A little bit of peace

I have felt very Zen for the last three days.

Almost sleepy.

Of course there is a possibility that I had the virus earlier and this is a leftover.

Or it could be that I am disposing of unwanted influences in my life, like toxic Trump supporters.

Or it could simply be the Prozac.

Ten milligrams for three days.

Not much, but if it provides this kind of relief, whether it is real or a placebo, I don't care.

I'll take it.

I'll take whatever it requires to survive the Trump era with all of its unimaginable horrors.

Friendship

Adults can have differing opinions. In fact, if they don't have them occasionally, one of them is probably not being honest.

Friendship can thrive on these differences. It adds variety and makes both people think.

But if those differences grow to become different basic ideological belief systems there can be problems.

If one of them becomes a cannibal, chances are pretty good the friendship will end one way or another.

If one of them chooses to support cannibalism, or pedophilia, or Nazi style meanness, it may take longer for the other to believe that has happened, but no amount of discussion is going to really make this a friendship worth having.

The idea that two adults can have differences in opinions is a far cry from being friends with a person choosing to support something I cannot condone.

In the course of

It takes a while to become who you are. 

I think that is why human beings get so long to grow up. Some of us do it in twenty years. Others take a lot longer.

But once you understand who you are there are parts of you that never leave. Like an Oak tree never grows maple leaves, or tulips never burst into roses, you are who you are and you might as well explore that.

Because there are little nooks and crannies that make you very special and there are big huge things that define you forever, and all of these things are you.

Forever.

Even if you forget them, or never recognized them at all, they are.

Are.

They are there to be dealt with, enjoyed, loved and dismayed by. They are there to create your experiences, your sorrows and your miracles.

You don't have to believe in them, but in the course of a lifetime, you will embrace them.

Back home again

There's a place I know, where I grew up and the people are free!

Free, man! Free!

They don't wear seatbelts, or facemasks or follow any rules they don't like.

They are gun toting, tchotchke craving folks,

Who fill every windowsill, woodwork or ledge big enough to hold something

With something.

Their garages and barns are overflowing with oversized pick ups 

Fast sport cars, motorcycles, and anything else they can cram in there.

They are flag waving, red capped, members of the You Es A.

Bible thumping, back slapping, jolly good neighbors,

Congratulating themselves on the purity of their friends.

They got money man and they want you to know it!

They are pro-lifers and willing to kill for it.

They go where they want.

Shop where they want.

Swim where they want.

And they don't believe in that there scientific stuff 

Like viruses and the environment.

Voting is important to them and if'n you can't get to the poll?

Well maybe you weren't meant to vote anyway.

This is a real fine spot and they are proud to live there.

I call it Satan's Little Circle.

Holey handbasket

Time flies even if you're not having fun.

I suppose the lesson here is to find a way to have fun.

Whatever it is, as long as it is legal

Go for it.

When I was young many people thought they should live for the day because the future was not ours. We thought the adults in the world would blow us to kingdom come and we practiced sitting with books on our heads underneath desks as if that would make a difference.

Now it looks like if ignoring the plague doesn't get us, the police might and if the police don't get us, Trump will find a way.

That seems to be the new norm.

How bad can we make it for other people.

So it is time to burst that bubble and find some value in a world that has already left in its own holey handbasket.

Read that book over your head, get up and write on that desk, sing out loud and long, make people smile, do whatever it is that makes you happy.

Who knows it might catch on and spread like a virus.

Adaptable

The world is a hard place. We are living in that future world sci-fi movies have talked about for years, corrupt leaders, white-supremacists, people who think, believe and spout things like sheep, and an earth slowly disintegrating from misuse.

Amidst all this are the bright angels who give me hope. 

My grandchild, who is barely ten seems to be able to take the facts, accept them, consider them, and still be a beacon of intelligence and light.

Growing up in a world where even going to school is not always possible, this child blithely says, "I hope I get to go to school in the Fall, but if not we'll still have our virtual classroom."

In the meantime there is having a sibling to play with in real time, virtual pets on Prodigy and maybe a real pet someday.

Even the possibility of changing schools becomes a simple balancing of pros and cons that equates to comparing apples and oranges.

Quiet adaptability is a stunning characteristic.

Meaningful

Ask me what kind of music I like and, depending on the moment, it could be anything from Mendelsohn to Sousa, Irish folk songs to Indie, popular music from the seventies to music made by people I personally know and love.

And those are the songs I always love the most. Music played for me by people whose hearts touch mine personally.

The people in my life who play music for me are people who care about people. They do more than warble pretty words, they back those words up with actions. They are the truly beautiful people who are beacons in this dark world.

Everyone generally does something good sometime, but I know people who put themselves out there for others nearly every day. Not just giving a nod to them, but actually going out of their way to do something that will really make them happy, or improve their lives. They are people looking for ways to be meaningful.

Sometimes when I am feeling really low I think of these people who take the time to give themselves and their  love to others in personal ways that say, I know you and I love you and I care enough about you to try hard to ease your way.

That's the kind of person I wish to be.

Father's Day

I have a little nook where I sit very close to my television. It is where I also use my laptop, talk on the phone, and read. I call it my command center. 

A few days ago I was sitting here, television off, glasses on, working on the laptop when I scooted forward to slip the laptop into its storage spot.

Glancing up I saw my father looking at me through the television screen. It was a shock, but there he was.

Of course it was only my reflection and yet:

I felt a closeness to him I haven't felt in some time. Of course, I am seventy and he died in 2000. If he were alive he would be ninety-three.

It's a nice thought that whenever I want him, he is there, right in front of me.

Or perhaps inside my heart.

It is your body

I have never found other people's experiences, or preferences particularly helpful, with the exception of two people who are almost my clones in feelings and tastes.

I have been told surgery was the only choice only to discover that letting nature heal it possibly saved me repeat surgeries. Sometimes I had to wait up to two years, but my body eventually solved it's own problem healing a muscle or joint that was then as strong as it had ever been.

I have been told that going to rehab is absolutely necessary and gone to be put back in a cast after just one trip. Allowing my body to move at its own speed has not failed me yet. If the desire to regain movement is there, it will appear in it's own time.

Nobody really knows the answers to any of these things. They can only tell you what has mostly worked in the past and the key word there is mostly. There is a time and a place for everything, but trust your own senses. If you are wrong, it is your problem, but if you are right you will learn more about how your body works. And it can be in miraculous ways.

People used to live without all the invasive things we put our body through. Of course they died too, but people still die and sometimes it is because we tried to take the easy way out with an instantaneous cure.

Modern medicine is mostly designed around removing something, killing something, or not getting sued.

Humane medicine is human being oriented and all human beings are different.

Gifts

Human beings are the most ignorant, entitled creatures on earth. 

We have every advantage, every possibility of living in a virtual land of milk and honey and what do we do?

We hoard the milk, the honey, and the land, cutting off resources for everything around us, never realizing that in doing so we are maiming our own progeny.

We could spend all our time trying to make life better for every creature, plant, water, mountain, and desert on the planet, but instead we worry about  whose name is on the deed, who loves who, and what color they are.

We have taken Eden apart one gift at a time.

Beyond time

There was going to be a party in a secret place.

My son and I nodded to each other. We would meet there later on.

Getting there meant riding a bicycle down the Constitution trail, out into the country to a grassy place by the water.

He arrived first and I followed, hardly believing it could be true.

As soon as I arrived someone put a wine glass in both my hands, but I broke the bottom off of one so it could not be put down and stand up anymore.

I thought I was very clever when I placed the broken one, upside down, in a glass container full of ice. Now I only had the good one in my hand -- only I was wrong! I had thrown the good one away.

Still I found my friend, Tom, and talked to him. I couldn't see him because I was so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open, but I knew it was him and he was there. I wanted him to meet all my other friends because this was a place beyond time where everyone I loved could be at once.

It was so hard. I was so tired, but I found Andy and got him to come meet Tom and we all hugged each other. I could tell it was lovely even though I couldn't see it.

Bobby was doing the same things, only he wasn't so tired so he could see everyone who was there and what was going on. I could only find the people I knew.

It was the most heart breakingly beautiful place I had ever been. 

If only I could have kept my eyes open.

Rituals

Today while the weather was nearly perfect, I ordered a sandwich from a place  my family has ordered out from since the children were infants.  I picked it up curbside and drove to meet my daughter up in the very back of a park we have gone to since before we had children.

There I lay out the table cloth we have used for Thanksgiving, Christmas and picnics for over ten years and the plates that are nearly as old, but only used for picnics.

We cut the sandwich in half, added a handful of chips each and opened the drinks we both brought with us. They are the newest addition to these family rituals. I like grapefruit soda water and she likes Viatamin water.

We sat under the same shady shelter that we sat under when I read to them on hot summer afternoons when they were little and she melted my heart because she still loves the "beautiful' Blue Jays the same way she did back then. But we sat six feet apart now. No one was in my lap today.

We spoke of the virus and how some people seem to think it's gone. We spoke of family and shared our most recent pictures with each other. We discussed politics and her fears about the next election.We talked about her job, which is at a small regional airport and the precautions she has to take now, but in between there were her exclamations pointing out these lovely birds that flew all around us.

I am seventy years old. She is my oldest child, nearly 48 years old. 

With a little help from our family she has come a long way, overcoming some pretty major disabilities and she makes me smile. I am proud of who she has become.

Oblivious

My sister was once married to a man I always considered to be, at the best nosy, and at the worst, completely without boundaries.

He helps people out, but only in ways that appeal to him and only if he feels adequately compensated with food and money.

He is quick to take advantage of other people everywhere he goes, both doing and saying inappropriate things and offending people who are just too polite to bluntly tell him what they think of him.

He forces himself on people, doing things like refusing to remove his truck from a garage that he neither owns, nor pays for, even when asked nicely by people who need the space. He does not even realize they could push that truck out to the curb and have it towed off by the city, but don't because they are better people than he is. He thinks he's one-up and safe because he took the battery out. 

He thinks because he has never faced discrimination he is better than people who have.

He always puts himself first and is the first to whine if people don't treat him the way he thinks they should.  He just doesn't understand how kind people are, because if they treated him the way he deserves, he would really be miserable.

He is completely oblivious.

Evangelicals

There isn't a fetish around as messed up as Christianity. People who need to suffer to feel good about themselves. People who need sacrifice and the killing of sons in order to justify their motives. Do they celebrate the life of a man called Jesus? Or do they give it lip service in order to wallow in the joy of his dying for them. No one wears a jar of water, or wine. There is no symbol for healing. There is a fish for feeding, but did they choose this as the top symbol?

No they did not. They picked the cross. Had it been later they might all have little guillotines around their necks, or nooses, or tiny electric chairs. It is the dying and suffering they get off on.

Every sect rewrites the bible in their own image, but across the board they denigrate this creature they call god by giving it human failings like jealousy and wrath and retribution. "I am a jealous god."

It is a concoction of every myth that preceded it, culled down and reduced to one narcissistic jumble of meaness. People killing each other, judging each other, denying each other simple kindness in the name of a creature they made up of all their worst attributes.

And then, after all the suffering and pain, misery and meanness, right after the orgasm, the face of Jesus appears and they collapse in ecstatic satiety because now they know they are loved.

I believe in a much more powerful force than this mean spirited, thinly veiled attempt to control the world and the creature they worship by prayer, or Christian spells. I do not believe in great buildings, or prejudiced, judging, imperfect idols. I do not believe that politics has anything to do with creation, only destruction. I am suspect of many self professed Christians.

It just all seems a bit too self serving.

I am angry.

Moving

When I was barely eleven years old I had a dream that my parents were moving. 

It was the middle of sixth grade and I had lived in our house and gone to my school since I started kindergarten right after Thanksgiving in 1955. 

In the dream we moved across the street from an enormous church and just up the block from my Aunt Evelyn who collected elephants, loved anything purple and wasn't really my aunt, but a family friend

I told my mother about it at breakfast. My mother believed you should never tell anyone your dreams until after breakfast or they might come true. The next day my father came in and said he had found a house and we were moving to try and make ends meet. It was on the corner of Walnut St. in Springfield, Illinois and right across the street from a huge Presbyterian church. It was also in the same block that Aunt Evelyn lived.

Yesterday, in the middle of the day,  I had a very vivid dream that my mother, sister and I saw an apartment on that same street. We went inside and they sat in the living room while I walked through. I thought it would be a good apartment for walking because there wouldn't be loose dogs on such a busy street. It was rather large, but all on one floor and seemed like a great idea except there was an odd feeling that something was wrong and when I tried to talk about it with my mother and my sister I couldn't make the words come out. I was too tired. 

I actually looked up apartments for rent on that street when I woke up, but there was nothing available.

Oh my

Whether he is tip toeing through the tulips, or frolicking in the bunker wearing his crown, we can be assured that he never forgets to play with his toy soldiers, or the tiny pretend tents housing covid-19 recipients. 

Those little headstones secreted among the roses are the casualties in his make believe world. He thinks people are just like them. They can be dug up and reanimated whenever the need arises.

In between playing golf and tanning, he likes to sit at the big desk and pretend to read, but sometimes people interrupt him with bad things, very bad things and then he throws himself on his phone and tweets.

But he, himself, is a good boy. Yes he is!

He carries the big black Bible and holds it up for pictures. Once, when he was very small he sang, Jesus loves me, and it made him smile. Everybody should love him like Jesus. Yes they should.

He likes being a daddy because his children grow up to be very delectable adults. Especially the girls.

It is good to be him. 

They're coming to take him away, ho ho. They're coming to take him away, hee hee.

All you get

The restrictions are lifting. 

People are dining out -out of doors that is.

Gatherings are occurring in limited numbers.

Social distancing is being loosely followed.

Does that mean it is safer to go out?

Or does it mean that when you get sick the hospital has more room to accommodate you?

It's like playing Russian Roulette with your life.

And that may be all you get.

Pride

What if everyone loved their job and was proud of what they did? Wouldn't the world be a better place? The boy who puts an extra shine on the shoe he polishes. The delivery driver who prides himself on being prompt and careful. The janitor who goes above and beyond. The babysitter who treats her charges as her own. The nurse who treats her patients like her own mother. 

Everyone feels better when these things occur.

Pride does not need to go before a fall. It can signal the beginning of a wonderful world.

A tiny home in a low income area whose windows sparkle is beautiful because of the pride someone takes in it.

No one needs to be ashamed, or apologize for the job they do if they do it with love and the best of intentions. 

We need to understand that without all people, all jobs, all places, this world becomes a one dimensional parody of life. 

When I was growing up I never thought the person who repaired my shoes, delivered our milk, picked up our dry cleaning, cut our meat,  mowed the lawn, drove my Grandfather's car, or babysat us, was any less important than my dad who taught school, or my mother who cooked and cleaned our house, or my grandpop who was some kind of rich guy who did, I didn't know what.

That is the way it should be. 

Of course it would also be better if everyone was compensated fairly.

Triggers

Watching the Jeffrey Epstein film left me feeling dirty, sad, sometimes hopeless. Odors rose around me like memories of a swamp I had decorated and redecorated, trying to disguise it from what it was.

Ephemeral, fleeting, pervasive, seeping into the darkest recesses of my being, as old and outdated, as confusing and manipulative, as awful and fouling as it was, it still is when I unconsciously allow it to surround me.

Everything is beautiful.

Except for that and it is like a westward wind constantly tinting the view with a layer of oily, slimy, dust. 

In the beginning there was betrayal and no amount of denying can redecorate that.

The people in my neighborhood

I grew up moving a lot, but mostly living on the corner of two streets. We generally had big front yards and bigger back yards with boulevards on the side by the street. The alley behind the back yard was significant, that was where garbage pick up was. Houses were surrounded by large trees for shade and we took all of this privacy for granted.

Now I live in a small two room apartment. One room is an open plan living room, kitchen. The other is a bedroom. It is ground level, meaning no steps and has a large down sloping front lawn out front, I don't really know my neighbors, nor do I really want to, but I love them. They are a multi-ethnic group of people who share two huge traits.  They seem to be good parents and are definitely good neighbors.

We nod at each other, even occasionally wave at each other, but nobody lies in wait to complain, or talk as they go about their business. They keep up their yards and homes, keep down their music, and mostly drive as if they are aware there are other people on the street.

No one, except for perhaps one Caucasian family across the street seems to feel entitled in any way. They all appear to be aware of how their actions affect others and try to adjust to the times we live in.

I have never lived anywhere I loved more.

My apartment is architecturally interesting with high ceilings and nice fixtures. My view is pleasant. Sometimes I do hear the odd bit of music drifting quietly into my life, but I have to strain to make it out. I also, occasionally, hear the sound of human voices or television muted by walls and choice.

I think a vague curiosity makes good neighbors. We don't impinge, but we aren't bothered by the fact that there are living breathing people around us.

Why?

I am constantly opening Facebook to see: When I was young we, or 50 words that say you're old, or  And we survived.

Programs constantly tell us how to redecorate our homes. change our landscape, update our curb appeal.

And the common denominator I take from everyone of these is: Change means money.

People pay for articles. People charge for redecorating. People selling furniture, paint and wall paper only benefit from the change that uses their products.

There is nothing wrong with change unless you are doing it under pressure to be cool.

There is also nothing wrong with being old, or older, but there is also nothing inherently sacred about it either. Just because you did something, or did not, does not mean anything really, except it was your way.

Classical good taste is timeless. If you love something why change it?

In my day we didn't wear bike helmets, or elbow pads, or walk to school up hill both ways. We still died of polio, went deaf and blind due to measles and I wouldn't go back there for a hundred reasons. My head is not stronger for being unprotected and my education is not stunted because I didn't struggle to get to school.

Wake up folks. Most of these articles are simply space fillers. Enjoy them if that's your gig, but don't take them seriously.

Social distancing

It was take your mother to work day yesterday.

In the middle of a quarantine that has people working at home and avoiding crowds, my son took me to work with him.

Due to circumstances beyond his control, he has become a ditch digger. 

He does other things too, but yesterday it was ditch digging in some of the most beautiful country anyone could ever imagine.

He arrived and everyone on the farm was gone, including the visiting dog, so there were just the two of us.

It was hard work involving two kinds of shovels, a water hose, a trowel and lots of muscle in death defying heat, All of which does away with the need to lift weights, or work out later on, so it's a two-fer.

We spent about two and a half hours there before getting in the car, keeping an average of 625 miles between us all the time

These are creative times for sure.

Remember

White supremists and racists, react out of fear, frustration, ignorance and the rage that follows these things. 

They want to be special and the only way they know how to do this is by force.

They don't have the words, patience, or understanding to change things any other way.

Hit something, shoot it, shout it down, drive over it, knock it out of the way, the people around them suffer as much as the people they hate.

Eventually they are relegated back into the darkness they live in and they don't understand why.

And thank god for this ignorance, it is what gives the rest of us time to prepare.

But what we need to remember is that there WILL be another infestation. They may not have much going on upstairs, but it doesn't take much to crawl out of the woodwork and start chewing on other folk's lives.

Sixteen minutes

This morning I feel tremulous, shaken, powerless, sad.

The fact that the world bears this out as normal makes it worse.

Once I thought it was possible for the world to revolve around love, but fifty more years of observing it, makes me think I was/am wrong.

Somehow we have nurtured an entire culture that reveres the ploy, the game, the callous view that everyone who is not US is simply here to be used.

And not only have we nurtured it, we have given over the power of one of the richest countries in the world to these people who cultivate it in the most mentally vulnerable and get them to do the dirty work for them.

Fear, frustration, rage are the norm now. People starving for justice are storming whatever they can find in search of some kind of sustenance that might end their suffering.

I feel it. I don't want to, but I do feel it.

And that is why I am blessed to get my sixteen minutes of love and kindness every morning from a voice that lifts me above this chaos and reminds me that of all the traits to value, kindness is the most important.

One step ahead

Is there a way to make a point that does not allow Trump and his white supremist groups to take advantage of it and have their way with us?

Perhaps there is now. The peaceful protests are obviously not going to be allowed to be peaceful by these people, so let's turn a page.

What about memorials?

Huge mounds of flowers, signs, notes, things. Things.

Things.

It is hard to turn things into Trump tear gassing extravaganzas. The flowers will weep for us.

And yet, if the news still covers them, the ideas will grow.

Things, because people are not things despite what our president believes. We are not ants to be exterminated and brushed aside so he can make a political appearance at a church. Not to pray, but strut his power.

Take away his power to stomp on us, gas us, mock us and how will he respond?

At first he will not even understand it, but when he finally figures it out, or someone explains it to him, he will have those peaceful piles of statements, flowers, signs, hopes and fears destroyed. He will claim they are public nuisances, or dangerous.

Then we move them to private property.

One step ahead of a bully is the only way to prevent him from using us to continue to promote his causes. Perhaps not as soul satisfying as hands on, but that is what separates us from him.

Terrifying

I am indescribably sad and I do not know what the answer is. 

Even in our peaceful little Midwest town the police tend to bully. I, an older, white woman was stopped a couple of years ago and baited by a young white policeman who ultimately had no reason to charge me with anything and therefore did not. But . . .  I found myself feeling very angry and unjustly treated and had I been a young male might have responded differently. No matter what this man asked and no matter how I correctly answered his questions, he found a nasty way to respond. An example is: "Do you have insurance?" I did and showed him my current card, then he nastily responded. "You do realize that expires in two months? Are you going to renew it?" I said they had renewed it every year for forty some years, so I saw no reason they would not do it again. This was as nasty as I got and I said it sweetly, old lady style.

Now, our town, which had two peaceful protests in two days, had looting overnight. In the news it appears Targets all over the country were looted. this seems pretty organized to me. I wonder if the looters are even from our city? 

I was thinking if we only had a real president, a real leader, but Bestest pointed out our president does lead: the white supremist groups, the white collar criminals, the people who have nothing to gain by being good people.

Our country handles almost everything in the worst way possible from health issues, to foreign affairs, to simple common decency and our president loves this. He sits up there like a head bobbing potentate giggling and twittering with the vocabulary of a disabled eight year old, full of bluster, but not bluff, because -- well because he is the president of the United States of America. He has power!

Terrifying.

Lullaby

Do not be afraid my sweetest. One night you will just go to sleep and I will fold you up in my arms, into the wind and the sunshine and hold you forever.