A life

The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness. A quote by Norman Cousins that a friend sent me this morning.

It made me think -- about so many things.

And it feels right in so many ways, but is that because I am predisposed to do this, or have I been  taught by my family, culture, or community to believe that I must be part of a herd, or pack? Perhaps loneliness has less to do with others and more to do with perception.

Biologically I am probably pretty much finished with my life. I no longer expect to have another child, nor do I expect to raise any more children. I understand that I still have value to people, both in my family and my volunteer work, but I am certainly not irreplaceable.

I don't really want to work more than I do right now, but I also don't have anything I consider truly valuable that I need to do most days.

I have always been good at filling up my time and I still am. I read, write, play music and draw a little. I go out with friends. I have a spiritual life, but all of this is without any real goals. Then again, I have never been goal oriented.

Looking back I think I have mostly been self oriented. Everything I have done, or enjoyed, or felt was worthwhile seems to have been something that satisfied a need in me. It may have made things better, or more interesting, or more enjoyable for others too, but it began with me wanting to do it.

Does that make it less meaningful? I don't know. Is it the journey or the end that counts?

For me, both really. I don't think I can love one and discount the other. For me most experiences are immersions. I seldom just dabble in things that are important to me. I throw myself in lock, stock, and barrel. My loves, thoughts, emotions, physical well being, even dreams are so inextricably interconnected it is difficult for me to separate them.

I've always needed to live in the midst of my own wave; drinking, eating, sleeping, acting on and feeling life as I flow through it. Some people call that passion. Others might call it narcissism or obsession. Whatever it is -- it is, or was, me.

Now I suddenly find myself set free, like a bobber whose line is cut in the middle of an open ocean. Free to go anywhere within the limitations of my life, how much money or health, or courage I have. But the problem is that I do not feel called to be anywhere, or do anything right now.

I am truly at sea.

Oer thy prairies verdant growing, Illinois

Yesterday was one of those rainy days that are only pleasant because there has been nonstop ice, snow and cold for the last few weeks. The drops fell, big and fat, against my windshield and I only had to turn on the wipers occasionally in order to be able to see.

By the time I got home it was still raining big, juicy, fat raindrops, but the intensity had really ramped up. I walked the short distance from my car to my door and was literally dripping by the time I got inside. Minutes later my coat was still dripping and the sacks I had covered everything with left puddles on my kitchen counters. I thought it was the most water I had ever carried into the house. Ever!

But later on, while sitting in my living room the rain beat a tattoo on the window that was actually awe inspiring. I didn't know rain could be so intense and still be in drops. Each drop had to fight with the ones around it to hit the window. It was as if someone was throwing infinite buckets of water at my window and they exploded into raindrops as they hit.

I woke up this morning and thought my window was going to explode into my room! I looked up from my bed and could see the heat from a neighbors chimney swirling like a mini dessert mirage above my head. It had stopped raining and started blowing!

The roar of the wind as it dove into the alcove where I live was daunting.

Even more daunting than the rain last night.

This is the Illinois prairie that our ancestors moved into with covered wagons and sod houses and I wonder that they had the courage to stay here. But maybe because it is not a common occurrence, at least not anymore, they didn't know until it was too late.

They had dug their houses out of the land, filled their home with as much food as they could acquire and huddled in for the winter. There was no place to go when the winds swooped across the prairies at fifty miles an hour, so they stayed. And having done it once, and survived, they decided to hang in there and keep on trying.

Only the strongest survived that and we are their ancestors.

Family ties

I tried out one of those DNA tests. Having heard both good and bad things about them and their accuracy, I used the one I felt would be most accurate.

The results were certainly not shocking, but they were surprising.

Tracking them I can actually attach family stories to some of the locations where my DNA shows up, but what it doesn't show was more puzzling.

My family has a whole story about our Ojibwa ancestor and it was relatively recent, after 1790, but there is no trace of it in this DNA kit.

Instead it is mostly (70%)Wales, England and Scotland along with northern Europe (Sweedon, Norway, Germany). And the migration is mostly into the lower Midwest, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky, from Virginia and North Carolina.

I did not join their site, so I can't get in there and explore family trees, but I did discover that I am possibly 4-6th cousins with one of my Facebook friends!

And there is that 1% in Mali that is interesting. I wonder when that happened?

I think, on the whole, what really surprised me were the Nordic connections. Except for an uncle by marriage who was from Holland, I had no idea our family ties went farther north than Germany.

None of this really means anything, but it's fun to dream of who these people were and what their stories might have been.

The reveal

The final product is starting to emerge and I am filled with curiosity.

Is it a thin rusty ruin lying in a heap, or a burnished patina that I see taking shape?

A distorted modern piece, a nightmare? Or classical, like Vermeer, deep and rich with shadows and light?

Leftovers, or something new?

Have I honed the lessons of a lifetime into wisdom and dignity?

Or tumbled into twilight blind, deaf, and dumb, without a match?

What stands here reaching for the veil?

What about them good ole days

Sometimes I think if I read one more post about how "we played kickball outside until the lights came on and, " I will drop off of social media for good.

The good old fifties when polio was still around and McCarthyism was in full swing.

Sure some people even played outside long after the lights came on, but is that such a great accomplishment?

We didn't have video games and iPhones, but I could tell time by what was on television. Families gathered around the TV sets like our forebears gathered around the fireplace, warming ourselves with love stories and westerns and Ed Sullivan while grandmas sat around saying, "In my day we talked to each other . . . "

My family still ate dinner in the dining room with damask table cloths and matching napkins. We used a full set of silverware and conversation was expected, but other families used those new fangled TV trays, so their kids must have come in from outside by then.

People have been talking about the good ole days since time began. I can imagine the first cavemen who had language saying, "In my day we lived outside with the sky for a ceiling and stars over our head."

The good old days were the days when we were active and young and open to new experiences. Today people still do all the things people have always done, they just do them in different ways. These are the good old days people will talk about in thirty years.

So enjoy them.

There is no rest for sleep walkers

Change is part of living so if I am not adaptable life is going to be hard.

Life IS hard for those of us who grew up believing  we were supposed to grow up, find a profession, find a partner, find a home, fill in all the blanks and live happily ever after.

Anything short of being all things to all people feels like failure and some of us deal with that failure by trying harder while others deal with it by leaving and some just go to sleep and live the rest of our lives in a somnambulistic state.

It all involves change, but different kinds of change.  The way we define and choose them depends on how honest we can be with ourselves..

Trying harder can be the road to satisfaction unless it becomes a constant battle to one up ourselves and everyone else.

Leaving can be very fulfilling if we leave for something that feels healthier, better, maybe even happier.

Sleep walking turns us into zombies, the walking dead, who deal with change like a man in quicksand, struggling to stay afloat in frustrating, murky confusion. There is no rest for sleep walkers.

When what I once did was wonderful, but now it is not, what do I do?

I change.

Please let me do it with insight and courage.

Dream dream dream

My life is fine, maybe even great, but my dream life is terrible.

My dreams are filled with almost unbearable frustration, vague fears of the unknown, being lost and unable to get home at night in a city, or an immense house.

Last night I dreamed I was trapped in a mountain town with my sister and a music minister from southern Illinois. The house was very bleak, everything was jury rigged. We could see the tops of buildings from the window, but it was dangerous to walk out there. My sister decided she was taking us all to breakfast and I assumed we would walk to MacDonald's like we always had because it was close, but the minister didn't want to. He wanted to go somewhere nicer.

I knew we would need the car to do that, but my sister had turned the car into a litter box so it had to be cleaned before we could use it. I tried and tried, but I didn't have the tools to do it right. I finally opened the trunk and was able to pull a little drawer out. It was full of cat poo and my sister wanted me to just open a window and toss it out. That felt wrong and I finally tipped it over a trash can, but then it turned out the cat had diarrhea and of course that didn't fall out.

It was getting later and I knew breakfast would be over soon. I really wanted to go out. My sister thought it was all very funny and somehow she finally made the car usable.

It was a black antique child's peddle car that looked like it was made of tin. We had to sit one behind the other to get in. My sister drove. The music minister crammed most of his body into the middle space and I sat in the back afraid we wouldn't be able to find the restaurant, terrified that dogs might be able to bite me in such an open car, and trying to remember what she did with the cat poo!

Tonight I am taking 10 mg of a prescription my doctor gave me last year to ease my anxiety. I don't seem to need it during the day, but nights are something else!

Hell

What if I am an eternal caterpillar?  Always in transition. Always changing into something else. Never able to get comfortable in my own skin? Spending all eternity crawling around in a bipolar state of awe and terror?

A caterpillar whose life begins and ends high above the ground whether he is climbing, or flying, so that  I can see the rest of the world, observe it, ponder it in relative safety and comfort, internally, if not as a real member.

That might be one definition of hell. Living life in a bell jar of time and space that allows me to observe what cannot be touched or heard clearly. Having a relatively clear understanding of everything except myself. Hearing the murmurings from beyond the glass without being able to quite decipher the sound or the fury of other beings.

It might be a relief to finally be caught and pinned to some random board where I am identified, tagged and placed in a drawer with others of my ilk.

At least I would know, or think, that I finally knew, what I was.

Selfies

In an age of selfies, where we photograph ourselves at every opportunity in every situation, it is often more about the situation than us. We want to share the baby in our arms, our gramma's birthday, the animals at the zoo, whatever it is that moves us in the moment.

I sometimes laugh at my great niece who posts pictures of her baby about every hour, but I think I was so enamored with my babies I might have done the same thing had we had smart phones back then and better to be posting photos than ignoring that baby. I am a great photo enthusiast. I have over fifty big wide three inch albums filled with pictures of my children growing up.

But today I was looking at the selfie I have on my Facebook profile. I put it on the desktop background of my computer, just to see how I feel when it pops up every day.

I'm not sure I would recognize myself if I saw me walking across the room. Once, long ago, I saw myself in a mirror at a distance and wondered who that woman was who was dressed like me. I snapped this photo in my bathroom mirror and tried to look as natural as possible. No big happy smiles, no coyness, no false worrying, or any other sort of artifice, so I believe it is probably as much how I  look to most people who see me on an everyday basis, as any still photo can be.

I am surprisingly okay with it. In fact, I think I like it. I look healthy, bright eyed, pleasant and thoughtful. At my age, really any age, that is pretty good, but it is not how I tend to think of myself.

I am much harder to please from within. I think of myself as a collection of feelings and emotions, often anxious, or unsure. I often feel ugly and unkempt, incompetent and a square peg trying to fit into this earth's round holes. Bestest tells me I am not all these bad things and I believe him, but I feel as if I am putting one over on him -- even though I am not, at least consciously.

So . . . I am going to keep this photo on my screen and try to assimilate who she looks like with how I feel about myself.  I would really like to be her.

The myth of us

Only in America can we take for granted that everyone should speak our language, follow our customs, celebrate our holidays, know our stories.

We make movies about the best of us, the myth of us, the ways of us and we send them out to the far corners of the earth as if they were gospel.

And perhaps because there are so many of them and perhaps because children always think what is not theirs is better and perhaps because we are so proud and the rest of the world so gullible, our ways have spread across the globe.

But that does not make them better -- or truer -- or anything else. It does make things easier for some of  us. So much easier that we begin to think we are superior, that our language is the "real" one, our ways the best ones, our stories the only ones that really count.

It goes far beyond patriotism.  We can be patriots without believing ourselves above everyone else. We can be patriots and still learn from what works for other countries, other people, other ways.

In a small town the people take on caricatures. They become the personification of kings and queens, bullies and bums and a country is no different. History will remember us for our kindness and caring, or it will remember us for our power and gold and most people would prefer that they and their families live in a kind and caring place.

Power and gold hold sway over those with choices and if the choices are for the good of all they will be kind and caring. Otherwise they will only be good for the handful of people who have the power and the gold.

It isn't hard to know who is who. Gold is as heavy as power when it is wielded for a few egos. Those people who feed the poor, care for the sick, teach the children, love their neighbors are like feathers blowing in the wind. The light shines through them and they rise above all others in the end.

But that is not the myth of us. The myth is that we all live on streets paved in gold with an orchestra playing our theme song in French horns and kettle drums and all we have to do is pry it from the earth and we will be kings.

One day

Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in a cottage in the middle of a large field.

The field provided for all her physical wants. It fed her, there was water to drink, a place for her home and a place for her children to play. She loved the field, but over the years it began to fill up with garbage until it was barely recognizable as the place she once loved so very much.

She began dreaming of a large bear, a huge brown bear, maybe seven feet tall, that walked on two legs.  It was fierce and terrible and it stood right behind her all the time. You might think she was afraid of it, but she wasn't. She liked the idea that if the wind blew too harshly across the field it would only blow her back into the bear's warm fur and not knock her to the ground. As fierce as he was, that bear became her hold on all she held dear.

Some people called him her spirit animal. Maybe he was. Some people thought he was just a crazy dream. Maybe he was. But whatever he was to other people, he was a source of comfort and strength for her.

One day they moved away from the field and set up housekeeping by some beautiful water. The woman loved to go to sleep watching the water shadows on her walls. She loved the sound of the water lapping against itself and the bear disappeared.

Until one day the woman realized that the water, too, was filling up with trash and garbage and its beauty was being destroyed.  That night she dreamed the Great Turtle came to her bedroom window and she crawled upon its back. They soared through the night as she looked down and saw the earth covered in trash. The Great Turtle said nothing, but she could feel his sadness. It flooded through her until he returned her home and as they passed through the moonlight, she felt his hope.

He came to her often at night, taking her to a secret tree that was her real home. A safe place where her children could play in all the branches and everyone was safe unless the Trickster came. When that happened the woman fled to the bottom of the tree where there was a huge paned window, and waited for the Great Turtle to come and carry her away.  Sometimes she even went deep into the ground below the tree where she could look up at the three hundred foot roots hanging down above her. That was where the Great Turtle came from, she was sure of it, but she really only knew for sure that he would come for her.

And then, one day, when she looked out her window and saw that the water was now as ugly as the field had been, she tore herself away. Her children were grown, the Great Bear was gone. The Great Turtle came no more. For many years after that she lived a life between the worlds, safe, but often confused.

Until, one day, she heard a small laugh and a very small boy appeared. He was wearing little coverall jeans and a striped shirt and he liked to sit on the branches of a weeping willow tree when he talked to her. Every day he coaxed her closer and closer until she found herself sitting next to him. She wanted to hold him and take care of him, yet, he made her feel very safe.

She could see he was really a flesh and blood being, but he became, not her protector, but her light and after that each day grew brighter and safer and happier.

She never saw the Great Bear again, nor the Great Turtle, but she knew they had led her out of the darkness and into the light just as surely as that little boy lighted her way into the future.

One day had arrived and while it wasn't happily ever after, it was about as close as she could imagine.

Horribly

Bestest and I were talking about a book he teaches in one of his classes. He seemed surprised that, like his students, one of the first things I remembered about it was the father killing the dog.

I've given a lot of thought about why that is.

One thing, is that people tend to think of dogs as innocent creatures, helpless in the way they can be horribly mistreated by people, but as Bestest points out, the main character is an innocent little boy who was horribly treated.

Why then do I think I remember the dog so vividly?

Because my experience in life is that I can be hurt much more deeply and irreparably by someone who goes after what I love.

As an adult I can deal with hurts in so many ways, but dealing with the guilt of having someone I love hurt because of me is almost unbearable.

It's not a novel idea. Evil people have known it as one of the most effective ways of torturing people since time began.

Hurt someone's pet, their child, their spouse, their parent and you inflict so much more pain.

The little boy is hurt in so many terrible ways that remembering the dog is almost an escape from the tension of the book, a step away from the horribly abusive story, allowing me to escape from his helplessness and suffering and separate myself from the book.