all sorts of ways of dealing with them.  Some work.  Most don’t, they simply force the stress underground.  I am, unfortunately, totally capable of multi tasking. 

In the past the stress sent up red flags seeking help: cold sores, pimples, hives, and sometimes whole illnesses because I became so depleted I was vulnerable to everything that passed by.   I dealt with each one by treating the manifestation.  Lysine for cold sores, acne medicine, Benedryl, asprin, whatever it took to survive.

Honestly things are not much different now even though one might think my life is stress free.  It’s not.  Everything, good or bad, can be stressful for me.  After 62 years in this body I finally have to admit it.  There is no getting around it.  Pretending otherwise just doesn’t change anything.

But the flip side is that I also find almost everything to be full of wonder and amazing.  This super sensitivity that make me vulnerable also makes me aware and open and alive.  I am easily touched by life and everything that comes with it.

My coping techniques are pretty straightforward.  I just try to focus on what is in front of me, savoring the moment.  And one of the beautiful things about savoring is that it takes up so much space that sometimes the stress gets lost.

Fatal Flaw

Sometimes I am surprised at the irony of my feelings.

I go to extremes to improve me.  I work on both my mind and body, striving to make them the best I can, wanting to be the best I can.

And for whom do I do this?

I know I am supposed to say me.

But the truth is I do it for those I love.  Don’t misunderstand, I am pleased with the results, but I am even happier when those I love notice and are proud or happy about it.

The flip side of this is that I don’t really want or expect them to do the same thing.  I love them for exactly who they are and it doesn’t really matter to me what they look like, or do, as long as they are healthy and happy.

Why can’t I believe everyone else feels the same way?

Perhaps it is experience and perhaps it is something else.  Either way these feelings have been the sometimes nearly fatal flaw that have followed me all my life.

Musings in the park

Back to walking in my park and back to seeing people again.

I walked just before noon last Tuesday and there was only one other person there.  Tall, thin, with brownish gray hair combed over, he wore tanish brown slacks and a short leather jacket. 

Obviously older, he was smoking a cigarette and walking down the center part of the park with a sort of lazy stroll.  He looked familiar, like perhaps a movie star I had seen before, or someone famous enough for me to recognize his face.

As I neared the other side, he emerged and crossed in front of me, heading over to Wesleyan University and I wanted to call out his name, to verify what I was pretty sure of now, but I didn’t.

Instead I stood like the student over at the bus stop, staring.  Both of us watching the man I would stake my life was Sam Shepard!  I went home and looked up the university website trying to see if he was scheduled to be there that day, but found nothing about it.

Yesterday I was walking along, listening to Book III of The Aeneid with visions of Maurice Sendak flowing through my head!  Virgil evoking Sendak!

I saw the Cyclopes, wild things, gnashing teeth, storming down through the woods, rushing down the mountain to crowd the shore and I thought how little we change as we morph from children to adults.  We still want our monsters roaring and dangerous, but vulnerable and stoppable.  An ocean, a religious symbol, some “thing” must be there to protect us from that dark side of ourselves whose presence always lurks within us.

Still, my life is mostly a walk in the park anymore.

Cold and Dreamy

I woke up early in the morning; cold, disoriented, needing to make a trip to the bathroom and reluctant to go because I couldn’t bear the thought of climbing out from under the pile of covers on my bed and because of the dream…a dream where a child was blamed for an adult’s bad behavior and where I intervened in a rather violent way.  Shocked by my own violence and yet convinced that I had done the right thing I found myself in a garden – and then awakened to this foggy chill.

At last, throwing back the quilts and sheets I threw my legs over the side of the bed, fishing for my slippers and dashed across the sloping hall into the pool of light in my bathroom.  Where shivering with cold I realized it was time to turn the furnace on!

Not even officially autumn and I was going to turn the furnace on!  I knew where the thermostat was.  I had located it the day before knowing this time was coming, but now was the hour.  I shuffled through the living room in slippers aptly named for the way they carried me and fumbled for the light switch.  Turning on the furnace meant knowing which direction was the word, “Heat.”

Slipping the little lever into that position I turned and looked for the registers.  I have been pondering which ones might be cold air returns and which might expel that blessed warmth that comes when winter approaches and the furnace is fired up.  In this old house there are all sorts of antique grates and grills stashed in odd places, but I remembered one behind the couch that most certainly would be a heat duct.

Too early to be neat or logical, I simply pulled the couch away from the wall and revealed that duct, releasing the heat so that it could flow into the room and not warm the bones of my beautiful red sofa.  Then I rushed back to bed and grabbed Bearnard, pulling him close and pulling the sheets over my head to contain the warm air of my breath and warm up my icy body.

Several hours later I woke up, warm, alert and past the trauma of early morning dreams.  Then my day started in earnest.

Chestnut House

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…

Under the spreading chestnut tree…

Because you are
only
a seed,
chestnut tree…

I don’t know what drew me here, perhaps it was the poetry that lay dormant in my head or the fact that so many have come here before me.  There are no chestnut trees on Chestnut, but there is a house.

Board and brick, glass and stone, bereft of the apron that once graced its sweet façade giving it a bit of dignity, it called to me and I was willing to wait. 

Eight long months I waited after signing the lease and on the ninth month I moved in, a sort of reverse birthing where the house opened up and enfolded me within its self.

The wooden floors groan under my feet, arching their backs like large wooden cats luxuriating in my presence. 

The walls soak up puddles of light where I read and write imbuing me with warmth.

Curtains create a timelessness within.  It could be 2012 or 1912 or perhaps 1890 during the day when no electric lights disturb this gentle giant.

I thought I would grow to love it over time, but it has grown into me.  We are symbiotic.  I can almost feel its tendrils curling around me, nurturing, protecting, caring for me as I care for it, brushing out the cobwebs, dusting the floors, allowing the scent of spring rains and fall leaves to circulate once more.

Sometimes in the morning, as the sun is just beginning to peep over the edge of the earth I lie here listening to the throbbing of a large heart beating quietly in my ears.  Once I thought it was the laundry downstairs, but I think it is only the house.

Grateful that we have found one another, grateful that someone has come to polish its front doors and chase the spiders away, grateful that my mind’s eye sees the missing porch.

It surrounds me and I embrace it.

The Starbucks Diet

I just read about a woman a little older than me losing 76 pounds on the Starbuck’s diet of her own making.  Immediately afterwards a bunch of nay sayers began ripping into her! 

In spite of the fact that she simply counted calories, ate the bistro boxes of fruit, cheese and veggies a lot of the time and choose Starbucks because it was close to where she worked, they found fault saying she could be malnourished or many other people might get bored with eating this way.

Believe me there is nothing less boring to an obese person than losing weight!  It is the literal carrot on the stick that keeps them going when the mirror isn’t being kind and other folks are actually sabotaging their attempts with good hearted but unhelpful “concerns.”

As far as being malnourished, I suspect many people are malnourished in our society where sugary treats, fried food, fast fake food and diets that encourage extreme use of only proteins or carbohydrates are rampant.  So you can be both fat and malnourished.  Eliminating at least one is bound to be healthier and I would opt for losing weight. 

In today’s world it is so easy to think I can buy anything I need, even something that will take off the pounds, but in the end it boils down to motivation.  Team players often want the inclusiveness of clubs and plans to cheer them on.  Loners often find these sources distracting and even destructive because they fixate on the one thing we are trying to stop obsessing over – food!

For me it has been a continually evolving experience, constantly changing the way I exercise or calories I consume.  Cutting my salt intake way down was the first big step.  Eating more vegetables has been the next one.  I count calories and have come to realize that I do not “see” myself realistically at all.  My mirror is not my friend.  In it I saw myself as normal seventy pounds ago and obese now! 

The Internet provides all the resources I need to find out my target weight and count the calories in the food I eat.  My scale feeds me better than any cheering squad when I lose pounds and the sweet comments of family and friends about how I look keeps me glowing.

The real trick is perseverance.  Like everything else in life, what I eat is part of the journey.  I will always have to eat something so I need to learn what really makes me feel my all around best both physically and mentally.

It comes right back to the idea of a healthy mind in a healthy body and if going to Starbucks does it for that woman I am all for her!

Movement

I am amazed at how much food I have eaten in the last two days and the fact that I have lost two pounds doing it!  Part of it is that I am making better choices, both by type and portion, but part of it may just be the amount of exercise I’ve been getting.

It is easy to forget how much work young children are.  My daughter-in-law is almost always carrying close to a thirty-pound child in a front carrier.  If she doesn’t have the baby, she has the two year old there.  I don’t think I could do that, but I have carried one or the other and loved every minute of it.

I have also climbed up and down hay bales, in and out of climbing toys and just simply run around doing all those things one does when she goes out to eat and to the farm and the zoo with babies.  I woke up this morning stiff and sore and happy.

Hopelessly in love

Young children are so sweet.  They are loving and forgiving, accepting and seem to see right through any facades or shams to the person underneath.

These are qualities many adults like to think they have, or want to project out into the world.  It is innocence and youthfulness at its best, but it is rare in people over the age of eight and maybe even younger.

A good actor might pull this off for a while, but mostly it is not something that can be faked.  It’s either there, or its not.  Adults who have it are sometimes mistakenly thought of as slow, or not quite all there, but it can be found in even the brightest among us.

It is just plain goodness and I don’t know who it blesses more, the giver or the receiver.  All I know is that when I meet someone who has it, they steal my heart away and I am hopelessly in love with them forever more.

 

Charmed and charming

I walk around the park in the dusky evening of this sweet September day listening to The Aeneid in the clear deep tones of a great storyteller.  And as he paints a picture of Queen Dido I am completely charmed!

I feel myself walking taller than other women; surrounded by my choirs of nymphs and guards.  I practically smell the incense and air as we ascend to listen to the pleas of my people, to dispense justice, to be a queen!

I feel strong and beautiful and then my heart nearly breaks it is so filled with love for this beautiful boy before me!  I know Aeneus will leave, that I will throw myself onto the pyre and die, but I want that to change.  I want a happy ending!

Slowly the story moves on and I come back to earth, back to the dark little park here in the heartland where Venus and Cupid and all the other gods and goddesses do not walk, or if they do it is so disguised that I do not know them.

And then my feet begin to ache and I am just me walking in the dark after a long day, ready to go home and have a cup of tea.

Challenges

In a world where stress is constantly in the news, often just to sell some product or service that supposedly helps reduce stress I have to admit I find most things stressful!

Whether I was born with this problem, or developed it later is irrelevant for me.  It exists.

As a child I was the kid who was sick by the time we left on vacation because I had been so excited for so long.  Most major holidays were prefaced by a long night of sleeplessness.  Cold sores erupted before pictures, school dances, even my own wedding.  Hives are as much a part of my life as acne is for teenagers.

I have learned to cope.  Lysine is a simple over the counter supplement that keeps cold sores at bay.  Benadryl is my friend.  Meditation helps me unwind and simple breathing techniques keep me sane.

Still, it is like wearing a sweater over goosebumps.  The feelings are always here, ready to eat away at my self-esteem, erupt on my skin, or ruin any situation.  Thoughts pop up in my mind blocking teacher’s voices in class, ministers in church, dialogue in movies, leaving me wondering what I missed.  I am my own worst enemy.

I say this because I don’t think I am all that unique.  This flaw in me is present to some degree in lots of people and while it is often a problem, it should not be a source of shame.  Nor should it be an excuse.

It is a challenge.  Not a simple one, or impossible one, but a challenge to live my life as much in the present as I possibly can, to keep bringing myself back to the task at hand – even if that is only to be cognizant of the beauty in each moment, and accept myself for who I am.

Being kind to others is easier when I can love myself.

It only makes sense

I remember one of my first psychology classes in college when the professors talked about how most people get well no matter what kind of doctor or medicine they use because the body heals itself. 

I have a cold. It runs its course and goes away.  I skin my knee.  The skin repairs itself.  Other things are not so clear-cut and that is when I turn to others for help.  I believe this other can make me better and he does.  Sometimes he offers me medicine or supplements that my body lacks, but often I just have faith in his ability to heal me. 

Athletes have discovered if they visualize their actions they perform better.  If I want to be a concert pianist I know it is going to require hours of practice every day.  If I want to be an author, I need to write, write, write.  If I am trying to shape up, I exercise the parts of my body I want to change.  When I am tired I yawn and go to sleep, when I am afraid the adrenaline surges through my body, when I meditate my body calms itself.   Physical manifestations that are the result of something that seems to start in my mind can be measured in concrete ways.

Just because I don’t understand what is happening does not mean I am not doing it.  We are finite creatures that will eventually disintegrate and die, but I believe each one of us is also a wondrous creature capable of doing what we now think of as miraculous things.

Arthur C. Clark, who had degrees in physics and mathematics as well as being a science fiction writer said:

·  When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 

·  The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. 

·  Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This makes a lot of sense to me.  I am willing to risk exploring the possibilities within my own body and mind because I believe that what I “think” makes a difference.  Discarding negative thoughts and adding positive visualization, meditation and faith in my own abilities to my repertoire of life skills is just as important as the way I eat, breathe and move.

The midnight ride of me

The world is a safer place for women than it used to be, especially a woman who lives alone.

The one night I really enjoy watching television is Monday when three of my favorite shows come on, one after the other.  I wasn’t feeling very good tonight, so I sat wrapped up in a gigantic terrycloth bathrobe, a cup of green tea steaming at my side and barely moved until bedtime.

Then, rising, I brushed my teeth and washed my face, put on my Yertle the Turtle jammies and discovered that the toilet was clogged!  I fiddled and faddled and it became clear that I either had to plunge it or not use it.  Not using it for a whole night is not gonna happen in my house so I went in search of a plunger.

My housemates were all sound asleep judging by the fact that their lights were off and that it was ten past midnight.  I made a hopeful foray into the basement in search of any sort of plunger someone might have left there and realized a trip was in order.

I reluctantly put on enough clothes to be decent and went in search of a plunger.  Leaving my front door unlocked so I didn’t need to turn on the outside light and tell the world no one was home, I only locked the big foyer door and walked around the house to my car.

I left the bedroom light on, so it was a good opportunity to see just how private my room is at night as I passed by it on the driveway.  Getting in my car I drove through silent streets devoid of all traffic except for two police cars until I got over to the far east side.  In my grandmother’s day most women wouldn’t even have had their own cars.  I was grateful for mine.

I was also grateful for my cell phone, which was tucked snugly in my purse.  In a real bind I could call my friend teamaker for help and know someone would come for me.  Good friends are truly blessings in the world of a single woman living alone.

I arrived at the all night super store, grateful this time that some place was even open at this hour and picked out my plunger.  There is a surprising array of them available, but they mostly appeared to be one of two types.  Your basic plunger on a variety of handles or a super plunger for three times the cost.  I decided I probably did not need any Captain Marvel type and went to pay for mine.

Amazing how many people buy three carts of stuff at half past midnight on a week night.  The cashier, who had just turned her light off, took pity on me and offered to let me pay her.  “How’s your night going?”  She asked.

“I’m out buying a plunger at midnight.”  I laughed incredulously.

“At least you have the money to buy it.”  She smiled and I realized she was right.  I am lucky.  I have enough money to be pretty comfortable.  I have a phone, a car, a nice apartment and now a very nice plunger!

 

Yesterday

I was walking through the park yesterday, watching the young people having a cook out and it occurred to me how much time we spend trying to figure out how to fit in.

It was a college party.  Kids stood in a circle tossing the Frisbee from person to person or sat swinging on the swings.  Others gathered around a grill and two long lines sat neatly at picnic tables placed end to end.  The fun looked a bit forced, the faces a bit too excited for what they were doing, but the desire to have fun was certainly there.

They have heard about these days for years.  Now they are trying to figure out what it’s all about.

Sometimes I think adults set kids up in their own need to relive what really wasn’t all that hilariously fun in real life at all.  But we all have to figure it out for ourselves.

And then, as if that isn’t enough, people begin making up other rules about living just to make the pecking order a little more complicated. 

The fight for dominance in the barnyard never seems to die.  Sex, color, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, if it isn’t one thing, we make up another.  Anything to be top dog!

There are pecking levels within pecking levels and the sad part is that in the end, to quote a very bad joke, we all end up dying to get out.

The kids are doing it right.  It’s the journey that counts.  So they stand in lines trying one thing after another attempting to figure out which ones are not being over rated.  I don’t miss that part of being young.

Respect

I hear people making excuses for doing whatever it is they want to do and it always annoys me a little.

It is a by-product of that old martyr syndrome that runs deep in my family.  It is enough to want to take a vacation, or buy whatever it is I want as long as there is enough money and time and the pros and cons are weighed ahead of time.

There is no need to convince others that I “deserve” it.  That always sounds more like a plea for pity than anything else to me.  Pitiful people are annoying.

Whether I really deserve something or not is often irrelevant.  If I am going to go ahead and just do it, or simply take it, or go out and get it-- that matters!  And that is a decision I should make before declaring it to anyone else.

Guilt is an inherited weakness that doesn’t do much to change anything.  It is a by-product of poor decision making in the first place.

Learning to think before I act eliminates a lot of the willy wallying that comes afterwards. 

I love it when someone is straightforward and positive and in control.  I may not agree with them, but I respect them and that goes a long way towards developing good relationships.

Amazing

I stand in front of the window soaking up the sunshine and think how wonderful it is!  I opened the windows last night and slept perfectly!  Autumn is almost here, my favorite time of the year and I am ecstatic!

I’m not sure what it is about Fall that I love more, but I know that I live in exactly the right place to enjoy it.  Big old trees to walk under, long shady walks to walk down, beautiful grassy places where squirrels scamper and play and hide acorns – it just doesn’t get much better than this.

I love the ocean with the constant ebb and flow of waves against the beach.  I love the mountains with their majestic height, but I love this heartland too. 

As a young person I always wanted to be somewhere else, to find the majesty and drama in the unfamiliar, but now something draws me in and I find inestimable comfort in where I am.  Never in my whole life have I been as content or happy or full of wonder as I am right now.

Sometimes I feel like a starving woman sitting at life’s table, greedily gobbling up everything in front of me.   It’s hard to say what I love most.  Once the food helped me get from here to there.  Now here and there help me avoid the food!

It’s all pretty amazing!

Lock Down!

Our high school is locked down!  Parents are advised that no one has been injured and students will be released in groups.  It is such a sad day.

We have reached a place where most children do not have to die from disease or hunger, but a blatant disregard for people is growing.

No one is guilty.  Everyone is right and righteous.  Everyone is only doing what their God tells them is right.  Everyone has a reason for what he or she does.  The world would be so much better if we could just get rid of the riff raff.  You know who they are, all those people who don’t believe what you do, or who didn’t happen to be born in your neighborhood, or social strata, because god knows, if you were a truly good person you would be just like me.  What goes around comes around.

In fact, it is the duty of some higher ups to purge our country of those people who don’t fit in, who are not perfect, who don’t look like those people on television who never seem to work because they are innately wealthy while the poor go around doing drugs and stealing and getting raped.

Is it any wonder our children are growing up believing that the way to solve problems is by killing people and bullying them?  It’s what they are taught by elitist parents and politicians and the extremes of modern media.  Find a scapegoat and do the world a favor!

We are still a very primitive culture, one that believes in sacrifices and revenge, in righteous wrath and brash actions.  Eventually everyone, or someone they love, will be the outcast, the scapegoat, the witch, or commie, or tree hugger, or Typhoid Mary.  And perhaps then, one by one, they will learn how much injustice there really is.

Today I wait, eager to hear from my granddaughter, to know she is really safe and sound in a school where she goes to learn about this world she lives in.

Fan

I was out on the tennis courts.  Hitting balls against the old cracked green backboard in the mid afternoon hours of a muggy heartland afternoon.

Seeking a rhythm of forehand, backhand, forehand….I felt my weight shifting back and forth, my left foot a pivotal point and then it happened!

The first ball went over the top of the fence and into the trees and meadow beyond.  Not so bad I thought quietly going out the gate and into the shade of the fragrant pines.  My eyes searched for that familiar little green orb with no success and that was when I first noticed him.

I discovered my ball about three feet way from where he stood and he never took his eyes off of me. 

“Well, hi there!”  I smiled at him and headed back onto the courts.  He followed and stood just outside the fence, watching as I returned to my practice.

The next time I turned around he was on the court with me!  I’ll admit I was rather tickled at his attention, but he seemed less interested in my hitting the ball than he did by its landing.  Each time a ball hit the ground he immediately ran over to it.

Then, I swear, he looked a little disappointed, or maybe confused and I recognized a fellow intuitive.  Like me he did things because they felt right and they worked.  When I see a tennis ball coming I somehow just know where it will be.  When he sees something fall out of the sky he just knows it must be edible!

We spent quit a bit of time together, that squirrel and I.  He seemed to have no fear of me and except that I was afraid he might bite my hand when I reached out to take my ball from under his nose I loved having him there.

By the people for the people

Politics seem to be the best we know how to do when it comes to running such a big country.  I find that frightening, because politics have nothing to do with right and wrong.  They have to do with getting votes one way or another.

Money talks.  Especially in a culture where most people don’t read and study the issues on their own and like to be hand fed as painlessly as possible.

It seems to me that we are perilously close to a government by the few where the rich make all the decisions for “the good” of the rest of the people. 

As long as everyone tunes in to his or her favorite channel for the “truth” that fits their own needs we are at risk. 

Sometimes it is necessary to step out of our comfort zone and look at things from way back.  The big picture is never as simple as special interests groups would like it to look. 

Don’t believe anyone, especially people who tell you they “know” what God thinks, or what is in your best interests.  If you believe in God you must believe he created this whole world, not just your little corner of it.  Putting God in the corner is never a good idea.

Everyone in our country needs to think long and hard about what is hovering before us, because if we don’t we will get to experience it first hand. 

 

My life

My own hierarchy of needs is pretty simple.  The care and maintenance of me begins like this:

I need to keep my heart beating and my eyes seeing.  Breathing is nice too.

The umbilical between me and my bestest is essential.

A place to live with indoor plumbing, heat, air conditioning and food is a necessity.

Internet access and a reliable phone are right up there.

I need lots of alone time and a few good encounters with people during the course of a week.

Sleep is a mandatory third of my day.

Creativity is woven in and out of all of these things holding them together and binding them to me as I make things with my own mind and hands.

Life with all these things is pretty much perfect, but then it should be!  A lot of the world has no access to any of it.

Miracles

Sometimes I wonder if life is simply what I make it?

Last February and really for the last thirty years I felt fragile.  I didn’t look fragile!  I looked massive and I had reasons.  I’ve always had bad feet and ankles.  My mother told me that when she special ordered high topped shoes for me at age three so I could keep wearing the baby shoes she put on all of us.  She had narrow feet and ankles and wanted to protect us. 

I’ve had a bad heart and trouble breathing for years too, but so did my mother and so does one of my siblings.  Of course they both smoked like chimneys.  I don’t.  I had other problems associated with being in our family and since they were inherited  I was exonerated!

I could ride my bike, but walking as a form of exercise was not a viable solution for me.  I turned into twice the woman I was before thirty before I began to make a slight change.  I started out walking five minutes a day and cutting down on the salt and calories.  Now I walk over an hour a day, lift weights and ride my bike a half hour.  I’m no longer diabetic, no longer have high blood pressure, and I’ve lost 65 pounds.  I still don’t look fragile, because I’m not!  I need to lose another 44 pounds, but I feel much better.

That all sounds pretty simple and straightforward.  Exercise, eat better, lose weight and feel better, but I think that is really not the way it happened.  It was more of a backwards process.  First I felt better then I was able to do the rest. 

All my life there have been conditions.  Conditions that were swaddled in good intentions and misinformation, but ones that made me feel like I was not enough or too much.  Even phrases like God isn’t through with me yet have a rather ominous underlying message that what is here isn’t good enough.  Add expectations or demands from family, friends and lovers to be who they want me to be or think I am and I, a desperate to be perfect and desperate to please you, type of person floundered.

I am sure none of these loving people meant for that to happen.  It was how they were brought up, what they knew and thought and believed.  It was who I was too.

Then I met a disembodied voice that slowly, over time, convinced me that I was perfect exactly the way I was!  I was smart enough, young enough, pretty enough, healthy enough, I was enough!  This voice convinced me that I was more than enough without changing one single thing.

Other people had said it, but I knew they didn’t believe it and neither did I.  It was believing it that made it possible for me to change everything.

Knowing something and believing it is the difference between science and miracles.  The magic comes with the belief.

Introduction To Literature 4812

Imagine a time when there was no television, or movie theater, or computer, a time when the only form of entertainment was live, a play or opera if one was lucky, but more likely a song or story to wile away the long dark hours of the evening.

A good storyteller, worth his weight in gold, wove tales that included those things all people love.  And what do we love?

We love to hear about ourselves, or those people related to us!  We want to be heroes who win over evil and rise above the trials and tribulations other men cannot.  We want romance and intrigue.  We want stories that make us cringe and cry and laugh out loud!

Some of us want to know about history, others about god and the man who can put them both into the same story will double his audience.  

If people really love a story they want to hear more and so other storytellers pick up where one left off and continue on, adding their own twists and talents to a tale once told by someone else.  Sequels are not unique to our generation.

The mythology of days gone by is not much different than ours.   The basic tenets haven’t really changed.   We like to think the quality was better in the past, but for every story that remains, a hundred disappeared forever. 

Which of our stories will still be around 2800 years from now?  What will children read in their literature classes in the year 4812?  Star Wars?  A Good Man Is Hard To Find?  Leaves Of Grass? Endymion?  Hamlet?

I would love to be a fly on that wall and see what survives!

The Fountain of Youth

I don’t feel old.

My children range in age from 33 to 40 and my grandchildren from not quite 1 to 18! 

I still remember holidays with my brothers and sister and cousins as we played with each other and the newest baby in the family.  Later on I remember hanging out with my youngest aunt whose husband was almost more of a brother than an uncle to me.

Now she is a great grandmother!  How can this be?

Grandmas and great grandmas are supposed to be crones, wrinkled and wise with age.  Their backs bent under the weight of long years baking bread and cookies, their eyes dim from sewing under faint lights in the wee small hours of the morning. 

My own grandma ran a business well into her nineties.  She was a notoriously bad cook except when it came to butterscotch pies and a fashionable dresser for as long as she lived. 

I look in the mirror and see silver gray hair on a smiling face.  It is the smile that hides the wrinkles and I have lots to smile about. 

Ponce de Leon supposedly went searching for the fountain of youth, but I may have discovered where it is all on my own.  Hidden deep within the contentment of living, behind the joy of every day, and manifested on a face that finds love in the eyes of people surrounding me lies the elixir that keeps me feeling young.

I don’t feel old.

My children range in age from 33 to 40 and my grandchildren from not quite 1 to 18! 

I still remember holidays with my brothers and sister and cousins as we played with each other and the newest baby in the family.  Later on I remember hanging out with my youngest aunt whose husband was almost more of a brother than an uncle to me.

Now she is a great grandmother!  How can this be?

Grandmas and great grandmas are supposed to be crones, wrinkled and wise with age.  Their backs bent under the weight of long years baking bread and cookies, their eyes dim from sewing under faint lights in the wee small hours of the morning. 

My own grandma ran a business well into her nineties.  She was a notoriously bad cook except when it came to butterscotch pies and a fashionable dresser for as long as she lived. 

I look in the mirror and see silver gray hair on a smiling face.  It is the smile that hides the wrinkles and I have lots to smile about. 

Ponce de Leon supposedly went searching for the fountain of youth, but I may have discovered where it is all on my own.  Hidden deep within the contentment of living, behind the joy of every day, and manifested on a face that finds love in the eyes of people surrounding me lies the elixir that keeps me feeling young.