Belief

I was at lunch with my daughter and she proudly ordered a glass of water then dumped some kind of powder into it, then proceeded to eat a huge lunch, confident that she was losing weight by doing this.  Part of me thinks the water might fill her up as much as the other stuff is supposed to help, but I said nothing.

Whatever she is doing, no matter how much she eats, or how bogus that lik-a-maid type stuff looked, it works for her and the last thing in the world I want is to take away her belief in something like that.

It is the same for many people I know. I don't believe what they are doing really works, except for the fact that they believe it does and there is extraordinary power in believing.

My feeling is that we all have a power deep inside of us that can do amazing things -- if we only know how to access it.

Prayer, chanting, pills, sugar or real, laying on of hands, whatever it is, if you can find a way to truly believe in it miracles appear to happen.

Unfortunately that is so much harder than it sounds. We are not raised believing in that. In fact, most of us are brought up systematically being taught that only God, or Jesus, or Doctors, or Shamans, or pills, or something outside of us has real power. I believe that by any name they all exist inside of us and we use them to tap into that.

Saying you believe and really believing are not the same thing. But when it works, like when a whole group of people prayed for my friend and his leg miraculously healed in the hospital over night, I am in awe and elated and sad that I do not know how to tap into that all the time.

The word according to

I would dress much differently if I could afford to have someone make the clothes I want, to fit me, out of material that I choose.

That thought made me think about style, culture, and all preferences  and how they all seem to be inculcated into our psyches before we are old enough to realize what is happening. It is possible to change them later on, but it isn't easy and requires a great deal of hard work and persistence.

Most of what we consider our culture is about as normal as the natives we found so fascinating with rings around their necks, plates in their lips, eating fried grubs, in National Geographic. We are barbarians surrounded by superstition and fear.

Women's high fashion clothing is not made for women at all. It's made for rich men who like to see women shackled by shoes that throw them off balance and clothing that is inconvenient and uncomfortable.

Churches are a major political party trying to circumvent other parties by using "the Word of God" to control their flocks.

We are still piercing our souls and dancing around campfires while witch doctors sprinkle propaganda and wishes on the flames. And the only way out is education which people want to be able to buy and hang on their wall showing nothing more than they, or their parents, had enough money to frame a piece of fancy paper.

The doorways to freedom are blocked by walls built by those who prefer to keep us smelly and ignorant like the sheep we are often compared to, so the shepherds can continue on in their castle like homes using us to maintain their lifestyles.

We need to learn to think. Not so we can manipulate others, but so we can make rational choices and decisions.

By any other name

"Patience." they say.

How long is patience patience before it becomes something else?

An hour? Two hours? Three hours? A day? A week?

Are there any other determining factors?

Like does it matter if you are waiting for love, or money?

And what does it turn into when it is no longer patience?

A fool's errand? A lost cause?

Does the feeling change it, or the time, or the reason?

Patience. They say it comes from the Latin word for suffering.

It certainly is suffering for me.

An open wound where terrible thoughts grow like bacteria

Until it scabs over crusty and hard over something that started out sweet and soft.

Wisdom

Not everything is logical.

Sometimes you need to give up, or put off things because you realize the one you are talking to is through.

It may be personal, but not necessarily so. Everyone has a limit, a place beyond which they are unable, or unwilling,  to tolerate dissension, or even questioning.

There is so much truth in the phrase, you cannot beat a dead horse. Of course you CAN beat a dead horse, but the only one who is possibly going to change -- is you. And while that might be considered a good thing, it's probably not what you are looking for.

So when you find yourself in the middle of a rant, yours, or someone else's, back off.

Time is generally not of the essence in most things, but it is the great healer.

Once upon a time

I feel like my world has been inching towards the North Pole the last few years.

First we had a forty below winter, which had never happened before in the sixty some years I have been on this earth (close to this actual place.)

Now we are having snow and ice in the Fall, which of course gives even more meaning to that nomenclature.

But then I began having polar bear dreams where our town was surrounded by a very tall chain link fence with the bears pacing around the outside.

This morning I left the house at nine wearing ice cleats on my shoes and carrying a small bowl of ice melt to scatter along the way. I felt a bit like Hansel and Gretal might have felt, if the evil witch was black ice. I scraped my car and let the defroster melt the rest away as I talked to Bestest. Then I bumped and slid down our poorly cleared street until I got to the clear ones closer to town. Finally picking up my daughter and taking her to work, I arrived back home near eleven.

I get to repeat much of that later today when I pick her up.

And we will live frigidly ever after with bad roads, slippery sidewalks and icy weather for the rest of what feels like an interminable winter.

Bye Polar

Your icy hands put a chill on my life

Who in her right mind wants to go out

With cold wet feet and shovel your slush off her car?

But it is your virginal white being that calls me

To throw myself down and make snow angels

Wallowing in your icy hugs.

Think

I love to make up stories, but I know the difference between imagination and truth.

There is the idea that if I think it hard enough, it can become true.

That's only partially true and maybe a little bit dangerous.

Because:

Thinking an alligator is a cute little bunny can be lethal.

This is our age

We are watching the age of true barbarism as it rears its ugly head. This is a time history will look back on with revulsion.

Not the bronze age when it seemed likely we could make tools to aid in living as well as dying.

Not the industrial age when we thought we could improve life for many with mass production.

Not the so called world wars where death was taken to new heights depersonalizing the human being with weapons of mass destruction.

This is the age that denies men's souls. It is the age of the megalomaniac. An age that could feed everyone, shelter everyone, treat people with drugs that are almost miraculous. This is an age where religious people vote to deny others what they have. An age where people die because they don't have enough gold to pay for medicine that is lying in warehouses under huge price tags.

This is an age where barbarism is touted as American and necessary and neither truth nor education are popular topics among the ruling class.

This is the age of control.

Mind numbing

It's difficult to be introspective, or witty, or sometimes even just normal when life is one long rotation of anti-itch cream, cold compresses and Benadryl.

My arm is much better. My eyelids not so much. It is possible to scratch in your sleep and not really wake up until the damage is done.

That being said, it is also possible to shop with no itching at all for over an hour.

If this is all in my mind I'd really like to figure it out.

Ageing

One of my personal greatest fears is that someday someone will decide I am not capable of living on my own and put me somewhere where I will be at the mercy of people who do not really know how I feel.

After all it is difficult to understand another's real feelings and add that to the fact that the one in charge is doing a job makes it more about them than me.

I suffer from incredible itching right now. I have always been prone to that, but sometimes it is worse. If it is not dealt with I think I might go crazy. I cannot imagine the torture of being tied to a chair because I was scratching and finding no relief.

I frankly would rather be dead than in a nursing home.

I remember living in a dormitory at university. I was so homesick and life was so sterile for that first year, but at least I had the hope and thoughts of the future to get me through. A nursing home is hopeless. The only way out is to die.

I'm doing the best I can to stay physically and mentally alert and it is relatively easy right now, but I don't know how it will be in my nineties.

Innocence

Innocence has a face of it's own. No one can truly capture it if they don't have it already.

Sometimes people are fooled, but it is not innocence they are seeing, it is their own desire for it, their own need to believe in it, maybe even their desire to corrupt it.

Few people are truly innocents as adults. They are good people, but their knowledge of the world, which they probably need to keep them safe, prevents them from actually being it.

The exceptions are often people we call mentally deficient, but there can be others.

People are like stained glass windows. A mosaic of different parts all welded together by the need to survive and that is where innocence can lift it's tiny eyes and peer out uncorrupted at a world that has been too cruel.

I think it is nature's way of dealing with the unbearable, a way of leaving a little opening for the soul to escape.

Playing dress up in reverse

I never thought I would be the one to write about this, but I am. I just saw a friend's video on Facebook. They were at some concert that seemed to be mostly people my age and older in the audience. Down where the mosh pit might be for younger folks was a fairly large gathering of older people.

Had they been swaying to the sounds of their favorite band I doubt if I would have given it a second thought, but they were not.

There was something too frenetic, too forced, too unnatural about the gyrations of those sturdy white haired people in their tennis shoes trying to look like teenagers. Instead of looking cool, or like they were having fun, they only looked sad to me. Like they were trying to be something they were not and never had been.

I don't know why cool has to be current. Or young. Or frenetic. Or goofy.

I think it is because it looked like they were just showing off, but something about it didin't make it look natural, or fun.

I don't want to grow old pretending to be something I am not, nor never was. I would hope that I grow more real as I age and that that would mean embracing my real beauty, not someone else's.

Ten

Being the first born child and grandchild has both its ups and downs. For nearly 23 months I was the ONLY child. It's kind of a shame those are the months I can recall the least.

I'm not sure I've ever been first since. Possibly when I was a new bride and perhaps when my children were young.

Most of the time I don't really think about things like this, but occasionally it occurs to me that I would like to be somebody's first. Not their only, love is to big for that, but first on the list.

I am well loved. In that I know that I am very lucky, very blessed.

I am just always somewhere down the line in the pecking order. Kind of like being the tenth child in a family of twelve.

Bestest

He was full of it!

Full of everything I loved.

Words and thoughts, stories and ideas, books and poems and everything that I loved.

I fell in love with his stuffing!

And for the longest time that was all there was.

Just this beautiful, rich, amazing stuffing.

My imagination gave him form, but none of that was real!

I did not know the color of his eyes, or even how many he had.

I did not know what he stood upon, or if he stood at all.

Except on that stuffing!

And that was more than enough for me.

So all the rest has been icing, a veritable feast for the soul.

Whose main course is always his stuffing.

Truly

I wrote wild passionate poetry for every new year for years and years and years. It was always about seeking something I couldn't find; about disappointment and hurt feelings and anger. A very poor way to start anything new.

Then I was divorced and the first year I wrote about sorrow. The second year I was madly in love again. In the old way. With the old expectations, the same disappointments and new pain too. Yet I was hoping for new results. I really am an optimist.

Now I have lived alone long enough to not only be reconciled to it, but to have evolved enough to enjoy it.

Now the main people in my life know me and value me for exactly who I am. It only takes one or two of those to greatly enrich a life. The other people in my life are there because we have a mutual appreciation of each other.

I was shocked to learn I am one of those people who really does need to surround myself with space, but still wants close personal relationships.

I guess that makes me a true loner, but being a loner and being lonely are two entirely different things..

I have never felt more loved than I have this year and I think I have loved more wholly, more honestly, and with less fears this year too.

I look at this and find it clumsy, but it is heartfelt and very late.

Happy New Year

Coming in the dark. In the middle of the night. At twelve bells, all tolling the blackest moment of the day, the new year drops on us.

And dredging up all our bravado we face our fears of the unknown with lights and shouts and Dutch courage, hoping to drive off whatever might be hovering near.

I believe our imagination was born at night. Perhaps right on this night, the eve of the new year. Born to help us through the unconquerable, the unknowable, the unbelievable. If we create it first it belongs to us and like a pet Rottweiler we trust it not to turn on us.

Refusing to yield to superstitions and dark thoughts we have turned the tables, calling it a celebration.

A time for rebirth, but something already here cannot be born again. Not really.

We need resolutions to make it harder on us so that our puritanical upbringing is not damaged beyond repair and then, when we break those resolutions?  We suffer through the joy of not depriving ourselves of what we promised to do with out.

I sometimes wonder if we were created out of the light, or the dark. Did we too enter this world in the light of the moon and the stars?

It really doesn't matter anymore. With electricity there is no necessity for difference -- only a commitment, an understanding of our own conscience and being true to ourselves.

Are we accountable or blameworthy?

Escaping

Imagine me with a small houseboat. I know we are in danger and need to leave the place we are at, so I gather my siblings and a few supplies and we set off down the river through the mountains.

All is well until we pass by the village and suddenly the river ends.

I am embarrassed, surprised and also shocked to realize that I really didn't know how we were going to do this. I only thought if we got on the boat and headed out, it would work, so now we have to turn around. You cannot cross dry land with a boat that big.

Back in our old place the water is filled with predator fish like sharks so disembarking has to be done very carefully. My teacher is there to meet us. He tells me I am late, but I can still take the exam. I sit down at my desk, but I don't have a clue what the answers are.

I get up and leave, but realize I left my purse in his classroom. When I go back to get it, he rummages through a pile of things along the back of the room and I leave wearing boots. They fit. They are the same color, but they obviously do not match. One has a rounded toe and the other a pointier one. I go back and try to show him that one of these boots is not like the other and they are not a real pair.

He doesn't see it and I have to reconcile myself to wearing mismatched boots. I think, I can do this. No big deal. We will just walk out of here. I start walking and pass a small fancy little shop where Aunt Lela is tatting lace and selling dresses decorated with it. I know you can't wear lace with mismatched boots, so I pass on by.

I make it through the town and am walking up a mountain path when I see a bunch of alpacas. I imagine them harnessed to the boat, pulling it through the narrow straits so we can escape, but then I remember I no longer have the boat.

There isn't any water here anyway. Let alone a strait that might lead us out.

And then I woke up worrying about those mismatched boots.

The elixir of life

I recently read about a study of 14,000 people that indicated people in their seventies who were overweight and drank both coffee and alcohol were the most likely to live into their nineties.

Old age can be a mindset.

After living a life of deprivation in order to be politically correct, religiously ethical, and puritanically like our forebears, many of our elderly are then shipped off to the abattoirs we euphemistically call nursing homes and hospitals.

People who have little or no say in any of life's little pleasures are unlikely to thrive.

I imagine most people who are still alive and a little overweight in their seventies are basically healthier than those who are already ill, so it makes sense they would live longer. Having the freedom to choose what they eat and drink is one of the pleasures that persists long after their ability to play football, or paint houses.

Being able to enjoy life, having the freedom to make your own choices, actually exercising free will, is the elixir of life.

Ancient artifacts

My life is like a museum now. Everywhere I look, everywhere I go, seems familiar.

There are the faces of my life, the songs of my life, the books, and letters and stories, all laid out on pedestals and upon walls, under glass and occasionally packed away deep down in the bottom of a trunk pushed up against a wall someplace.

I wander through admiring, breathing, trying to keep it all in perspective.

Occasionally though, one of the pedestals tips over and someone falls off. That's the danger with pedestals, they are more like leaning towers of Pisa than sturdy little three legged stools.

A stool may not be as elegant as a pedestal, but no matter how many times it is turned around the three legs keep it balanced. Once in a while it is necessary to just turn something around so I don't have to look at it.

I am slowly transferring everything off the pedestals as I grow older. It's safer and more sane that way.

It's Christmas and the world goes on

Does it matter who did it?

Does it really matter why?

Does it make a difference if it's the first time, or the millionth?

Are there enough excuses to excuse it?

If you could take the tiny body and lay it in the lap of the Christ what would he do? What would he say?

Matthew 25:40-45 King James Version
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

If you don't believe in all that, imagine the body of your child, or your grandchild, make it personal, because whatever we do to anyone is personal.

Statistics are for excuses and politics and reasons never justify cruelty.

The hour I found Christmas

You can give someone a million Christmas presents, but to really give someone Christmas?

That is a gift beyond words.

Truly beyond words.

Bestest gives me music and once he gave me a keyboard so I could play my music.

But I could never play for him. My hands shook. My heart quaked. I was too afraid.

This year I was like Charlie Brown. I just couldn't find Christmas, but Bestest kept right on singing and playing until Christmas Eve.

When the spirit of Christmas finally rose inside of me and poured out of my fingers.

After eight years I could play for him.

All's well that looks well

The title of this blog speaks to much of our society today.

We are a people of social media concepts. If you think I'm smiling I am happy. If you think I look beautiful. I am beautiful. If you, if you, if you . .

And the truth lies in between the words.

Because magic starts inside of us.

If I think I am beautiful, then I am. To me. To the person it really matters to. And that will most likely make me smile and make me happy and then I will be all these things and more.

My happiness is up to me, not you. Although you could enhance the happiness for both of us if you do something kind for me out of the goodness of your heart.

And vice a versa.

Today

Music is my soul. Maybe it is everyone's. I don't know.

I do know that it picks me up and transports me to times long gone. Specific times.

I fills my heart with the same sorrow and joy of that time. It wrings the same tears from my eyes.

Perhaps the first year of a new decade is the hardest, or perhaps I am feeling my age, but this feels like one of the hardest and sweetest moments I have ever known.

Whatever comes later, I will never forget now.

My world

I am surrounded by fears and disappointment.

And so I surround myself with beautiful things.

Pictures of those I love.

Lovely rooms.

Even lovelier toys.

And an imagination that sometimes even stuns me.

I want good wine.

Good food.

Better desserts.

And a mind unafraid to contemplate all of creation.

These are the things that keep my feet on this earth

And the love that rains from a few.

Where are the simple joys

Be yourself they said.

But don't do this.

Or that.

Don't cry, or be nosy, or impolite, or too loud. Speak up. Sing out. Don't get in the way or bother anyone.

By the time I was finished and sent out into the world to meet my fate I had no idea who I was.

I tried polishing up the edges of that person in the mirror, but I was never really sure if I was becoming more me, or if I were just someone else's art work in progress.

I am coming up on twenty years of cohabitating with myself.

I pop up now and then on long lonely mornings, or walks around the park. I appear in the library like a ghost returning to its old haunting grounds. I even heard myself singing the other day as I played with my favorite things.

Not raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but dollhouses and wallpaper and typewritten stories..

I used to run to the telephone when my Daddy called and it was the highlight of my three year old day. Now I do the same thing, but it is  Bobby and Bestest.

No longer obsessed with finding the simple joys of maidenhood and all those adoring daring fables, I am beginning to look a lot like me!

Time

One of the sweetest things about knowing someone for a very long time is watching them grow.

People have to grow into their bodies and voices and find their own places in this world and as much as I might think I know where they will end up, I am often surprised.

Bestest has been a writer for as long as I've known him. He writes for a living. He has books that are sold with his name on them and they are wonderful books.

Yet, this year he has truly found his voice.

Now he writes with his soul as well as his head and the words touch other people in ways that could not happen if he hadn't finally found his place.

The night before

Twas the night before the apocalypse and all through our country
Not a creature was stirring
Not even old Grumpy
The charities were all stashed underneath his great chair
In hopes no one found them
But they were all there.

The aides they were hung by the scruff of their need
Contemplating the wisdom
Of following their greed.
With rattraps galore and Decon out too
Success had been tainted with lots of true rue.

The fireplace was roaring
The logs were in place
And the red of his hair
Hid the red of his face.

But I heard him exclaim as he leaped in the fire
I'm winning. I'm up, No need to inquire.
And the ashes that rose from the chimney with flare
Gave rise to the lies that he would not dare.

En pointe

I feel like a Christmas Tree, a Scotch pine balancing sideways on the point of a mountain.

Slightly off balance.

My roots cut off.

Every bit of wind leaves me quivering and quaking, literally shivering.

Like something bad is going to happen when I least expect it

Which is comforting, because I am expecting it any moment, so maybe it won't happen.

I imagine myself with lights and ornaments and maybe even tinsel

But it would blow off, or fall off, or be destroyed in some way up here

That's the point I suppose.

I am balanced. I'm not actually falling off

But I am not en pointe.

Healing

Fragile.

That is not a word anyone has ever used to describe me.

Even when I was born.

Even when I was a teenager and asked my father, he told me I looked healthy.

I thought I wanted to be petite, tiny, fragile.

But now that I am older I realize it's not all it's hyped up to be.

I realize that I was emotionally fragile. Nightmares, night terrors, depression, these things have been my constant companions since I was thirteen. Reasons abound, but what good are reasons?

My skin is fragile. The slightest bump can tear it apart, but the rest of me is strong now.

I am a fast healer.

When I was younger

I have two different groups of women that I get together with socially, but this is still a difficult time of the year.

When I was younger we always had the biggest house and a dining room, but no one in our family wanted to drive two hours to celebrate with us and see our decorations, so we always packed up the children and dog and went back home for holidays. That way we could all be together.

Up until about four years ago my sister and I were still very close, but then her children and grandchildren starting moving into her house and her life; and now her great grandchildren have joined in, so there is seldom any time for just the two of us to be together.

My daughter who has had no car and no real steady boy friend for a number of years used to spend Sunday afternoons with me.  Now she has a boyfriend and a sixteen year old step son-to-be that she spends all of her time with. The only time I see her is if she needs a ride somewhere.

One of my sons has decided that I am the devil incarnate and the cause of all his problems, (along with a laudable group of other people) so we no longer spend Thanksgiving together. His ex-wife, thank goodness, still lets me see my grandchildren, but they live in Seattle.

My other son and Bestest call me quite frequently and that is the best part of most of my days.

It's not that I am not busy. I volunteer, get together with friends, and workout at the gym, but those things don't replace having someone come into my home, admire the Christmas tree, play with the dollhouse, bake cookies, whatever.