Fighting fire with fire

Bestest has taught me much about loving and living simply by being himself. He teaches by example, not fear mongering.

We learn what we live with, what we see and feel and hear. People do what they've been taught.

And much of our culture is fear based. We are afraid of being poor, of being laughed at, of not being the best. Out of a misguided sense of direction we believe that happiness comes from having a lot of money, or at least enough money. We use laughter as a weapon to hurt each other. We think being the best must be learned or manufactured.

And even when we say otherwise, our actions shout the truth to those around us.

Being who we are, finding our peace, our joy, our being inside ourselves and looking for that in others is the real truth.

That doesn't mean condoning the mean spirited, dangerous, or hate filled people who want to rule over the meek, but if more of us were really brought up to love ourselves and each other, there would be fewer of the former around.

Right now people are trying to justify the need for the ugliness in our world, but you cannot put out a fire with fire. You may contain it for a while, but to destroy fire with fire it is necessary to destroy every single thing that can burn.

We don't want to do that.

Terrarium

Imagine setting up the perfect terrarium. It is balanced so that you can put a lid on it and it will sustain itself and you can go on. What you do when you go on is irrelevant. You can create other terrariums. You could go play tennis. Or, I suppose you could sit there like a little despot making sure all the tiny creatures inside follow your rules.

If they don't, you unscrew the lid, reach down with your powerful finger and knock over their dwellings.

You keep a close eye on them even if it requires getting out a magnifying glass to do it and if a ladybug loves the ant, or the grasshopper uses the spiders bathroom, you pluck it out and toss it in the incinerator you keep going just for situations like this.

Occasionally you lean down and speak to one of them, or even show your face to a lucky caterpillar and tell him all your rules so he can go back and tell the others after he transforms.

You are a jealous despot who wants to make sure they all know they would cease to exist if it weren't for you. You have nothing better to do than watch and make sure every single one of them toes the line.

You take copious notes on each and every one. What they are doing. What they are thinking. How they are feeling, so you know whether to toss them in the incinerator or recycle bin when they die.

Or you could go play tennis.

Moving

I move -- the furniture, the stuff in the drawers, the things on the shelves.
I sell my condo, unlease my lease, rent a new place.
I change jobs.
Make new friends.
Volunteer new places.
I move.
Write new stories.
Find a new center point, a new filler, a new way.
That is what I did.
I used to rearrange my world when I couldn't rearrange my life.
It doesn't seem to work anymore.
I think I am done moving.

Branching out

It has been difficult for me to write my thots lately.

I have been busier than usual. Branching out socially takes a lot of time, but it is a lot of fun. I am discovering sides of me that go from a group that defines themselves as women to one that calls itself ladies. The biggest distinction is age. The ladies are much older and more traditional.

There are other distinctions though. The women come from all walks of life. They are younger and don't think twice about going out by themselves to meet new people and do new things. The ladies arrive four to a car and prefer to know who they will be with. Both groups do a lot of eating and laughing.

I love both groups and I am learning a lot about myself by being with them.

As a life long loner this is new ground for me. I love people, but tend to prefer one on one conversations. Now I am learning to appreciate the different kind of intimacy a larger group can provide. And yes there is an intimacy to these groups, each unique and wonderful in its own way.

I find I have much in common with both groups and yet I find I also have distinct differences and I'm okay with that. There is room for lots of learning here.

Raison d'être

I watch Annabel and think how plastic life can seem sometimes.

She plays with her sparkly toys that glitter and move and seem like they must be the most wonderful things in the world, but any intelligent creature soon notices that the ball always goes around in circles and as exciting as it looks it can't really be caught, or eaten, or cuddled.

After a while she gives up playing with it, but for lack of anything better eventually goes back again and again.

There is something to be said for having to work for one's own food, to have unmet dreams still ahead, for having a reason to be besides being comfortable. Having hope is important. Knowing that it is possible to earn these things makes the work less undesirable.

Without the richness of strife who can really understand the joy of comfort?

It becomes too easy to look for replacement feelings in danger and drugs and manufactured strife - until that becomes the reality and life is depressing and sordid.

Being loved is important, but it is not enough to base a whole existence on. Annabel wants more.

Love is the foundation, but there is a whole lot more.

Spoiled

The most frustrating people in the world are those who never change.

Good intentions are not enough!

Sometimes it really is the end result and not the journey that counts. Especially when you know how that journey is going to end. Why would anyone keep buying a ticket to the last house on the left when they want to go to Disneyland?

Many failures are nurtured by the same people doing the same things that didn't work the first time and won't work today, or tomorrow, or the day after that. And the saddest part are the casualties that fall by the wayside.

You can buy a million fancy outfits, pay for a hundred fun vacations, even buy houses and cars and pay for every conceivable service there is and not be doing the best, most loving thing. Spoiled means exactly what it sounds like -- ruined, not healthy, not good and trying to make changes by doing the same things that spoiled it all in the first place won't change anything.

Bad to the bone

I found myself thinking a strange thought as I drove home from school today. Is prejudice, bigotry, hatefulness possibly a mental illness? Why are so many people exhibiting these behaviors in an age where one might think they should be diminishing?

Growing up, I thought only poorly educated people felt, or thought that way. Later on I discovered that even well educated people could harbor such dangerous and disgusting thoughts. One group was just better at disguising or hiding them.

Why do we care who loves who?  What intelligent person really believes that the color of someone's skin makes them less than? What makes Christians so eager to blame Muslims, or Jews, or Atheists for their problems? Why does God become such a bloody topic?

Is there some primal instinct that makes one man dislike another simply because he is not the same? In today's day and age, are there people who never outgrow the bully stage, who lord it over others just because they can? 

People without honor attack others for no real reason all the time. They set a woman's dress on fire because she wears a headscarf, burn religious buildings because they can claim it is for god and country, torture people in the name of patriotism. They turn away those seeking asylum from horrors no one should have to live in, let alone raise children in.

Obviously, ignorance, fear and low cognitive ability cause people to make broad sweeping judgements about who is bad, but what about those who do it knowing full well what they are doing?

Are we becoming a nation of mentally ill people, or are we just bad to the bone?

Who are we?


  

The red recliner row

I have always loved those foreign streets I see on House Hunters International, or travel shows. The ones with the multi colored painted doors, or layered verandas on twisty streets in old movies. I like the idea that these neighborhoods might be filled with nosy people who lean out windows and talk to each other.

Those streets. Those people.

They seem exotic and interesting in a sort of anthropological way.

This morning I saw our building through those eyes for the first time.

We have three levels of decks here and I think of the the top southern one as the red recliner row, because  three of the four apartments have red reclining canvas lawn chairs on them. I don't know why. It may be that one of them found a good deal and shared it with the others, or it could even be they all know each other and have some other connection. It could be pure coincidence. It's just one of those things.

I only know that one apartment, has a man who is usually out on his deck smoking a cigarette and being noticeably loud. One of those types. When he isn't talking on the phone or visiting, he sits there staring out like a neighborhood guardian.

Now you would think that might offer security of a sort, but it does not because several people across the lot feel as if he is stalking them. He elicits those feelings.

He is tall, thin, dark haired and has a big mustache that makes him stand out from a distance and it is impossible not to hear him when we come around the corner of our parking lot. He often has two or three loud women up there with him. He's one of those men.

Other people come and go, but the guy in the red recliner row stays on and on. He's one of those people.

Respect

Simple respect may be the single most important part of any relationship, or at least the foundation of it. I think loss of respect signals the beginning of the end.

Love is complicated and far from being linear. It is possible to love someone without liking them. It is even possible to love someone without respecting them, but it is much more difficult.

Life style, the way one treats people, how information is gathered, the way it is used, even the way it is processed affects a relationship.

If I really disagree with the way these things are being done, or perhaps just don't understand why they are done this way, it is difficult for me to be close to someone. And if their way of doing things puts other people I love in danger, it creates an almost insurmountable barrier between us.

I am childlike in many ways. I honestly don't care, or even notice things like color, race, sexual preferences, or even gender most of the time, but I do notice logic, reason, sensitivity, and empathy.

Someone who is purposefully crude, or rude, ignorant, or passive aggressive grates on me like fingernails on a chalkboard. After a while I have to get away from them or I will start trying to change them and everyone knows that is pretty much impossible. It creates a strife that eventually becomes all out war.

We can agree to disagree, but after a certain point that disagreeableness becomes a warning that compatibility is gone and the best thing, for everyone, is to back away.

I wish I had realized these things years and years ago.

Verily, verily, verily, verily

Six little ducks floating down a stream.

Blissfully unaware that they are part of the carnival of life.

Trapped from beginning to end in a current going round and round.

Bad things happen.

All good things eventually end.

Bad things end too.

Never giving up.

Learning to enjoy the moment.

This stream is not a dream.

It has room to negotiate the obstacles,

Make some compromises,

And take advantage of all the beautiful surprises that come along.

Then it becomes a work of art.

Before a hand reaches down and plucks them out of the stream.

Signals

Having a kitten and walking it in a stroller does at least two different things.

It gets me out walking once or twice a day.

I meet new people along the way who are intrigued by the stroller (and the cat when they can see her, but a black cat in a dark screened in area is not easy to spot.)

Today I was stopped by a woman walking her shih-tzu, Lucy, named after I Love Lucy. We talked and she invited me to join her and some other people here when they go out. We exchanged phone numbers.

Funny how the universe responds once I make my intentions known.

A cat's tail

Don't know where I was born. Don't care either. I woke up in a box with bars one morning. Hair shaved from my neck and belly and a strange pain there too. I could hear dogs barking and kittens meowing. Don't know how I knew who they were, but I did.

I couldn't see anything but a blank wall unless a large human took me out to play. He said I was a black cat, a beauty, someone to be protected and loved. Other people held me sometimes too, but only "mommy" took me "home."

Home is a very big box, but I think that's because humans are much bigger than cats.

We share a big bed. She sleeps in it at night. I sleep there during the day. Why anyone wants to sleep away the dark hours I will never understand. Mommy and I get along just fine, but there are other things I don't understand too.

Sometimes I do things like practice my hunting on the things that move under her blankets at night and then, out of nowhere, something spits in my face and gets me all wet!  The same thing happens when I try to honor her big chair by marking it with my claws. And she does things I don't get at all!

Mommy likes to hide behind a big curtain and play in the water, so today I decided to play too. I couldn't believe it! She PLAYS with the spitting thing! It was huge and completely soaked me. I had to use her foot as a springboard to get out. I don't think she liked the big hole I left in her foot.

I don't know why mommy calls me Annabel. That's a sissy name! I ignore her as much as I can, but I don't think she's getting it.

She like's to pet me, but I'm just too busy. I keep waking up in her lap. I think she pets me when I'm asleep. That's okay I guess. She says I'm like black velvet without any bones then, but the rest of the time I'm all claws and jaws.

I tried sleeping in her shoes, but I still don't understand half the things she does. Maybe if she'd pick a better name we could come to terms.

Busy busy busy

I'm always looking for a life style that is healthier and sustainable. For me that is not easy. The only exercise I ever loved was tennis and that just isn't a real option any more.

Walking is good as long as the weather is not too hot, or too cold. Like Goldilocks I prefer just right, or at least under 85 and over 10.

Getting Annabel out of the house twice a day is a good incentive and dividing the walking into two 20-30 minute sections helps. It gives me 40 to 60 minutes a day.

Then today I tried adding chair yoga for an hour. I'm sure it is good for improving the mobility of my joints, but it honestly was fairly difficult for me.

Trying to stay active as I grow older is proving to be a challenge, but I think I'm doing a pretty good job of it between volunteering, Meetups and exercise.

Simple songs

Once upon a time I thought I wanted to learn to play the dulcimer,

Part of it was the song, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. I love that tune. I don't even know the words. I don't even want to know the words.

I have my own words that run through my head when I hear it, or perhaps they are more feelings, thoughts, primal memories, of something indiscernible that speaks to me in those simple notes.

There are a few simple songs that do this for me, take me to a place where I positively ache to be, and they are all old, old, religious songs, that strike me as more spiritual than religious, but none more than this song.

I like them on folk instruments, or cellos, or pianos, or even played by full orchestras. It is the tune, not the instrumentation that touches me.

So much of the music in my life makes me sad. It is too full of memories, more than my heart can bear to feel, but not the old simple songs, the ones people played and sang without paper and written words.

I love the freedom of these tunes. They connect me only to spirit.


 

Awakening

Transitions take time.

No one can see what's going on inside the chrysalis of a Monarch butterfly. It seems as though that caterpillar just goes to sleep and wakes up transformed.

But nothing is that easy.

Filled to the top

Imagine struggling up the side of a mountain. Each step requires planning because it leads to the next and the next and the next. The way is rocky and steep. The air gets thinner at the top and even though the light seems brighter up there, it is cooler.

At last the journey is complete! You stand at the top of the mountain! You did it! You made it! Your world is complete! You have achieved your goal!

So there you are.

Now what?

You look around you and everything is perfect. Just the way you thought it would be. The rocks glitter with gold and quartz. The sun reflects off of everything. You are in great shape, even your eyes look brighter. The weather is just right. Everything is -- just a bit hollow, a little plastic feeling, empty in some way. It's not what you expected. And it stays that way.

Until you notice another mountain, a few peaks over, and it begins to call to you. You feel frustrated. You just got to the top of this one and to get to that other one will be a lot of work. You have to go down this one, cross several valleys, climb over two other mountains, but, oh well, you just start plugging away.

And somewhere along the way, you realize you are filled up again.

And then we were three

There we sat, like four kids waiting to talk to the principal. Lined up in black plastic chairs against the wall, faces serious and silent, wearing our uniforms of blue paper hats, blue paper booties over our shoes, and gigantic paper name tags taped to our chests.

We were marked. Truly. We each had a blue x over one of our eyes.

There was nothing to do but stare at the semi-circle of bizarre chairs facing us. Large reclining chairs with odd shaped head rests, all covered in sheets, that looked like gigantic chess pieces - Bishops - waiting for their turn to go on the board.

A very tall man came in and sat in one of those chairs, his back to us as women covered him up, arranged his head, and inserted a needle into his arm. The tension began to build, but just then a nurse called out a name and the woman sitting next to me got up and trundled into the room beyond the door.

And then we were three.

A moment later my name was called and I rose from my black plastic chair and went through the door too. There I sat in another chair, this time in the corner. Waiting for my turn.

Finally, the other woman came out of the inner room and I was sent in. The man behind the machine motioned for me to sit down and place my head in the metal frame, but my feet couldn't reach the floor so I couldn't slide forward without scooting down and when I did, the chair still wanted to roll back so I held onto the handles on the machine.

Two little red dots full of floating black dots appeared and then I was done. The scar tissue from my cataract was gone. My sight was perfect!

And I was sent home as if from a geriatric preschool, only I had to drive myself.

Perfect

I learned about Meetup last year when I was laid up with a bum foot and couldn't go anywhere. Never one to jump into things without some thought I didn't apply until this past July when I found myself curiously alone. As you might expect with me nothing is ever as easy as it seems. The group I chose is considered, "secret," which means they have to meet you at a public event before you are accepted into the group. That took nearly a month to occur so I just recently began doing things with this group.

I love it! I have gone out for coffee, gone to a nice restaurant for a meal in the company of fascinating women, and will be going to a game night, brunch and movie in the near future.

This particular group is right up my alley and I was thinking about that today. I don't feel any of the pre-event nerves I used to feel when attending social events. First of all, I am only responding for myself so there is no pressure to please anyone else, nor is there any fear that I will be judged on the person going with me because I am going alone. Next, everyone else will be coming alone so I won't be odd man out either. And finally, these are all just social, fun things to do. I don't have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Bridge or worry that my partner's ego is at stake.

It seems to just be a group of like minds getting together to participate in a bunch of diverse things.

Information gap

Our country has traditionally not condoned torture, because any rational person understands that people will say anything if they are in enough pain, but secret torture was used during Bush's presidency and under the Patriot act even citizens could be denied due process.

Someone talks to unseen spirits and rational human beings become leery. When spirits talk back, labels appear, schizophrenic, disturbed. Unless these spirits are related to religious characters. Then, for some reason it is seen as holy.

Separation of church and State was honored until 1954 when Eisenhower added, "under God" to our Pledge of Allegiance.  Normally many of our legislators are less concerned with God than with the highest bidder, but if a distraction is needed they can find God!

Now we have private prisons where poor people, racially profiled people and children are sent for things that would be a simple traffic ticket, or school detention in the past..

One of our presidential candidates has openly said hateful things about all manner of minorities and not only has he not been charged with hate crimes, people are willing to put the fate of our country in his hands.

I read where cognitively challenged people like him because he makes the scapegoats clear so they know who to hate and the wealthiest like him because, well because he is their Republican candidate! I think they feel insulated from the havoc he might wreak if he is elected. After all the last Republican president was easily handled.

The news channels keep the pot boiling because that is their part in this game of greed where money speaks louder than truth.

Never since the signing of our constitution has our foundation been so riddled with obscenities, fired off by well paid raconteurs and embraced lock, stock and barrel by people who are so ill informed.

Love and fear

Love should set you free!

I wrote that line just before Bestest called and lo and behold what did we talk about!

So many of us are told that we should love our neighbor as ourselves and that love is infinite, it never runs out, that wherever two are more are gathered there is love.

We are also taught to fear contaminating love by allowing it to extend beyond one person, as if having a best friend outside of marriage will destroy something, or diminish it.

But love is not a cave made of rock, it is a concept, a feeling, perhaps the breath of god that flows in around and over us all the time. Just as a child needs a mother, father, grandmother, uncle, aunt, cousins and brothers and sisters and loves them all in different ways without taking anything away from any of the others, a healthy adult still needs this diversity to be happy and whole.

It is not necessary for "a man to leave his mother and a woman leave her home" for a marriage to thrive. In fact to believe that one person can be everything to another is a little naive. We have just learned to make do and making do causes problems.

On the other hand, sex is not love. It can be part of loving, but love can and does exist totally outside of sexual relationships, which probably should be reserved for one person, or at least one relationship at a time, in today's world.

We need to do better than just making do. We need to allow love to do its work unencumbered by fear.

Imagine a world united by so much love it crowds fear out.

Cindiana Jones

I was walking Annabel around the ponds today when I heard shrieking and saw two little girls, about eleven and thirteen being chased by a flock of little mallard ducks.

It was hysterical, because they had obviously been feeding the ducks when they must have realized how many there were and when they tried to move away, the ducks naturally followed the crust of bread one girl had in her hands.

I don't think they thought the ducks were really chasing after them at first.  The girls were simply enjoying the joy of something novel, but that quickly disintegrated when they moved faster and so did the ducks, who were not about to lose this opportunity to eat white bread.

I wanted to tell them there was nothing to fear from ducks. You could put a baby down in the middle of them and the only thing you'd have to worry about would be the baby hurting the ducks or eating their poop. But I was too far away to say anything, so I just watched.

The girls screamed and ran and by the time I was leaving the area they were standing back to back on top of a park bench like two little Cindiana Jones guarding each others back and protecting themselves by throwing bread to the flock of wild beasts -- terrified and loving every minute of it.

Who binges on toast

I met the most delightful woman at Barnes and Noble today.

I went over, perused the books on cats and found really nothing on training. (Annabel uses her box. She's a neat eater and very smart. I'd like to utilize that and teach her a few tricks, but so far I haven't found anything that she likes more than her freedom to be her!)

Then I went to look for books on yoga, preferably done in a chair, or on a chair and designed for people with bad joints. I didn't really find that either, but a woman looking in the same section looked, left, then came back and struck up a conversation.

I thought she was much younger than I am, but she didn't seem to think so. She was looking for a cookbook, but we talked about the vicious cycle of gaining and losing weight and discovered we had lots in common that you normally wouldn't share with anyone.

Like eating until you feel sick, or eating half a loaf of toast with strawberry jam, or how we eat to celebrate and to commiserate. How we just love to eat.

Sometimes it's just nice to meet another person like yourself -- and like her!

Freedom

There is comfort in traditions, but there is danger too, because traditions come from the past.

They are tried and true, cherished and powerful. Apple pie and Christmas trees, Valentine hearts and mother's love.

Burnished feelings with dim reflections that we remember more with longing than truth.

Joy and peace are like a river. They must be free to overflow the banks of tradition and find their own ways.

We aren't there yet

That shalt not.

Do not.

Any parent knows them are fightin' words! Words that tend to elicit just the opposite behavior in defiant teens.

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

Positive but very very difficult. It would require a mature, intelligent adult (or little children) to accomplish something like that, because neighbors come in all shapes, sizes, races, religions, genders and combinations of all the above.

So the negatives win -- for the time being.