Waiting

Have you ever ached for the unknown?

Not just novelty, or adventure, but something more. Something rich and deeply satisfying that flows through all of you at once?

Indiscernible but there, like a sense memory of an experience you know you never had?

I do.

Sometimes I find myself waiting for it, sure that it is just around the next corner in time and sometimes I yearn for it as though I am looking at old pictures in a scrapbook.

But the pictures are fuzzy and the corner never quite comes.

It isn't as though I believe this will make me happy, but that I need it to complete something. It is as though I have forgotten something very important to me like my mother's name, or the address of home.

Sometimes I wonder if it is the same thing that makes Monarch butterflies fly to Mexico, or geese fly south, or salmon swim upstream, but I can't put my finger on it.

The day my mother passed

 I remember being three years old and standing in the big window of my grandmother's living room watching long parades of cars that people called weddings and funerals. To me they were just words that meant lots of people getting together. I still interchange those words to this day.

Since the road to the cemetery was just past our block, every funeral passed us. People in small towns pull over for funerals, or peer out windows paying their last thoughts to someone they might not even know.

The day of my mother's funeral I found  myself in a surreal dream. I watched as we passed my grandmother's house and the window I had looked out of when I was barely a toddler. I told myself that today I was in one of those funerals, that people were looking out their windows and seeing us pass by, but today the streets were lined with the living, all coming out to stand on their porches and steps and even the curbs to watch my mother's final moments above ground. I recognized these people. I knew them. Yet it all seemed unreal.

We passed the childhood homes of her best friends, the lady who did our ironing, the women who worked for her and my grandmother and I felt like a ghost. I wondered if they could see my mother sitting beside me watching them as we drove her out past the graves of her father and uncle and grandmother.

And then I don't remember anything else until that night when my sister and I sat at my father's dining room table eating Tombstone pizza and writing thank you notes for the flowers and plants and food that filled three houses around us. I was giddy with the stress of the last three days. It seemed hysterically funny to be eating a pizza called Tombstone and writing thank you notes, but I kept breaking into tears at the oddest moments.

That was the day my mother passed away. The day she could no longer sit beside us telling us who this person or that person was. The day she could not tell us what to write or how to say thank you for so much more than ham salad and chocolate cake. The day I cherished the smell of her closet when I went to find a sweater.

Now my grandmother's house is no longer in our family. Sold to a man who tore out the fireplaces and wood work to sell as piece work. The windows stand empty and dark, sad eyes peering out at the street where the family all passed by to say their final good-byes.

Growing old gracefully

First of all I don't believe there is one perfect way to grow old gracefully. In my nearly seventy years on this earth, though, I have had the ability to watch many women age and some definitely do it better than others.

To dye or not to dye, that is not really a question.  I tried the embrace my natural gray hair way and then I dyed away, both professionally and at home. All of those seem valid to me. The only question I see is picking a color or style that compliments your face, skin tone, and lifestyle. A hank of dry dead hair spraying down your back will not make anyone look younger, or more attractive. Go for the shine! That's what makes young people so beautiful to look at. They are healthy!

All that glitters is not youth. For some reason older women start piling on the sequins and rings, bangles and baubles. If one necklace is good, three must be better. If God wanted you to wear one ring he'd have only given you one finger, right? If you are going for the aging gypsy look, all this works beautifully.

And then there is makeup.  Old flawed skin with its brown spots and wrinkles can be depressing to look at if you worship youth, but it is a fact of nature. More a fact if you've worshipped nature's sun, wind and water. You may have the leathery skin of a Norwegian fisherman, but daubing tons of blue eye shadow on your eyes and red rouge on your cheeks turns you into Emmet Kelly, not Grace Kelly. Keep it simple.

Embrace the inner you. When I look at the people I love I see what I feel for them, the sparkles in their eye, not the things covering them like an out of season Christmas tree. (unless those things block my vision.)

How do you know

How did you meet?

Is it true there are soul mates who meet again and again throughout time?

Is it possible that people can be drawn together by fate?

Is it simply luck?

Or perhaps simple attraction -- like magnets?

Whenever I have met people who end up being important to me I always have the feeling we were meant to be together, but I have been wrong at least once. At least I think I have been wrong, but who knows? Even bad experiences shape our lives, draw us down one path or another .

If there is a divine power directing our lives I suppose it is possible that sixty years might not seem too long to it in the scope of eternity. Where we feel we have twenty or twenty five years to shape a child into an adult, that power might feel it needs fifty, or sixty to achieve some purpose.

Maybe even more!

Cloud nine

Imagine believing it is okay to be you.

When it comes to me there has almost always been something I was waiting to fix before I thought I might be okay.

Part of happiness is liking yourself or your life and finding joy in the present.

I was there in my early twenties. I remember telling my dad, "You've heard about the Joneses? Well we ARE the Joneses right now." It may, or may not have been true, but it felt true and it gave me a lot of self confidence.  I liked where I lived, what I did, how I looked.

I have not felt that way in a very long time, until lately.

I'm not sure quite what happened, but I have found myself particularly contented with myself and my life the past few weeks.

I don't want to dissect it, or do anything to end that feeling. It is just too nice.

The times they are a changing

Once every so often society transitions into a new way of being and generally it is a step in the right direction for nearly everyone, But a few people always get lost in the process.

Change takes time. It doesn't happen over night, but if people are isolated or insulated against the world around them they may not even notice until it is so late that they are completely befuddled by the state of their lives.

The last century was one of those times. Women began to take on more and more power and with that power came expectations as well as rights.

The long suffering woman work-a-holic's self image has always been I work myself to the bone, I do every thing a man does even though I am weak and frail. I am lovable because I am pitifully and pathetically hard working and if I get sick I expect even more attention, because I am sick because I worked so hard for you.

This is often not a conscious way of living. It is has been learned from mothers and grandmothers as the only way to survive in a man's world.

Only it is no longer a man's world. Women today, especially young women, are strong, independent, smart people and the successful ones balance work and play just like men can. Being sick may generate compassion, but there are no extra points because you passive aggressively worked yourself into a tither.

Not understanding this and not being able to move into this world can be very painful for women who don't understand why they are working as hard as they can and doing everything they've always done, but people are not responding the same way anymore.

Schubert and sneezes

One of the first poems I ever learned. From my mother, of course:

Spring is sprung, the grass is griz. I wonder where them flowers is.

Of all the faces of spring, the ones that were the most glorious were those early ones.

When the first tulip burst into all is glory, looking like a cup for fairies to gather round. When hyacinths seemed so extraordinarily dainty and pansies were my favorite flower.

April showers meant walking to school under my mother's huge umbrella. Sharing with my sister, both of us arriving with soaked feet, wet legs and filled with giggles.

May Day followed with paper baskets filled with lilacs from the backyard bushes, their heady scent so strong it made me sneeze when my mother put them on top of the baby grand in the living room..

Schubert and sneezes!

The signs of spring.

Only the dead

We had a house in our family that we all called the Big House. Not because it was like a jail, but because it really was a big old Victorian family home and our family had lived in it since before my mother was born.

Most of the rooms were the size of my entire apartment and there were many. Living room, library, kitchen, dining room, music room and a downstairs bedroom. Add a hallway almost twice as big as my apartment and you had the downstairs flanked by a kitchen porch, a side porch and a front porch. Upstairs were six bedrooms connected by doors one to the other and a hall big enough that when it was turned into two apartments, one of them included a bedroom made out of just the end of the hall. There were only two bathrooms and closets were either tucked into these or the little alcoves connecting the bedrooms.

There was a full attic above it and a basement with a warren of rooms below it.

My mother grew up here with her grandparents, aunt, uncle, three brothers and parents. I spent family holidays here and two weeks in the summer. For a while my mother lived here with us, my grandmother, great aunt and youngest uncle while my father was in Germany and later she and my father lived in the entire first floor. This was an important house in my life.

Last night I dreamed I was there doing laundry. In the dream there was my old neighborhood right next door, but that is the way dreams connect things. I was doing laundry and had even put my shoes in the machine when I saw a fire flickering in some outlets above my father's head. I yelled at him that I thought there was a fire and suddenly bedlam ensued.

My father and mother were both trying to put the fire out. My oldest brother was trying to salvage what he could and I was pulling on long over the knee socks because I couldn't find my shoes in the washer!

I finally decided I would have to go upstairs and get another pair of shoes, but by that time the house was pretty much consumed. I was trying to find a safe way up and thought maybe I could take the back stairs when my great Aunt Lela came out of the rubble that had been the kitchen. She didn't think I should try it.

As I stood there watching, three boys between nine and twelve years old came sliding down what was left of the staircase. Typical boys they were laughing and playing as though it were a great escape in a playground rather than a fire.

I stood there in the back yard by the old winding driveway and saw my grandmother looking at the house. She was dressed like she was when I was very small, in a striped sun dress and white wedge loafers.

Then the phone rang and woke me up, but the dream has stayed with me all morning. There was a sense of frustration because I couldn't find my shoes, sadness because the house burned down to black flaking charred timbers, and relief that no one was killed in the fire.

Then I realized that everyone in the dream, except me was already dead.

Beware of fantasies

I just read Priscilla Presley's account of her relationship with Elvis and I have walked down that same trail minus the drugs and fame. Only she had the wherewithal, both financially and mentally, to leave after four years and I stayed nearly thirty.

I am constant if not the brightest bulb on the loyalty string.

On the other hand I have managed to live out many fantasies in my lifetime.

There is something tasty and exciting about doing that. In the beginning the wonder is exhilarating. I can't believe I am doing (whatever it is that I am doing.)  I am following a dream that I have often had since childhood, or at least my teenage years.

Living the dream!

Everyone should do that! But the kicker is dreams are not forever and knowing when to wake up, smell the coffee and bow out is crucial to survival.

All leprechauns do not lead you to pots of gold. All angels are not from heaven and symphony conductors are not all heart and soul.

In the end I have to walk on my own two legs, use my own good sense and waltz away knowing there will be other fantasies and perhaps one of them will morph into a reality more fantastical than the dream.

Reality

Life is not a reality show.

In a world were reactionary actions become the norm it is much easier to control people. Condense life into an hour a week of reacting, over reacting, responding to their basest emotions, before considering what is going on, or how vulnerable it makes the reactors to manipulation and we are in trouble.

These people do not believe education has any real value because they do not know how to think. They believe that an instant response from the gut is the "real" way to go and that is because not knowing how to think makes people vulnerable to those who do know how to think.

Unscrupulous thinkers are already manipulating these people.

It is a melee of emotions the like of which we have not seen since two year old preschool. Only now the teacher is the president of our country and he believes that his reality can be made real by simply changing the story at will.

Once upon a time does not end in happily ever after if the building blocks were never real to begin with.

Betrayed

I had a very disturbing dream last night that left me feeling sadder than I've felt in a very long time.

In it I was betrayed.

It took me several hours to realize that was what it was this morning.

First of all I had a hard time getting up. Then I had this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. The kind you have when someone dies, or you lose a dear friend, or break up with someone.

I can think of no reason I would have this particular dream, but it has certainly left a lasting impression.

Perhaps it is only a residual from the past, but why now?

Why? That is always the question and the answer is usually as simple as why not.

Expecting life to be fair is ridiculous.

It is what it is.

Genesis

Tipping over they spill out into the universe

And then the fun begins.

Blown by a cosmic breath

Pulled close by a magnetism I don't understand

Clicked together by an indiscernible intellect

Infinite creation all out of one box.

Feelings

Movies are full of people falling in love. They do it in a million different ways, but it always seems so natural in the end.

I thought maybe we had soul mates when I was younger, but if we do either I didn't find mine, or time and space played a colossal joke on us.

If you had asked me last month if would I ever date again, or take a chance on being in that sort of relationship, I would have said no.

But all things change.

Once in a while we find ourselves drawn to someone in a way that feels different. A person walks into our lives, shakes our hand and you just feel something. Why? I have no idea.

It may never amount to anything, but it does change the way I feel.

Tempting fate

Today I granted myself the favor of reading a good book in the middle of the day!

That may sound ridiculous, but most of my life, really fascinating reading material has been hard come by and reading is one of the great joys of my life.

From the time I could read I would save good books for special times so I could savor them, loll in their mysteries, become one with the story. I remember reading at my desk on a Sunday afternoon with a much coveted glass of Coca Cola and two ice cubes. It was much diminished by the spider that somehow fell into the glass and crunched between my teeth!

Later I would read in the bathtub, carefully picking a time when no one else in the family was likely to need in. Propped up with a cheese sandwich and steaming hot water, I was in paradise.

I did not have access to the public library as a child except on very rare occasions. We were a one car family and it was far away. I read nearly everything in our house, but it wasn't always what I was dying to read.

Later, when I should have had access to anything I wanted there was a sense of scarcity. I didn't feel I had the right to go buy books and I also didn't have the time, or means to get to a library much of the time, so when I did have a really good book? I cherished it! That meant pacing out the reading so I wouldn't finish it too soon and lose those "friends" I found between the covers.

Now I live by myself. I have a good working car and lots of time, but old habits dye hard.

I tend to read at bedtime. I look forward to it and it helps me go to sleep. It is the reward I get for going to bed. A part of me is almost afraid that if I take advantage of my resources (book) and time, that somehow I might lose this precious right. I know that makes no sense, but it's a fear that has been with me since childhood.

Today I gave myself permission to just sit down and read! After all it's a big book and it will take me a while to finish it. And -- when I do -- I can either go to the library, or order another one.

I am enjoying every second, but when I pause to think about it, it does seem as though I am tempting fate.

Passion

When I was a young girl living in a small town during the 1960s, it seemed important to be passionate.

The people in the movies I saw were passionate. They slammed doors, threw things, made grand gestures for love and retribution. Then they lived happily ever after.

My mother was a fiery redhead who reacted almost without thinking, breaking chairs, throwing glasses, backhanding me when I least expected it -- and yet it was obvious my father adored her.

The big Italian family who ran our local grocery store sang opera and Italian love songs as they stocked shelves and cut meat. It there was any disagreement it, too, was loud and passionate (and in Italian.)

Of course the sixties were also the time of protesting and meditating and drugs, which kind of clashed with everything else in my life and itself too.

We had Pooh and Peanuts and wanted to celebrate the world as simpler, kinder people.

Except we didn't.

We became the forerunners of this awfulness our country is going through. Liars, cheats, child molesters, racists, people with no real conscience and a love of money that is idolatry. People who glom onto one idea and pervert it into a lifestyle that serves nobody.

Winnie the Pooh cannot erase the corruption, or hold the suffering children, but he can open a window to a bit of light that might see a few souls through in especially trying times.

Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.  Winnie the Pooh

A life

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

It made me think -- about so many things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am truly at sea.

Oer thy prairies verdant growing, Illinois

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

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

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

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

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

Even more daunting than the rain last night.

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

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

Only the strongest survived that and we are their ancestors.

Family ties

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reveal

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

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

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

Leftovers, or something new?

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

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

What stands here reaching for the veil?

What about them good ole days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So enjoy them.

There is no rest for sleep walkers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I change.

Please let me do it with insight and courage.

Dream dream dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hell

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

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

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

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

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

Selfies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The myth of us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horribly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.