Because I could not stop for Life,
And It wouldn't stop for me,
The calendar just rolled along
And turned a page or three...
Tomorrow's the first day of school in these parts which means that Summer is done, the leaves have gotten their eviction notices, and what have we to show for it all. I'm not really sure. I did do a lot of outdoor creating with paint and water and wood. I spent some time with good friends and family now and then as well. I spent way too much time in hospitals and doctors' offices. And like parents everywhere I stand at the precipice, under some invisible banner which calls us to celebrate "Tomorrow" with no idea how to do so.
It used to be August 1st was the saddest day of the year, but that was back when Climate Change was just an infant in our minds. Seems it's the middle of the month now when the light changes and it just plain doesn't look like summer anymore no matter what the thermometer reads. Everything is changed and you cannot go back and unfix it. It's done, summer's done, and you did what you did and missed what you missed, (suit)case closed.
So with that imaginary banner flapping in a warmish breeze over my head, I needed to do something to mark the occasion. And (pardon me again, Miss Emily) because I could not rearrange the furniture, I murdered my Twitter account. I have 30 days to dial up the Governor of Twitter's office to request a stay of the execution, as it were, but I don't think I'll do that. I think it is guilty and it knows what it did.
You know though, it wasn't It so much as it was Me. I changed. And just as the slant of light gets lower and thinner and spreads over a smaller and smaller territory with every passing day, so the world inside my head (Science, help us all who have to deal with that horror of a place!) must shrink as well. I can't seem to cast my light quite as far as I used to; I'm like a dying battery powering a big old lantern, poorly. Ain't no sunshine in my soul and on those days I can most certainly hide my beams under a bushel basket...probably under a thimble. And the seamstress is working tirelessly on the weak point where evidently I've come undone.
So many tiny infractions, with as many accompanying frustrations, echo in my recent memory, but as is usual in these times, it's the amorphous blob that most vexes me. It was and I did and now it's not and I can no longer do. So there. But I did do a whole lot more than last summer...a little voice somewhere pleads. And I am in possession of tons of new keys which have unlocked some very old mysteries, some going back for decades. The voice and the keys seem at times like a rope and pitons, promising to get me out of the holes I find myself in. My internal Google Machine can find "Smile" a lot quicker than it did before I acquired these tools.
Tomorrow morning the familiar echoes of months ago will return: the laughter of children walking to school, a bus passing by, a distant bell calling the elementary children inside, the hum of many more cars than usual on our street, and then the quiet...the heart-stopping sound of no children in the house. I remember this day several years ago when I still had a child at that nearby elementary school when, as I came out of the building, I was met with another mother, grande fancy coffee of some sort in her hand, who just smiled and said to me in her best deadpan, "Best day of the year." But I also recall the feeling of driving out of the parking lot of the middle school, even on mornings when my kids had been terrors and had stood firmly on my last nerve, when I went from agitated to alone in a matter of milliseconds: In the quarter turn of a steering wheel, in the nod to a crossing guard, in the wave to a neighbor. Alone was huge and came crushing down, sitting on my heart it pushed all the air out of me, leaning on my lungs it made me want to cry.
It's the thank-goodness-you're-okay-now-let-me-beat-hell-out-of-you-for-scaring-me-to-death syndrome that's gone through every parent's mind whenever a kid does some reckless thing like dart across a parking lot or wander off momentarily. One moment they're pressing your buttons, the next their touch is gone and much as it hurt, you miss it terribly. And this is just the first day back, less than eight hours out of sight. What happens when they start to drive? Go on their first date? Go off to college?
There are a few summers left between now and those fateful days to come and I hope to build on whatever it is I've created this time around. It's all a blur of course, like sweat running into your eyes on a hot day outdoors. By now, if it wasn't for the signs of my efforts in the yard, I wouldn't believe any of it ever happened. June was a million years ago, a billion thoughts ago, trillions of emotions passed by. Another tough summer for our slice of the rhubarb pie in general of course, but no intensely personal tragedy or loss to speak of. We look back with gratefulness and forward with hopes of many snowfalls to come to our high and dry hills...and a slowly-paced runoff season, thank you very much.
To everything there is a season, and to every season there is a purpose...if for nothing else, they cause us to appreciate the one just ended or the one yet so far away. And while I may well pine for warmth when it's 20 below, I'm glad I live in a place with changing seasons. It hurts to say goodbye to leaves, then flowers, then berries as a bush reverts back to its sculptural, winter appearance, just as it pains me to drop the kids off and drive away. But the chokecherries will return and the choked-back tears must remain as a right of passage. The only thing to do with Change is to accept it: For though it may not be exact, it will happen. And it'll rattle around and drag you down if you don't spend it well.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Friday, August 9, 2013
Are There Emotional Rescue Service Dogs and Where Can I Get One?
I've had a fairly easy life all in all. No massive tragedy, no particular long-term agony, nothing you'd think of as the Real Bad Stuff. But I did realize something today: There is not one person on the face of the Earth who I can give myself to completely. Maybe that's why I have dogs, the whole unconditional part of the love would be lost on me without them.
Don't get me wrong--something that seems to be going on a lot around here just now--I have a husband who loves me, kids who are capable of being spectacularly amazing, and a few people who smooth the edges for me from time to time. (Telling perhaps that none of those people inhabit the same time zone as do I.) But none of them could stand me without a mask or two on my persona, none of them could face what I see in the mirror. Maybe it's that way with everyone and I'm just late to the reality party. I'd like to think that's not the case, but evidence over the past 24 hours points in the glass-half-empty direction.
Yes, I'm feeling sorry for myself, and pissed, and disillusioned, and paranoid, and everything on either side and in-between. I guess that's what you get when you have a flat tire, ride a rim to a closer point of abandonment, walk home, then discover someone you considered a friend has given you a verbal rim job without benefit of lubricant. Maybe I deserved it, maybe everyone does, or perhaps no one does. Who knows? All I can say for sure is I really don't have a friend I can count on for anything, no matter what. But, by the same token, I cannot say for sure whether anyone would write my name down on that blank of their own life story either. Life's closer to Mad Libs than we would perhaps care to know.
I don't know what happens next. I feel like it's those ten years of torture in school again, like the decade I don't remember. The time I was afraid to speak, and to share, and to feel. I wish I could throw my phone away, change the number, go into the Witness Protection Program, or at least change the locks on my heart. I wish I could unknow a lot of things, and I really wish there were things I'd never admitted to anyone in a moment of misguided affection. I need to kick the vending machine and unplug the computer, take the card out of the DVR and wait five minutes, change a battery somewhere. Re-boot, as it were.
But there's never an easy way out with people. People are messy, fussy things that require constant sunshine and watering. They don't take a stormy day well even if you really need the cool-down. They won't just wither quietly if you ignore them, rather they become the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. Charming mo-fos, aren't we?
And there's this dumbass "People's Distemper" I've decided to come down with for some reason. Talk about charm, it's like having a lobotomy without anesthesia, like Alzheimer's without the grace of being oblivious. You know exactly what's happening to you and you still can't do a damned thing to change it. You can't walk out of the worst movie you've ever seen, you have to sit there and watch the cast of bad actors with unrealistic emotions parade past for day after day with no relief. It's your own one-woman show from the screenwriters in Hell.
But you know what? There are people out there with Real Problems, with scars and afflictions you can see. People who cry when they're wounded. But those of us with "mental-emotional-chemical-hormonal" illnesses are invisible to The System and to each other. We don't scream when you shoot us, don't bleed when you take a stab at us. We're more like the fish you pull out of a mountain stream: We just stare at you quietly with our mouths open, gasping for a reason to explain what's happening, flopping around in seizure until we finally suffocate on the irony of all we thought our lives could be.
Or not. Whatever. Screw it.
Don't get me wrong--something that seems to be going on a lot around here just now--I have a husband who loves me, kids who are capable of being spectacularly amazing, and a few people who smooth the edges for me from time to time. (Telling perhaps that none of those people inhabit the same time zone as do I.) But none of them could stand me without a mask or two on my persona, none of them could face what I see in the mirror. Maybe it's that way with everyone and I'm just late to the reality party. I'd like to think that's not the case, but evidence over the past 24 hours points in the glass-half-empty direction.
Yes, I'm feeling sorry for myself, and pissed, and disillusioned, and paranoid, and everything on either side and in-between. I guess that's what you get when you have a flat tire, ride a rim to a closer point of abandonment, walk home, then discover someone you considered a friend has given you a verbal rim job without benefit of lubricant. Maybe I deserved it, maybe everyone does, or perhaps no one does. Who knows? All I can say for sure is I really don't have a friend I can count on for anything, no matter what. But, by the same token, I cannot say for sure whether anyone would write my name down on that blank of their own life story either. Life's closer to Mad Libs than we would perhaps care to know.
I don't know what happens next. I feel like it's those ten years of torture in school again, like the decade I don't remember. The time I was afraid to speak, and to share, and to feel. I wish I could throw my phone away, change the number, go into the Witness Protection Program, or at least change the locks on my heart. I wish I could unknow a lot of things, and I really wish there were things I'd never admitted to anyone in a moment of misguided affection. I need to kick the vending machine and unplug the computer, take the card out of the DVR and wait five minutes, change a battery somewhere. Re-boot, as it were.
But there's never an easy way out with people. People are messy, fussy things that require constant sunshine and watering. They don't take a stormy day well even if you really need the cool-down. They won't just wither quietly if you ignore them, rather they become the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. Charming mo-fos, aren't we?
And there's this dumbass "People's Distemper" I've decided to come down with for some reason. Talk about charm, it's like having a lobotomy without anesthesia, like Alzheimer's without the grace of being oblivious. You know exactly what's happening to you and you still can't do a damned thing to change it. You can't walk out of the worst movie you've ever seen, you have to sit there and watch the cast of bad actors with unrealistic emotions parade past for day after day with no relief. It's your own one-woman show from the screenwriters in Hell.
But you know what? There are people out there with Real Problems, with scars and afflictions you can see. People who cry when they're wounded. But those of us with "mental-emotional-chemical-hormonal" illnesses are invisible to The System and to each other. We don't scream when you shoot us, don't bleed when you take a stab at us. We're more like the fish you pull out of a mountain stream: We just stare at you quietly with our mouths open, gasping for a reason to explain what's happening, flopping around in seizure until we finally suffocate on the irony of all we thought our lives could be.
Or not. Whatever. Screw it.
Monday, July 15, 2013
A Change Has Got to Come
There's so much I wanna say right now, today. There's been so much I've pondered since Saturday night, that I don't feel I've arrived at the best vehicle for blogging just yet however.
I'm still sad, but I have a luxury that Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin do not have, the ability to move past sad. They never will.
Not that I'm not angry exactly, and who wouldn't be, but I feel it more as disappointment and despair. You're not supposed to be able to have a license to hunt people in our society, but evidently a portion of our population has just that. And you certainly should never be the hunted, but that seems to exist as well. It's disheartening, terrifying, and so ridiculously unnecessary as to defy logic...and ethics...and human-ness.
I'm going to continue to collect my thoughts and develop my anger through rage then, hopefully, into constructive action. That seems to be the way to handle this miscarriage of "justice". If I write anymore now, today, it's going to come out wrong or incomplete or misguidedly arrogant. It's gonna devolve into vitriol and there's bloody well enough of that in our world already. I don't want to add to the hate in this precious child's name.
But I very much want to add to the truth. We need to and we WILL have The Conversation in this country because our future, our children, and our souls depend upon it, the Fulton-Martin family deserves it, and making positive change in the face of unthinkable horror (and thereby retaining our sanity) demands it.
Watch this space...
I'm still sad, but I have a luxury that Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin do not have, the ability to move past sad. They never will.
Not that I'm not angry exactly, and who wouldn't be, but I feel it more as disappointment and despair. You're not supposed to be able to have a license to hunt people in our society, but evidently a portion of our population has just that. And you certainly should never be the hunted, but that seems to exist as well. It's disheartening, terrifying, and so ridiculously unnecessary as to defy logic...and ethics...and human-ness.
I'm going to continue to collect my thoughts and develop my anger through rage then, hopefully, into constructive action. That seems to be the way to handle this miscarriage of "justice". If I write anymore now, today, it's going to come out wrong or incomplete or misguidedly arrogant. It's gonna devolve into vitriol and there's bloody well enough of that in our world already. I don't want to add to the hate in this precious child's name.
But I very much want to add to the truth. We need to and we WILL have The Conversation in this country because our future, our children, and our souls depend upon it, the Fulton-Martin family deserves it, and making positive change in the face of unthinkable horror (and thereby retaining our sanity) demands it.
Watch this space...
Saturday, July 13, 2013
What? A Load of Shit?
It occurs to me that my children may need a primer course in the definition of poop. You'd think this would be one of their strong suits--between guy jokes and a girl with a puppy, but sadly it is not.
As I was collecting nuggets of wisdom from the dog run just a while ago, I envisioned how this treatise might go: A PowerPoint presentation perhaps, but with lousy production values, no color, and the obligatory 1950s voice-over dude. The big white-lettered title banner would read: THIS IS POOP. And though there would be eye-rolling and more sighing than must come from the public gallery in the House of Representatives these days, my offspring would not be surprised at this tactic. I am, after all, the mom who just this week wrote out the grocery list on a two-foot by three-foot dry erase board before announcing, board in hand: "Okay, who's going with me?" (I then snapped a picture of the list with my phone, leaving the board in the kitchen. I do have to live in this town, after all.)
When a person of let's say teenaged years is asked to clean up the dog run or, in another widely available translation, pick up all the dog poop in said run, one, let's say of the half-century persuasion might expect to walk around the corner of the house and find no poop. This is false logic because there will be poop. We have only to ask ourselves why.
Some queries I developed: Have cop shows taught you about the "Statute of Limitations" after which a thing is simply no longer of import. After poop ceases to smell or if it disintegrates is it no longer poop? Have the dogs become masters of camouflage? Are they "laying the rails" as it were in such a fashion as to chameleon-ize their means of communication? Am I ignoring the slant of light and asking this job be done at the wrong angle, at the wrong time of day? Or are my children simply incapable of concentrating for the 45 minutes it takes to complete the task? All troubling but I dare say not thought-provoking enough to launch a full-scale investigation.
My kids might simply not care enough or take the matter seriously enough to do it well. Remember that "Everybody Loves Raymond" episode where Ray knew that if he did a thing badly enough he'd never be asked to do it again? I think that's what happens sometimes with teenaged people...and husbands, but that's another story. And as I collected the artifacts of meals come and gone a good six months ago now at least, I contemplated many things, one of which I can repeat to you here. I have really got to get husband to show the kids how to use the doggie septic we installed last summer and have yet to use. Yes, we have a doggie septic system. Yes, they make doggie septic systems. And yes, we are some of those people who get things and then FORget them. I do not want to learn this lesson because then I'll have to do it too, and I believe I have other things to do already. That's my takeaway from Ray's Sitcom Wisdom. (That, and the communion wafer substitute called "I Can't Believe It's Not Our Saviour" which just cracks me up no end. Oh, and Ray's dad's "What contest in Hell did I win?" when Ray's mom insists that she is a trophy wife.)
I like to picture myself on a beach whenever it comes my time to pick up the poo. But I love irony. And I do take a turn because it's a big job plus my dad always taught me never to ask an employee to do something you wouldn't do. Every now and again, even as a grocery store manager, he would go to the back room and clean the toilet. I can't exactly preach good Union Values and not instill them in my children through my own practice. Keeps down the insurrections as well. And today I wanted it done properly because I care about my neighbors. Right now one of them has a house on the market, this is the first weekend of their listing, it's been near or past 90 degrees for days, you get the picture (in all its scratch-and-sniff glory.)
So, lads and lassies (and Lassies), This Is Poo: It can be any color from black to brown to grey to yellow to green, it can be almost any shape from a tidbit to a tart to a loaf to a full-on pie (deep dish), it can be warm or cold, hard or soft, smelly or without smell, it can roll or lie very still, it can become the exact same color as its surroundings, it can hide under grass and pine cones and rocks, it can shape-shift, disappear then reappear, in short, this is some pretty magical shit you're being trusted to care for. Just go to your happy place, the place where, yes, you will find enough soap in all of the world to be able to eat lunch in a few hours, and no, you will not feel the need to sniff your fingers before you do so. (This is where you remind them to take the baggie, plastic bag, or disposable gloves outside with them--or all three if they are Those Kind of Kids.)
And if the shit really hits the fan, just remind them of the explosive times they gave you a few years back. Talk about some indistinguishable shit! If they knew that what they were doing then was pooping, then they are eminently qualified to be dog poop picker-uppers. No arguing. No discussion. Case (and Diaper Genie) closed!
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Tell It To Me, Gently
There's something to be said for telling a story obliquely. I'm not referring to the BS politicians use to say a whole lot of absolutely nothing, but the time-honored show of sensitivity known as the slow unfolding of the truth. It's a handy tool whenever some firestorm or other could be brewing, as it gives you a way to gauge your audience.
And it can cover your arse in the event of litigation. This was the case on the original Saturday Night Live show when Chico Esquella, as imagined by Garrett Morris, was in the midst of a paternity suit. The resident sportscaster, and pretend ex-baseball player, Esquella wanted to comment but had been advised not to do so. He retreated to the thing he knew best to tell his story, sports. After showing footage of NBA players doing various things, he played and replayed tape of a big time dunk complete with bursted backboard. Chico then ends the broadcast with ideas for a new material that would prevent this hazard of the court (pun intended), and I paraphrase: You could use fiberglass or plastic, but not rubber because rubber breaks, but I can't talk about it.
Dr. Joel Fleishman, Rob Morrow's character on Northern Exposure, employed this round-about method to tell Maggie O'Connell that yet another boyfriend, this time Rick, had been killed in some bizarre fashion...by a satellite. He starts out with a joke, again, paraphrased: So my friend was watching a friend's cat while the guy was on vacation and the cat died. My friend just comes out and tells the guy this which shocked him. He said that sort of news ought to be told more gently and with all the details. So he tells the friend the long version which culminated in the cat going up onto the roof and meeting its demise. The next time the friend goes away on vacation his grandmother dies. My guy sits him down and starts out with: Well, your grandmother went up on the roof and... Maggie laughs and expresses her surprise that Joel has actually, and accurately told a funny joke. Then of course Joel's next words are "Rick went up on the roof..."
I know that there has been a big story in the news lately which has set a lot of people off for different reasons and has driven a wedge between Liberals, Progressives, Democrats, whatever label you favor, and I have stayed away from it. The tale involves a very serious matter and features a main character with a compound word of a name combining a winter variety of precipitation and another word for parlor or sitting room. And while I've followed most of the details and have heard reasoned arguments on all sides, I have yet to mention it here.
Now I won't tell you that this person has "gone up on the roof" because he hasn't, but he has gone somewhere and that is what I choose to focus on. The biggest point of contention (setting aside the important aspects) is whether or not this is a good guy or a bad guy. Let me say this: He's a stupid guy. If I'm living in Hawai'i with a honey, knocking down a good three-figure salary and not even 30-years-old yet, I'm not hanging my butt out to dry in a Moscow Airport no-man's-land for two weeks. I mean, dude, come on. One day you're having plate lunch the next borsch? Please.
Think whatever you will of secrets and spying and privacy and your Constitution-given rights--and you should--but realize that this guy is in desperate need of a life coach or a travel agent or both. I was pretty well stupid at his age too, but I did know better than to go where I wasn't invited. And I knew not to piss off at least half of my friends, or the world. And I never, never, ever went up on the roof!
And it can cover your arse in the event of litigation. This was the case on the original Saturday Night Live show when Chico Esquella, as imagined by Garrett Morris, was in the midst of a paternity suit. The resident sportscaster, and pretend ex-baseball player, Esquella wanted to comment but had been advised not to do so. He retreated to the thing he knew best to tell his story, sports. After showing footage of NBA players doing various things, he played and replayed tape of a big time dunk complete with bursted backboard. Chico then ends the broadcast with ideas for a new material that would prevent this hazard of the court (pun intended), and I paraphrase: You could use fiberglass or plastic, but not rubber because rubber breaks, but I can't talk about it.
Dr. Joel Fleishman, Rob Morrow's character on Northern Exposure, employed this round-about method to tell Maggie O'Connell that yet another boyfriend, this time Rick, had been killed in some bizarre fashion...by a satellite. He starts out with a joke, again, paraphrased: So my friend was watching a friend's cat while the guy was on vacation and the cat died. My friend just comes out and tells the guy this which shocked him. He said that sort of news ought to be told more gently and with all the details. So he tells the friend the long version which culminated in the cat going up onto the roof and meeting its demise. The next time the friend goes away on vacation his grandmother dies. My guy sits him down and starts out with: Well, your grandmother went up on the roof and... Maggie laughs and expresses her surprise that Joel has actually, and accurately told a funny joke. Then of course Joel's next words are "Rick went up on the roof..."
I know that there has been a big story in the news lately which has set a lot of people off for different reasons and has driven a wedge between Liberals, Progressives, Democrats, whatever label you favor, and I have stayed away from it. The tale involves a very serious matter and features a main character with a compound word of a name combining a winter variety of precipitation and another word for parlor or sitting room. And while I've followed most of the details and have heard reasoned arguments on all sides, I have yet to mention it here.
Now I won't tell you that this person has "gone up on the roof" because he hasn't, but he has gone somewhere and that is what I choose to focus on. The biggest point of contention (setting aside the important aspects) is whether or not this is a good guy or a bad guy. Let me say this: He's a stupid guy. If I'm living in Hawai'i with a honey, knocking down a good three-figure salary and not even 30-years-old yet, I'm not hanging my butt out to dry in a Moscow Airport no-man's-land for two weeks. I mean, dude, come on. One day you're having plate lunch the next borsch? Please.
Think whatever you will of secrets and spying and privacy and your Constitution-given rights--and you should--but realize that this guy is in desperate need of a life coach or a travel agent or both. I was pretty well stupid at his age too, but I did know better than to go where I wasn't invited. And I knew not to piss off at least half of my friends, or the world. And I never, never, ever went up on the roof!
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Community Chest
Well, there were no cannons and no fireworks, but our Fourth of July celebrations were quite complete nonetheless. On Thursday we were treated to a neighborhood potluck with grilled goodies at the house of our dear friends. Five households were represented, the food was wonderful, and the conversation could not possibly have been more enjoyable.
That afternoon my daughter and I had spent a few hours working the booth for The Pet Food Pantry, garnering donations and having a blast. We adorned our heads with stars and flags, sported red-white-and-blue necklaces, etc. A visiting French gentleman asked to take our photograph as we looked so "American".
On Friday we attended the local Farmers' Market (which has a huge following) and procured some lovely tea made of dried wild strawberries, and some ingredients for an aioli I wanted to make to accompany our corn-on-the-cob. We had a huge late afternoon meal of ribs and side dishes and cornbread and dessert: It was wonderful. The showers even held back just long enough for us to enjoy this repast on the deck.
But they couldn't help themselves when it came time to hear the Symphony. Ah well, with the luck we've not had around these parts over the past two years with wildfires, we'll gladly take the rain. Daughter and I managed to walk down to the festivities, circle the track once to survey the crowd and listen to the Celtic opening act, then opened our umbrellas against the opening sky for the walk back home. We knew we could hear the music from the front porch if we chose to anyway.
Back home, we did remain on the porch hoping for a rainbow as the clouds and sun jousted back and forth for a bit, but none came. We heard the Symphony warm up...then nothing. Either we're losing our hearing or thunder delayed their start, whatever the reason after about an hour or so we retreated indoors.
Even with the less-than-anticipated activities, our roster seemed full: We got to have two terrific meals, see lots of friends and neighbors, make some money for our non-profit, and share of ourselves with other folks. And that's the best part. When you let yourself be given to others you become a part of something larger than yourself. Every joke, each insight, all your truths you give away become the best return present of all: Community.
That afternoon my daughter and I had spent a few hours working the booth for The Pet Food Pantry, garnering donations and having a blast. We adorned our heads with stars and flags, sported red-white-and-blue necklaces, etc. A visiting French gentleman asked to take our photograph as we looked so "American".
On Friday we attended the local Farmers' Market (which has a huge following) and procured some lovely tea made of dried wild strawberries, and some ingredients for an aioli I wanted to make to accompany our corn-on-the-cob. We had a huge late afternoon meal of ribs and side dishes and cornbread and dessert: It was wonderful. The showers even held back just long enough for us to enjoy this repast on the deck.
But they couldn't help themselves when it came time to hear the Symphony. Ah well, with the luck we've not had around these parts over the past two years with wildfires, we'll gladly take the rain. Daughter and I managed to walk down to the festivities, circle the track once to survey the crowd and listen to the Celtic opening act, then opened our umbrellas against the opening sky for the walk back home. We knew we could hear the music from the front porch if we chose to anyway.
Back home, we did remain on the porch hoping for a rainbow as the clouds and sun jousted back and forth for a bit, but none came. We heard the Symphony warm up...then nothing. Either we're losing our hearing or thunder delayed their start, whatever the reason after about an hour or so we retreated indoors.
Even with the less-than-anticipated activities, our roster seemed full: We got to have two terrific meals, see lots of friends and neighbors, make some money for our non-profit, and share of ourselves with other folks. And that's the best part. When you let yourself be given to others you become a part of something larger than yourself. Every joke, each insight, all your truths you give away become the best return present of all: Community.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Go, Fourth!
I hope everyone has a fun and festive holiday awaiting them tomorrow. Here in the hinterlands, we have a little festival in the park with all the requisite and charming activities like dump a local official in the pool of water, ride a firetruck, and eat barbecue, but the Fifth is actually the big celebratory day for us.
For more than thirty years we've celebrated the day after everyone else because that's when the Colorado Springs Philharmonic can make a spot in their busy schedule for us. We call it Symphony Above the Clouds, which we hold at a school grounds, and we usually have about 7,000
-8,000 folks attend. There's the music and some concessions, but most folks bring a picnic basket, blankets and chairs, and come for "dinner and a show" as it were.
But this year's event will be a bit quieter. We won't have truly some of the best fireworks you'll ever see as it grows dark because of the fire danger, and we probably won't have the canons from Fort Carson because of the Sequestration. I've joked before that this may be the only small town in America where every little kid knows the 1812 Overture of Mr. Tchaikovsky by heart and out of necessity. They need to know when to cover their ears to protect their hearing from the canon fire. This is how we begin our fireworks show, you see. Once the Overture and the canons are through, the fireworks continue for a good fifteen or twenty minutes--or so it seems--until every last rocket is shot into glory.
It's a terrific little tradition of which we are most proud. It's also a great opportunity to see friends and neighbors you run into regularly as well as other folks you may only see a few times a year. Practically everyone comes and walks the crowd hopping from conversation to conversation. As my friend Bill says of events in our hamlet, "It's a stitch."
But even without the fanfare and display, I know just as sure as the real estate agents who put an American flag in every yard in town and did so yesterday will come no matter what, that we'll manage to have the same great time that we always do. Even if we have to make pretend canon and fireworks sounds on the walk back home.
For more than thirty years we've celebrated the day after everyone else because that's when the Colorado Springs Philharmonic can make a spot in their busy schedule for us. We call it Symphony Above the Clouds, which we hold at a school grounds, and we usually have about 7,000
-8,000 folks attend. There's the music and some concessions, but most folks bring a picnic basket, blankets and chairs, and come for "dinner and a show" as it were.
But this year's event will be a bit quieter. We won't have truly some of the best fireworks you'll ever see as it grows dark because of the fire danger, and we probably won't have the canons from Fort Carson because of the Sequestration. I've joked before that this may be the only small town in America where every little kid knows the 1812 Overture of Mr. Tchaikovsky by heart and out of necessity. They need to know when to cover their ears to protect their hearing from the canon fire. This is how we begin our fireworks show, you see. Once the Overture and the canons are through, the fireworks continue for a good fifteen or twenty minutes--or so it seems--until every last rocket is shot into glory.
It's a terrific little tradition of which we are most proud. It's also a great opportunity to see friends and neighbors you run into regularly as well as other folks you may only see a few times a year. Practically everyone comes and walks the crowd hopping from conversation to conversation. As my friend Bill says of events in our hamlet, "It's a stitch."
But even without the fanfare and display, I know just as sure as the real estate agents who put an American flag in every yard in town and did so yesterday will come no matter what, that we'll manage to have the same great time that we always do. Even if we have to make pretend canon and fireworks sounds on the walk back home.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
See Shel!
This past Saturday I had the pleasure of volunteering for one of my doggie non-profits, the one that rescues and places dogs and puppies in foster care until we find them a forever home, at our Mountain of the Sun Music Festival. This was the third year of the event which is growing and gathering a pretty decent following.
Tony Furtado was the headliner, local favorites (now "homeless" after last year's Waldo Canyon Fire) The Flying W Wranglers were there--think Sons of the Pioneers, and several other fantastic bands filled out the lineup. And I discovered Shel. In a word, this band is fantastic. Comprised of four sisters from Fort Collins, Colorado, they play what I would call Modern Celtic meets Sea Shanty while playing rock. Their musicianship was consummate, their songwriting phenomenal. I can see why a CMT scout called them one of the best ten bands at this year's South by Southwest festival.
But the coolest thing about them for me, was that my partner-in-good-deeds that day, a lady I simply adore who just happens to be nearly thirty years my senior fell in love with them as well. I bought the vinyl/CD package after the set so we could share the music. How often does that happen? A cross-cultural and intergenerational match made of some of the most wonderful kickass tunes I'd been treated to in many years. Check these chicks out; they're going places beyond our little neck of the woods for sure! www.SHELmusic.com
Other sights and sounds: trick slack liners, hand-forged camping cookware, tie-dyed everything, ethically-prepared vegan fare, and an awesome thing called Music in Motion in which four audience members on bikes power an entire soundstage. Pretty cool for a teensy mountain hamlet.
What a beautiful day on the slopes of Pikes Peak! You just don't get a better setting than that, and when you stumble across a favorite new band that you get to share with a dear friend, well that's just more than you could ever hope for from a lazy Saturday afternoon.
Tony Furtado was the headliner, local favorites (now "homeless" after last year's Waldo Canyon Fire) The Flying W Wranglers were there--think Sons of the Pioneers, and several other fantastic bands filled out the lineup. And I discovered Shel. In a word, this band is fantastic. Comprised of four sisters from Fort Collins, Colorado, they play what I would call Modern Celtic meets Sea Shanty while playing rock. Their musicianship was consummate, their songwriting phenomenal. I can see why a CMT scout called them one of the best ten bands at this year's South by Southwest festival.
But the coolest thing about them for me, was that my partner-in-good-deeds that day, a lady I simply adore who just happens to be nearly thirty years my senior fell in love with them as well. I bought the vinyl/CD package after the set so we could share the music. How often does that happen? A cross-cultural and intergenerational match made of some of the most wonderful kickass tunes I'd been treated to in many years. Check these chicks out; they're going places beyond our little neck of the woods for sure! www.SHELmusic.com
Other sights and sounds: trick slack liners, hand-forged camping cookware, tie-dyed everything, ethically-prepared vegan fare, and an awesome thing called Music in Motion in which four audience members on bikes power an entire soundstage. Pretty cool for a teensy mountain hamlet.
What a beautiful day on the slopes of Pikes Peak! You just don't get a better setting than that, and when you stumble across a favorite new band that you get to share with a dear friend, well that's just more than you could ever hope for from a lazy Saturday afternoon.
Monday, July 1, 2013
We Are Remanded to Their Care
Out of deep respect and immense gratitude, I'd invite you to keep the 19 hotshots lost in Arizona and the lone survivor who is battling injuries in your hearts and minds over the near term, and as our Western Wildfire Season continues, please keep in mind those who go out and fight for our lives, our homes, our animals, and our towns each and every day. None of us lucky enough to call the West home could begin to live here without their support and efforts.
Blogposts will continue here and at susanbranham.blogspot.com tomorrow. Be safe, be fire safe, and help your local responders in any way that you possibly can. Thanks.
Blogposts will continue here and at susanbranham.blogspot.com tomorrow. Be safe, be fire safe, and help your local responders in any way that you possibly can. Thanks.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
The Fever-y Hillabilities
"Come and listen to a story 'bout a gal named Sue,
A ten-mile bike ride seemed like the thing to do,
And then that day on the way back from the beach,
She damned near killed herself and she is here to teach:
Over 50, dodging cars, 97 degrees...
See the one thing forgot was a bottle from to drink,
'Cuz the lack of concessions was a thought she didn't think,
And that oversight? The beginning of the end,
For the beat of the heat landed her a case of bends:
Head pounding, stomach churning, seeing stars...
No gears, but Hill Abilities!"
(Yes, I think, in retrospect, I'd better get a mountain bike, or a new bike at any rate...with a few gears. I'm too old for this shit...)
A ten-mile bike ride seemed like the thing to do,
And then that day on the way back from the beach,
She damned near killed herself and she is here to teach:
Over 50, dodging cars, 97 degrees...
See the one thing forgot was a bottle from to drink,
'Cuz the lack of concessions was a thought she didn't think,
And that oversight? The beginning of the end,
For the beat of the heat landed her a case of bends:
Head pounding, stomach churning, seeing stars...
No gears, but Hill Abilities!"
(Yes, I think, in retrospect, I'd better get a mountain bike, or a new bike at any rate...with a few gears. I'm too old for this shit...)
Thursday, June 27, 2013
May the Road Rise Up To Meet You...
Today was a good day, in no small part because I survived it. The afternoon went from the thrill of victory to the agony of defeat in no time at all. So I can't ride a bike uphill in 97 degree heat for more than an hour. I made it to my destination, had a nice, long game of water frisbee in the lake, hung out on what passes for "beach" in Colorado, then nearly died on the way back. It happens.
I've had a few nearly died situations (or those perceived so at the time) and most all of them come while hiking. Why? Because I am a hard-headed individual and I will not turn around when I should. Two of these occurrences came in my youth: as a pre-teen I nearly slid over the edge at Stone Mountain in Georgia--I didn't understand what that was all about at the time...just thought the South had a Mount Rushmore-type attraction--and my parents and I were on some Smokey Mountains trail somewhere FAR off the beaten track when we, and by we I mean my mom and I (dad was busy laughing at us nearby), clung to life on a 70+ degree-angled hillside with only a tiny sapling between us and sure death below. Sapling? It was an overgrown weed really, maybe even a single stalk of grass as time finishes the story for us. Once we'd traversed that horror, we met with a stream or a snake or something--maybe mom would recall--that made my dad wonder if we should turn back. My mother told him no. Not in those words, but in many, many other words. We pressed on ahead, successfully.
Then there was the time I decided on an all-day hike at our local State Park here. All day, like nine, eleven hours all day. I could't tell the difference between the ground and my own face and folks, that's the definition of draggin' low! And there were several times when I said to hubby and the Bouvier, "just one more curve" at what used to be our local lake until last year's wildfire closed it. It takes a lot of miles to circumnavigate a reservoir by the way, when you've got land to build a big one, and one thing we got a lot of out here is land.
You'd think that last story, The Reservoir Episodes, would've stuck with me. They obviously eluded me today. Then again I'm fifteen years older today, too. (That's fifteen having-kids-writing-novels years, not normal time passages.) But I made it around a good 70% of this res today before the water play and the return trip. I even made the first twenty minutes or so of retracing our fat tire tracks okay, until I didn't.
Humility, in my experience, comes upon you quickly, like a sudden rogue lightning flash that precedes any thunder or storm. Your mind (and in my case, head and stomach) make decisions for you concerning matters you had no idea were "pressing" as it were. And if you're 51 and it's 97, well, the math doesn't add up after a certain point. In the interest of saving you from such a fate I will tell you here and now that this certain point I speak of is microscopic. You will never see it before it sees you. And you know what, it hates you. It wants to sneak up, smash your skull in with a pounding headache and force you to remove some bile from your digestive system without benefit of privacy. Call it Napoleon Complex if you will, but respect the little bastard, I'm warning you. Your day on the Road to Dumbass Cuss will come, mark my words.
But I live to tell the tale, and am entirely healed thanks to the magic of the Coca-Cola Company (you'll recall this has occurred for me before in the backseat of the car story...) and a good, long nap. Heatstroke? Nah, just hardheadedness again and a young girl with a deficient memory trapped inside a little old lady with too much gumption.
May your trails be happy...and healthy ones!
I've had a few nearly died situations (or those perceived so at the time) and most all of them come while hiking. Why? Because I am a hard-headed individual and I will not turn around when I should. Two of these occurrences came in my youth: as a pre-teen I nearly slid over the edge at Stone Mountain in Georgia--I didn't understand what that was all about at the time...just thought the South had a Mount Rushmore-type attraction--and my parents and I were on some Smokey Mountains trail somewhere FAR off the beaten track when we, and by we I mean my mom and I (dad was busy laughing at us nearby), clung to life on a 70+ degree-angled hillside with only a tiny sapling between us and sure death below. Sapling? It was an overgrown weed really, maybe even a single stalk of grass as time finishes the story for us. Once we'd traversed that horror, we met with a stream or a snake or something--maybe mom would recall--that made my dad wonder if we should turn back. My mother told him no. Not in those words, but in many, many other words. We pressed on ahead, successfully.
Then there was the time I decided on an all-day hike at our local State Park here. All day, like nine, eleven hours all day. I could't tell the difference between the ground and my own face and folks, that's the definition of draggin' low! And there were several times when I said to hubby and the Bouvier, "just one more curve" at what used to be our local lake until last year's wildfire closed it. It takes a lot of miles to circumnavigate a reservoir by the way, when you've got land to build a big one, and one thing we got a lot of out here is land.
You'd think that last story, The Reservoir Episodes, would've stuck with me. They obviously eluded me today. Then again I'm fifteen years older today, too. (That's fifteen having-kids-writing-novels years, not normal time passages.) But I made it around a good 70% of this res today before the water play and the return trip. I even made the first twenty minutes or so of retracing our fat tire tracks okay, until I didn't.
Humility, in my experience, comes upon you quickly, like a sudden rogue lightning flash that precedes any thunder or storm. Your mind (and in my case, head and stomach) make decisions for you concerning matters you had no idea were "pressing" as it were. And if you're 51 and it's 97, well, the math doesn't add up after a certain point. In the interest of saving you from such a fate I will tell you here and now that this certain point I speak of is microscopic. You will never see it before it sees you. And you know what, it hates you. It wants to sneak up, smash your skull in with a pounding headache and force you to remove some bile from your digestive system without benefit of privacy. Call it Napoleon Complex if you will, but respect the little bastard, I'm warning you. Your day on the Road to Dumbass Cuss will come, mark my words.
But I live to tell the tale, and am entirely healed thanks to the magic of the Coca-Cola Company (you'll recall this has occurred for me before in the backseat of the car story...) and a good, long nap. Heatstroke? Nah, just hardheadedness again and a young girl with a deficient memory trapped inside a little old lady with too much gumption.
May your trails be happy...and healthy ones!
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Water Music
Lying on the v-berth, my ear to the pillow, I can hear the soft, tiny sound the water makes as it gentle strokes the spot where the hull meets the surface of the lake. It's something you might expect from snowflakes, acutely amplified, as they fall to the ground. A bubbling, dripping almost.
That slight sound, taken together with the shimmering, dancing sunlight off the water as it paints the ceiling overhead with the afternoon, almost makes me feel like I've traveled, not just a few counties away, but back in time to The Lawrence Welk show with its champagne bubbles and twinkling, sequined outfits, glinting toward the camera. If I let it, the little sound becomes a xylophone under the mallet of a jazz master and if I don't, it's more like someone playing their cheek with the bowl of a spoon. Both "music" no doubt, but with very different venues and audiences.
It's warm below and I have a very big fan keeping our little trapped piece of air moving. It reminds me of all those hot car rides back in the South, lying on the backseat somewhere between a Stuckey's and a peach orchard, praying that some day my Coke would come, while trying hard against the odds and the elements to take a nap. This was, of course, long before air conditioning came to our houses much less our cars. Back then all you could hope for was the wind as you tooled along and maybe the shade of a cloud every hundred or so miles. An afternoon shower request would just be getting greedy with God.
My parents like to tell the story of me, very young and dying of thirst in the backseat on one such outing, suffering for the miles between the last Coke and the next, swearing that I was just not going to make it. Finally, after what must have seemed like years of waiting, I got my little sea glass green bottle of ice-cold soda, took a few sips, and fell sound asleep. They tried to softly wrestle the bottle from my hand as I drifted off without success. I had a "death grip" on it they'd say as they related the tale.
I'm here relaxing through the heat of the day with my son, wondering what it is he'll remember, what markers he'll take with him from childhood into adult life. We take memory photographs we aren't even aware of, and how we choose what to keep, who really knows? So many images are just shiny shards of this and that, made into a collage that becomes a Cliff's Notes version we can pass along as our stories. Most of it's true, but perspective has a way of adding a new coat of paint to our portraits every now and again. And the farther we age away from our memories the more the art morphs from a vivid, primary-colored finger painting to a blurry watercolor of romanticism; the sort of pieces that hang in museums because they are visually pleasing and require very little concentration.
My pretend xylophone is slowing a bit, seemingly coming to a new movement or maybe even arriving at the end of the piece. There's a harpish quality to it now, flowery translucent like those ancient watercolors. Like something soft and pleasing, happily trapped with nowhere else to go.
That slight sound, taken together with the shimmering, dancing sunlight off the water as it paints the ceiling overhead with the afternoon, almost makes me feel like I've traveled, not just a few counties away, but back in time to The Lawrence Welk show with its champagne bubbles and twinkling, sequined outfits, glinting toward the camera. If I let it, the little sound becomes a xylophone under the mallet of a jazz master and if I don't, it's more like someone playing their cheek with the bowl of a spoon. Both "music" no doubt, but with very different venues and audiences.
It's warm below and I have a very big fan keeping our little trapped piece of air moving. It reminds me of all those hot car rides back in the South, lying on the backseat somewhere between a Stuckey's and a peach orchard, praying that some day my Coke would come, while trying hard against the odds and the elements to take a nap. This was, of course, long before air conditioning came to our houses much less our cars. Back then all you could hope for was the wind as you tooled along and maybe the shade of a cloud every hundred or so miles. An afternoon shower request would just be getting greedy with God.
My parents like to tell the story of me, very young and dying of thirst in the backseat on one such outing, suffering for the miles between the last Coke and the next, swearing that I was just not going to make it. Finally, after what must have seemed like years of waiting, I got my little sea glass green bottle of ice-cold soda, took a few sips, and fell sound asleep. They tried to softly wrestle the bottle from my hand as I drifted off without success. I had a "death grip" on it they'd say as they related the tale.
I'm here relaxing through the heat of the day with my son, wondering what it is he'll remember, what markers he'll take with him from childhood into adult life. We take memory photographs we aren't even aware of, and how we choose what to keep, who really knows? So many images are just shiny shards of this and that, made into a collage that becomes a Cliff's Notes version we can pass along as our stories. Most of it's true, but perspective has a way of adding a new coat of paint to our portraits every now and again. And the farther we age away from our memories the more the art morphs from a vivid, primary-colored finger painting to a blurry watercolor of romanticism; the sort of pieces that hang in museums because they are visually pleasing and require very little concentration.
My pretend xylophone is slowing a bit, seemingly coming to a new movement or maybe even arriving at the end of the piece. There's a harpish quality to it now, flowery translucent like those ancient watercolors. Like something soft and pleasing, happily trapped with nowhere else to go.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Slip Sliding...No Way
I've only been up to the boat once this season and that was just for the day. Tomorrow, after I finish my gig handing out pup and cat food, I'll be grabbing the boy child and heading up the highway to the lake.
It's been a couple of years since I spent the night--we're gonna spend two--and I am thoroughly looking forward to that aspect in particular. What a wonderful way to sleep, rocking gently to and fro (and it will be gentle, I checked the wind outlook), with no sound other than the lapping of the water. Even after just one night, I can still feel the effects for a good four nights on, finding it easy to convince myself back home in my bed that I'm still on the water.
I'm not a boater per se, I am a docker. I like "slip life" just fine, thank you very much. I get scared out of my wits when we're underway. I'm sure there's a reason, all I know is I've been this way since childhood. I can sit on the "beach" with the best of them should the family need to feel the freshwater wind in their hair.
But this will be a mother-son outing only, and that's a good thing. Kids need a healthy dose of one-on-one when they have siblings, and when they are about to embark on big new things in a couple of months...like high school. (Gyad help us.) He's a good boy, a great student, and a ton of fun to be with when he isn't feeling like a teenager, but then again, aren't we all.
I'm going to give the wi-fi a shot up there so I can check in with you as the week--and our trip-- progresses. But I tend to go all moonbeams and heron calls when I'm near the water so I apologize in advance if it gets a little deep and syrupy. Hopefully, just when I need grounding, a "teenior moment" will strike the boy and bring me hurtling back to reality.
Ahoy, maties: I'll be docked and boated! See you at the lake...
It's been a couple of years since I spent the night--we're gonna spend two--and I am thoroughly looking forward to that aspect in particular. What a wonderful way to sleep, rocking gently to and fro (and it will be gentle, I checked the wind outlook), with no sound other than the lapping of the water. Even after just one night, I can still feel the effects for a good four nights on, finding it easy to convince myself back home in my bed that I'm still on the water.
I'm not a boater per se, I am a docker. I like "slip life" just fine, thank you very much. I get scared out of my wits when we're underway. I'm sure there's a reason, all I know is I've been this way since childhood. I can sit on the "beach" with the best of them should the family need to feel the freshwater wind in their hair.
But this will be a mother-son outing only, and that's a good thing. Kids need a healthy dose of one-on-one when they have siblings, and when they are about to embark on big new things in a couple of months...like high school. (Gyad help us.) He's a good boy, a great student, and a ton of fun to be with when he isn't feeling like a teenager, but then again, aren't we all.
I'm going to give the wi-fi a shot up there so I can check in with you as the week--and our trip-- progresses. But I tend to go all moonbeams and heron calls when I'm near the water so I apologize in advance if it gets a little deep and syrupy. Hopefully, just when I need grounding, a "teenior moment" will strike the boy and bring me hurtling back to reality.
Ahoy, maties: I'll be docked and boated! See you at the lake...
Monday, June 24, 2013
Get Out!
I have been getting so many yard and garden projects completed so far this summer that it's almost become an obsession. I think passion is a better word. Being outdoors, working in the yard is such a sublime and precious way to pass the time. After so much lethargy and in the midst of so many fires, I want the yard to feel how much I love it, to know how much joy and simple pleasure it gives me everyday.
Laughter may be the best medicine for some--and I do include healthy doses of tomfoolery into every day that passes--but for me, nature is the key, even nature close to the city limits. I don't have to be in the middle of the forest, miles away from any structure to get my fix--though I do imbibe in that prescription whenever I'm able--I can receive miraculous healings from one square foot of land if need be.
Everyone should have a natural place they go to reconnect with their own rhythm. It can be the ocean or a potted plant on a balcony off the 100th floor; anywhere will work. Nature gives you not only solace but perspective: Yes you are unique and no you're not terribly important. Take comfort in that knowledge. The weight is lifted, momentarily.
I may find myself on my home equipment or in a gym during the long winter to come, but for now hauling rocks, hoeing beds, repotting plants, pulling weeds, building a fountain and waterfall from something between "scratch" and "nothing", excavating pavers, installing yard hardscapes, protecting everything from the deer, and watering nearly all of it are the components of my workout. And for every achy muscle, for two black dirt-stained feet, for dusty mustaches and streams of sweat, I lose a worry or an aggravation. In every paint-splattered tee-shirt, I somehow find my soul.
Laughter may be the best medicine for some--and I do include healthy doses of tomfoolery into every day that passes--but for me, nature is the key, even nature close to the city limits. I don't have to be in the middle of the forest, miles away from any structure to get my fix--though I do imbibe in that prescription whenever I'm able--I can receive miraculous healings from one square foot of land if need be.
Everyone should have a natural place they go to reconnect with their own rhythm. It can be the ocean or a potted plant on a balcony off the 100th floor; anywhere will work. Nature gives you not only solace but perspective: Yes you are unique and no you're not terribly important. Take comfort in that knowledge. The weight is lifted, momentarily.
I may find myself on my home equipment or in a gym during the long winter to come, but for now hauling rocks, hoeing beds, repotting plants, pulling weeds, building a fountain and waterfall from something between "scratch" and "nothing", excavating pavers, installing yard hardscapes, protecting everything from the deer, and watering nearly all of it are the components of my workout. And for every achy muscle, for two black dirt-stained feet, for dusty mustaches and streams of sweat, I lose a worry or an aggravation. In every paint-splattered tee-shirt, I somehow find my soul.
Literary FYI
If you're interested in reading some of my short works, I'll be blogging essays over at susanbranham.blogspot.com for your dining and dancing pleasure. Thanks for checking it out!
Sunday, June 23, 2013
To Be Fair, Everybody Must Get Stoned
Recently I blogged about mental health and how we all possess some form of "offness". I mean come on, you know you do. And when Melissa Harris-Perry began leading a panel on the discussions of the morning--young black men in our society, obesity as a disease--I harkened back to that posting. Everyone has a problem, just not necessarily of their own making. Not everyone in our wealthy society has access to the things I take for granted: good cheap fresh food (well, setting aside Monsanto's monied influence), low risk of being shot at, sidewalks. Too many good people among us do not begin to have enough to arrive at nor survive with the level of day-to-day health many of us sustain. Everything from prejudice to lack of education to a society overgrown with corporate interests has doomed the days of our brethren.
We have a lot of questions to answer: Why I am advantaged because I'm a white, middle-class (yes it still exists, but only barely) person with nothing else to recommend me but that? I'm "educated" but I do not draw on that knowledge to contribute to society. I make no money. I do not fill my everyday with the wishes of any particular group of people. And why do I not do these things? Simply put, I'm not able. I still have nightmares about the days when I did go to jobs and do "work". Serious nightmares. For a big, strong girl, I am very fragile in that way. I don't handle being a captive audience very well. And along the same line of questioning, why is a young man disadvantaged because he is walking around in a city while being black? If just 14% of black youth make up drug users in total, why are they nearly 38% of the incarcerated drug offense population? That's nearly three-times the rate of other drug using demographics. That's not on them, that's on us. That's on a profiling, prejudiced society that stalks young black men.
Nearly half of us are poor and nearly half of us are obese. We don't do much better with the second group than we do with the first. We blame the victim for being victimized. We take away the
conscience of a society to do the bidding of ADM, Monsanto, the Koch Brothers and others and let the processed potato chips fall where they may. We do not hold the makers of our food and energy to the example to which we hold our ill-equipped population. Our Supreme Court gives personhood to businesses and those businesses give the business to the people. And we blame the people for what we have caused to be wrought upon them.
Melissa and her panelists put it well, and I paraphrase: No one on Wall Street has gone to jail for defrauding people out of their homes and their pensions, but you can go to jail for life in Georgia for stealing a beer. We did that. We let that happen. Everyone who is overweight doesn't choose to be overweight any more than everyone caught stealing chooses to steal. We create an environment of--pick your poison--poverty, lack of mental health care, negative messaging, fear and loathing. We take money away from cities and states and schools, we have a holy shit-fit about Obamacare and pass out guns like candy. We let George Zimmerman be afraid of a very accomplished student who happened to deign to go out for some candy one night, his last night on this earth...while he happened to dare to be black.
None of this is a white-people's problem, it's a society's problem. It's what happens after generations of trickle-down-I-trust-big business-but-not-big government nonsense among other factors. It's not up to white people to do the honorable thing. Who the hell died and put white people in charge of the moral compass in the first place?! It's up to people to see a wrong and help right it. It's up to people to look out for each other's needs. It's up to people to speak up when some asshat says or does something vile. We don't need to count the number of this kind of person or that kind of person on television shows to decide we can sleep well that night. We'd do better to count the profiled victims in the CCA-privatized jails that make up our Prison Industrial Complex, or the number of children who ate three meals that day, or the number of funerals that didn't happen in Chicago or Connecticut.
We all suffer from something. Some of us simply have a more acceptable "illness" than others. And some of us weren't hurting a soul when someone somewhere, uniformed or not, decided they needed to be stopped from what they were doing. From being themselves. From not being like you or me or some idea we got from a place we don't even remember.
I've done good things in my time on this experimental planet we share and I've done things I'm damned glad no one knows about. It isn't about who's caught, it's about who's hunted. And a kid in a rural classroom or an immigrant without papers or a child living on the streets by his wits all have some bruised version of love and light to shed on us all. Damn us for not accepting their faults AND their gifts. Damn us for causing them pain we don't see for looking at ourselves in the mirror too rarely.
We have a lot of questions to answer: Why I am advantaged because I'm a white, middle-class (yes it still exists, but only barely) person with nothing else to recommend me but that? I'm "educated" but I do not draw on that knowledge to contribute to society. I make no money. I do not fill my everyday with the wishes of any particular group of people. And why do I not do these things? Simply put, I'm not able. I still have nightmares about the days when I did go to jobs and do "work". Serious nightmares. For a big, strong girl, I am very fragile in that way. I don't handle being a captive audience very well. And along the same line of questioning, why is a young man disadvantaged because he is walking around in a city while being black? If just 14% of black youth make up drug users in total, why are they nearly 38% of the incarcerated drug offense population? That's nearly three-times the rate of other drug using demographics. That's not on them, that's on us. That's on a profiling, prejudiced society that stalks young black men.
Nearly half of us are poor and nearly half of us are obese. We don't do much better with the second group than we do with the first. We blame the victim for being victimized. We take away the
conscience of a society to do the bidding of ADM, Monsanto, the Koch Brothers and others and let the processed potato chips fall where they may. We do not hold the makers of our food and energy to the example to which we hold our ill-equipped population. Our Supreme Court gives personhood to businesses and those businesses give the business to the people. And we blame the people for what we have caused to be wrought upon them.
Melissa and her panelists put it well, and I paraphrase: No one on Wall Street has gone to jail for defrauding people out of their homes and their pensions, but you can go to jail for life in Georgia for stealing a beer. We did that. We let that happen. Everyone who is overweight doesn't choose to be overweight any more than everyone caught stealing chooses to steal. We create an environment of--pick your poison--poverty, lack of mental health care, negative messaging, fear and loathing. We take money away from cities and states and schools, we have a holy shit-fit about Obamacare and pass out guns like candy. We let George Zimmerman be afraid of a very accomplished student who happened to deign to go out for some candy one night, his last night on this earth...while he happened to dare to be black.
None of this is a white-people's problem, it's a society's problem. It's what happens after generations of trickle-down-I-trust-big business-but-not-big government nonsense among other factors. It's not up to white people to do the honorable thing. Who the hell died and put white people in charge of the moral compass in the first place?! It's up to people to see a wrong and help right it. It's up to people to look out for each other's needs. It's up to people to speak up when some asshat says or does something vile. We don't need to count the number of this kind of person or that kind of person on television shows to decide we can sleep well that night. We'd do better to count the profiled victims in the CCA-privatized jails that make up our Prison Industrial Complex, or the number of children who ate three meals that day, or the number of funerals that didn't happen in Chicago or Connecticut.
We all suffer from something. Some of us simply have a more acceptable "illness" than others. And some of us weren't hurting a soul when someone somewhere, uniformed or not, decided they needed to be stopped from what they were doing. From being themselves. From not being like you or me or some idea we got from a place we don't even remember.
I've done good things in my time on this experimental planet we share and I've done things I'm damned glad no one knows about. It isn't about who's caught, it's about who's hunted. And a kid in a rural classroom or an immigrant without papers or a child living on the streets by his wits all have some bruised version of love and light to shed on us all. Damn us for not accepting their faults AND their gifts. Damn us for causing them pain we don't see for looking at ourselves in the mirror too rarely.
DETOURS: The Road Curves Away From the Destination
If you know me, you know that in addition to Easter and Spring Equinox, I have bad luck with Mothers Day. Really bad luck. I suppose it's good to know that tradition continues, a continuity of sorts.
This year I spent Mothers Day, two days in fact, in hospital. Hospitals, for those of you lucky enough to never have been in one, operate (pun intended) on their own time schedule, in their own reality, of their own world. You lose track of reality faster in a hospital than falling asleep will get your veins poked.
I'd been feeling "off" for weeks--months or years now that I look back on it--and had just a week previously consulted with a friend in the profession. My main symptom was a pain in the neck accompanied with swelling. (I have very few truly skinny things on my body and the neck area is one of them. It's pretty easy to see when it isn't its normal size.) My friend did agree that there was some girth that hadn't been there before but didn't think it was too serious, which at that time, it wasn't. So I followed up with my NP and was pleasantly surprised when she ordered not just bloodwork, but an ECG and an ultrasound. But by the time I got the reports from those tests, I knew something was up. I couldn't eat ANYTHING for five days. This progressed to having a hard time swallowing clear liquids, which devolved into the inability to even drink water. I was breathy like a Texan who comes up to our altitude for the first time. Once the weekend arrived, I was in bad shape. I went back to the same friend, waking her early that morning. When she saw my neck, she struck a more serious facial expression than I associated with her. "We need to go to the ER now," was how she put it.
She drove me down the pass to one of the main hospitals in the Springs and helped me fill in the paperwork. I don't remember very much about the next ten or twelve hours, but I spent them in a private ER room (I remember the days when it was communal triage so this was a blessing) getting close to ten or twelve tests. I do not recall many of them. Eventually day became night and I was admitted. I spent that Saturday night into Mothers Day morning in a fog of aggravation and paranoia. It was hours before I was to know what was going on with me. But I could breathe, the pain was better, and soon I would be able to swallow again.
I have an auto-immune disease called Graves Disease. (Why Doctor Sexypants couldn't have discovered the disorder in the late 1800s is just my bad luck of the draw.) But, according to the late, great Mr. Graves, my thyroid gland has turned against itself, and thereby, me. And it turns out that the little butterfly in your neck is a pretty important little sucker. They don't call it "the master gland" for no reason. In a nutshell, the thyroid takes the energy you put into your body and tells every single cell you possess exactly what to do with said energy. Explains a lot looking back on my recent history. And during the three-week period leading up to what I experienced that weekend, a "thyroid storm", my thyroid was making me hyperthyroid to the point that I had unwittingly been in tachycardia for the entire three weeks. Kinda scary to know that now. My heart, and the rest of me, was on overdrive for a very long time. In retrospect, I'm lucky I didn't get myself into any trouble in that state!
So life goes on and so do the meds, for the rest of mine anyway, but that's okay. Taking four pills three times a day I can handle. Shying away from conversations and activities when I become overwhelmed I can carry out with a measure of grace. I'm even beginning to reclaim a somewhat "normal" energy level and have thoroughly enjoyed working in the yard and gardens this month. I'm also back to work at both of my doggie non-profits.
May was tough, Mothers Day was tough, but hell, that's par on my golf course. And if I keep taking my meds and keep having some of the best friends (both here and in this virtual world) on the planet, I'll be fine. I'll have life's averages of waining and waxing days, and I'll get some of things that make me the happiest accomplished. All will be as well as it can be.
(At least until the Fall Equinox, that is.)
This year I spent Mothers Day, two days in fact, in hospital. Hospitals, for those of you lucky enough to never have been in one, operate (pun intended) on their own time schedule, in their own reality, of their own world. You lose track of reality faster in a hospital than falling asleep will get your veins poked.
I'd been feeling "off" for weeks--months or years now that I look back on it--and had just a week previously consulted with a friend in the profession. My main symptom was a pain in the neck accompanied with swelling. (I have very few truly skinny things on my body and the neck area is one of them. It's pretty easy to see when it isn't its normal size.) My friend did agree that there was some girth that hadn't been there before but didn't think it was too serious, which at that time, it wasn't. So I followed up with my NP and was pleasantly surprised when she ordered not just bloodwork, but an ECG and an ultrasound. But by the time I got the reports from those tests, I knew something was up. I couldn't eat ANYTHING for five days. This progressed to having a hard time swallowing clear liquids, which devolved into the inability to even drink water. I was breathy like a Texan who comes up to our altitude for the first time. Once the weekend arrived, I was in bad shape. I went back to the same friend, waking her early that morning. When she saw my neck, she struck a more serious facial expression than I associated with her. "We need to go to the ER now," was how she put it.
She drove me down the pass to one of the main hospitals in the Springs and helped me fill in the paperwork. I don't remember very much about the next ten or twelve hours, but I spent them in a private ER room (I remember the days when it was communal triage so this was a blessing) getting close to ten or twelve tests. I do not recall many of them. Eventually day became night and I was admitted. I spent that Saturday night into Mothers Day morning in a fog of aggravation and paranoia. It was hours before I was to know what was going on with me. But I could breathe, the pain was better, and soon I would be able to swallow again.
I have an auto-immune disease called Graves Disease. (Why Doctor Sexypants couldn't have discovered the disorder in the late 1800s is just my bad luck of the draw.) But, according to the late, great Mr. Graves, my thyroid gland has turned against itself, and thereby, me. And it turns out that the little butterfly in your neck is a pretty important little sucker. They don't call it "the master gland" for no reason. In a nutshell, the thyroid takes the energy you put into your body and tells every single cell you possess exactly what to do with said energy. Explains a lot looking back on my recent history. And during the three-week period leading up to what I experienced that weekend, a "thyroid storm", my thyroid was making me hyperthyroid to the point that I had unwittingly been in tachycardia for the entire three weeks. Kinda scary to know that now. My heart, and the rest of me, was on overdrive for a very long time. In retrospect, I'm lucky I didn't get myself into any trouble in that state!
So life goes on and so do the meds, for the rest of mine anyway, but that's okay. Taking four pills three times a day I can handle. Shying away from conversations and activities when I become overwhelmed I can carry out with a measure of grace. I'm even beginning to reclaim a somewhat "normal" energy level and have thoroughly enjoyed working in the yard and gardens this month. I'm also back to work at both of my doggie non-profits.
May was tough, Mothers Day was tough, but hell, that's par on my golf course. And if I keep taking my meds and keep having some of the best friends (both here and in this virtual world) on the planet, I'll be fine. I'll have life's averages of waining and waxing days, and I'll get some of things that make me the happiest accomplished. All will be as well as it can be.
(At least until the Fall Equinox, that is.)
Sunday's Child Has Lots to Say
I had already decided that today was the day I was going to come out of my sabbatical and blog again. And, I had already decided that this morning's MSNBC installment of the Melissa Harris-Perry show was one of the most important I'd seen in quite a while. That seemed plenty enough prodding and fodder to write a fairly good quality blogpost.
Then, at the end of the show, Melissa spoke of Pam Spaulding and her blog, Pam's House Blend, which I was not familiar with though this lady's beautiful face did seem familiar to me. Seems Pam has been blogging since 2004 about being Southern, being a woman of color, and being a member of the LGBT community. In just those short years between Bush, The Second Coming, and Obama, The Second Attempt (successful, thank heavens), Pam went from letting loose some steam to being a credentialed citizen reporter at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. She made some waves. She got some attention. And this week, she decided that working full-time, blogging, and fighting RA was one thing more than she had the stamina to handle.
Pam has decided to end the daily grind of blogging much to the chagrin but no doubt full understanding of her many followers, to include MHP herself. When Melissa reached out to ask what Pam would want to come from her blog, what, in effect, the legacy should be, Pam answered that those of us who do this (erstwhile or regularly) need to keep going, and need to be heard from.
Well, as we say in Southland Speak, "I hear that!" And I'll try harder to do so. Not that I am so enamored of myself to think I NEED to be heard, but I do have things I often need to say. I'd love it if I made my blogging into more of a journalling atmosphere: My daily take on all things me and my view of the world. But I'd also love to keep banging out the politics, the issues, the things that I don't necessarily wake up feeling but that grab my attention during the day and create the traffic jams of words and thoughts in my head, hourly. In other words, the sublime but also the serious.
I could make promises to myself, but I know where that would lead and they keep the light on for me there already. I'll just say "I wanna" to myself and see where and for how long it goes. If I've learned anything over the past few months it is that you have to be easy on yourself. You just have to choose to be.
Then, at the end of the show, Melissa spoke of Pam Spaulding and her blog, Pam's House Blend, which I was not familiar with though this lady's beautiful face did seem familiar to me. Seems Pam has been blogging since 2004 about being Southern, being a woman of color, and being a member of the LGBT community. In just those short years between Bush, The Second Coming, and Obama, The Second Attempt (successful, thank heavens), Pam went from letting loose some steam to being a credentialed citizen reporter at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. She made some waves. She got some attention. And this week, she decided that working full-time, blogging, and fighting RA was one thing more than she had the stamina to handle.
Pam has decided to end the daily grind of blogging much to the chagrin but no doubt full understanding of her many followers, to include MHP herself. When Melissa reached out to ask what Pam would want to come from her blog, what, in effect, the legacy should be, Pam answered that those of us who do this (erstwhile or regularly) need to keep going, and need to be heard from.
Well, as we say in Southland Speak, "I hear that!" And I'll try harder to do so. Not that I am so enamored of myself to think I NEED to be heard, but I do have things I often need to say. I'd love it if I made my blogging into more of a journalling atmosphere: My daily take on all things me and my view of the world. But I'd also love to keep banging out the politics, the issues, the things that I don't necessarily wake up feeling but that grab my attention during the day and create the traffic jams of words and thoughts in my head, hourly. In other words, the sublime but also the serious.
I could make promises to myself, but I know where that would lead and they keep the light on for me there already. I'll just say "I wanna" to myself and see where and for how long it goes. If I've learned anything over the past few months it is that you have to be easy on yourself. You just have to choose to be.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Dreams of My Failure, Last Weekend: Road Trip
The "house" dreams, the "car" dreams: We all know that we are the house or the car and the whole flipping thing is a mental metaphor for our life. And there have been times in my life when I've been interested in such studies, when I've had the patience to care what nocturnal notes I'm amassing.
But those halcyon days are gone and the dreamscape is just one more thing about which I simply do not give a shit. I've had dreams, recurring ones, about finding a room in a house I'd long inhabited which I never knew existed. I've had dreams about going from room-to-room in my parents' house where, once I'd cleared a room, they'd taken something out of it. I've had the dream where I'm on the outskirts of town and either:
A. it's spooky and dark and "they're" looking for someone (I'm getting gas, looking on),
B. I'm circling an old oak tree on a climbing boardwalk which doesn't exist in the light of day,
C. there's a new, or previously hidden exit onto or off-of the highway and I can't seem to figure out where it goes and how to navigate it.
I've had car dreams about driving to a spot where a bridge that shouldn't be there is washed out, where I'm running from danger, or where I'm angrily skidding into the trouble. And those are the most normal of my dreams. When I was a kid, my big scary repeater was one where I lived in a crooked black house on the side of a hill in the mountains which is drenched in a midnight rain that threatens to wash it away. It and I are saved that fate from a bolt of lightning which lights the place afire, sending it crumbling and tumbling to the bottom of a rocky chasm with me inside. Happy times.
What all that says about me, who knows? The only truth I can touch is that all the posturing and pondering such questions require is not in my repertoire at present. I don't have the mental nor emotional staying power for such endeavors. The truths I can handle are the tiny microcosms of washing the dishes or sweeping the floor. Of studying a pebble gone wet on one side and harboring the distant dream of husbanding a patch of moss. I can only look as far as I can stand to see. Instant purpose, completion, meaning. Books, as I've said, take me two years, relationships take forever and you still never know if you got it right.
But I did do one good thing last weekend. I helped that friend with the similar name I told you about. She's beginning to rethink the whole damned thing while the rug of all that has ever been is quietly being pulled out from under her. So I listened. Where as I had spent an earlier hour concentrating on one dog hair at a time from one area rug at a time, I now took the flying strands of her life, her torn shards, the strings of her broken web and attempted to help her weave them into next steps, into hope for a future.
That was as far as either of us needed to see that night. And in reality, those moments are all we ever have. Nothing's real; it's all just busyness. Not one thing is guaranteed to last. There are no answers. Life is just a series of short trolley rides that stop off at fleeting attractions: the medical carousel called "healthy living", the merry-go-round of "political world view". You pays your ticket and you takes your chances, you may even cheer for a while or feel some glee. But you always wind up back where you began because every new study and every new poll shows something different. Pickles are good for you; pickles will kill you. We should educate the slave states; we should just cut them loose. Circles hurt over time.
Triangles aren't much better. I'm currently caught in the triangular triumvirate of my bane-filled days: Easter, Spring Equinox, and Mothers' Day. (If you've read this blog for long, you know all about my bad luck on these hideous occasions.) During this "Springing back to life" time of the year, the return of the light, the greening of nature, I am swirling lost in my own private Bermuda Triangle. I haven't gotten "disappeared" yet, but I do tend to drop out of radar contact. If I didn't live in a rectangular house in a square state, there would probably be no hope for me at all.
Speaking (well, whispering) of not looking too far ahead, I found myself whisked from doc's office to hospital yesterday to facilitate testing on the pain in the neck. Thyroid goiter. Jesus. You'd thing goiters would have gone the way of small pox or the plague by now. So I gave blood, images, and heart beats for the perusal of the medical staff. Little drops, little pictures, little noises. Just as far as you need to see or hear. It's funny because you know how you get to feeling so lousy, you feel so freakin' sorry for yourself that you fantasize about the world stopping to consider you? Well when it does, you freak out. Wow, I am sick. What the hey?
Right now my dearest one, Woody, is having ACL surgery at the vet's. UPS-chasing injury, most likely. They say he's gonna have a tough and painful few days after, then should start to mend relatively quickly. The people doctors should have a plan for me within those same few days. I have no idea what they will say or want to do, and Googling such things never makes you feel any better. But I know I can take care of my little dude while I sit and wonder. I can take that narrow and reasonable view for now. And as long as he's okay and comfortable, I think I'll be able to look up from my life and see just a bit farther into the future. Just one silly little frame at a time.
But those halcyon days are gone and the dreamscape is just one more thing about which I simply do not give a shit. I've had dreams, recurring ones, about finding a room in a house I'd long inhabited which I never knew existed. I've had dreams about going from room-to-room in my parents' house where, once I'd cleared a room, they'd taken something out of it. I've had the dream where I'm on the outskirts of town and either:
A. it's spooky and dark and "they're" looking for someone (I'm getting gas, looking on),
B. I'm circling an old oak tree on a climbing boardwalk which doesn't exist in the light of day,
C. there's a new, or previously hidden exit onto or off-of the highway and I can't seem to figure out where it goes and how to navigate it.
I've had car dreams about driving to a spot where a bridge that shouldn't be there is washed out, where I'm running from danger, or where I'm angrily skidding into the trouble. And those are the most normal of my dreams. When I was a kid, my big scary repeater was one where I lived in a crooked black house on the side of a hill in the mountains which is drenched in a midnight rain that threatens to wash it away. It and I are saved that fate from a bolt of lightning which lights the place afire, sending it crumbling and tumbling to the bottom of a rocky chasm with me inside. Happy times.
What all that says about me, who knows? The only truth I can touch is that all the posturing and pondering such questions require is not in my repertoire at present. I don't have the mental nor emotional staying power for such endeavors. The truths I can handle are the tiny microcosms of washing the dishes or sweeping the floor. Of studying a pebble gone wet on one side and harboring the distant dream of husbanding a patch of moss. I can only look as far as I can stand to see. Instant purpose, completion, meaning. Books, as I've said, take me two years, relationships take forever and you still never know if you got it right.
But I did do one good thing last weekend. I helped that friend with the similar name I told you about. She's beginning to rethink the whole damned thing while the rug of all that has ever been is quietly being pulled out from under her. So I listened. Where as I had spent an earlier hour concentrating on one dog hair at a time from one area rug at a time, I now took the flying strands of her life, her torn shards, the strings of her broken web and attempted to help her weave them into next steps, into hope for a future.
That was as far as either of us needed to see that night. And in reality, those moments are all we ever have. Nothing's real; it's all just busyness. Not one thing is guaranteed to last. There are no answers. Life is just a series of short trolley rides that stop off at fleeting attractions: the medical carousel called "healthy living", the merry-go-round of "political world view". You pays your ticket and you takes your chances, you may even cheer for a while or feel some glee. But you always wind up back where you began because every new study and every new poll shows something different. Pickles are good for you; pickles will kill you. We should educate the slave states; we should just cut them loose. Circles hurt over time.
Triangles aren't much better. I'm currently caught in the triangular triumvirate of my bane-filled days: Easter, Spring Equinox, and Mothers' Day. (If you've read this blog for long, you know all about my bad luck on these hideous occasions.) During this "Springing back to life" time of the year, the return of the light, the greening of nature, I am swirling lost in my own private Bermuda Triangle. I haven't gotten "disappeared" yet, but I do tend to drop out of radar contact. If I didn't live in a rectangular house in a square state, there would probably be no hope for me at all.
Speaking (well, whispering) of not looking too far ahead, I found myself whisked from doc's office to hospital yesterday to facilitate testing on the pain in the neck. Thyroid goiter. Jesus. You'd thing goiters would have gone the way of small pox or the plague by now. So I gave blood, images, and heart beats for the perusal of the medical staff. Little drops, little pictures, little noises. Just as far as you need to see or hear. It's funny because you know how you get to feeling so lousy, you feel so freakin' sorry for yourself that you fantasize about the world stopping to consider you? Well when it does, you freak out. Wow, I am sick. What the hey?
Right now my dearest one, Woody, is having ACL surgery at the vet's. UPS-chasing injury, most likely. They say he's gonna have a tough and painful few days after, then should start to mend relatively quickly. The people doctors should have a plan for me within those same few days. I have no idea what they will say or want to do, and Googling such things never makes you feel any better. But I know I can take care of my little dude while I sit and wonder. I can take that narrow and reasonable view for now. And as long as he's okay and comfortable, I think I'll be able to look up from my life and see just a bit farther into the future. Just one silly little frame at a time.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Construction Zone, Day 5.4: Mile Marker #0
Numbers decide way too many important things for us. If your bloodwork doesn't come back as a .8 but a .4 of something, then you don't get the magic whatzit pill because you have not contracted Symdrome X. If you miss one more question on that exam then the dust shifts, a dam breaks somewhere, and you don't go to College U. And if only you could move decimals with your mind, you'd be a zillionaire.
Think about all the daily instances where numbers just, well, they just fuck you over. That's "low normal" and not something we will be spending our time on. That's not a fever. That's not a number I can put on my form that tells me to tell you which door to wait in front of until someone comes and asks for you, oh, and where's that number I gave you to pin to your shirt? If the pain ain't past 4, you'll get no more!
Try as every long form and computer might, people cannot be read with numbers. We are not points on an array conjured up in some godawful class snagged halfway between psychology and statistics. This number of bowel movements is awesome, one less and you'll die soon. This pool ph is optimal, but the water is 51 degrees. Your kid is not in the normal range of our baby fat-ridden growth chart. Turn that pyramid upside down, you need 100 servings of protein now and no carbs! No, wait.
I like remembering numbers (which is why I often offer to hold my friends' credit cards for them), but I don't like how they are used to describe everything indescribable--like people. Bo Derek be damned, we are not a sum total of anything. And we shouldn't be scared half out of our minds by slights and fractions. This little sliver between normal and death--which is like the light under a barely ajar door--is what you should let drive your every thought. Write everything down, memorize it, and buy a burial plot just in case.
I do count calories because I am in the midst of losing the weight I lost two years ago which, without aid of GPS, map, nor legend, managed to find me again. It wasn't a pleasant reunion. Nearly halfway back to the number I'd like to be, I'm not about to stop counting now. So okay, I do think of myself as a number using numbers to become another number. But that little bit of rationality will not deter me on my rant...uh, screed about numbers.
You know who makes a big deal about numbers and absolutes and thus, perfection? The directions wench who lives in the box in your car. She will admonish you no end if you piss with her numbers, with her plan of action. And if, at mile 109.6 you find your ass in a corn field well then, by god, you were meant to be in that corn field. (If you see Cary Grant, don't get out of the car. You're in 1959.)
Just like our chat about autopilot before, beware of absolutes and alwayses and gottas: Beware of numbers which cannot be altered. And for gosh sakes don't let yourself become one at the expense of your idea of an identity. Unless you're a wiseass and want to be pi, or infinity.
Check your oil, check your ph, take a barometer to your brain and a metronome to your afternoons. What have you got to lose except a little infintesimal drab of moments which you can take off the books, away from the form, and outside the box?
Think about all the daily instances where numbers just, well, they just fuck you over. That's "low normal" and not something we will be spending our time on. That's not a fever. That's not a number I can put on my form that tells me to tell you which door to wait in front of until someone comes and asks for you, oh, and where's that number I gave you to pin to your shirt? If the pain ain't past 4, you'll get no more!
Try as every long form and computer might, people cannot be read with numbers. We are not points on an array conjured up in some godawful class snagged halfway between psychology and statistics. This number of bowel movements is awesome, one less and you'll die soon. This pool ph is optimal, but the water is 51 degrees. Your kid is not in the normal range of our baby fat-ridden growth chart. Turn that pyramid upside down, you need 100 servings of protein now and no carbs! No, wait.
I like remembering numbers (which is why I often offer to hold my friends' credit cards for them), but I don't like how they are used to describe everything indescribable--like people. Bo Derek be damned, we are not a sum total of anything. And we shouldn't be scared half out of our minds by slights and fractions. This little sliver between normal and death--which is like the light under a barely ajar door--is what you should let drive your every thought. Write everything down, memorize it, and buy a burial plot just in case.
I do count calories because I am in the midst of losing the weight I lost two years ago which, without aid of GPS, map, nor legend, managed to find me again. It wasn't a pleasant reunion. Nearly halfway back to the number I'd like to be, I'm not about to stop counting now. So okay, I do think of myself as a number using numbers to become another number. But that little bit of rationality will not deter me on my rant...uh, screed about numbers.
You know who makes a big deal about numbers and absolutes and thus, perfection? The directions wench who lives in the box in your car. She will admonish you no end if you piss with her numbers, with her plan of action. And if, at mile 109.6 you find your ass in a corn field well then, by god, you were meant to be in that corn field. (If you see Cary Grant, don't get out of the car. You're in 1959.)
Just like our chat about autopilot before, beware of absolutes and alwayses and gottas: Beware of numbers which cannot be altered. And for gosh sakes don't let yourself become one at the expense of your idea of an identity. Unless you're a wiseass and want to be pi, or infinity.
Check your oil, check your ph, take a barometer to your brain and a metronome to your afternoons. What have you got to lose except a little infintesimal drab of moments which you can take off the books, away from the form, and outside the box?
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