Let's be real

Listening to the the news in my car today, I realized that I don't trust people who become complacent, or use the excuse, "That's the way it's always been."

Those people scare me, because it seems to me that this is an excuse not to keep learning, not to keep looking for better ways, or not seeing corruption in systems that are not really working.

It is possible to be cute, sweet, lovable and not stereotypically dumb.

When nostalgia is your only frame of reference you are both in trouble and a danger to those around you.

Otherwise we might still be living in caves, dying before forty and suffering from rickets or scurvy, or polio.  We  might be slaves, or falsely accused, or scape goats, or kept out of institutions of higher learning.

Accepting disenfranchisement because that's the way it's always been done leaves our poorest, youngest and sickest at the mercy of money hungry individuals who hide our dirty little secrets from us so we can feel good about ourselves while they do the bad things in our name.

I don't believe you are innocent if you are aware that the wrong things are happening and do nothing. You are just as guilty as the person who is more directly involved.  Maybe not always in the eyes of the law, but certainly in the eyes of whatever higher power you believe in, or yourself.

We each need to do our tiny part to protect each other from abuse, whether that be from families, governments, or those proverbial "bad guys." And you can't do that if you run around pretending the world is one big happy sitcom.

The chasm between over reacting and doing nothing is what keeps so many people unfairly suffering.

All shapes and sizes

I have some very wonderful people in my life. Here are just a few.

My oldest friend, meaning the one I've known the longest, has made trips over to my apartment during the last four months to bring me lunch and picnic on my deck, to bring me a bath chair at the end of a very long day and crutches after an even longer one.  And this was after she just had a mastectomy!

My neighbor, who lost her son to a terrible murder a year ago, surprised me by leaving a fern on my porch one morning before I ever woke up.  She runs two coffee shops in cancer centers and caters for people with about as much love as anyone could ever possibly dream up.  She grows vegetables in a local public garden and tonight brought me all kinds of tomatoes and peppers from her first harvest.

Bestest, who calls me and texts me all sorts of tidbits through out the day, who celebrates my birthday in style and who has turned our archive work into vacations, is celebrating his birthday.  He's already had several cakes baked by people who love him and presents started coming in weeks ago. Why? Because he treats everyone like they are the most special person in the world.  People just can't do enough for him.

There is no such thing as too much love.  It's not all the same. It comes in different ways from different people, but it's there and I hope I never take any of it for granted.

Positive thoughts

DNA can be traced back to an ancient beginning and it is reasonable to believe whatever created that DNA is imprinted on it in some way. If we are created in the image of that creator I would love to know what that image is.

Obviously it is not things like hazel eyes, or red hair, so it must be something more important than the color of hair, or skin. Could it be the soul or the brain?  Could it be our ability to reason, or love, or perhaps to create things in our image the way we were created?

Most of us can create babies in our image, but what if we can also create more?

How many of us have looked for something . . . in the same place . . . over and over again and then when there is no reason to expect it to be there . . . there it is! For no explainable reason it is just there.  Maybe where it should be, but surely where it did not seem to be before.

If we can create an outcome by thinking positively, or praying fervently, or positive visualization,  than perhaps that is the image itself -- -- -- and our belief is the main hurdle.

And if that is true, then who knows what is possible?

Not so fun adventures in living

Fifty billion ways to treat modern patients and it always seems that four hundred nintey nine billion of them cause me more harm than good.  I am a doctor's nightmare.

My doctor was sick yesterday so my appointment was cancelled.  Today I went to one of her colleagues.  Just bringing him up to speed sounded like the diary of a mad hypochondriac.

Less concerned than I am about the possibility of impending baldness but sympathetic to the quarter sized red spots that neither hurt, nor itch, (and only pop up two at a time and disappear before the next two show up) he asked me what I thought.

We decided that due to my bad reaction to almost every medicine, we would just treat the high blood pressure until my appointment with my regular doctor.

I then drove over to the pharmacy to pick that prescription up.  (Hoping they wouldn't keep me waiting at the drive up window for an hour or more, per their usual routines.) They didn't.

It was closed. It seems someone had tried to break in and it will be three weeks before the drive up opens.

The store was open and I was able to pick up the prescription, but there was the usual long wait during which many other people came to pick up prescriptions.  (Each one having some major problem picking up their medicine!)  And topping it all off, as I left the store, a drenching thunderstorm swooped in.

I finally got home.  My appointment actually took very little time.  I got in early to see the doctor and was out only five minutes after the appointment was scheduled to have started, but the whole ordeal with the drug store and rain took forever.

A reality show

I turn on the radio in the car and they are talking about reality shows.  I suppose there is the chance that some can be educational or helpful, but most of the ones I have seen just appear to be wildly emotional people acting badly as if drama makes up for no real story line.

I try to imagine a real reality show.

Perhaps one based on my life.  What would I call it?  What does Gramma do all day?

It could start as I pick up my "at home uniform" and get dressed. Then I drive to my favorite fast food restaurant, the one that makes biscuits the way I like them and buy a sausage egg and cheese biscuit. I come home, make coffee and eat in my big chair while watching the weather channel or a morning news show.

My friend texts me and then calls and we talk for about an hour while he walks his dog. After that I shower, brush my teeth and sit down before my big computer to begin editing.  For the next three or four hours I read transcribed text out loud highlighting problem areas.

Occasionally someone calls and we talk before I go back to editing. In mid afternoon I eat lunch in my big chair while watching HGTV. (I especially like Tiny Houses.) Then I sit down to write a story for a friend. Breaking from this to answer phone calls, go to the mailbox, or do a crossword puzzle.

I eat dinner in my big chair watching a dvd or maybe a movie on the television and drawing a picture for a friend until it is time to brush my teeth and go to bed.

But wait! The day is not over yet! I read a book on my kindle for 30-60 minutes before dozing off and doing it all over again.  I used to throw in a walk around the goose pond, but that kind of action is on hold for the time being.

I guess I can see why people manufacture drama.  I wonder what kind of drama a director would suggest to spice up Gramma's life?  Perhaps . . . well, maybe I won't go there.

Science fiction or fact

People preparing for the apocalypse, the rich, the entitled, the NRA supporters, the ones building underground bunkers to sustain them and help them survive when the rest of us less worthy people die from the fall out of environmental misuse and greedy production of weapons of mass destruction, the people who think more with their bank accounts than their hearts and brains, the ones for whom THEM and US is a definite division, have no idea that there is another group of people also preparing.

This other group will not have sixteen thousand pound doors between them and the chaos, but it will have techniques set in place to allow those who survive to rise again and the first things those early risers will do is set off the procedures that will keep those in the first group blissfully unaware that they are not the only living people left.

Safely ensconced in their self built, self imposed prisons they can live anyway they want while the rest of us try to repair and rebuild a world not based on the mythology of the American wild west.  We will get a chance to create a world based on something better.

I suppose that people, being what they are, might eventually come back to where we are today, but then our secret weapon would be to let those living in their anthills of mass destruction know it is safe to come out again. They will emerge and within a reasonable amount of time destroy the world again.

Our Center point

I look at my life and know that this is not how I imagined it when I was twelve, or sixteen, or even thirty-two. There was no frame of reference for this kind of solitude in my life. Family surrounded me, overwhelmed me, lived forever back then. . . . only two people ever went so far as California and one of them came back.

Our center point was the Big House, that place where five generations lived in time eternal. Somewhere I was never alone because no one ever really left. Whether it was Great Grandfather's chair in the library, or Great Grandmother's parrot cage in the dirt room; the old player piano in the front hall where my Grandmother sang The Old Rugged Cross, or the big homey kitchen with its potato and flour bins where my Aunt made homemade noodles, that house with its majestic fireplaces and homely bathing room was the place our family was still orbiting around when my children were small and toddling along the same old carpets their Great Great Grandfather had walked.

The scratchy horsehair love seat near the alcove downstairs, the cavernous garret-ed attic packed to the brim with old toys and wedding dresses, Indian moccasins and Greek Bibles, were where I played on rainy days.  On sunny ones I caught butterflies in the garden, or played in a white painted truck tire sandbox while grown-ups hung clothes on lines propped up by long poles and worked on cars in the huge converted barn-garage.

Babies were born here in the big downstairs bedroom, loved ones laid out in the formal parlor, squabbles and tears, hugs and stories were the continuity of family life that kept on going and going and going.

The front porch swing was for talking to company, the side porch glider for watching storms, we played croquet in the back yard and roses grew wild and lush in the side one.  Church was three blocks away, the grocery store just down an alley flanked with bachelor buttons and hollyhocks that could be made into dancing dolls.

Bought by a Civil War soldier,  weathering the crash and the depression, the Big House survived two world wars and a fire that burned down the family business, but it could not hold fast when the world became transient and families spread out across the country.

And now, it stands empty eyed and cold while I live in an apartment that would probably fit in any one room still there, but this house was Home with a capital H for generations of my family and it will remain so in my memory forever.

The almighty mundane

I tried my first big grocery store outing today, wondering how it would go. Shopping is a mundane necessity that I haven't engaged in much lately.

It go-ed. That's about the best I can say for it.

I chose a smaller big grocery store because I didn't think I could handle the huge parking lots and warehouse size of the bigger stores.

I was right.

I avoided anything that required a person to serve me because my experience is that they are very time consuming in every way.  Even then, going through the self checkout I had to wait for the woman to realize she had to push the button because the toilet paper didn't fit in their bag.  She was preoccupied in some way I have yet to figure out.

I pretty much just hit the perimeter of the store, bread, cheese, yogurt, a few frozen things and I was limping badly and worn out by the time I was back in the foyer.  I had been lucky enough to park as close as possible without a handicap sticker, but that meant there was no return cart stall nearby, so I carried all my groceries out tucked under or hung upon on my long arms.

It all seemed to take forever and I was afraid my frozen things might thaw out in this hot weather so I hurried home.  I didn't get it all brought in.  For the sake of getting the frozen stuff in quicker I left that unwieldy package of extra tough, mega toilet paper in the car.

I would say it was a successful trip, but a much bigger deal than I even dared to dream it might be.

Wake up

Waking up surprises me.

Especially since I didn't realize I have been asleep.

My mind reaches out, poking into corners it hasn't thought about in months.

Hope is in the air.

My imagination starts to stretch and with each tiny move I feel bursts of energy.

I am amazed at how much I had given up and almost forgotten.

All because I injured my left foot.

We really are just a step away from so many possibilities!  I want to write myself a note saying:  Don't forget you love to write!  Don't lose your curiosity! Don't give up no matter how long something takes, it will eventually end.

Memory

Memory is important.  Especially now while our education systems still rely more on memorizing than on how to do research. Memory speeds things up when I don't have to look up every detail, but computers make looking those details up pretty darn easy. Sometimes I think we would do well to encourage common sense, order and research rather than memory and competition.  But I know there are ups and downs to everything and our society is in no danger of losing the need to remember.

Memory, though, is not an exact science.  In fact, it is like the silly putty of the mind. It can pick up the comics just by being pressed against them.  It can pick up almost anything that way.  An ardent counselor can dig up memories and reasons and experiences we never knew we had -- because we didn't.

We all know people who remember things much differently than we do.  I am in awe of the different memories my siblings and I all have of growing up together with the same parents at the same time.

The point of this little rant is that the future is much more important than the past, because nothing dug up, or resurrected, or even evaluated from memory is particularly reliable.  Any good debater could make a case for almost anything depending on what they were looking for.

Go forward!  Take what is in this moment and step out into a whole new world of possibilities unhindered by the baggage of memories.  Focusing on the past seems like worrying about what is in the garbage bag sitting by the door.  If I'm going to take it to the curb anyway, why worry about that?  I don't want to be a garbage picker, so I need to focus on what I do want and put my energy there.

Sometimes it can be as simple as I want a cup of coffee, or I want a nap, or I want to be happier.  One baby step at a time can be a very positive thing, because even good memories brought up at the wrong time can be damaging.

In this moment

I sit here looking out at a green tunnel that focuses my eyes on an azure sky framed in fairy tale white clouds.  A cool breeze wafts in through the windows and the leaves on the trees dance gently to make shadow stories on the grass.

I cannot hear the sea here in the Heartlands, but the wind rolling in across the flat farm lands in the distance is our version of tranquility.

In this moment life is good.  In fact, it is stunningly beautiful.

These are the moments that help me walk through life in relative happiness.  I can almost always find them anywhere I happen to be if I am able to let go of everything else for the space of a breath or two and just look.

Tiny oases in a world full of obligations and concerns, they are here for the taking.  "Breathing in, I calm my body.  Breathing out, I smile." There is more to this little poem from Thich Nhat Hanh, but these remind me of the rest even when the words fail to come to me.

Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment.

One tiny moment at a time I can survive almost anything and over time I can even enjoy life when in the midst of a storm.

All of those seemingly trite phrases I have heard through the years can be irritating, but four simple words have been life savers for me.  This too shall pass.

Using these two coping mechanisms together has given me a form of living that borders on magic when I look back.  They are ways of being that ease the way and like all things they become more natural and more a part of me as moments go on.

Solutions

Some people shop when they are bored or depressed or don't know what to do. 

I can shop online.  I have been shopping online for months, since I couldn't get out.

Thanks to that and doctors and it being the end of the month I can no longer do that.

Now I begin my most favored way of battling boredom and depression, and not knowing what to do. (When I can't go walking in the woods.)

Anti-shopping!

So far this year I anti-shopped my desk and desk chair, my bicycle and exercise cycle. even my upholstered side chair.

Today I am doing the closet (again.)

Anti-shopping is that intensely satisfying feeling I get from divesting myself of anything I can live without.  It's different than simplifying only because I may replace it with something better in the future.  Or not.

It's not the only solution, but it's cheap, it's time consuming, and it feels good.

Feelings

The parables, the allegories, the fairy tales and movies and even television exaggerate the good and the bad as if we might miss it were it not made bigger than life.

And perhaps we might if we were always a third person looking in, because watching is not the same thing as feeling.

I love live music.  Often it does not even matter if it is music I would choose, but the fact that it is live pulls me in.  I feel the vibrations, the notes, the energy of the musicians.  I feel it's aliveness!  Without that, were it only on the radio or on a DVD, I might not listen to it at all.

Feelings are the barometer of life.

They generate unnecessary cruel words when a shrug would work. They filter kind actions through unkind thoughts and do the opposite of their intention.  As unavoidable as breathing, they can wreak more havoc than anything else in the world.

I do not want to censor them, but I need a trustworthy translator and some kind of reins to pull them in when they run away with me.

If only I could catch them like fireflies and put them in a jar. Being able to look at them when I will, or put them under a microscope, or perhaps just set them on the back shelf of the pantry until I am able to deal with them, might make life more bearable and even rational.

But the real world is not that simple.  It asks me to be judge and jury and comforter and consoler of my own feelings and, more often than not, I am harsher than is necessary. The good is not saintly.  The bad is not intentional evil. The end is truly just another beginning and who knows where that might go.

Mrs. Pink's blooming kittens

1953 found me living in a small two bedroom house with a glassed in front porch in Champaign, Illinois.  My father worked in two places, a locked room in the basement and a place called the U of I.  I was not allowed to go into the first unless I was invited and I never saw the second until many years later (when he no longer worked there.)

One afternoon my parents brought home a cute little gray cat.  They said it's name was Pretty Soon.  I said we should call it Mrs. Pink, but my father pointed out that Mrs. Pink was a girl's name and we didn't know if our cat was a girl or a boy.  I asked when we would find out and he said, "Pretty Soon."  I thought it was sad that my cat had to have such a silly name because my parents weren't smart enough to tell a girl from a boy, but I let it go.

One morning, as I sat eating oatmeal, my mother pointed out the window.  Our yard was overflowing with cats!  "Pretty Soon is a girl."  She announced. It made sense to me.  Girls like to play a lot while my baby brother didn't do much more than lay in his crib and make funny sounds.  Then one day my father came home from the U of I and told me to come see what he found in his office downstairs in the basement.

My mother took my sister and I down and there, in a large box, was Pretty Soon and five fuzzy little kittens!  "Where did she get them?"  I wanted to know.  My mother said there was a field where kittens grew and mother cats could go there and pick out whatever babies they wanted.  From that day on I had my nose glued to the car window whenever we went anywhere.  I really wanted to find this place!

I think my first fantasy was finding this field and meandering through it, deciding which kitten I would pluck off the giant green leaves there, but a close runner up would be that I was going to grow up to be Mrs. Pink and live in a little white house with pink shutters and have a three year old little girl all my own.  Those were my ideals then, adorable three year old girls and cuddly kittens.

I lived in the center of so much love that I never even dreamed of being anyone except me. My dream was to live in my perfect little house with a perfect little girl just like me and be just like my Daddy.

But then I was three.

Simple joys

Sometimes it's the simplest joys that count the most.

For me just walking to the trash can was a pleasure today.  I haven't been able to walk across the room with any comfort in nearly four months and was beginning to believe I might never do so again.

I received a thank you note signed, "From the best ten year old ever!" complete with drawn on hearts and flourishes that made my day.

I heard from Bestest, which is often one of the constant highlights of my day, but today I also was able to listen to his interview about Harper Lee's new book on the radio.

I finished Go Set A Watchman last night and have another good book already started.

I have two movies on DVDs to watch this weekend and a frozen pizza ready to cook.

Life is good and I need to remember that because only last week it felt just the opposite.

Spirituality

Spirituality, to me, means the way an individual connects with the power of his highest self.

Many people appear to want the rites and rituals of a formal religion, a communal way of reaching God by following the rules ordained by those who went before.  "Whenever two or more are gathered in his name."

Others seem to prefer to find that connection through nature, or science.  The order, the balance, comes more through rules that are ordered by the universe.

And some look for it within themselves, meditating, praying, listening.

I think each one of us has to do it the way that works for us. It is the belief, the idea that there is something bigger than us out there and we are part of it that makes the difference.

Without that there is an ominous sense of powerlessness in life when things happen that are not rational, or make no sense.  There is nowhere to turn when power, or money, or brute force cannot change something uncomfortable into something bearable without the belief that there is something bigger and unknowable.

What ever power created the universe and everything within it, exists.  My belief in it, my name for it, my way of reaching out to it doesn't really matter. The euphoria of KNOWING, or having FAITH, or BELIEVING, as powerful as it is, can often be fleeting, or elusive. 

Spirituality is the river that is always there, even when the miracles are far apart. It is the lap I crawl up into when I want to touch it.  It is what holds me close and whispers in my ear,  "It's not time to worry," or "Tomorrow is another day," or "I've got your back."

Whatever metaphor I use to express the inexpressible comfort I find in the unknowable, it is what it is.
 

What would I change

If I had the chance to start all over, what would I do?

Looking back there are lots of things I wouldn't change because, I wouldn't want to miss out on some very good and very major parts of my life.

But if I could choose to keep the good things and just tweak the details, I might.

I would finish school and I would chose a profession I loved rather than thinking school was just the prelude to the big event, marriage.

I would choose a profession based on the things I loved in life rather than something that would fit into a married-with-children-woman's life.

I would be much more pragmatic about marriage.

Had I done all these things who knows where I'd be now.

But, had I done everything the same, and could now change a few things, it would be to be healthier and have enough money to do more of the things I want to do now.

Curiosity

I find it curious how something can be so important to one group of my friends that it is eagerly anticipated, intensely received and there are even television and radio interviews and programs concerning it; while another group has never even heard about it, has no clue what it is, and further more, does not care.

The second group of people does have an interest in their own things and while I may not find these things up my alley, I do know about them and often find myself curious. I wish they had a reciprocal interest in things they were not particularly into.

It makes me think that curiosity is one of those traits that truly divides different types of people.  Some of us find not knowing a wonderful call to adventure.  Others find it incomprehensible and even frightening.

As Alice said, or really Lewis Carroll, that is curiouser and curiouser.

Coping mechanisms

My ex had an uncanny sense of timing.  He always waited to spring the big one on me at the exact worst moment.  I kind of doubt he did this on purpose. I'd like to think he would never have been that mean, but if it was not on purpose then I suppose it was even worse, because a natural instinct for that kind of thing is pretty awful to contemplate.

The divorce was a coup de grace that almost paled next to many other things, yet it left me needing to redefine myself just before I turned fifty.

I rode my bike and played my piano all the way through it and I hauled that piano with me through six more back breaking moves.  Why?  Because it had been my coping mechanism since I was a child.  A simple line of black and white keys could carry me from despair to peace given enough time and the strength of my fingers.

When the piano was gone I could still get out into nature.  A walk in the woods, alone with trees and rivers and sweet blue cornflowers nodding their heads,  gave me a place to write and think and balance my thoughts against something so much bigger than me.

The bike was the last to go, or so I thought.  No more mind numbing rides at top speeds down the bike trail out in the country where flat fields allowed me to feel free, if only for a while.

But I was wrong.  The universe, in some perverse need to try me to the nth degree, took away all my freedom when I munged up my left foot nearly four months ago.  No more walking in the woods, no more unnecessary walking anywhere.  In fact I have barely even walked to my mailbox, or shopped in those months.

Every coping mechanism I have had in my life is gone except writing right now.  And sometimes that is difficult to hold onto too.  I wonder what people do when they don't know what to do?

(But that is certainly not a challenge!  I have no desire to lose any more.)

Peace on earth

I sometimes surprise myself.  This morning I found myself watching the Pope saying Mass -- in Spanish!  At least I assume it was Spanish, but I don't really know.  I do know that I was mesmerized.

Partly because I recognized the Mass. Even though it was in Spanish and I was Episcopalian, somehow,  I heard it in my head and in my heart.

Partly because Pope Francis seems to understand more about this world and the real issues surrounding it than any other religious leader I have heard in a very long time.

I am not a church goer.  For many reasons, the first being I used to be one.  But today I heard the Mass and I was moved. 

The words were not in English.  The music was not at all familiar, but that added to the experience for me.  I was not wallowing in nostalgia, or evangelism. 

It was purer for me. 

I felt a kinship to mankind and this old man who seems to be trying less to control people than to bring peace to earth.

Pope, Latin for papa: being a good father is so much more than laying down laws.  It is putting the good of the children at the top of the list.

Go Set A Watchman

Harper Lee's novel, Go Set A Watchman, is due out next week. 

I recently reread To Kill A Mockingbird and once more fell in love with Scout's dry wit and perspicacious outlook on life.  I love that little girl and I could not wait to read the first chapter of Go Set A Watchman that came out today.

I felt like I had gone to the train to meet an old friend this morning.  I heard hints of the same old Jean Louise coming through an older, very slightly, more restrained grown up. I doubt if she will be quite as tartly fascinating as the child who turned a riot away trying to be like her daddy, but I am looking forward to the rest of the book.

I want to know what this woman, who won a Pulitzer Prize, wrote first.  I want to hear the thoughts and words of a woman who was trying to get her foot in the door just as women's lib was starting.  I want to know how she wrote before someone began editing her thoughts and words.

And after saying all that, I am now one hundred percent sure she wrote To Kill A Mockingbird herself. 

Any book written from an adult's point of view is likely to be a bit more restrained than that of a six year old, but it's still worth reading.

I can't wait to read the book.  It sounds like pure Harper Lee.

Reality

Occasionally I am so tired of the world with its pettiness, self importance and sophistry that I can't even write a thought.

This is one of those days.

A day when children will die of hunger and diseases and hate because of a word game being played around it all.

Trees

I was thinking that I love to look at trees.  Any trees, the ones in my backyard, the big ones out in California's redwood forest, the gnarly old oaks in Illinois' woods.

I love the look and feel of bark, growing, peeling, covered in moss.  I like the shapes of the leaves and the colors they find in Autumn's chill and the proliferation of fruits that fall from them.  I love the shadow plays of the sun slipping through them on hot sunny days and wild windy ones.

But most of all, I love their size.  It puts mankind into perspective for me.  I feel small around trees, but I never feel insignificant. 

I look at the way they stay in in one spot, their roots intertwined with others under the earth, truly connected without a need for recognition or adulation.

I may want to hug them, to connect with them in some visceral way; my arms may wrap around one of those huge bodies, but they never reciprocate.  They never reject.  The just accept me for whatever I am.

That is the kind of being I search for, reach for, try not to block when I meditate.

Trees are the ultimate caretakers, sharing nutrients and water underground, acceptance and stolidness above.  Like Atticus, in To Kill A Mockingbird, they epitomize the unshakeable justice and goodness I am always looking for.

A deadly combination

Ignorance and pride stand between a gun toting mama and the baby who shot her.

Ignorance and pride believes it can hold back global warning with denial.

Ignorance and pride blithely elect bigots of every shape and size.

Ignorance and pride build walls between reason and insanity.

Ignorance and pride

one doesn't understand and the other is deaf.

Who are we

Sometimes I think everyone wonders why we are here.  To raise children is one obvious answer, but what about after that? 

Some people still assist in caring for the young.  Some produce food for the rest of us, or process it, or sell it. Some create medicine to keep us from leaving here before our time and even changing that time.  The rest assist in some form of perpetuating the culture of those we call modern man I suppose.

I hope there really is a mystery regarding our creation, that we are here for some good reason, not just as a science experiment gone bad that might destroy itself given enough time.

I know I love some of my fellow creatures very much.  They have a sweetness, a giving, caring goodness that must be good for us all. 

We are not simple creatures and I am thankful for that.  Motivated by more than simple survival makes us one fascinating layer after another, so never give up.  You never know what anyone's next layer will be, especially not your own.

And that is something I learned by living through lots of layers.

Wants

Life is hard.  The details can be downright brutal.  In the sixty-five years I've lived there have been so many disappointments, so many betrayals, so many heart wrenching events that if I had known about them before I was born I might have decided not to be born. If that had been an option.

But it wasn't. The big things never seem to be an option.  I have so little control. I make so many mistakes. And the truth is: if I could do them over I might just make different mistakes.

I have had a few big dreams in my life, a couple of videos that I thought would make my life perfect.  I was going to grow up to design magnificent, unique homes for people, write books that people couldn't put down, raise my children on ten acres of woodland on the water where the love of my life and our children would be wrapped in the sunshine of our love from sunrise to sunrise.  I wanted friends forever and grandmas and grandpas who would drop in with pies and stories and more love.

It just doesn't work that way -- for anyone.

The best I learned to hope for were the moments.  The glimpses of those things I want the most.  Maybe not for a lifetime, or a year, or even a week.  Just glancing moments that help me see and feel and know a little bit of those dreams.

The filter of my life determines how I experience everything and it is the same for everyone else.  Put all of us in the same situation and each of us would come out in our own way. Loving, really loving, means trying to understand what another actually needs from me and then trying to give it to the best of my ability.  Knowing that my needs and their needs may even be at odds with each other, I sometimes have to make a choice.

Do I do the hard thing, the thing that maybe leaves a hole in me because I love them so much that is the best?

Am I strong enough to live, to make the best of those glancing moments and learn to feel the satisfaction of knowing I wanted to love well, to love right, to be the best I could even when what I did turned out differently than I hoped?

That kind of selfless is not always within my grasp.  It's not always possible, no matter how great my love.  It can be a goal though and with that come those glancing moments when things are so beautiful the intensity of them is enough to carry me on until the next one.

Maybe that intensity is only tolerable in glancing moments, but I always want more.

The 4th of July --

The fourth of July 1954, I am watching my uncle burn little black tablets that seem to turn into snakes on the big rocks at the end of the walk.  My "trolley car," a shoebox with cellophane covering the cut out windows to make them look like stained glass, waiting.  Tonight my mother will put a candle in it and I will pull it around the block on a string before we light sparklers, but between then and now I will load the caps into my new gun and run around pretending to defend my world until the caps run out. Then I will load the single caps into my cap rocket and throw it at the sidewalk to hear it explode.

The good ole days, the violence that seemed so run of the mill back then.  It was innocent.  It was only tradition.  I also played with baby dolls in the shade of huge trees and walked my baby around the block in an old wicker baby buggy that had belonged to my mother when she was small.  Sometimes I even dressed up in my cowgirl outfit, donned my gun and holster and played with all of it at once!

Later in life we would gather to watch neighbors light flares and giant sparklers on their lawns, but the big fireworks, the ones that mimicked bombs bursting in air, would not appear in my life until I was nearly fourteen.  The Country Club set them off and everyone in the city watched that display with wonder.  I watched through the windows on our staircase landing.

The fourth of July's of my childhood with picnics and popcorn and Sousa marches gradually evolved into the ones of my children's childhood where I banned the guns and the sparklers and we watched the magnificent firework displays from the parking lot of the Pepsi plant while listening to the choreographed music on the radio.

We lost the personal involvement and furor of the fifties, yielding to the both more dangerous and safer commercial displays of the eighties.

Now it has become a point of honor for many to hoard bootlegged fireworks and set them off in the country for wide eyed children who no longer play with cap guns or cap rockets but are in danger of finding real hand guns in their mother's purses or father's cars and the games of the fifties take on bigger consequences.

What will we have learned thirty years from now?

Still thinking

Everyone seems to want answers.  Social media is filled with tests to tell us everything from how smart we are to what our real name should be.  It used to be a home with an encyclopedia could offer lots of answers, now most homes have computers to do the same thing and even better.

Doctors do innumerable tests so they can give us a name to match our particular set of symptoms best.  Schools give fill in the blank tests with the hope that we will remember the words that best fit the most common questions.

We have experts in more fields than I can even imagine with answers on subjects I haven't even heard of yet.

And still, sometimes there are no answers.

Sometimes there are only more questions.

And that is a good thing.  It means we're still thinking.

Reality

It is a terrible thought that those very traits that make me really good at what I do can become my absolute undoing.

My tenacity, my perseverance, my total devotion to achieving what is important to me is both a blessing and a curse.

Like a baby animal imprinting on the first creature it sees, I am at risk.  Imprinting on something that will not nurture me can be fatal.  Refusing to acknowledge that this object I am fixated on cannot give me what I need; making it the focal point for all my energy, my thoughts, my reason to be; not realizing the difference between constructive perseverance and mad obsession will not turn the butterfly back into the caterpillar. 

All is not lost, but realizing that the Appalachians are an older version of the Rockies is a good analogy.  I cannot return the Appalachians back into their younger version, tall and rocky and majestic like the Rockies.  Tips so tall they are covered with snow and roots so deep they still bloom with trees; it would seem the Rockies have it all.  Yet, the Appalachians, weathered and eroded for thousands of years have a mistiness, a softness, a total fecundity that can be more appealing to a wiser, older eye.

The wild energy of youth must be tempered with the wisdom of experience.  There is a time to let go, a time to take a new path, a time to embrace the unknown and allow it to work its own magic.

What will be, will be.  How I experience it is up to me.

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Take the child test

The trouble with hermits
 if there is only one thing
 is that hermits are single so their voices ring
with only one echo and only one sound because they're alone,
the only ones around.

They might talk to family,
or teachers, or friends,
but they don't have to listen to hooligans.
They can turn off the tv, the radio, the computer
and listen for those voices they might find much cuter. 

Life is much simpler when its all in your head.
At least that is true from what I have read.
Some people swear that if you swallow some drug
Your face will be happier with a smile on your mug
Say no to this buzz and move on to some hugs.

There's peace in the stillness and joy in the sound
of voices from the past still hanging around.
If you're conflicted, filled with fears that abound
remember that love isn't sold by the pound
and hug the next child you find hanging around.

Small children don't lie, their hugs stand the test
Of love's sweet surrender much better than the rest.
If you are lonely, take the child test
And if it hugs back, you're the best of the rest
Kiss it and hug it and feather your nest!

You aren't a real hermit, you are just a tad sad
And your face can still smile even when you feel bad.
Cause children still love you no matter how rad
the thoughts between you and the rest in your pad.
And time can still heal the sad and the mad.