The joy underneath

Life has become increasingly difficult these past few years. Once more I feel the need to divest.

Accumulating stuff seldom makes me happy beyond a certain point. The things dearest to me are those with some sort of sentimental attachment and even these things do not embody the person. It is the memories that do that.

Hours have passed this week without me even noticing. Sleep overtakes me when I least expect it and evades me when I lie down in the silence. My mind is not at peace.

Holding onto things through fear does not make me happy. Fear that some day I will want a coat like this, or shirt like that. Fear that I will not have enough money to replace things if I gain or lose weight. Fear that people will think I am poor because I wear the same clothing too often.

I do not want to keep things to impress other people. I only want to keep things that enrich my life.

Maybe if I clear away enough stuff I will rediscover the joy underneath.

Reconfigure

I am living my life.

My thoughts shape it.

My actions define it.

My perspective evaluates it.

If something is not going the way I want it too, I need to do something different.

Loner

I think the true definition of a loner is a person who has no real connections with anyone. That could be literal, or simply a feeling of being unlike, or really unattached to anyone else at a deep level.

It is possible to go through life walking next to people, learning to express the correct emotions, even interacting with others without fully understanding what those things mean.

Living like that is akin to acting in a play. The character is spelled out. Her actions are relatively clear. Her voice is predetermined. Everything about her seems perfectly normal -- except she is not a real person. Outside of that scene she does not really exist.

The loner would like to be part of something, but there is always a stumbling block, a blockade, a barrier that separates her from what she suspects reality is. Attempts to convince herself otherwise are mostly counter productive.

It is like living inside the shell of a person. Observing her from within. A lab rat watching its own reflection, missing the sensory perceptions that occur to real, non-loner types.

It is possible to live with only one long tether connecting reality to supposition. Or, perhaps, one long tether connecting to reality makes living possible.

Tradition

Traditions have to start somewhere.

Why not here and now?

If there is something important to you, or me, it is up to us to make it happen.

No one can read our minds better than we can ourselves, so we have to become the arbiters of our fate, the captains of our own lives, the people who make our dreams come true.

Imagine your perfect world and get to work. You may not ever get it completely right, but you might do even better.

Light

Tis the season to be cheerful . . .

And even if it is only for a week, or two days, or one day, or even an hour, the universe is a better place because of it.

As silly as it may seem, I think every cookie baked out of love, every song sung out of love, every card written, any gift given -- all if done out of love -- makes the world a better place.

We need these beautiful manifestations of light in the darkness of this hour.

Belief

The river is unbelievably long,
winding down and around bends and curves I never see coming
Muddied underneath and obscured by fog on the surface
Seldom reflecting the bright sunny days children draw
with fluffy clouds and green fish moving in groups of three.
Staring at the glinting ripples, breathing into the dark waters
Searching for the calm, the oneness
Belief outweighs existence.

The river is unbelievably long
luring me into places I never wanted to go
Pulling at me with icy fingers through warm waters
Teasing me into accepting what I cannot change
with alarming alacrity
Swimmng, wading, trying to stay afloat
Reaching for the calm, the oneness
My mind is my savior.
 

Women and words

Sometimes life gets in the way of writing and as much as I love to write, or believe that it is a discipline that needs to be practiced every day, I also believe there must be something to write about.

In search of that I joined several groups of women this year. One group is my age or older. Another is closer to the age of my children and the last is a motley crew. My experiences with each of them are very distinct and very different from the other two.

But the one thing they all have in common is their fluidity. They do not meet at a certain time for a certain reason. Instead each one has different things that pop up here or there and I can choose to participate, or not, as the spirit moves me and no one will be offended, or upset either way.

I don't think these sorts of things existed in the past, at least not for women, who had to plan everything in advance so they could get babysitters, appropriate clothing, and sometimes even permission from their spouses. I like the freedom of today's women and we are women, not girls.

We do not need people to drive us places. We do not have to go everywhere in pairs. We can go out to dinner, or coffee, or drinks, or wherever we want simply because we enjoy it. We don't have to know who else will be there because we are capable of enjoying each other's company in the moment. And we are diverse groups, whose only prerequisite in these cases is that we are women.

They give me outlets I would have loved when I was a young woman and still find rich and wonderful now, but they do take up time that I might have spent writing in the past.

Rich

Living is a balancing act. I don't want to miss all the wonderful little treats and blessings hidden away in the tucks and folds of unlikely moments, waiting there to be discovered like Easter eggs delivered by a huge invisible white rabbit whenever I look away.

But if I get too close I miss the big picture, the one that can't be seen if I am trapped in an eight by ten frame on the mantle of some dusty manor house.

And again, if I find myself jumping from one perspective to another, consciously trying not to miss anything, I will miss a lot. The fireplace is filled with the ashes of lost opportunities, things that never came to pass because I was focused on not missing that minuscule thing under the microscope, or far away thing through the telescope.

The ebb and flow of life and love, moments and adventures, fantasy and fact, light and dark, archetypal and mundane is so rich. I feel like a huge whale scooping up delights by the tons and filtering it out again, hoping to retain enough to keep me alive for one more mouthful.

And sometimes I am so discouraged by the doctors and dentists, the philosophers and newscasters, the specialists who feel it is their duty to keep me on the straight and narrow, the down and dirty, the road stomped safe and flat by a million other feet, that I feel like giving up.

Life needs to be lived and the older I get the more necessary it becomes for me to live it! I don't want to spend years on a shelf, to be viewed like some stuffed copy of the human I once was. I want to burn bright and get blown out on a dark and stormy night listening to the thunder outside my window and being glad I'm inside safe and warm.

At the table

One of my dearest dreams, since I was a young girl, was to be able to sit at the feet of a great teacher and learn.

I learned a lot by eavesdropping on my father and his associates. Sitting in the back seat of the car, at the table when they ate lunch, over coffee, at conventions --  those were days off from school where I learned more than I left behind.

Most of my life, even though it was rich in things I loved, has left part of me starving. I seldom feel qualified to take part in great conversations, but in truth, there have not been many around me. The business world talks of profits and money. The elementary school world talks about behavior problems and record keeping. Flower people talk about flowers. Nurses talk about body parts.

A few religious people and musicians have brought up more esoteric things once in a while, but mostly I have been that hungry little face pressed against the window looking in at things I could only dream of.

Now I have been invited in and I sit at the feet of the Masters listening to them talk and laugh and discuss things I often must look up to understand.

And it is heaven.

Hibernation

It has been one of those days on the frozen tundra of an Illinois winter.

The world is one big ice globe and I didn't feel well, so I stayed inside doing -- well, nothing.

Turning on the television turned out to be more of nothing. The programs were mostly sordid reality take offs and ugly newscasts, which just made me feel worse. I finally turned to my last resort (before Netflix or Amazon) and watched a Hallmark movie.

Frankly it was much better than I expected it to be, but I still fell asleep and woke up a couple hours later having missed the ending. That is okay, I thought, because they are playing it again! Same male lead, same basic venue,(an inn.) The tone was the same. The pacing was the same. I actually watched it for a few minutes more before I realized the female lead was different. Then for a bit, I thought they were just showing a remake of the same movie (this couple was also going on a picnic.)

And finally I realized it was an entirely different movie - well not really, but it was supposed to be. I didn't know why this channel seldom draws me in, but I think I do now.

I got up, gave up all pretenses about it being daytime and crawled into bed where I was really warm for the first time in ages, and slept the rest of the day.

Boxes

I just read an article about what it's like to be this age, or that and I found it unfamiliar even though I have been that age.

I would like to think I am some extraordinarily unique creature who, alone, does not fit the mold, but that would not be true.

I don't think it is possible, or fair, to look at another's life as a blueprint for our own. Doing that might limit the possibilities. Feeling the need to do something similar might take up the time better spent inventing a more personal way. Even when the result is similar, we should have the knowledge that our path was our own and inventing it one of the great joys of living.

I have seldom found myself fulfilled by many of the things people rave about and that is across the board. Boxed up pursuits are only jumping off places. After peeking at them, it is more fun to find out where the angora came from in that sweater and how it was put together and by whom before it was wrapped up to fit inside a shirt box with a tag on it. Or, having gone inside a church and spending time learning there, to branch out, look at nature, listen to the Silence and ponder the miracle of actual being.

I like the novel, the fascinating, the deep and dark and brilliant. I want time to explore and think and experience with my own body and mind. I want to hear your thoughts and dreams and wondering, but I need the space to experience you in my own way.

So what is it like to be me, or you? Now or back then? In sickness and in health, for better for worse, till who knows when?

Let's get together and talk about it.

What I do for love

I never regret the things I do out of love.

In fact, I have a very difficult time doing things I don't love, at least for any extended period of time.

That is not to say that all loving things are easy to do. Some can be really hard, but then they are worth the effort.

Most of my life has been spent doing what I love.

That is a blessing I cannot be too grateful for.

Happiness is

Happiness is personal.

Unhappiness is too.

Both can be a choice. I cannot always make things go my way, but I can usually choose to go a different way. And while that may not make me happy, it might do a lot to alleviate the unhappiness.

Good people

In the midst of all the money grubbing, power pulling nastiness that seems to have taken over our country, I flipped channels and found Dolly Parton's fund raiser for Gatlinburg.

This is more the country I have loved all my life.

People are gathering together to help those who are hurting.

I have been through Gatlinburg many times in my life, starting when I was sixteen and my aunt and uncle drove us through this little town with black bear cubs  rifling through the trash and later on, after having driven my own sixteen year old son to work at a summer camp, we rented a house up in those mountains.

I took a photograph up there that was so stunning we blew it up and framed it to hang over our mantlepiece. Now those woods are gone along with the lives of people and pets and other animals who became the victims of a fire started by some teens playing with fire.

In the midst of the sorrow, it is good to see so many people coming forward to help those they don't even know, but who are kindred spirits to good people everywhere.

Work

No matter how hard I try, my sense of self worth still seems to be tied to what I am doing.

That means that when I am doing something that seems worthwhile, such as transcribing interviews like I am doing now, or raising my children, I feel really good about me.

But then when I am not doing much of anything I don't think much of myself.

That is why volunteering is so important to me. I see a reason for what I am doing or I wouldn't be doing it. Then I feel I have a reason to be.

Somehow work done out of love is so much more fulfilling.

Holy people

Human beings travel across the world seeking people and places where miracles happen. Religious pilgrimages are popular among the devout. Holy people draw followers like bees to honey.

It is sweet to believe that some deity out there throws out threads for the devout, or lucky, or holy to find and if they keep their finger on it long enough, for just the right reasons, and in exactly the right frame of mind, their wishes will be granted.

The magic of childhood fairy tales morph in the magic of religious traditions.

But what if all these miracles have less to do with holy people and places, words and objects, or anything else outside a person?

What if the most sacred place, object, word, thing in all the world is simply a human being, or perhaps even a living creature, or even more unbelievable, everything?

What if we already live in that magical place everyone dreams of and are blind to it?

What if miracles come to us, from us?

What if belief is the answer? Belief in ourselves, that we can heal, or change, or be all that we can be. What if that is what the Bible means when it says we are made in God's image?

How simple. Or not, because that kind of belief can't be faked. 

So we trick ourselves and each other by handing over the power to find it by creating places and words and people who are special, or holy and ask them open the doors for us.

It's my wonderful life

There have been times in my life when I wondered how much longer I had to endure this life. At the time I could not imagine any way things could get better.

And then they did.

Last spring I looked around my studio apartment and thought, is this all there is? My grandchildren are far away. My friends live far away. I have nothing to do, especially in the summer. Am I going to live out the rest of my life this way?

And then I joined a meet up group and met lots of kindred spirits.

And then I got a keyboard for a birthday gift and rediscovered how much I rely on playing to drag myself out of the doldrums.

And then I felt my creativity starting to reawaken.

Now I have more to do than I have time to do it. I am going to coffees, book club, dinner out, brunches and game nights. I am playing my keyboard, writing stories and My Thots and drawing and working on another book with Bestest.

And life is wonderful. It's not perfect, but it is very very good. I wouldn't trade it for most of the other lives I know about and that is saying something.

Sometimes

Sometimes I forget how satisfying it is to do my own work, express myself in my own way, simply be me.

Unfettered by fear or feelings of inadequacy, it leaves me feeling like a child again. Ready to write scary stories in haunted mansions. Eager to draw pictures with words.

Sometimes I want to just take globs of words and splatter them all over the page; creating a poem or picture of Pollock-ish proportions and not care what the world thinks.

And sometimes I like to be careful, to tat tiny delicate phrases that are out of date and long over due.

Traditions

We have a new member of the family, my younger brother's third great grandchild! A beautiful baby girl born to a handsome young father and pretty mother who carries on the strangest family tradition.

It is not a tradition started by my immediate family, but it is all in the family.

In 1955 a sixteen year old girl had a baby who became my brother's wife sixteen years later. Now, through similar situations that brother is a great grandfather to three children born to parents under eighteen. Their grandfather was only thirty five when it began.

So far all these children have managed to, at least, finish high school and one has her MA. I hope that tradition continues as well.

Children having children is not a tradition I am proud to have in our family, but I am glad they are managing to continue their education. They all love and support each other, but the saddest thing is their lack of knowledge.

Not one of them realizes, or understands, the experiences they have missed by taking on so much responsibility so early. They all stay close to home because they have to at that age. And the odds are better than even that their children will be constrained by the same ignorance that led a girl in the fifties to start this tradition.

Fitting in

Annabel is a cat.

That seems like such a direct and simple statement, yet all cats are different and Annabel is like no other cat I have ever had.

To be fair she is the first cat I've had that was not a young kitten when I brought her home. She is all cat.

On her own from before nine weeks, her first memories are probably of being locked, alone, in a cage facing a wall in the animal control center. Everything she knows about being a cat comes from some place inside of her.

After her first twelve weeks, since she knew no better and had no choice, she turned to me. Wrapped up in my large gray plush blanket I am the mother. Only when I am asleep does she come and cuddle up against me and even then mostly when she isn't feeling all that great. I can tell she cares for me, but she shows it by curling up between my feet on the foot of my recliner every so often. Or she will lie down touching my shoes, or paw my chair once in a while. Twice she let me hold her for a few minutes.

She has learned everything else by watching me intently as if trying to equate the things I do with the things she needs to learn. I brush my teeth and rinse my mouth under the faucet. She reaches out with one paw and scoops water into her mouth if I leave the faucet dripping. She eats only from her glass dishes and won't touch food on the floor. She will fetch her stuffed mice and return them to my shoes if she is in the mood, or chase the laser light around the room if I make it seem like a real animal. However, she knows full well I make it go, because when I stop, she comes to me to make it go again. If she spills her food, or gets litter off her rug, she will try and sweep it up with her foot.

There is a real little lion inside of her, but it is an accommodating little creature trying to fit in with the only family she knows and I appreciate that.

Hope

Sometimes life is so sweet it's like a candy cane, one delicious piece wound around another so tightly it seems like it is all one big whole. All happy and perfect and wonderful - - and scary, because if it is that simple it could just as easily be all awful and dark and sad.

Most of the time life is a bit bitter sweet and somehow that is a little better all around. The sweet feels sweeter and the bad is ameliorated by the good.

The trick is to focus on the sweetness, or the best, without forgetting about the bitter and bad. That way hope has a way of finding its way in between everything and when there is hope, all is bearable.

That's the story of

My friend's nativity scene is the product of a blended family.

Baby Jesus has a little baby brother, also named Jesus.

There are three mother Marys, but only one Joseph as far as I can tell. Lots of shepherds and angels, a few wise men, several kings, even a sacred cow or two.

They are all colors and sizes and I suspect a fair diversity of ages.

It is just the sort of thing the Jesus I learned about in preschool would have loved, but almost certainly not something many fundamentalists would be able to tolerate today.

Funny who changes things.

Looking at which side?

The line between happy and sad is so thin that holidays often blur them right together.

Memories, dreams, wishes, fears, all jump on that train and take it even further.

Focusing on the present helps clear it all up, because in this moment, right now where I am sitting in a chair, next to my cat, life is pretty darn good.

Sometimes that is the best I can hope for, better than many people ever really have, so I'm going to be grateful for that . . .

In this moment.

Deeper than

Everything changes.

People grow up. People grow older.Tastes change. Habits change.

Everything changes.

Except love.

Love is like the ocean. It moves and waves. It ebbs and flows. It is warmer somedays and cooler others,  but real love finds a way to be constant in the ways that count.

Instead of changing, love only burrows deeper.

Death of salesmen

I had an experience today that was right out of some zany old fashioned comedy.

Only it didn't feel funny.

I received a very nice shirt as a gift. It didn't fit and the store would only give me store credit when I returned it. That was on Black Friday and there was no chance of buying a new garment on a day like that.

I went home, ordered a shirt online and my store credit didn't work. I finally called them in person and got it ordered.

Yesterday I got an email saying they were out of my item so today I went back to the store to see if I could find a replacement. Most things were not my size and the ones that were, were not things I would wear.

With the possible exception of some sweaters hanging in a tight jumble way over my head.

I tried using the hook to get one down I thought might be my size, but it wouldn't work. When my arms were finally too tired to even try any longer I found a clerk, but she said she couldn't help me. She asked another clerk if he could help me, but he said it wasn't his department either. They called for help, but no one would come.

I left the store.

I went to return another shirt I got, but that store said they no longer accepted returns there if they were ordered on line. Now I can pay to return it by mail or drive to another town an hour away, but they thought that store might have closed!

I called. It hasn't and they will accept the return if I bring it down there.

I might just make do with the clothes I have. It is way too much trouble trying to find new ones. Either way I will never shop at these stores again.

My brother Tom

Some people would say my brother Tom is a failure in this life. I might have thought so too at times, but not now.

I was looking at our family Thanksgiving photo and realized that he brought over half the people.

Whenever there is a family wedding or funeral, we can expect him to show up with his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and most of his ex wives.

He has a best friend that's been around since they were in high school.

One of his friends thought so much of him that she left him her home and farm until the day he dies.

He may have poor health, no money and a bad habit or two, but he certainly has nailed family.

Cleaning up

It was one of those days when I did all the little things that needed doing.

Some needed doing back in July when I should have mailed the birthday present I mailed today.

Some were predestined like picking up my car from the the auto body shop where it was being repaired from being rear ended. Also calling my insurance company to check on providers then calling back and forth with my doctor about how to deal with a medical issue.

Others were smaller things like getting gas for the rental car, finding an odd size battery that runs the remote control for my lights, gluing two of my twenty year old runes back together, running by the dealership to have air put in my tires, balancing my checkbook, ordering cookies for Fahrenheit 401, and sending new pictures to my brother.

I am surprised at how good it feels to have all these things wrapped up for a while.