Lessons in Review

I’ve learned a few things in the past few weeks that are quite astounding that have actually stuck in my forgetful mind.

I learned from another blogger’s summary of her life-mediator’s advice that one can improve their self-esteem by crossing their “T’s higher. And that journals, in order to effect positive change, should only contain positive thoughts. So much for my “Rage” journal – the one I keep to serve as a therapeutic outlet for the impetuous thoughts that I dare not speak (or post)...

I learned from the Dalai Lama that society needs to shed the conflict created by an enduring ‘them’ and ‘us’ attitude and realize that with today’s technology we are all linked and become only ‘we’. And in realizing that we will readily understand that any act of aggression against other nations is an act that equally cuts into our own flesh.

I learned that garden dirt has something in it called ‘a happy bug’. Something that releases pleasurable endorphins that insulate our bodies from various ailments. We used to get an adequate amount from garden veggies but that is no longer so. The happy bugs are all being washed and rinsed away. Scientists say this happy bug is/was a source of immunity for children against allergies, bronchial problems, even asthma.

I’m inclined to think that such wee critters do exist. There has to be some plausible explanation for why Hub and the grandchildren become so giggly, garrulous, and gay after devouring garden carrots pulled from the soil and rubbed haphazardly on their jeans.

And then, from a science show on Intelligent Television, I learned the most surprising thing of all. That there is a relationship between the sex of the brain and the length of one’s fingers. With men, particularly, the gap between a longer ring finger and a shorter index finger, translates into the amount of male hormones present in the womb during the pre-birth of that individual.

The greater the gap the more competitive (risk takers) men are likely to be. The greater the gap, the more adept they are at science, math, and spatial-visual assessments, but at the same time they are likely to be deplete in empathy and emotional telepathy with others.

It was found that even as infants, male babies are more interested in looking at devices, while infant girls seek to look at faces.

I examined Hub’s hands and can readily see why he drives like a maniac and is so nonchalant about my emotional ups and downs. From this, I finally understand why when I cut or color my hair, Hub never notices. I now understand why I am invisible and why when my face plainly shows that my world is crumbling, Hub continues to dismantle electronic devices without distraction.

Male participants in the study admitted they have little intuition and if women expect to be understood, they need to explain in minute detail how and why they are feeling upset.

So, that’s it for this week’s lessons. These are my new convictions. I’ll cling to them for a while until they are debunked by something totally contrary which shouldn’t take long.

And so, in the meantime, if you want to see the crossbar on the “t” in “Roberta”, look up, way up – aloft, skyward.

Woman

Woman is the everlasting encumbrance
Of time, a garden, and a coiled serpent.

Insatiable in her want of warm rocks
Long conversations while listening more
Of exuberance versus stillness of thought
And seemliness of the soul

But still within her longings
Linger memories of serpentine-thoughts
Manipulation of destiny
That link to a garden and a tree.

Fangs hidden by sensuous moist lips
Crush fresh fruits from the garden
And draw sweetness where they can
It is a needful thing
And only then is she sated.

And so,
With the setting of the sun…

Eve falls.

Halloween Crimes

I wanted to give him rice cakes, but he wanted candy...

What could I do?

Halloween Panic

Maybe I should start to panic sometime soon. The kids will be coming to the door in a few hours and I haven’t even got my candy bags filled yet. I’m going to have 4 less bags than I had tricksters last year – hope that will be enough. Oh well, I guess the stragglers can have some loose candy, some peanuts, and a couple slices of bologna.

I didn’t buy a pumpkin to welcome them at the door either but I have a sewing manikin, a gorilla mask, rubber gloves that blow up nicely and a hoodie -- we'll have to see what Hub can come up with for the front step.

If all else fails, Doughee-Dog can welcome them with his wrap-around sunglasses and an old floppy hat. I laugh because the dogs always greet the kids and the younger kids especially often get so involved with playing with the dogs that they don’t want to continue their treat trek.

Bags aren’t going to fill themselves so I gotta run. Halloween is happening!

And I'll be short a whole lot more bags if I don't get them filled before Hub gets up from his nap.

"I'm Here!"

If you live on an acreage and you have hounds, you can’t have happy hounds if you don’t have a fox. And we have a fox. Normally, I wouldn’t be concerned about that but after two foxes were killed on the road last week, I worried that the remaining fox (although there could be more), would be so sad. He was in my thoughts a lot.

So with a huge bag of dog food that my basset hounds totally disdain, I decided to feed the fox. Of course I worried that if I fed him too much or too frequently he might lose his ability to hunt and that would not be good. So I decided I would only feed him skimpy amounts of food every other day.

The first couple of times I put out the food, I simply cast a bit on the ground at the edge of the field. Always the next day the food was gone, but because the ground leaves were undisturbed I was suspicious about who was dining there. I began to think that a mouse or squirrel or perhaps even a raven was feeding there rather than the fox.

So the next time I put out food I put it in a small cottage cheese container placed inside a large plastic pail. Boy Twin was curious. “Why are you doing that?” he asked.

I explained to him that if a smaller animal like a squirrel or mouse were eating the food they would have to climb into the bigger pail to get it. And although they could get out, hopefully it would take them several rotations in the bigger pail before they would figure that out. And while figuring it out they might be there long enough to leave a few droppings that would tell me they were there. After all, my intention was to feed the fox, not squirrels or mice.

Now before I continue this story, I need to tell you that Hub has a funny little saying whenever I crowd him by the coffeepot, at the table, or on the chesterfield. He always laughs and says, “I’m here!” It sounds funny and cute so I say it as well when he rolls onto my side of the bed or leans over me at the stove to see what’s cooking. I laugh and say, “I’m here!”

So back to my story. The next time I went to check to see who was eating the dog food, the small dish was beside the big pail, rather than in it. Both dishes were upright and again the surrounding ground was undisturbed. But in the small dish was a bold message that read “I’m here!” As neat as you please, without any smears or misses, the fox deposited some poopies in the smaller dish. It was amazing to me how he did that.

Now one of my neighbors explained to me that foxes live in a rather small arena. And in our woods there is no water source, and it hasn’t rained for weeks. So the next time I took food for the fox, I put it on the ground and filled the pail with drinking water. Silly fox. Again he announced, “I’m here.” It was evident he had drank some of the water. But incredibly he had also managed to deposit poopies in that large pail without spilling the water or even tipping the pail. I can’t even imagine how he did that.

Since then I’m satisfied that with a skiff of snow on the ground, he no longer needs water, so now I only toss a few crumbles on the ground. That seems more sanitary. Also I do not want the woods scattered with plastic containers each with its rather disgusting message…“I’m here. Signed: The Fox”

It’s only been a few days since I started doing this but yesterday I walked alone without Hub or the kids and guess what I saw? The hounds were off in another area harassing a squirrel when I saw a bit of orange between the trees. That’s when I saw the little fox trotting parallel to the trail in pace with my own steps.

And then I heard a crashing sound in the woods and feet approaching like the sound of a wild mustang and the crescendo of hounds baying and he was off. The fox and the hounds engaged in that old game as old as time itself.

When the fox and the hounds play this game I smile and laugh. No one is at risk. The hounds haven’t got a hope of catching him. But this game is their rightful inheritance. It offers rediscovery of the meaning of a hound’s existence. And at the same time it is a fun game with grand cardio and aerobic exercise to keep them all in top-notch shape particularly when they’re all eating well.

These are sounds I love to hear and sights I love to see. So much more pleasant without humans with rifles on horseback that used to run interference and spoil the game for players who only wished to play for fun.

My basset hounds have a keen sense of smell that is amazing but at the same time the speed of the pursuit is handicapped by their short crooked legs. But still the hounds smile, the fox grins, and I laugh. Pleased by something that spurs my imagination into thinking that I am treading the woods and grounds of some notorious ancient estate.

The neighbors even laugh when they see the fox cross their yard, and fifteen minutes later my two hounds appear on the exact same route baying loudly with wild excitement and running as fast as their short crooked legs will carry them.

The Big Lie - Part II

A Mother-Load of Lies

So as I told you in my intro, Hub only knew me as this congenial, laughable, light-hearted, devoted girl. But that was for the first year or two. And I never thought for a minute that any of that which I presented was devious or a lie. But it was.

The truth came out later. The truth that at three o’clock in the afternoon, I like shuffling around looking the same as when I first rolled out of bed – in faded housecoat, with medusa hair, and mismatched socks. That I want my own way or I pout. That I even throw things (not any more, but I did for a time). That I can be hateful and mean and completely unreasonable.

And as for pressing jeans, ironing shirts, polishing shoes? I don’t think so. Won’t be happening around here. Not routinely, anyway.

So you see what I gave Hub to believe about me so long ago was an absolute lie! This marriage, that I was so smugly convinced was based on honesty, really started out with a mother-load of lies.

____

Now you know and I know what they all say. “You can’t deal with a liar” and “you can’t build a relationship on a lie.” And that is true except in this case there was a bit of a twist.

While I was lying to him he was also lying to me. What he led me to believe about his exceptional patience and long-suffering demeanor was as much of a stretch as my stint at the ironing board, my good humor, and my fixation with flawless grooming.

And another thought. I think we all readily assume that whoever authored the lyrics of that little chant… “Liar, liar. Pants on fire,” was simply writing a nonsense rhyme for juveniles. But perhaps that isn’t true. Turns out the phrase is a shrewd description (and discernment) of the dynamics of the lies that I told.

So now, with an expectation of doing better, I feel compelled to tell you how red-faced ashamed I am. I’m ashamed of all my lies and devious acts. And if I were to offer an excuse it would be this. ‘Lovers, through no fault of their own are inadvertently cast into a highly emotional state that cannot separate right from wrong.’ But that won’t do either because, for liars, there are NO excuses.

So I must live with my shame, confess my shame, apologize for my shame and promise never to do it again. I’m willing to do all that, but in the end there is an evil piece in my soul that I cannot purge. What is lurking there in a dark corner is a desperate marauder that longs for the good old days when Hub and I lived each new and glorious day with such wickedness and complete disregard for truth.

__________

So in conclusion, there you have it. And even though I’ve apologized and humbled myself to the level of a ground crawler, I still can’t find a way to feel the teeniest, tiniest bit of remorse.

The Big Lie - Part I

The Posture of Truth

I have always prided myself on being honest, so finding out so late in life what a liar I am is downright upsetting.

I certainly can’t blame my dishonesty on my upbringing. My Dad was so honest that it was sometimes to his detriment. I remember how his face beamed with relief, and release, the day he shook hands with his neighborhood financier because the loan for the house was finally paid off.

But upon reviewing the figures, he realized the mistake. And in a flash, those twinkling eyes clouded over. And so I watched him get into his truck and drive to the lender’s place to expose the error. The loan was not fully repaid as originally concluded. At the time I was only a child but I couldn’t help thinking what a stupid thing for my father to do.

But as I grew older, deeper in my soul, I had to admire such moral perfection. And I longed to be like that.

I determined to match that standard and ultimately thought I had. Didn’t I take the boss aside one day when my supervisor was harshly disciplined for a careless mistake? Didn’t I boldly inform him that I was equally responsible and should also be punished? That it was my mistake initially? That my supervisor was only guilty of signing off my error without noticing?

The boss listened to my ‘wholesome’ confession then just shook his head and said, “Roberta, I have never known an employee quite like you.”

I took it as a complement. And then he told me it was up to him, rather than me, to determine who should be disciplined and he wanted no more discussion about it. Of course, I now suspect that at the time I had an ulterior motive – mind expansion for a boss that consistently hid all his screw-ups in the hope that they would never be discovered.

But I am talking about my own determinations here and more specifically I am talking about the day I had to face the realization that without knowing it, or realizing it, or understanding it, I lied and lied and lied some more.

You see when I met Hub, I deceitfully hid the real me. I only allowed him to see that part of me that I felt he would find attractive. A girl, light at heart, flexible about plans, highly attentive to his needs. A girl that smiled through pain and laughed through disappointment. A girl always carefully groomed. In those days I even accepted criticism as a positive thing – a way for me to know how I could readjust to be more pleasing.

I creased Hub’s jeans and polished his shoes. I pressed his shirts with sweat dripping from my brow I slaved over the ironing board while thinking to myself…“What delight in doing this special thing for someone I love”.

And I suppose right now, my dear reader, you are beginning to feel skeptical. Well, don’t. These are the things I did!

(to be continued…) Part II – A Mother-Load of Lies.

Cranky and The Expert

(A bit of nothing for blog-media filler)

I was cranky yesterday but I’m not cranky anymore.

Last night I made a fresh banana crème pie. (No whipped cream – whipped cream not necessary). And before it was properly chilled Hub and I ate it all.

Hub said “It was perfect. The best crust, the best filling and I know ‘cause I’m a pie expert!”

“How could you be?” I said. “You've never baked a pie, rolled a crust, or even looked at a recipe?”

His response, “I know cause I EAT pies.”

Politics in Brief

(MOOD - cranky)

Intelligence Gathering

The media looks with sneering dismay at Putin, Russia’s Prime Minister, taking the time and effort to meet with Iran’s leader. What is surprising to me is that no one in North America would ever think this might be a new twist in the old game of Diplomacy.

It would seem to me one can get more accurate information about any situation through diplomatic infiltration (or befriending the enemy) than one can gain by hiding out in one’s Great White House and uttering war threats. Mr. Putin may be a whole lot smarter than we think.

_______

Environmental Judgements

And about “Planet in Peril”…

So there he is, Anderson Cooper, flying over an Amazon jungle and so dismayed at scattered patches of forest being cleared and burned. Isn’t it a shame? Yes, it is a shame.

But excuse me, the last time I flew over the American continent, although I saw far-reaching crops and cultivated fields, at the same time in this great huge far-reaching expanse I saw no “virgin” land. Yes, there are a few National Parks that pretend to be virgin forest. But they’re not really. Even here there are engineered modifications and clearings done in proprietary ways to make the parks more financially sustainable.

Even farmland is becoming so compressed that within a few years I may have to grow and grind my own wheat. So who are we to get in this kind of self-righteous snit?

I live in the back country and even here the coyote, the wolf, the fox, and the deer are so squeezed they cannot find enough space for safety or food resources.

The End of the Chain

I can never forget the day I realized the chain was broken. The day I suddenly became, without warning, the link at the end of the chain.

My mom and dad passed away within a year of each other. And when that happened, I felt such an emotional instability when I realized I was no longer solidly connected to my parents on one side and my own offspring on the other. It was devastating to realize the chain of life was broken and I was now the last link at the end of the chain.

It was a raw feeling. It drew me back to the place of my birth but rather than finding comfort there I found my desolation magnified 30X. The old house, vacant for only a few years was burned down by an arsonist, and when I saw the charred remains, the full reallity hit me of broken chains and lives in ashes. As if they had never been.

As if the games had never been played, the songs had never been sung, and the laughter had never rang in that place. That’s the day I felt an overwhelming conviction to write.

Perhaps through writing, I could re-establish connection. Perhaps I could replace the missing link of my parents with another chain-link of sorts to avoid the isolation of disconnection and to make life meaningful. It wasn’t the best solution, but it was all I could hope to do to reconcile the heartbreak of broken chains and vanishing points.

That was many years ago and now I find myself at a similar aperture. But this time what isolates me, and retraces the pain I just told you about, is my moral and mental disconnect from the stream of the progressive thinking of modern life. Once my perceptions of life and philosophy comfortably tied with the mandate of the society I lived within. But no more. Once again I’ve become a disconnected link. Unity severed by my lack of understanding of what is happening around me.

The link on the left of me began to weaken with stupid stuff. The shocking business of rugged men dressed in pink polka-dotted shorts followed by girls in pant-garb that made plumber’s pants look like high-risers. And the mutation of romance stories from prose that misted the eyes and stirred the heart into nothing more than graphic descriptions of physical connections between individuals, that left the heart cold and stirred only the groin. The rapid transition of religion from that initial solid belief in God to a Godless reverence for nature, and ultimately to self-Gods or celebrity gods.

When truth, that thing that so many honored, and paid homage to, turned aside from forthrightness to blatant denial. Denial, with such fervor, that eventually falseness morphed into truth and suspicions were forgotten. When humility and contriteness were put to rest in a place of decay with empathy and diplomacy. When language became either so vulgar or so ornately scripted that any and all meaning could come out of its convoluted form.

Now I see the anarchy of Political Correctness marching across the land engaged in genocide of language terms. But its domination is nothing more than a mask – a façade to hide the evil in men’s breasts. It is really no more of a cure than a sugar pill.

But we had a cure as good as Bantam and Best before this. Evil was contained through an active conscience and a mandate given to every child in their formative years that one must treat others the way they hoped to be treated. But now, even the meaning of that old adage has been skewed by adopting a new educated, yet ignoble, way of handling bullies that too often boomerangs into greater violence and more confusion.

It’s all too much. You see how the link of my relevance to life on this planet is breaking. And without relevance how do I participate? How do I integrate? How do I postulate? Or even capitulate?

I swear it’s like a new strain of Attention Deficit Behavior that I wasn’t born with but was cast on me by modern strain to see how well I would fare. A super bug or a staph-infection passed on by society rather than a medical facility. My mind is anxious, my thoughts disruptive, and I am unable to focus.

Society had no right to do this to me. They are bullying acts. And how dare they, within the sweet tolerance of a politically correct society, continue to still refer to me in terms so demeaning? ‘Old and feeble’, ‘Mentally Unstable’, ‘Confused’ or ‘Obsolete and Antiquated’?

It’s lonely here. Being, once again, at the end of a chain, without any connectivity to unite my existence with others. But that’s okay. I will use my writing and my imagination to reconnect the chain. I will fashion a link of an uncommon alloy that will return my strength.

I’ve done it before. I can do it again.

The Immortal Writ

When I have no inspiration
And I can find no calibration
For stylus, writ and imagination

Still I write.

This is, for me, a forced conscription
It’s who I am. It’s my conviction
So

Still I write


So still I write, I’m writing still
Though prose is sick; and poetry ill,
Wit is ailing, plot is failing
Yet

Still I write.


Perhaps I should lay down me pen
And never take it up again.
Roll it in a winding-sheet;
Prepare a spot in the mossy peat.

Then with dignity, I can mourn my loss
By a gargoyle-stone sarcophagus.

Nah…

Wipe your tears, unbend your knees
I only wrote this poem to tease.
And you should perhaps take extra measure
To wipe away that look of pleasure…
Cause,

Still I’ll write!

I Can Fly

I returned to the old place. They said I would find the landscape much altered, but nothing had really changed. Steep paths, though less visible, still descended to the ocean sand.

I recalled the plunge down those same paths. Paths so steeply vamped that it took such courage for a child to descend. But I did it. Rushing with monster steps and flying feet, in order not too plunge or tumble.

Faith was important as well. Believing I could run. Believing I could fly. Only one fleeting moment of doubt or hesitation and I would tumble end over end down steep cliffs, over sharp rocks, and into the briars.

I think about how enviable I could have become if gravity could be slightly skewed so that my feet could fly with the same rapidity on a flat track.

And perhaps if the gravity in the human mind could be skewed in a similar manner, we could likewise make unbelievable strides. Strides large enough to accomplish all we ever hope or dream. As long as we don’t hesitate and begin that self-perpetuating tumble – down, down, down. End over end over end.

It is surprising to me that this old haunt offers such philosophical and academic import. Study notes, as it were, promoting an understanding of how the character of the soul can find agility through a memory that cements the belief that ‘I can fly’.

Common Sense Refreshment

Common sense is as refreshing as a gentle rain. I say that because this year, along with family members, our Bush Man Friend (BMF), spent Thanksgiving at our house. After dinner we engaged in conversation.

Now before I continue, I need to tell you that I knew BMF since childhood. We went to the same tiny country school, but BMF had such difficulty in school that he quit long before quitting time and since then, despite so much solitary time in the bush, he has gained an enviable and most interesting education.

BMF’s tales of solitary bush life are both fascinating and original. I challenge the busiest of socialites to tell me stories about their busy lives half as fascinating as the escapades that he has to tell.

Part of the appeal of what he speaks is his jargon. He tells stories in a lovely new gendre of literary prose, refreshing and innocent. And because of this, it is quite impossible for me to retell with authenticity or titillation the stories in like-manner as they were told to me.

Whether written or spoken, he has always treated language in his own unique way. That was the problem in school. He was way too offended that ‘cow’ was not spelled ‘kow’. Being always a simple philosopher of common sense, he could not be satisfied with the feeble academic explanation the teacher attempted for such stupidity. “Why isn’t it spelled with a ‘k’?” he asked, and even yet wonders why.

And although, too often among classmates, he was a source of ridicule, it seems like the unfair criticism of how he spelled ‘cow’ cut his gentle soul the deepest. I say that because he still mentions it so often and when he does his face clouds and his lips quiver.

The other thing I need to tell you about our BMF, is his sense of graciousness. If graciousness is class, he has more class than anyone I know. When he spends time with us, we generally receive within a few days, a note of gratefulness. Written with thought and care. Each word spelled out, not as grammar dictates, but with common sense and his own phonetic interpretation. An encrypted message but easily understood, sincere, and touching to the depth of my soul.

So when BMF brings up the subject of the frustrations he has with language, as a lover of language, I tend to listen closely. This weekend he shared his own unique perspective on the standard usage of the phrase, ‘back and forth’. And, I have to say, as always, common sense ruled his thinking.

“Why do people say ‘back and forth’?” he asks, with that sweet innocence that makes all that he speaks so endearing.

“It makes no sense at all. To first go back? One can go forth and back, forth and back, forth and back. But it is impossible to go back if one has not yet gone forth!”
_______

As a final note, BMF is too often taken advantage of because he is a dogged worker and of such a good nature.

This weekend he told us a story about compensation promised but never delivered. As it turns out, after he graciously and repeatedly asked for payment for his work, he eventually concluded that the promised payment would never be forthcoming.

But didn’t BMF tell that former employee? Yes, he did. Not with rage, or anger, or with retribution in mind. Later, much later, at a large gathering, when his former employer greeted him like an old friend, BMF looked him straight in the eye and gave him something to think about in one simple cutting statement:

“You don’t have enough man in you to make a small boy!”

Thanksgiving Levity

(News casts have 'filler', movies have 'filler', commercials have 'filler', so why shouldn't my blog have 'filler'. This is 'filler'.)


Thanksgiving is over. The monstrous turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce are all gone and the houseguests have left. Now its oft been said that turkey produces sleepiness and that feel good byproduct called serotonin. But there is more to turkey-lurky than just that. There are other things turkey does, that I am now more aware of as an ‘old fart’.

I worked hard last Friday. Baking and tidying up everything for the Thanksgiving event. I washed all the floors, but that was downright silly. I should have washed the chandeliers and ceilings instead.

Cause yesterday was a day of levitation. Even the puppies, after eating all those turkey scraps, hovered over the lawn instead of resting on it when I looked out the window. Hub jokingly asked this morning if it was finally safe to cut the mooring lines that kept us from floating near the ceiling.

Of course by now you’ve figured out that the reason we were all levitating is because turkey-gas is lighter than air. Exactly like helium, it would seem to me except for one small difference. Helium is odorless.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Why do people do it? What makes elderly people pack up a few goods and all the memories in their home community and dash off to places unknown? To areas where seniors are known to congregate? Particularly the west coast? And don’t you tell me it’s for the climate either – as bad as dry freezing cold is for stiff and arthritic joints, all that moisture has to be a whole lot worse.

I never did understand it. But I am older now so closer to a state of understanding (maybe?). The most obvious thing I can put my finger on is a perception of a change in identity that none of us welcome with open arms. A feeling of deteriorating physical beauty – wrinkled skin, gray hair, a limp, or a much slowed walking pace – and thus a wish to escape before the changes are too obvious. The only way to preserve the identity of what we once were is to get away before any one really notices.

But as for me, I’m staying. I find that an amazing number of people older than I still remember how lively and curious I was as a child. Others remember when I worked here and when I worked there. Others (a mighty few), remember even more unique things – a conversation we once had, a meal we once shared, a laugh, or a cup of tea. Some remember better than me how I looked when I had rich brown hair and a long ponytail. Hub certainly does. And of course some remember the mistakes I made, but I remember them a whole lot better.

That’s comforting. But what is even more comforting about my home community is the loyalty my neighbors have always shown me and still do. It’s as sweet as mothering comfort to know how readily they will come to my aid, if aid is needed.

Sure I hate to hear the things I hear now. Remarks like, “Roberta is looking pretty peaked, don’t you think?” “She’s certainly aging fast.” I would like to be smug enough to say I don’t take these things into account, but I do. But instead of packing up and dashing away to parts unknown, I just disassociate more. Stay more out of sight. And so I only make the dreaded trip to town on odd, and sparse days, when I am particularly well rested and feeling a little more energetic than usual. Pleasant days, that for a brief moment, allow my wrinkled skin to look reasonably ruddy, and a day when sunshine casts sky-lights on my gray hair so that it looks like enviable[?] silver gloss.

Old, but vain, you might say. I prefer to think ‘not’ but at the same time maybe I am wrong. Maybe it is vanity that applies in indirect ways to all of us – whether we stay, or whether we leave.

Bottom line for me is I am going to stay, if for no other reason, because of the great fun and amusement Hub and I find in the company of kids. Particularly in the close companionship of the twins next door and the pleasant thrill my grandchildren get from sleeping in the same room, playing in the same yard, eating in the same kitchen, as Mom did when she was little. These kids love everything about this place and they make us laugh and that would be the sad thing missing if we moved to a distant or modern villa for retirees.

Who can deny that the gaiety of children is certainly the most effective anti-dote for the drudgery and disparity of old age? The ‘Comedy Channel’ is so often nothing more than remakes of the same old joke. With children every hilarious antic is fresh and new and original. It doesn’t get any better than that.

I didn’t get a picture yesterday but I certainly wish I had. Girl Twin asks Hub, “What do you want me to do?” Hub replies “Follow the Yellow Brick Road, follow the Yellow Brick road.” And with that cue to start, Hub and Girl Twin skip down a trail of solidly blanketed golden leaves singing loudly “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz”.

Hub is too funny leaping with such wildly exaggerated steps, arms loosely raised, and flipping his head of sparse hair while singing in a simulated high-pitched, yet child-like, squeaky operatic voice. Ditto for Girl Twin. And here comes Twin Boy and I behind singing as loud as we can in falsetto, “Because, because, because, because – Because of the wonderful things he does!" All our troop barely able to sing for laughing.

So, as I’ve already said, Hub and I wish to stay put, but if anyone had seen us, for certain, we would have been packed up in short order by some charitable-minded community citizen or physician and moved to some other locale.

So, it goes without saying, if we intend to stay put, maybe we need to be just a bit more careful. Old people, despite allowances for their eccentricities and peculiarities, are nonetheless expected to be slightly more demure, and a bit more mature, than we tend to be.

To sum this all up, the nicest part of it all is later, after dinner, Hub and I sit in the livingroom and relax. The old hip is aching, the stomach is unsettled, the back spasm is still there, the heartburn is back, feet are swollen, but still we smile and smile because it was such a funny day. Hub asks with a grin, “What are you grinning about?” and I don’t even answer. We just laugh some more.

Living Longer and Stronger

More than once I’ve come across articles that suggest that people with spiritual convictions live longer than those that don’t, but I never gave it much thought. After all it is a hard thing to prove and not all theories, though intensively researched and polled and counted hold water for long. Biases of the researchers sneak in. Politics lends a hand. And of course society can adopt crazy notions when ‘flock mentality’ rather than ‘independent thinking’ kicks in.

But as to the longevity theory that connects to spiritual beliefs, it seems to make sense. Obviously when people are of a positive mind, that is good.

Now the reason I mention this is because yesterday I wrote a blog. The subject was so difficult. So layered. So hard to bring to surface.

I spent hours manipulating phrases and words to find easily understood clarity. But what kept happening, in my frustration, was notions stealthily coupled on paper when my intent was for them to resist, and showed opposition when I wanted them to fuse. Hours later, exhausted from my attempts to deal with words that were acting like a throng of misbehaving kids, I felt I was finally making headway.

And then, without warning, my screen froze up. But this old lap top is usually pretty dependable though it has its quirks. I pushed ‘ctrl’ and ‘delete’ and shut down my computer. I again started it up and it did what it always does, with such prompt surety. When I went back to my text program, the words I had written came up on the screen as if nothing had happened.

A quick review of what I had written and immediately I was again so embroiled in the subject matter that it never occurred to me to hit ‘Save’. So more work, more struggle. Now the thing is really taking shape. But then, it happened once again. The screen froze up. So nothing for it but to again repeat the routine of shutting down the computer and restarting it.

But “whoa”, what in bloody ---- goes on here? Nothing came up. And no where could be found those weird files in my documents with a foreign name that oftentimes turn up to be the lost document. Nothing. Zilch.

I was horrified. I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw things and smash my laptop. I wanted to talk to someone who lost everything in a house fire so they would have some kind of real and sincere empathy for how I was feeling.

I wanted to go to the bridge and jump off. I wanted to rip out my hair and slash my wrists. I wanted to take words, adjectives, phrases, even thin helpless little pronouns to the garage and smash them on Hub’s anvil with his sledge hammer. I wanted to burn dictionaries.

I wanted to escape to a primitive world, to a time where we only communicated with grunts and yips. That kind of simplicity might offer me a hope of remembering what I had written. But what I had written had too much complexity and recalling it, with my current weakened state of recall, was quite out of the question. But amidst all this irrational thinking and heartbreaking frustration, peace and calm quickly descended.

Thankfully, I have this spiritual element. And so, with that, I was immediately convinced that there was a reason that this happened. That the God of my belief decided that it was not time for me to reveal what I so ardently wished to reveal. That the God of my belief had a problem with the articulation of what I had written. So I accepted that was how it was to be.

So yes, I think those with God beliefs live longer. I am one and I have far less stress with my spiritual crutch that prevents me from being, or doing desperate things that are completely rash and irrational.

So even the simplest of pronouns get to live another day -- "I", "she", "me"...

The Better Things in Life

I don’t believe in Poltergeists, but there is a spirit painter that hangs about this old house and slaps up canvases that are as tender and touching as the celebration of sound of a live pianist in my living room.

Only once, just once, a visitor came by who was an accomplished pianist and switched my electric organ to ‘piano’ and played, while I prepared afternoon tea, a selection of solitary piano solos ---“Somewhere my love”, “Autumn Leaves”, and some other of the great songs. Whether it was the instrument, the skill of the pianist, or the acoustic resonance of the higher ceiling in my living room, I cannot say. What I will say is that I never forgot how beautiful that was. How beautiful it sounded. How, in an instant, it changed a dull house to a fine old castle full of reverence, and awe, and beauty and romance.

And if excess and luxury means extravagant paintings and sweet music, I maybe don’t often have the music, but I do have the art. My invisible painter comes by, when the snow is deep and the world quite plain and the trees so bare, and paints with delicate hues of pink, rose, white, and blue, sweeping valleys, villas, and mountainous scenes of uncanny realism in the sky. Sometimes he paints abstract stuff with dark purple animated monster-looking things with bulbous eyes, and domed foreheads that mercilessly chase smaller entities of sweet innocence clothed in auras of sunshine, and dresses of white.

In the last few days, he has discarded many colors and in the process splashed all the trees with various Monet-like dabs of brilliance. He’s covered the green lawn with golden dabs and poured out a deep rich luminous burgundy paint on the dog wood tree. The other day while waiting for the appropriate time to touch up the landscape with fall colors, he mischievously painted a rushing river where there was none.


So although I have no paintings of worth on my walls, I have a collection that rotates quickly and invites me to have another look out my window at his latest masterpiece.

But, as mistress of this place, to preserve the ambiance of formality and flushing dignity, I really must buy some piano selections— (Liberace, perhaps), for topping-off special moments when friends come over, and I don my lace apron, and the china comes out for ‘high tea’, and the latest paintings are hung, and the afternoon light is just right and ‘housekeeping’ – (that would be my robot vacuum cleaner) has just dispelled all dust from the corners of this ancient estate.

I guess I’m in this special frame of mind because right now I’m reading that old English Classic first published in 1881, “The Portrait of a Lady” by Henry James. And jangling in my mind is that very first sentence, so simple and so lovely—that tells me this will be writing at its best:

“Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not – some people of course never do, — the situation is in itself delightful.”

I have the circumstances. I have the tea. I have the art. And all I need now is the music (and for me that is piano – without violins, without horns, without anything but the clarity of each left-hand resonating chord and right-hand winsome note.

_______

Of course later, Hub will shut down my music and go to the Lone Star Channel (with all that gunfire erupting and horse hooves rumbling and graceless verbal interchange), and my painter will fold up his palette, and I will return to a plebeian existence. I will descend from my throne, shake out my hair, and bumble around in faded jeans and a stained cotton tee, engaged in the servile task of preparing supper for Hub, my puppies, and me.

Derailment

Head bowed she moves slowly
Planting and shuffling each faltering step
While grasping with white-knuckles the precious cart
That came as a self-extricated gratuity.
Her other prize – a loaf of day-old bread
Bought with a coin left by a harried customer.
In the coin slot of the grocery cart,
tipped and carelessly derailed.

She bends over the cart in usual hunched form
Studying the filthy sidewalk through the wire grid.
All of it a blurred and rippled vision
With only the exceptional clarity of the
Bold lettering on one solitary bag in the cart.
While others in domestic comfort read cereal boxes,
She feels a happy completeness in the sustenance
Promised by these words - “Liberty Bread”.

She smiles and raises her Medusa-spiked hair,
Smooths with gnarled hands her dingy robe.
And unfolds a derelict body into a
spasm of honorable uprightness.

And then in that moment of poise, she cries
Like a trumpet blast to the bustling streets and busy throng…

1.“Keep, ancient lands your storied pomp…
Send …homeless, tempest-tossed, to me…”

She reattaches herself to the cart,
Folds again, and moves on

Laughing…while we weep.

1. Italicized text is from Emma Lazarus’, “The New Colossus”, written for inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

Pig Latin Pulses

This short one-Act play is your mind bender for today. See if you can decode the pig latin phrases, do the math, think of more potato uses, and maybe tell me about the days in your youth when pig latin was your special way of communicating with your friends.

ACT I

[Hub and Roberta and the little twins from next door are sitting at the kitchen table after walking the dogs. Earlier Hub and Roberta picked all the potatoes.]

Hub: Woman, why do you always insist on planting so many potatoes?

Roberta: I want to make sure we won’t run out.

Hub: If we do, you can buy some. At the store, at the farmer’s market, at a neighbors.

Roberta: I don’t want to do that, it is too inconvenient. And they never taste the same. Rocks in the bags, tasteless, and smutty spots everywhere.

Hub: But look at all those potatoes. Did you do the math?

Roberta: Y—e—h. Three small pails per week, 36 weeks, 4 potato meals per week, 120 potato hills, averaging ¾ small pail per hill –oh, never mind – I did the math! And anyway, I need extra potatoes for days when I have company, for perogies, for potato bread, for soups, french fries, potato salads, and seed potatoes for next year. So, don’t even suggest it. There are NOT too many potatoes.

Hub: I suppose you’re right. We’ll also need some for Christmas decorations, dog toys, carved stamps for printing letters or logos on envelopes, dried potato heads, potato guns, for heartburn, and for batteries for my potato clock.

Little Twin Girl [with a broad smile]: ee-tay, ee-hay, ee-tay, ee-hay!

(She and her brother have been practicing their Pig Latin while we are on dog walks. And pretty much everything she says is in that dialect.)

______

I roared with laughter at that bit. But that is not all. I’m still laughing about Twin Boy’s antics when we were out walking the puppies. He tried to topple a dead tree and when it eventually came loose and he saw it was going to topple across the trail, he yelled:…. “imber-Tay!”

And to our astonishment, even though Hub’s attempts at Pig Latin are impossible to decode, and completely dyslectic, he scrambled out of the way with the rest of us. The twins told him they were “oud-pray” of his “a-way-om-cay-ish-lay-ent-may!”

Hub said when they left, “It’s too bad that the twins’ arents-pay and isters-say on’t-day owe-nay ow-hay uch-may un-fay ee-thay ins-tway are-way.”

I laughed and nodded.

The Psychology of Gizmos

I’m so not good at waiting. It is distressing. It makes me anxious, and uneasy. It is worrisome and unpleasant. But yet, with my gizmo in my pocket or purse, I can endure endless hours of waiting, without nervous energy spinning me into a state of nausea.

How do I do it? I have the primordial gizmo of all time. The ‘adam’ of the species. It is a button and a bobby-pin. And how do you play with it? You put the bobby pin in the button, you squeeze it, bend it, unbend it, and twirl the button and create unique b & b associations.

It’s a diversion. The same kind of diversion as that provided by high-tech gizmos. It is a diversion for easing the discomfort of idleness. It works to quell the irritation of feeling alone in the crowd or the oblique thought that I am waiting for something, without the slightest notion what I am waiting for.

But bobby-pins are scarce, hard to find, and I’m not too sure everyone has a button jar anymore. So while I calm and sedate myself with my button and bobby pin, you go ahead and get downtown (if you must) for the latest gizmo.

P.S. If you want to be resourceful, you might want to try a piece of velcro and a barrette.

Love on Demand – Part V (Conclusion)

Finding Sensibility

Discussions with a neighbor lady with a broken heart in a pre-arranged marriage have validated what I already believe – I cannot give love on demand. So how can I save my sinful soul without going down the path of a loveless and pre-arranged union with God?

With or without a love relationship with God, I can’t deny that I have always been awe-struck at nature’s perfection and at the creator of it. But despite that, I have not found a path to loving God. From the stories told to me by the lady down the road, I understand that it is impossible to give love on demand because that kind of love is too false to be soul-saving. Serving a God of truth by a brazen lie is so not right.

But my problem is even bigger than that. How can I make myself love someone who so often seems to turn deaf ears on my prayers? Yet, admittedly, at other times, responds at lightning speed with a wealth of blessings, quite unexpected?

It remains puzzling to me that somehow, though not until some time later, in all this storm-tossed sea of doubt, somewhere along the way, without conscious endeavor, my subconscious mind was coddled, and warmed, and seduced into a positive belief that told my conscious mind, “You have not pressed me or overrode my authority. You have not forced me with insubordination. And so now, it’s okay to believe. I’ll go along with it.”

But that is me, and so as I consider these things, I realize it is not fair for me to judge others. And it is also unfair for me to expect everyone to love God because it is the better thing to do. Or because I am sure he exists. Of course it isn’t fair. Not with love being a helpless condition over which we have no control.

It takes more than conscious willingness. It appears there are no conscious arguments or convictions good enough, or even strong enough, when it comes to love, to force the sub-conscious into agreement. Surely even the Job in the Old Testament, who endured so much sorrow, must have consciously wanted to reject God, but his sub-conscious mind exerted its own authority and would not let him.

And so even young couples who contemplate marriage, carefully taking into account all practical considerations, and faithfully attending marriage counseling, are in fact jumping into a pre-arranged marriage, if the sub-conscious mind objects. You see long courtships are not just an old-fashioned notion. They are necessary for feelings of love to be honest exchanges rather than superficial notions.

So, isn’t it silly for preachers to compare heaven to hell to force a kind of pre-arranged union? To demand that we find redemption through a pre-determined subset? And, in the same way that it is unfair for me to judge the atheist, or the agnostic, isn’t it equally silly for these same, whose subconscious mind is not yet ready for God-love to scoff at religion as being nothing more than evidence of human weakness and a keen imagination?

In conclusion, I think there will always be those who make a pretense of religion and God-love, but if they are honest with themselves, it seems to me that regardless of how hot hell burns, if the sub-conscious mind does not give in to such a notion and provide unanimous agreement and support, loving God is not possible until the soul eventually whispers to the head – “this is truth and it is time”.

Love on Demand - Part IV

Finding an Answer

I am afraid. The minister says I must love God or be eternally damned. But I don’t know how to give love on demand. Physically, I can choose to do anything I want to do. I can completely ignore the authoritarian control of my subconscious mind. But not emotionally. So, the dilemma of turning love off or on, is the dilemma that I seek to resolve.

Then I remembered. I remembered stories told to me by a lady who lived just up the road and who immigrated to Canada shortly after she was married. Often she told me stories of the ‘old country’. And in these stories it became apparent to me that although outwardly she seemed no different than other neighbors, in her home, all was not well.

Her stories were so sad. Each time she spoke to me of her youth and her marriage, she wept with heartbreaking pain. And at the root of that pain was the story about how she had been so wrongly convinced by others that she could give love on demand.

And her dilemma seemed pretty much like my own. There was even the same interplay of redemption or destruction – only her choice was a different kind of heaven and hell. Her choice, if one can call it that, was to find security through a pre-arranged marriage (love on demand), or face a lifetime of loneliness as a forgotten spinster.

Unfortunately she thought she could give love on demand. And so she married and in her conscious mind she told herself she loved the man chosen for her. But her subconscious mind held fast in disagreement.

So that tells me I am right. The administrator of the sincerity of love is not the head. It is the heart. And because her heart could not be coerced into agreement, her soul remained in agony.

So without all the complexities I have written here, I still figured out, as a child, that it is not possible to give love on demand. And there would be no sensibility in me trying. So here I am, headed straight to hell, because I cannot love God or give him love on demand to save my wretched soul.

NEXT POST: The Conclusion of this story – Finding Sensibility

Love on Demand - Part II & III

Scare Tactics – Part II

Now initially I thought you had to be a person of excess to be a sinner. My mother extricated herself from sinners and all of those that she avoided lived lives of excess. Too much smoking, drinking, eating, womanizing, lazing around, or talking dirty.

So what had I to fear? I had no excesses. I was too woefully thin, too woefully shy, too woefully poor, too woefully frightened, to be excessive in anything. Too limited in every way to be a sinner. But now I’m sitting here in the front of the church with the graduated pews and the preacher has his beady little eyes focused straight on me and he is telling me I was born a sinner. Born a sinner? What the h…?

And if that wasn’t enough now he’s telling me that if I reject God, I may look around me and feel out of favor now, but it is going to get a whole lot worse. The bottom line is the only way I can expect to have blessing in this life, and escape from hell’s burning flames in the next, is to love God with all my heart and soul and mind.

Oh, but just hang on a minute here. I have a problem with that. I can say ‘I love God’ but if I don’t sincerely love him, that is the worst kind of lie. And I cannot give love on demand. I just cannot. I am not responsible for who I love. It is out of my control. And I absolutely cannot love someone because I am told I must – whether that someone be mortal or immortal, all powerful, or weak as a newborn kitten.

I have a subconscious mind and it forms commitments and purpose quite removed from what I wish or want or will. My subconscious mind made me love my parents without me choosing to, wishing to, or wanting to. So love is not an option that I can decide to choose or decline. It runs much deeper than that.

So it seems to me one can’t seek redemption through fear and still retain the fitness and propriety, some call it ‘grace’, that must accompany that conversion. Cause God is all-knowing. He knows more than what we tell him. So it goes without saying that he knows if we want him in our lives to simply curb our fears or because we truly love him.

So what to do? How to save myself? There is no sensibility in the minister demanding that I love God cause no matter how the preacher man has motivated my conscious mind with fear and panic, love controls reside in caves and tunnels buried much deeper than that.
________________

At the Root of the Fray – Part III

So you see the problem. Never in my lifetime, as a child, or even as an adult, has my subconscious mind allowed me to give love on demand. Even yet, I cannot affectionately accept notions because of social or political pressures.

And because this is true, though not generally examined or understood, there are those who say I am opinionated and close-minded. Some even may suggest that I am bigoted. But what my critics fail to understand is that allowances must be made for my subconscious mind – that little piece in my heart or head, I know not which, that houses my conscience, my soul, my love, and my spiritual convictions, over which I have no control.

And so, because of the conflict in my head with the other, there have always been popular social concepts that in no way affect me personally, but yet my subconscious mind refuses to accept them. And on the other hand, there have always been other abstractions that directly affect me, and even though in my conscious mind, I am theoretically convinced, my subconscious mind chooses to remain obstinate.

For example, I know global warming will eventually have dire effects but I can’t get my subconscious mind to accept that it is happening. Obviously, though many think otherwise, there is no straightforward correlation between the conscious and the subconscious mind.

So I sat in church that Sunday morning, wondering how to find a solution to an impossible dilemma. And then I did what kids always do. I searched within the context of my own limited knowledge for a solution. And surprise, surprise. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had some exposure to the validity or invalidity of the expectation that one can offer – love on demand.

NEXT POST – Finding an answer.

Love on Demand & Pre-Arranged Unions

Ruled by the Sub-Conscious Mind (Part I)

There was something rather unusual about the church I went to when I was a child. When new pews were installed, the front pew was small, but as you moved down the aisle the pews got larger and larger.

My mother told me how this happened. She told me that when the pews were built, the builder used the pattern of the first pew to cut a second and the pattern of a second to cut a third. He didn’t even notice what was happening until all the pews were built. And that is when he realized that each successive pew was bigger than the previous. And so, it only made sense to line them up in order. From smallest to largest.

But what I found most surprising about the graduating seat size was how the congregation reacted. Seat-size seemed to dictate to the subconscious mind of the congregation where they should sit.

I watched them each Sunday wandering down the aisle and sorting themselves according to their particular breadth and depth and length. I also watched the small lady and the large lady that were such good friends that they always sat together, debating at length over where they should sit without easy or quick compromise. And with the installation of the new pews, they no longer sat together.

It was evident that some people entered the church with a mind to sit in the front, but though this may have been their intent, their sub-conscious mind overruled, and without even thinking about it, they moved to the seat that offered, for them, the best fit and comfort.

I tell you this little story to offer just one weak example how subconscious thinking can alter a conscious choice.

NEXT POST: "Scare Tactics" - more serious situations arise that are over-ruled by the tremendous power and authority of the subconscious mind.
…to be continued…

A Fable of the Future

Once upon a time, far, far away, in the time of Post-Global Warming and Post-Political Correctness, an ancient woman could be seen staggering along the broiling pavement in insulated boots. Her head was protected from the harsh heat by a teflon scarf. Her body; by a robe of micro-fibre. Still the heat was unbearable and so she sought refuge in a nearby park. Here she slumped in the shade to rest, and as she sat there, a group of children approached.

They too were seeking shade. And so they seated themselves on the fringes of the small thicket of man-made turf and sculpted palms. The island of shade and refuge was so small it was impossible for the children to find space apart from the old woman. They just hoped the frightful old hag wouldn’t speak to them and would soon depart. But the old woman, though aware of their discomfort, wasn’t going anywhere and so she endeavored to put them at ease through a simple, yet intriguing introduction.

“Hello children,” the ancient woman said. “I am the wise old sage of Natural and Social History. Tell me, if you like, what you want to know and I will tell you how it was.”

A very tall youngster eventually said with an obvious sneer, “Tell me about Global Warming and why the grass and trees could not be saved.” Another said, “You must know how it was before God died.” And then, from some invisible spot a wee voice from the back of the little group said in almost a whisper, “If you please, could you tell me about the ‘L & S’ thing?”

The ancient woman looked about at the group and said, “The story about Global Warming is a long and depressing story. I could tell you about God but he is still alive and can tell you himself if you listen for his voice in your inner soul. So that leaves the L & S thing and I will tell you about that.

I can’t, of course, say the words. The words are disallowed. They are too coarse, too vulgar, for your genteel generation but still since time began, youngsters know and privately use vulgar words and probably most of you know what those words mean.” A few heads solemnly nodded.

Then, as she prepared to continue, a fidgety little fellow broke the silent anticipation of the group. “I said it once. Man, was I in trouble? My mom gave me time out for a week, my sister phoned the police, and Dad took away all my electronic toys and put up a satellite barricade so that I couldn’t talk, or text message, or watch television.”

“Do you want to tell us about it?” said the ancient woman.

The little fellow was more than happy to do so. “I got a new nose-pod to go with my eye-pod and ear-pod for my birthday but it wouldn’t work. I wanted so much to smell all the things of the Pre-Cosmic Burn Age – roses blooming, hay fields freshly cut, gentle rain, lavender fields, and most of all – fresh air!

But when I turned my nose-pod on, all I could smell was rotten eggs, sulfur gases, and shit frying in the sun. I was so angry and so disappointed that I flung the thing on the floor and stomped on it with my insulated boots and yelled, “Lick it! Spank it! Bloody Lickin’ …” here he quickly covered his mouth and mumbled, “I’m sorry. Please don’t tell anyone. I didn’t mean to say that,” and quickly sat down.

This brave admission increased the intimacy of the group and they huddled together closer as the Old Woman began her own story about the ‘L & S’ thing.

“I only can tell you this because I was there. I am a hundred and forty years old, thanks to the magic of stem-cell research,” she said. So I know, and know well, about the ‘L & S’ thing.

When I was a child,” she said, “every child was well acquainted with the ‘L & S’ thing. But at the same time, there was method to the madness. This is how it worked. It was similar to the ancient fairy tale about three wishes.

A mom would say to a child when he spit at his sister, 'I wish you wouldn’t spit at your sister anymore.' One wish gone. And, if he did so again, again his mother would say, 'I really wish you wouldn’t spit at your sister anymore.' Second wish gone.

And if he did, yet again, his mother would save, 'I wish I didn’t have to do this, but I do.' And she would give him a serious smacking on the bottom that he would not soon forget, and, as a result, all wishes done. But now, magically, wishes one and two, and of course wish number three, as well, came true. And that brought an end to it. He did not spit at his sister anymore.

I’m sorry if you’re disappointed. That doesn’t seem like much of a story, but that is it. That is all there is to tell.”

(Here Hub interrupted to say, “Now I suppose I will hear the horror story of the monsters the Old Woman created. Kids pummeling each other, hair pulling, blood flying.”)

But ‘No’. Here Tiny Tim, the somber-faced little fellow that had asked about the “L & S” thing smiled with pleasure. “That is such a good story,” he said.

“I wish things could be different. Other kids are so nasty to me. They push me, shove me, call me names. I hate school. I can’t wear my new backpack because they will steal it or hide it. I can’t take my pods to school because they will shell them or hide them. Sometimes I think they take my stuff because they are in the midst of ‘time out’ at home. So they take my stuff home and obediently go to their rooms where they stay all evening locked away but still carrying on with the same amusements they normally have – but now it’s with my stuff!

If things were how they used to be (big sigh), these kids’ parents would share with their kids their three wishes. They would tell them how they wish they wouldn’t treat me like that once, and then they would tell them how they wish they didn’t treat me like that twice. And then they would tell them how they wish they didn’t have to, but they must give them a damn good ‘L & S’!”

And once again, before he even realized it, he was again yelling loudly, “Oh Lick! Oh Spank! Wouldn’t that be Lickin’ Great!! Cause then I would love to go to school. I could expect to be treated fairly; the same as everyone else.

Truth is,” he continued, “if I had three wishes that could come true, I would wish for the smell of fresh air and gentle rain without a nose-pod, and a damn good ‘L & S’ for meanies!”

After one hundred and forty years, the old woman knew full well there will always be those indignant about her observations and those in hearty agreement. This morning she smiled with relief at the indignant ones – those too entrenched in social convention to find credence in anything an old woman might have to say. But the indignation of their gasps and sighs stirred slight ripples of air that mimicked a breeze in that arid land.

The others simply smiled with gentle pleasure at how things had been before the sun burned down like a black hole in the sky erasing every oasis with such ferocity and leaving inhabitants too parched to spit.

What are You Laughing At?

Has the world really become that somber? I mean, I’ve noticed it before. The glum faces in malls and on the street. Faces blank. Lips drawn into straight lines. No pleasant crinkles dotting the eyes.

Yesterday I was in a busy store waiting for Hub. A young mother parked her shopping cart with her little guy sitting in it next to me. The little fellow was about three years old.

I find such pleasure in the beauty of children. Looking at them makes me smile and kind of bubble up inside. Looking at this little fellow, I broke into a smile, as I always do. I don’t generally speak to children because a) if they are extremely shy, it could upset them, and b) many parents aren’t comfortable with strangers forcing an exchange. So I simply glanced at him and of course seeing him made me smile.

But he was obviously not a shy boy. He looked at me directly and promptly said, “What are you laughing at?”

Rather caught of guard, I responded. “I’m smiling,” I said, “because you are such a handsome little man.”

His mother overheard and told him to say “Thank You” for the complement.

“Thank you,” he said, routinely, and then in a very serious tone, “But why are you laughing?”

Obviously my smile perplexed him, and for this I was sorry. But at the same time his response equally perplexed me.


Hub was done by this time and we left the store with me wondering if the world has become so somber that children think smiling is some kind of odd, suspicious, behavior.

Now as one plunges through life to the frailty of old age, many joys are minimized. The joy of rich food – or hot and spicy. The joy of physical exertion – shopping, sports, or even holidays. The joy found in competitiveness, challenges, and busy days. All these joys plummet. But the joy in children never minimizes one iota no matter how feeble, senile, or forgetful, one may become. Children are joy and they always bring joy. On my most worrisome day, when I am in a total funk, I still laugh and feel such joy when I see the grandchildren coming up the walk.

But still this occasion left me wondering. Surely wee children are not being led to believe that smiling is linked to laughing. And laughing is linked to ridicule. And because smiling and ridicule go hand-in-hand, everyone must take constant and sober care not to smile.

A Democracy of Fables and Fantasy

As a Canadian, people often ask me why I watch American News Channels as much as I do. In response, I have to say that once upon a time Canadian News was an accurate reflection of Canadian determinations. But that is no longer the case. In the last few years, Canada has become a reflection of the U.S. and what little there is to impart logic, representation, and understanding of Canadian governance comes more accurately by viewing the rippled image in the pond of U.S. governance. And I guess that explains why, as a Canadian, I’m going to rant about American politics rather than affairs within my own country.

Now yesterday when I came to the kitchen for morning coffee, Hub was watching television. And what he was watching was George Bush expounding the grand merits of democracy and how, because Iraq is now a democracy, everything is so idyllic. Iraqis are in this grand place where they can choose who their next leader will be.

Now hold that thought while we randomly connect the dots. I have to tell you that I am under a staid impression that the president’s wife is fascinated by fairy tales. I can’t help but feel this way after characters of these tales were center-pieced as Christmas decorations for the White House a few years ago.

It seemed to me an odd choice. Even when it was explained the study was for emphasis on reading and literacy. Cause in my mind there are a limitless number of literary works that promote reading, understanding, and knowledge far more than make-belief. (But then maybe part of the purpose of that theme was to get Americans in gear for the fantasies of good and evil that could and would, like fairy tales, magically morph into reality.)

And what was more distressing in this choice was I thought that perhaps Laura’s fascination would lead her to do what I do with my favorite stories. I often read them aloud to Hub at bedtime.

I hope not, because hasn’t it been said, that ‘what you read, is what you are’? I think she has been reading them because truly that presidential speech about democracy that I found myself listening to yesterday morning sounded more like a fantasy tale than any revelation of real truth.

Now, without question, I have never heard such a grand exhortation of the wonders of democracy, and when I was right at the brink of trembling conviction, something untoward hit me. What I thought was that if right now, the speech was suspended for a quick game of “Democracy” on the White House Lawn with cheer-leaders in formation around the star player yelling a pre-game cheer…“Who do you want and why to you want him?”…what would happen? Would the boo’s be as loud as I think they would be?

And then when the ball was tossed out, and the game began, I am quite convinced that this pick-up-spontaneous-game of Democracy would end before the first inning. Because before that first inning was complete, the game would have such a margin of defeat, there would be little point in continuing. But Democracy doesn’t work that way.

People in a democracy can choose who they want but when they find the selection was disguised and not at all what it appeared to be, nothing can be done in response to a change of mind about the choice that they made. Even when they discover that the leader they chose is different than he used to be. There is no remedy. It has a similarity to Snow White too late discovering that the sweet old lady with the basket of delicious juicy red apples was really a witch in disguise, with a basket of death treats.

I think if the real intent of Democracy is to be upheld, it should be a game played more frequently than every four years. In fact, maybe it should be played at undetermined times, like an unplanned pick-up game on a green field or ice rink. Rather than pulled out of the attic at election time and then stashed, ignored, and allowed to collect dust until the next round.

In the meantime, all it does is provide a fixed resolve for a period of time where nothing can be amended and we are held captive in that dark dungeon, even long after we have discovered the apples are toxic. Democracy loses much sweetness when I think how in real life, democratically-elected leaders can be ‘booed’ but no matter how much they are booed they do what they want, how they want, cause they know full well they cannot be ‘booed’ off the field. That there is no need to remain in game-mode. That there are no ‘out of bounds’ penalties to worry about.

Now, all I’m telling you in this rant is what I was thinking. So now to go to some wildly disconnected dots as I continued to watch the speech about the beauty of democracy in Iraq while in my head I contemplate that other – the ugliness of democracy that we choose to ignore.

I only surf politics, I am a casual skimmer. Not big into that sort of thing. And the other thing I am not into is stock market investments. But having watched this speech which left me so close to conviction and then so utterly disgusted and unimpressed, I felt like doing something quite out of character for me. I felt like smashing my TV.

And then I thought, if I, as a casual bystander, who so pride myself on letting it all run off my back, have this sudden urge to smash my television, then right now at this very moment, it is time for me to buy stocks in television manufacturing. Because if I feel this way, those politically-minded people, in Canada and the U.S., and I know there are a goodly number, will be smashing televisions this morning at an unbelievable rate. And then they’ll all be scurrying downtown next week to buy another. I must buy shares in television manufacturing immediately. It couldn’t be a surer bet.

So I turned on my computer to look for a buying site and that’s when I realized something that totally crushed all my dreams of sudden wealth. The program I was listening too was on the Republican Channel!! I think you know which one I mean. The one with all that spin, enough spin to spin straw into gold.

Puzzled, or Paranoid?

I have other stories to tell, but in the meantime I have something else on my mind – Collapsed bridges, floods, and the uncanny draw that causes a driver to suddenly swerve off a dry, smooth road into a lake, dugout, river, or bog.

That latter bit happens so frequently, it hardly seems purely coincidental. I can’t help but wonder if there is an interplay, or some dynamic of water, tide, and planetary magnetism that we fail to understand that actually leads to these disasters. Something as puzzling as the forces that leash minds and play games with pilots in the Bermuda Triangle.

I am tired of newspapers and broadcasters telling me that someone died in a pond or body of water because they were trapped in a vehicle. I want to know more. I want to know why they were trapped.

Obviously with water pressure, it is well know that opening a door is pretty much impossible. So that leaves only one other method of escape—through the windows. So my question is ‘Do power windows still function when a vehicle is underwater?’ It concerns me.

I can’t help but think, with such extensive flooding, with the compromised quality of so many bridges, with the inability of mankind to understood the curious dynamics of the roadside-wetland-draw, that this is a question that needs to be debated.

Surely if a vehicle plunges into water, roll-down windows would be more dependable…or would they?

Writing...Right

It is so often said that writing is a lonely business, and I truly believe that. When I am feeling isolated, it seems as if words tumble unassisted out of my ‘Word Scrumble Bag’ into a sterling and meticulous arrangement. And with seemingly nothing more than a gentle tap on the ‘enter key’, the words are set in motion and ripple across the page like the smooth tide of dominoes tumbling against each other in measured sequence.

But at the moment, without that isolation, the garbage can in every room is full of feeble attempts that I have been forced to scrap. You may be thinking, “What the hell? You could have published those on your blog. There must have been something in that mess, some small tidbits worth digesting?”

But…No, that is not true. There is nothing there except reams of paper with 350 words per page that hold less fascination than smears on toilet tissue.

I mean, let’s face it. You know me well enough that if there was even a remote likelihood that something I had written might provoke thought, I would have salvaged it. Or, if any of it had done the other things I expect writing to do, I would have retrieved those bits as well.

But I seek a level of compliance. What my writing must first do is touch my own heart, mind, or soul, in some undeniable way. And then, in order for it to be passed on to you it must do more. It must be seductive, grounded, and objective. I know it seldom is, but that in no way alters my conviction of what it should be. I want it to pinch or cradle your heart. I want it to uplift or plunge your soul. I want it to enliven your mental state or calm your spirit. And barring all that, I want it, at the very least, to make you cry or smile. A tall order – but that is my conviction.

It is all so easy, when I am feeling solitary and alone cause that is when writers can really write the way they want to write.

Now the dictionary wrongly leads us to think that loneliness is all about the absence of other people. Big, bad error.

‘Loneliness’ is not the result of being in a solitary place, with no one around. The most extreme and austere feeling of loneliness more often occur in the midst of a mob. In crowded airports or busy shopping malls. I was never so lonely as when I lived in the city in a large apartment building. So, you see, it is not a solitary existence that causes loneliness. What causes loneliness for me, and I expect for most people, is the perception that no one in the crush around me, personally cares about me.

And so that brings me back to the difficulty I am currently having with writing blogs. I can lock myself in the bedroom or even take my laptop to the furnace room but I still have difficulty writing. It is because Hub is here, and in an exceptionally good mood which he has been in for weeks now. And in the midst of his good mood, through ESP, he is transferring to me a ‘caring aura’ that makes it quite impossible for me to feel isolated enough to write.

But I want to write, need to write, and since I cannot write in this climate of acceptance, love, and belonging, today I am determined it is going to end.

Now other people, in a similar position, who take their writing far too seriously, might want to piss in Hub’s cornflakes. Relax, I’m not going to do anything that extreme. Although, I am thinking about how disgusted he would be to find warm milk on his cold cereal. I’m also thinking of shrinking his favorite sweater, waking him up from his nap to talk to a pre-taped solicitor-conversation on the telephone, or putting margarine in the dish designated for butter. Not anything really nasty but still strategies that might work.

Silly, relatively harmless stuff that will make Hub cranky and impatient, and as a result of this impatience, I, being naturally insecure, will begin to doubt that he cares about me. And as soon as that doubt grips my thoughts, loneliness will be hard on its heels, and then I will go to my laptop and just write happily and unencumbered.

I mean obviously, if you love to write, and want to write, the way I do, sacrifices have to be made and drastic measures taken. Right now I am making a nice cup of tea for Hub with lukewarm water.

So chins up, out there in Cyberland, don’t blink. Cause if you do you’ll miss all those thought-provoking blogs that are going to come blasting in rapid succession into this space in the next few days.

Objections to a Second Round

Sometimes I question whether life in the hereafter will be a paradise in heaven or a reincarnation that will replant me on this earth for another round as a newborn. I hope it isn’t reincarnation as a newborn, cause I find no appeal in that thinking. And I’ll tell you why.

Too much change. All I can think is that first of all I will be confined for far too much time in solitary confinement in a darkened nursery. Without even the benefit of leaf shadows trapped in a beam on sunlight on the wall to dance for my amusement. Room must be dark. I don’t know why, but it just must be.

And if I scream in protest against this blank environment, without sensory perception and the sweet smell of she who conceived me, with dry pants, and a recent feeding, I’ll be left to scream. No one will ken to my cries between scheduled maintenance. That would throw painfully-held-to routines off schedule. No, it is time for me to ‘go down’ and ‘go down’ I must.

And I’ll get no small firm pillow like I did the last round. And instead of soothing warm sweet milk that I got the first round, I’ll probably get a room- temp bottle with cool gawd-awful gross-tasting formula.

And if I do get a blanket, which is unlikely, as blankets in cribs are no longer recommended, it will not be a lovely breathable fluffy cotton one. Instead it will be some kind of downy soft but yet so miserable acrylic or micro-fibre similar to a plastic bag covering – freezing cold in winter, a humidity trap in summer.

And I will definitely not get those blessed times when I was placed on a soaker pad in the raw and the skin on my little bum allowed to drink in sunlight for a few moments – a brief time of freedom to bath in unadulterated exposure to cool atmospheric breath. I shudder to think that in the next round I will be solidly and consistently wrapped in a stretch-wrap diaper contaminated by plastic or man-made materials and hermetically sealed against the escape of contents from the inside and the injection of air from the outside.

I fear too, if given a second round, I’ll not be swaddled firmly and tightly. I found that so comforting the first time round because it so closely replicated the close, warm, and snugly place I was in for nine long months. Instead I’ll be dressed in nothing more than the stretch-wrap I have already referred to with all my limbs flailing and my head flopping and my little soul so anxious and traumatized without the snug all-encompassing body-wrap security I had grown so acclimatized to while in the womb.

And when traveling, I’ll be put in a car seat and compelled to stay in that thing folded up in an unnatural position feeling no less comfortable than when I tried to sleep in a bean-bag-chair when I was seventeen years old, the first time round, and five foot seven. The car seat wouldn’t be so bad if my head was not unnaturally forced up completely out of alignment with my spine.

The first time round, yeh, agreed, I traveled in vehicles on my mom’s lap which was so not good. But my road trips were very few. For the most part, I traveled safely on hips magically spread during birthing for that very purpose. To provide a hip-saddle for me to straddle. First time around that was my transport. My mother did all she needed to do throughout her busy days with me riding on her hip, one hand around my waist, while I burped up gas readily and eyed from my perch the floor for the most part and occasionally the path ahead. My father used to say, “Woman, don’t you think that child is uncomfortable slung over one arm like a sack of potatoes?”

But my mother knew. She knew how much I loved to perch there despite the sudden pitching and jolting and yawing that came with her picking up things from the floor, reaching high into cupboards, and making beds. I was there for the ride and you can have your Drop of Dome, or Roller-Coaster thrills, cause my thrills were in this accommodating place. And the sudden pitches often left me giggling like any ride at an Amusement Park.

And if reincarnated, I just know I wouldn’t be allowed to gum up buttery toast long before I show promise of a first tooth. No longer allowed to practice the wondrous art of chewing on an almost, but not fully, stripped, turkey drumstick at Christmas or a juicy, but still warm and buttery, bare cob of garden corn. But going back to the toast, I have to be conciliatory about that criticism because God knows commercial bread does not hold together like home-made bread. Even yet, with my false teeth, as soon as I take a bite it clums to the top of my mouth and sticks there like glue. No, you’re absolutely right. One can’t be giving a young babe that stuff to sage the desire they may have to work toothless gums.

But worst of all, I guess, are the plastic chairs. The car-chairs, the lounge chairs. I know if I had a second round I would end up in a plastic lounge chair on the floor in some kitchen in the middle of the winter where the temperature at the floor is ten degrees colder than room temperature (despite sophisticated central heating) but no one would be aware of that except me. Me with my tiny back against shockingly cold plastic augmented by what is foolishly expected to insulate. Can anyone adequately personify how I feel with that acrylic, man-made fiber, or plastic-based fleece that just grabs the cold and fires it into my back and kidneys like a cannon?

If I am to return for another round, I want lounge chairs and car seats padded with wool or cotton or down – even straw would be a better insulator against cold and heat than all those layers of synthetic resins.

And always, and always, to lie on my back. To vomit while on my back. Yuck. I admit, I can’t dispute that it is dangerous to lie a baby in a crib on their stomach or side, because I am no scientist. But the first time around I lived in nest that moved from room to room as my mother moved from room to room. I laid on my stomach or side with a monitor imaging, not only me, but my rate of breathing, the regularity of chest movements, body temperature, posture, and stomach gurglings. A monitor that was more efficient than an electronic device with its beepers and instant digital screen-imaging. My mother monitored me by hovering over my bed like a guardian angel when I wasn’t on her hip bouncing through the day.

And though I may wail, I probably still wouldn’t get a soother. And of course, under no circumstances would I be allowed to alternately soothe my frazzled nerves with my thumb. Cause babies get crooked mouths by sucking thumbs, and soothers. Besides, both are so grossly non-hygienic.

And of course I would not be allowed to partake of vegetables and meat pureed into a smooth warm satisfying elixir until I had completed my probationary sentence of 5 months, 9 months, or whatever my mother’s all-wise Baby Doctor (without children) insisted upon. No thanks, I don’t want to deal with that either. That’s far too much harsh controlled behavior for me to be me.

And since the latest research indicates that colds are caused from exposure to others with colds rather than winds or chilly temps, there is little understanding that a tiny body needs so much more warmth than a big body. And little note taken of the relationship between colds and chilly floors, plastic wrap, brisk winds, and a tiny body.

So no, I don’t want a reincarnation with another run. Not with these kinds of inconveniences and miserable discomforts to deal with.

But was all as grand the first round, as I claim it to be? Maybe not, cause that first round included corporal discipline. The sting of a wooden spoon smartly applied to my bottom when I reached the age of understanding. But you know what? With that kind of self-sacrifice and complete attentive devotion, there was no risk of psychological damage. I was held too long and too close to the breast for me to ever doubt my mother’s love.

So I guess there is something more to be said about discipline. If you take away a child’s blanket, trap them in plastic, feed them cool milk or insufficient sustenance despite their quest for more; and if you ban a soother or a thumb, and regularly isolate them from the body scents that wrap them in security, you best not be slapping them on the bottom with anything. Obviously psychological damage is right there knocking at the door before they have even reached the age of understanding.

I sometimes wonder if all this interchange of cold and separation does not cause the chilled spirits, frigid souls, and unfeeling connections that young people of today possess that so distresses parents. Maybe we are completely off track when we assume it is the result of exposure to violence on TV and the sterility of gizmo-facilitated relationships.

Rushing to Paradise

On Thursday I did something I haven’t done for years and years. Hub and I, and ED (eldest daughter) spent the afternoon on a large secluded property where we picnicked and walked the dogs. And after lunch on a quick hike ED and I picked what we could of blueberries calling out to us as we threaded our way down crude horse trails.

Hub, of course, picked no berries for the pail. He has a problem, always has, always will, that when he gets a handful of berries, his elbow bends and his mouth flies open. ED tried to trick him by slipping our pail as close as possible to him and saying, “you’re going to drop those soon if you don’t empty your hand,” but all to no avail. Again the elbow would bend as if to drop them in the pail and then of course the mouth would fly open and that would be the end of that.

But I digress. What I wanted to tell you is that when I got home and cleaned my meager three cups of wild berries Hub wanted them fresh with ice cream. But I couldn’t do it. Something was pushing me to do jam. Silly thought with so few berries. But I had four apples in the fridge so I peeled and diced them to make more fruit. And a while later I had two small jars and a desert dish of fresh jam. When it cooled I buttered some fresh home-made bread, made a cup of tea, and slathered my jam on that bread.

Now this is where words fail me. How can I begin to describe the pleasure of sinking teeth and lips into that jam? I fought brutally against that first overwhelming desire to cram it all in one great gigantic wad into my mouth. I must savor it all – take it little by little.

I sniffed the delicate aroma. So soft and sweet and barely discernible. The color – as beautiful as sapphires blended with navy skies. A sparkling blue that has yet to be duplicated in a world with 11,070,014 colors and 854 shades of blue and 4 falsely labeled ‘blueberry’ blue.

I took a bite and pressed it against the top of my mouth allowing it to fornicate with my tastebuds in that small dark space. I moved it to the back of my throat and succumbed to its caress. With no will of mind involved, it stroked my mind, my throat, my tongue, my heart, and pressed delicately through every vein. My life flashed before me. Childhood, games, hikes, special moments, a dear Mother, and all blessings that followed me, descended on me, visited me, and harbored me.

But then when I swallowed it, something quite unexpected happened. I felt it working, resolving that business of the food anxiety I’ve had for far too long. That rotating and disturbing thought of need and want. Of standing confused and undecided in front of a fridge door that offers nothing that appeals to me. Chronic hunger without knowing what I crave. Eternal longing for something nameless. But with that first swallow of wild blueberry jam, I knew immediately this is what I longed for, this is what I craved. This was the emptiness within.

It felt so good, feeling it doing its work of tenderness and benevolence. Blowing new life into healthy cells and crushing malicious ones. Rushing at a mad frictionless-pace through every physical and emotional atom of my body and renewing it. Redemptive deliverance.

Oh God – give me more!

Making a House a Home

Okay. So this morning Hub and I began recycling this same conversation that keeps coming up so frequently in the last few weeks. Hub is searching for a way to find motivation in his retirement; an environment where all has changed and all is different.

There are no longer defined tasks. There are no promotions, no monetary rewards, and often no verbal accolades. So, in his attempts to come to grips with a lifetime of working as a Big Boss in the workplace, every once in a while he sinks into the muck of ‘why do I groom my lawn if it is only for sporadic visitors and a few close neighbors?’

And it’s a good point. With retirement we are suddenly out of our element. We have moved beyond the corporate world of competition and tangible rewards. And that sudden jerk in our reality has left us bereft of the purpose, meaning, and motivation that life once had.

So in desperation, and I do believe this IS desperation, he looks at the lawn and says to me, “If one of my old girlfriends happened to stop by, I could not let her see my lawn looking like this!”…and then away he goes to groom the yard.

I laugh, but finally this morning, I said. “That ‘old girlfriend’ thing you so often use for motivation has me stymied. So first I have to ask, When are you expecting her to come?”

He laughs and says, “That’s just the problem, I don’t know.”

I laugh too. And secondly I say, “I have to ask, if you go into a really clean spotless house or a well manicured yard, do you think more of those who live there?”

He was totally honest. “No,” he said. “I don’t. But I definitely think a whole lot less of those who don’t make an effort.”

That was a response agreeable to me. So that settles the yard issue, so I already knew where we would be going next – to the house discussion. And I was right. I’ve got pretty good intuition after all the years I’ve spent with this man. But its not all old hat, because usually with the expected comes some kind of new surprise. The surprise was I found his comments on the house agreeable as well.

“I like a clean house,” he said. “But I like it to reflect that it is lived in, that it is a comfortable home. Like my Mom’s always was. Neat and tidy, but homey with that bit of knitting by her chair, recipe magazines near at hand, and some extra cake in the pan on the counter.”

So there you have it – free advice from the Expert…on how to find motivation to groom the lawn and how to make a house a home.

So in conclusion, I guess I won’t be dusting or vacuuming today. I just realized there are cookies on the counter but there is no knitting by the chair.