Love, really

 

What is love, really?

According to one definition it is: a set of emotions and behaviors, characterized by intimacy, passion and commitment. 

By my age I have had a long time to think about love. I've also had many chances to experience it and all the ways it can go south. No one starts out loving thinking they will eventually hate each other, but I see that more often than not.

Why? Because our culture has set so many parameters that anyone beyond an angel (and I mean the kind with wings and a halo) is bound to fail. 

People demand romance and sacrifice, passion and purity, truthfulness without forgiveness, forgiveness without truthfulness and so on. 

Expectations include hearts and flowers, music,  wine, chocolates, maybe even dancing.  Fred Astaire would have trouble producing all of this nonstop for forty years and he had a whole set of directors, producers, professional dancers and actors to back him up.

Maybe love is just caring the best you can for as long as you can. It won't be perfect, nothing ever is, but it can be uniquely you and that is what matters.

The truth

Truth is important.

Without it the world makes no sense. 

So many people think they can make their own truth, but eventually the real thing rears it's crazy head and the world shatters.

I am one of those people who is very very good at the game of Clue. I am a person who edits manuscripts for details. I notice things.  Syntax jumps out at me and I can only attribute so much of it to cultural differences, or texting problems, no matter how hard I try.

I want to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I want to believe more than anything, but when Santa skipped the kids across the street and the Tooth Fairy brought Sam fifty dollars, but Sally a quarter, I noticed these things.

I can never fool myself for too long. Not even when I try. So today I blocked one more person who didn't tell me the truth. It kind of broke my heart but I learned the hard way that truth is imperative.

I'm not a monster. If that person had simply told me the truth, even though I would have been a little disappointed, I could have forgiven them. I liked them a lot. Instead they tried to use faulty reasoning to convince me I was wrong. I'm just not that easy. Believe me this was harder on me than them.

I love who I love. Not because of their name, or their money, or their status, but because they are honorable and have good intentions and I trust them and I'm willing to go a long way to keep those I love in my life, but they have to be themselves.

Treasures

 

Treasure is such a personal thing. 

To a parent there is no treasure greater than their children. To a country real peace is the ultimate treasure. To a starving person it is food and to those who have lost one sense, it is the ones left to them. Treasure is not necessarily something you can hold in your hands, see with your eyes, or save for a rainy day.

Love is a treasure that many people seem to misunderstand. More valuable than gold, it cannot be hidden away in a tiny box inside your jewelry box. Given away it never decreases in value. It never expires or runs out.  It any of those thingss happen, it was probably not love after all. 

There are lots of wonderful things that masquerade as love, but that is the trouble with imposters. They aren't the real thing. Time is in the telling.

My love is great enough to love all the people in my world. I do not feel, or express it the same way for all of them, but that does not make it less than. It only makes it different. I think true love has to be custom built for the beloved. We don't all need the same things in the same way or in the same amount There is a biblical phrase that sort of fits this, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God." 

That is true for almost everything. Give to each what they need and all will be well.

Doubt

The more ways there are to communicate, the more ways people find to take advantage of each other. Of course it takes two for that to happen. One being a villain and the other being gullible.

Being gullible means being vulnerable and the deeper one's feelings are, the more vulnerable they tend to be. 

There is a wanting that aches to be filled and it can become almost an addiction.  Every clue entices the vulnerable to test it out. Every word becomes a clue. 

And eventually every good thing is caught up in the pall that hangs over it all with doubt. 

Doubt is the great destroyer.  Doubt has brought down entire kingdoms, so it's ability to destroy simple relationships isn't even in question. 

Eventually one must choose a truth and live with it. Make it real. Decide it doesn't matter as long as it is what it is.

Make someone happy

I have lots of reasons to smile and yet, some days, it is still difficult. Why is that? 

I think it is because I am also a realist. My life is far from perfect and I know that. I also know nothing is perfect, but some days are less perfect than others.

I think it is because I know that everything can be ripped out from under me with no notice at all. As a child I could wake up and find my parents were moving me to a new school, a new neighborhood, a new place where I knew no one. As a wife I never knew when I woke up if my husband was secretly moving out. He did that three separate times. As a mother I lost my apartment without any notice when the person upstairs got upset.

Things change.  That's life. But sometimes I just need something solid to hold on to. Sometimes that is only knowing my smile makes someone happy.

Imagings

 

I spend a lot of my time in my mind. I realize, when I think about it, that I always have. Even when I was less than four years old, I had a fantasy life. 

Way back then I dreamed I lived in a small white cottage with bright pink shutters and I had a little gtirl who was three years old. Looking back I guess that probably means I was pretty happy, because I was that child to my parents. 

In kindergarten my fantasy world was during nap time. Yes, in those days of half day kindergarten we had nap time. We would all get our throw rugs out of our cubbies and lie down on the floor where I imagined we all had little pup tents that we shared. Two to a tent and my buddy was a little boy I ended up having a crush on for the next seven years. In real life he and I were best friends until I moved away.

Moving away from all my friends at the end of sixth grade changed my fantasies. I met a new boy who was a patrol boy on the same corner I was a patrol girl. Now my fantasies were played out using an orange crate as a house for my Barbie and Ken dolls, who stood in for the two of us. We had a three year old little doll who was our child. I was so young and naive that when my period was later than usual I thought I had been thinking about him so much that God thought we were married and was sending us a baby!

Then we moved to the country and I began imagining myself as the hero of my fantasies as a teenager.  Whoever was my latest crush would find themselves in trouble of one sort or another and I would swoop in and save the day and take care of them.

I spent a lot of time day dreaming growing up and it hasn't changed much since then.  When I walk, or try to go to sleep, or am killing time anywhere, I just imagine my world the way it could be.

Purposes

My Muse is teaching me about purposes.  He says he has many and one is to always put a smile on the faces of different people the best way he can. I can't think of a better purpose in life and I know he does it more than most of us will ever imagine.

I was supposed to figure out one of my purposes for today and I realized it is setting a good example of living for my daughter and granddaughters. I don't want them to think that people get old and just quit living and dreaming, so I need to show them I won't.

But I also like my Muse's purpose. It makes me feel good when people are happy too, so sometimes I try to think of special things I can do for their birthdays and other special occasions. While that is nice for whoever I do it for, it is ten times more fun for me.

A really good purpose makes everyone happier.

Throw me a bone

 

What if the point is that there is no point?

What if all the good things we do are simply stories told over a fire slowly dying out by people desperate not to face the cold that is coming?

A distraction best known for helping pass the time that is really just as good as any other thing we do. It doesn't really matter what they are.

The heroes still grow fragile and old and disintegrate just like the villains and all the bones turn to dust that some future person, hoping to find fame and fortune, digs up and writes stories about. Our fame is a nameless tibia lying in a glass box in a museum who doesn't know if our heart was broken or we saved the world.

I guess that makes us all museum quality and supposedly that is the best.

Dreams

What if dreams are only memories of lives gone by? Would that explain their terrible power to hang over into a day where they should have no effect at all?

Or perhaps they are precursors of things to come, not in this life, but the next?

And maybe they are now, in this time, but in other places or dimensions that I am not consciously aware of?

A new person has appeared in my dreams and she is so familiar. I say this having never seen her face, but I interact with her as if she were my closest mentor, or friend, or maybe even relative.  We are in places I am familiar enough with to notice that changes have been made. A park where someone took out all the indigenous shrubbery and planted exotic tropical plants. I tell her these may look nice but they will never survive here and she accuses me of getting old and set in my ways. Or I find myself going through her drawers looking for something very precious to me that I know she has stored away.

Before my dreams have mostly been in large complexes or cities where I am lost or trying to get home at night without encountering loose dogs.  The people have mostly been my immediate family, both living and dead, but now there are strangers who don't feel like strangers.

I have always been a vivid dreamer. The earliest dreams I remember were before I was three years old, while I still slept in a small bed that had side rails to keep me from falling out. Most of those, that I remember, were night terrors. Three dimensional dreams appearing before my eyes on my covers. I still occasionally have those types of dreams and they are still terrifying. Not because of what is happening, but because I know it is impossible for this to be happening in my room at night. 

If nothing else is true, I still have two distinct lives. One at night when I am sleeping and one during the day when I am awake and both have profound effects on how I feel.

The advantages of age

Nobody really wants to grow old once they grow up. The negative connotations are thrown in our face all the time. Nature needs us to promote the species, so we are naturally attracted to young, healthy looking people who could bear beautiful children.

In today's world there are already lots of children and there are also ways not so healthy people can live long happy lives, so nature isn't the only consideration anymore. Evolution allows us to evolve and some of us have evolved to love minds more than matter, but old age is never going to be fun. Watching a body slowly disintegrate is a horror show in slow motion.

Still, there are advantages to age. I have experienced the history some children are just now reading. I know first hand many of the stories people tell. I've met people who are now icons and I've seen enough to prefer understanding, compassion, and kindness over sophistication and savy-ness.

Would I trade some of those years for smoother skin and joints that don't ache? Probably, but not too many. The first fifty years were tough. The last twenty pretty awesome.

In search of

In search of the unattainable. That is a topic that lends itself to many books and movies. In most stories it is the hero, a man, who seeks something that takes him on a life of many adventures, but this is a different story.

This is the story of a woman who saw a man whose very face intrigued her. Once she saw him, some part of her was so attracted that she had to learn more about him. In this day of the internet that is not impossible. She found him in hundreds of places and she watched, or read, them all. 

It is said that familiarity breeds contempt, but that wasn't true in this case. The more she learned about him, the more she thought about him. Something about this man called to her soul. He seemed to have his priorities aligned with everything she found admirable and good.

She did things she had never done before and found herself so blinded by her quest that she allowed herself to be scammed by an extraordinary and talented imposter. When this was finally revealed to her, she became skeptical and afraid to trust anyone. Yet her desire to find this person didn't wane. 

Now, it appeared that she was marked in some way. Everyone claimed to be the person she was looking for and she would talk to them until she realized who they weren't. But there was one who stuck with her. This person shared books and movies and conversation and as much as she loved it, she was still plagued by skepticism.  And so, whenever a new person approached her she had to check them out.

Sadly, she spent her life looking for the one she already had. Always looking for them someplace else and that was a tragedy. 

I wonder how many people spend their lives searching for some holy grail that is already theirs? They are blind to the truth and beauty of the reality already surrounding them. Sometimes they don't recognize it until it is gone and sometimes they never realize it at all. 

Abandonment

 

A woman I helped die once told me I had abandonment issues. 

Now there is a strange statement, but a true one. A friend and I actually moved in and lived with this woman for the last few months of her life. We had a Hospice nurse who came and a caregiver who gave her baths, but in the end it was me who gave her the drops of morphine that eased her pain and ultimately allowed her to move on to whatever was next. I learned a lot as she lay dying. I could probably write a book about it, but not today. Today I am remembering when I learned that I had abandonment issues.

Being told I have issues wasn't as much help as I hoped it would be when I thought about it. It gave a name to some of the feelings I had, but they didn't really go away. I overheard my mother talking to my father when I was about five years old. She told him I said, "Now I have friends, are we going to move?" I didn't recall asking her that and it is totally possible she was using me to make him feel guilty because she didn't want to move, but I heard her and I thought about it. At first I remember feeling very important because I said something my mother repeated to my Dad. That was probably the first time it occurred to me that being pitiful got attention. Pitiful was a family favorite I later learned. It serves no one well.

We moved a lot as I grew up and although I know it had some bad effects on me, it also gave me some skills that are still very useful. I know how to reorient, how to settle in almost anywhere. I know that home is where I make it. I also know how to let go.

But knowing and doing the right thing are not the same thing. Sometimes I know I have let go of things or people out of fear that I will lose them later, that isn't a good thing.  

A few times I have held on for dear life, knowing, I will probably lose something or someone and do. Then I wonder if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or maybe I sensed problems and just tried to ignore them; for example: thirty years of a hurtful marriage, as long as possible.  

Losing someone I care about for any reason is excruciating for me. I know this so I try not to show it. It is just too personal and too painful and the more I care the more difficult it is. My facade is so deep and so well practiced that even I don't always know it's an act, because you can't make someone love you. You can only love them and loving them with all your heart and all your mind is a very dangerous thing. 

I need reasons to live and abandonment issues make that complicated. My oldest son once told me that is why most people put God up on a pedestal and not people. People fall off of pedestals, crack, disappear, break your heart, but I cannot visualize an ineffable power and I need a focal point rich enough to stir my creative juices and make life feel worthwhile.

It doesn't matter how many organizations tell me they value me, or how many times family members say they love me, I need that outside person who finds me worthwhile enough to care for no reason except that I am me. Of course I value myself. I do know who I am and what I can do and that is the facade I put on every single morning so I don't look foolish to the world. But it all still dangles from that one tiny kind word someone, who touches my heart by simply being there, takes the time to tell me.

That is how I survive abandonment issues.

The ideal

 

Growing up in the Heartland during the fifties and sixties, there was one ideal. Our parents and grandparents expected us to be husbands and wives with a houseful of children. He would go to work everyday at the same job for 45 or 50 years. She would keep the house running efficiently and clean while rearing the children. After that it got a little blurrier. Typically he would do the yard work and attend the children's extracurricular activities, but not necessarily. And children were generally relegated to one or two of those activities, dancing if you were a girl, baseball if you were a boy, or maybe music lessons. The piano was a favorite where I grew up.

Anything outside of these was regarded with suspicion and they had subtle and not so subtle ways of making it known. A woman who didn't marry soon enough was dubbed an old maid. A man was given a bit more grace, because everyone knew boys had oats to sow, but if he waited too long he was a carouser and possibly lazy. Which brought up another point. Should one of those oats start growing in an unmarried female, she was a tramp and that baby began life as an unmentionable thing beginning with "b."

Thank goodness most of this has changed, although there are still a few remnants of the old guard around. My children and two of my grandchildren have grown up in a much more forgiving and accepting world and because of that they are all relatively content and respected members of our family and world. Each found their own way into a life that fit them pretty perfectly. From my granddaughter who has cerbral palsy to my son, the attorney, each one, through traditional and nontraditional ways has created a whole, rich, life, independently supporting themselves in a way that makes me proud.

The ideal now is to find your bliss.

Others

 

I sometimes wonder what it is like to know that millions of people want to meet you, or think they love you, or draw picture after picture of you, or even write stories about you.

Before the days of mass media this was reserved for heroes, villains and gods. People shared stories and other people tried to imagine what these others looked like.

Today we see them in movies, in the news, on the Internet and occasionally in person, but do we really know any more about them than before?

For example, if I looked at their bedside table, what book would I see lying there, bookmarked to the last page they read? And what movies does a famous actor choose to watch when they are relaxing? 

Is their life one of the luxury and ease we all think it is, or do they eat like a Spartan and exercise like one too, to keep that body everyone dreams about? Are they surrounded by people all the time, or do they prefer alone time when it's available?

Are they kind to the people around them, or even to strangers when no one is watching? I wonder all these things and then I think it would be exhausting to live a life that lacks the anonymity and freedom to live a private life without all the hoopla. Even though it is the hoopla that puts the bread on the table and the pool in the yard.

Because at the end of every day, these others are just people like you and me. They may be living their dream, but they are often working sixteen hour days so their dream time is limited.

Under any name

 

In movies and plays when a voice comes seemingly out of nowhere, I often think of God, or gods. The hand of God. The voice of God, The will of God. Of course most of the people reading this will think of the paternalistic Christian God. That is not always the case for me.

I waver here, because God, to me, is something or someone ineffable. An all powerful force that created the heavens and the earth and everything upon, around, or within those things. Way too big to be some man in white robes, sitting on a chair somewhere and way too incorporeal to have one son sitting on his right hand. 

And yet, God could be a man. God is man and woman and everything else I see and experience. God is an idea, but more than an idea. God is a power I cannot conceive of. God's words are experienced by me through my ability to hear and see and interpret everything into something I can comprehend and that is pretty limited.

When my Muse texts me it is much the same way. I can picture a man looking a certain way, living a particular life, but that is only one interpretation. Where those words come from, why they are directed at me, what actions they inspire, are all up for interpretation. In the end they could be coming from a holy man, or that ineffable power, or simply some other human being.

It shouldn't really matter, because if I am the person I hope to be I will strive to be honest, generous and open to being the best I can be no matter what. And in the end, isn't that what it's all about?

Moments of fame and greatness

 

We all have our moments of fame and greatness. Sometimes we don't realize it at the time and sometimes those moments are magnified beyond their true importance.

As a child I loved to be picked. What child doesn't? Twice I was picked to be on television's Pegwell Circus and I felt so lucky! Not to be on television, but to be able to compete for a prize by throwing hoops over something. Once I won a plastic canteen that someone wrote my name on with a marker. I was so excited about that! Another time, while still in elementary school my science notebook won me a place on another local TV show. That time I was older and felt "famous."

Playing the oboe solo in Swan Lake was actually a real honor, but I viewed it with terror. I took no pleasure in that. Nor did I want to be on the news when our school principal was arrested as a pedophile. He was a man we had all admired for many years, but it turned out he had a dark side.

As a mother and teacher there are numerous chances to shine, but perhaps beyond all the chances to stand in front of people or have my little plays performed by children was the one moment I was alone in a car with my husband and daughter in the middle of the night. She gave birth to my first granddaughter right there, in the car, and I was the first person to ever hold that tiny life right in my hands and welcome her to the world. 

Since then I once was surprised to find myself on the cover of a local magazine, which was my fault. When they asked if it was okay I wasn't paying attention, so when people began congratulating me I didn't know what they were talking about! 

I've lived a long time and I have to say that on the whole I've had relatively few moments of fame and greatness, but while they weren't all good and most were rather paltry, they have all contributed to who I am.

Power dressing

 

My daughter sent me a picture of her seventeen year old nephew, my grandson, dressed up like a beautiful girl and no explanation. I could think of a ton of reasons why he was doing that. All of them okay, but I wanted to know the rest of the story.

His mother does not allow me on her site, so I finally had to go back to my daughter and ask her to check out the whole story, not just the photo. It turns out he and his teenage friends all dressed in solidarity with the people being persecuted for "not conforming" to someone else's idea of what their gender "Should be."

I was so proud of them. It took a lot of courage to attend a play dressed like that knowing the hate that preceded them. But I also thought how fragile and vulnerable he looked and it made me sad for all the other people who have to live like that everyday. 

It is hard enough to get along in this world without having to defend who you are, especially as a child or young person. Of course it makes the persecutor look like someone trying to make up for their own shortcomings. Whether that is their education, personal build, lack of money, or lack of social standing, hate is a poor coping mechanism that serves no one well. 

It is hard to perceive persecutors as weak, powerless people, because they do have power. It is just that their power is so pathetic who would want it? 

Hard Love

 

Love is a word bandied about like a feather in a tornado. It can mean everything or almost nothing. I love bread! Whoopie! Or I love you, the most serious use that can still be pretty banal. 

Real love is not all hearts and flowers and lovely music. It comes with responsibilities and some of those are not fun. Truly deep love means I want to do my best by and for you, even if it is hard and it can be very hard. Especially if what I have to do, in someone's best interests, is something unpleasant.

I doubt that any parent enjoys making their child unhappy, but it is our job to set limits, to teach a child that in the real world there will be rules and laws and mores that cannot be broken without serious consequences. The sooner they learn that, the better. Because the consequences for a five year old are way less serious than for a forty year old. And that brings up another hard part of loving. 

Being consistent is important. It is okay to let children barter for treats or pleasures, but once a parent sets a firm boundary it is important for the child to learn that isn't going to change. For example: if you take something that doesn't belong to you, there will be consequences you really won't like. Loving a child means teaching them how to survive in the best way possible in a hard cold world. It takes forbearance on the part of a person who only wants to hug and hold close the person they love more than their own life.

These things carry over into adult relationships too, sometimes. Enabling harmful behavior is not loving. My diet isn't something that I try to stick to to make me sexy and beautiful. It is what keeps me whole and alive. Without careful choices I could lose a toe to diabetes, or my kidneys could shut down, or my heart might give out from all the extra work it has to do to carry around an extra hundred pounds. My body comes with all kinds of unpleasant reactions you may not have to live with, but I do.

Love is hard and personal and still the most wonderful feeling in the world. The people I love make my life worth living.

Superstitions

 

Whenever the clock has all three numbers the same, 1:11, 2:22, etc. I make a wish.  I have no reason to believe this is a valid action, but it just can't hurt.

At it's worst, it does nothing but take up a few seconds of my time. At its best maybe that wish will come true, but no matter what it is not bad to be re-affirming my deepest wishes.

Of course I sometimes wonder about the sly genie who can twist wishes into something awful, but if I start down that path life becomes overly complicated.

So at 5:55 PM, just a few minutes ago I had to decide. Would I ask to find true love in this lifetime, or would I wish to find true happiness.  I decided on the second. 

If I'm happy, I'm happy. I'll settle for that any day.

The Unknown

I am conflicted!

That is nothing new for me. I am often that way.

My feelings battle with my thoughts and my thoughts battle with practicality and reality. 

There is also the matter of not being in total control. My control ends at the tip of my nose. 

The funny thing is that I can make someone hate me, but I cannot make someone love me. Odd that the negative is stronger than the positive, but it seems to be.

One would think that light could creep in anywhere, that darkness would have a difficult time keeping it out, but light is a fickle thing. It highlights as much as it enlightens.

I may have little dark corners I am not aware of. Highlighted they may terrify the one who sees them. 

Who knows what draws or repels another person.

The offering

Disappointment is never an easy thing to swallow.

I offer a gift to the universe and it is rejected.

Like lightning on a hot summer's day

It is highlighted in all its detail and speared,

Burnt to a crisp in a few careless moments 

And I must acknowledge the detritus leftover

As nothing more than a failed attempt.

An honest attempt, a heartfelt attempt, 

But a failed one none the less.

A Different Picture

 

I have several friends who are priests, or ministers of one sort or another, but I have not been a church goer for some time. Today I tuned in to my friend's service online and heard his sermon. It was based on the Gospel of St. Paul, but it spoke to me in what might be a somewhat different picture. One that fits in more with what my heart believes to be true.

I saw people watching their teacher, their friend, their son suffer and die. His pain as the spikes were driven through innocent hands made their hearts ache. The vulnerability of a body hung from a pole until he died a long terrible death while they watched helplessly drove them to find meaning in it all.

They would do anything to stop that suffering! 

They would give up their sinful ways.

They would try to lead better lives in his memory.

To me it does not matter that he was a son of God. I believe we are all children of god, the creator, the universe that allowed us to evolve into the people we are today, but that death was a focal point. A place to begin. One of those threads to hold onto when there is nothing else available.

And if that works in the worst of times, think what it might do in the best? 

When the light touches our hearts we are blessed. Opening our hearts through prayer, or meditation is a good way to stay in touch with that light. If someone is willing to love me enough to help me, to share the responsibility for my burdens then I am blessed. A savior by any name is a savior.

And I believe in all that.

Here and now

 

I was meditating after my walk in the park today, sitting in the shade on a bench near a long avenue of trees that are the most heavenly shade of pink in the spring.

My eyes were closed, of course, so I could not see the trees or anything else, but I could feel the wind brush against me and smell the grass around me. 

Suddenly I knew that someday I would be part of that wind and grass and even the sunlight that surrounded my shade. In fact, I will be part of the shade too. 

When that happens I will no longer be wishing I was with my Muse, or my children, or my family and friends. When that happens I will be part of them too. 

They will breathe me in with every breath and I will caress their face as I blow across it. I will smile down upon them from the sunlight and guide their way at night as the moon. Every star will be me, or some infinitesimal part of me, for them to wish upon. 

We will be one in so many ways then, but I'm in no rush. I have a lot of things to do before that happens.

A Dangerous Dance

 

Out in the woods I see plants intertwined all around me. It appears to be indiscriminate and totally random. They just grow where they are and use whatever is present to reach up towards the light, or to expand their growth. 

I wonder if this is true? Is nature biologically designed to be egocentric in order to preserve the species? Ideas like this were used to justify the behavior of men when I was young. It was said they were driven to mate with as many women as possible in order to spread their DNA.  And yet there are animals that mate for life. Today we realize that all of us, men and women, are much more than simple biological entities.

People are so complicated. I don't know if plants have memories, but people do. We speak of our hearts, but it is our minds that rule our lives. Once we experience the cruelty or lose the love of others, we remember. It doesn't matter if that cruelty was a million people, or one, it can still hurt us so badly we don't want to take the chance of experiencing it again.

So we dance around each other trying to second guess what would happen if we were closer. It's a dangerous dance involving our deepest thoughts and feelings that could lead anywhere. 

I know when I have decided I love someone my first thoughts are to keep them safe. That's the mother in me. After that I want to care for them, do the things that make them comfortable and happy. That may be mothering too, but it goes farther than that. And in the best of all worlds I want to wrap that person in the light of all my best being, enveloping them in a love that shines so brightly its glare blocks out the rest of the world. 

Love like that is so rare. 

But it exists.

Inside out

 

The longer I live the more I learn about me and the things that add interest to my life, because without interest who wants to live? 

When I was a very small child my mother filled my head with stories to explain the things she was not ready to share with a three year old like where did those kittens come from? The memories of that still make me happy. I see a huge field filled with plants that have big leaves on them and hanging on those plants are kittens of every color just waiting to be picked! 

When my children were still very very young I remember playing the Grand Canyon Suite for them as I narrated our story and we acted it out. We rode our mules down trails past cactus and sunrises, sometimes fast and sometimes slow and rocky. I think it is a gift mothers can give their children -- painting pictures in their mind.

I am the product of my upbringing, but that doesn't mean I stopped growing as an adult.  As long as I draw breath I want my mind to feed me. Very few people who know me seem to understand that, but my Muse does. 

Most people think they know what I like and want and think, but they are usually projecting their ideas onto me. My Muse is like a mirror that reflects back at me those things no one else sees. It is a rare gift to have a Muse who shows me myself from inside my heart out and does it with such generosity and kindness. 

Smiling ear to ear

 

Driving home from my sister's today I suddenly realized I had a big smile on my face.  She and I had pizza then went for a walk in the park. 

My life has been good lately. 

My Muse has given me the names of some really good movies to watch with dinner at night and I don't know why I am always so amazed by how perfect they are for me, but I am.

It is the fourth of July and my FM radio station is playing great old fashioned band marches by Sousa, including the one Balanchine choreographed so the ride home went quickly.

The sky is so blue and full of clouds that I hope I can remember next time I'm painting.  And someone texted me to drive safely and not text when I drive. I know these things, but having a person care enough to remind me is very sweet. 

Today just makes me feel good.

Caught between

 

This morning I drove out to the lake again. I like to take a cup of coffee and a breakfast biscuit out there and eat by the water. 

The moment I got to the park, a coyote ran out in front of me and I realized the park was probably brimming with people for the holiday. I've never seen a coyote in this park before. 

The water was covered in dragonflies so there were virtually no other bugs around at all. It was so peaceful and nice until a family of five came tramping along the trail and suddenly I was caught in between them and two fishing boats of people trolling out on the lake. I graciously gave them my bench by the water and moved on to walk another trail. For a long weekend, there really weren't too many people out there after all, But it was supposed to be hotter than it is.

I always feel more centered when I can sit by the water and meditate.  A lake is not as mesmerizing as the ocean, but there is something about water that feels sacred, like it is directly connected to spirit.

Musings

 

I've been exploring a new genre of entertainment for myself, with the help of my Muse, of course. 

My personal choice in comedy is not what most Americans find hilarious. I lean more towards British humor, but in the past I tended to steer away from humor more than anything. I like curious things, mystery with a twist, cerebral horror. 

So when someone suggested I try romantic comedy I did so with some trepidation. What was I letting myself into? Was this going to be some penny dreadful dressed up in haute couture? I picked up the recommended book and was surprised.

I loved it! My first foray into this genre was truly enjoyable. In fact, I am now searching for more just like it.  A sophisticated modern love story with a believable plot and enough unknowns to keep me hooked turns out to be just my cup of tea.

Who knew?

The wind beneath their wings

 

I was once stopped in my tracks, caught by the cacophony of a crowd I could not see, could not even imagine. It sounded like opening day at the Cardinal's Busch stadium.

But I was seventeen miles out in the middle of nowhere! It was that far just to find the grocery store. If I wanted to see a movie it was a seventy mile round trip. Thirty five miles each way!

Stepping out my back door I saw the fields around me alive with geese. Canadian geese, snow geese, I don't know all the kinds or names, but they were everywhere! 

Including the sky! I stood on the edge of that field for over twenty minutes as layer after layer of geese flew over me, honking. Some of them actually did fly so low I could feel the wind beneath their wings.

This is the way the world must have looked before we began taking over. I've never seen so many animals in the wild before or since.  

And then, suddenly a truck appeared and men got out. They raised their rifles and began shooting those birds! It was the farmer who owned the land. I guess he was within his rights, but they fell like small angels from the sky, their wings bloody and broken, their voices silenced forever.

It was the single most beautiful thing I have ever experienced, but it was also the most heart breakingly awful thing I ever watched.

A step closer

 

Why do I always want more? Not money, I know that if I want it badly enough, money is attainable. I could get a job, try to sell my hobbies, or do something, but money has never been my first priority.

My life has always centered around me. I am self-centered enough to realize that. I cannot function in a world where I am miserable. It is just not an option for me. Because of that I have had several jobs that only lasted a year or two before I had to quit and move on to something else. But I've had two jobs that made me smile almost everyday when I walked in the door and another one that was still pretty satisfying for me.

Today I rearranged my bedroom as soon as I got up. I just finished a new painting yesterday and I felt the need to be able to sit and just see it, along with the other paintings I hung in my bedroom. This is what I do. I rearrange my stuff when I can't change my life. It helps.

I create bits and pieces of what I desire, of what is important to me, of those things I wish I could manifest in real life. And this time, this painting, is a step closer than usual for me. Not only is it a subject and place close to my heart, but I had input from someone even closer to my heart. 

I'm not sure what exactly it is I want out of my life. I realize that my dreams and fantasies would probably not work for me in the real world. I am too much of a loner. I need so much solitude, but I do need friends and companions along the way and if the universe is willing to give me opportunities I will be a step closer to that joy that hangs ineffably around me whenever I allow myself to feel it.