"Where Have All The Flowers Gone..."

"I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will eventually triumph. And there is purpose and worth to each and every life."     ~Ronald Reagan

“Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing...” An iconic folk song of the sixties associated with life, getting married, war and death. A song most will remember associated with the Vietnam War and the senseless killings of our American soldier. A song for remembering the era of hippies, flower power, Civil Rights movement and the Feminist movement. It's a song I heard on the radio today that invoked an outpouring of memories from my past.

I gathered my old yearbooks, the ones shoved in a box at the back of my closet, and paid attention to every face on every page. “Where have all the flowers gone” played in the back of my mind when I flipped through those pages. Then unconsciously, the lyrics spilled over my lips and I was singing the tune. With every turn of the page, I saw the faces of the kids I went to grade school, junior high, and high school, and couldn't help but wonder what happened to some of those people. I saw the smiling black and white faces of those who's young lives ended before they ever experienced the world on their own. I saw the faces of those who died a senseless tragic death. I saw a few who was wounded or died serving our country. I saw faces of those who have successful careers, and some who were not so fortunate. I saw mothers and fathers who are now grandparents. And I saw faces of people were were once my friends in a different time. Where have all those faces gone, long time ago?

Some of those people, I have reconnected with through social networking which I am grateful for the connection. Some of those faces never knew my name but only as a face in the hall with a sea of other kids when the class changing bell rang. Others might think, “Oh, her!” with some condescending phrase afterward. And that's all right because its human nature to talk about others. Some of the faces I recognized right off, then others I had to think about for a moment. There were many I liked, some I didn't, one or two I had a crush on, and some I wish I could forget. We all have those memories, good and bad associated with going to school. There might even be someone reading this I went to school with and can associate my former self in their own minds with one of the things I just mentioned. I was a wall flower, I didn't seem to fit in and I was the new girl. Some things you get over, and some things you want to bury. Glancing through many yearbooks and class pictures this afternoon, it all came flooding back.

You wonder about the aggressors, the agitators, the jocks, the class clowns and the cheerleaders. You wonder if they had children, and if they turned out to be the mirror images of the parents. Then you recall the painfully shy kid that stuttered, or the girl who was brutally terrorized in the locker room or the kid that had the worst acne in school. You think of the kid who walked funny or the one who always smelled bad. Then there are some people wouldn't wonder about such things because they were the “in” crowd. Most of those kids thought they held themselves to a higher degree of greatness. They probably wouldn't remember the kid's face who was abused at home, or the one who never had the pleasure of wearing new clothes, or the one that didn't have indoor plumbing. They wouldn't remember the kid who struggled to make it through the day without being bullied or the girl who's phone number or comments was written on the john wall which ruined her life.

It's a funny thing looking at old school pictures. Try it sometime. It conjures up a time some would want to return to live all over again as the best days of their life. In others, it dredges up unpleasant memories which defined the person they would be become for the rest of their lives. “Where have all the flowers gone...young girls picked them every one...when will they ever learn?”



Peter, Paul & Mary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QZq-wKaBWc&list=RD1QZq-wKaBWc#t=26

When Inspiration Comes In Waves

When I sat at my desk today with the task of writing at hand, I drew a blank. I do that often. I want to write about something profound, so profound that it invokes a tear, a feeling, or maybe even anger. I'm not an angry person. I know the feeling well, but today, anger is not my agenda.

When someone gives me a book, or I gift a book to someone, they or myself have to write an inscription or a well meaning message of some kind inside, and then of course, date it. Somehow, it makes a great book an even greater personal gift, because there was some thought in the process of picking it out much like picking out a greeting card. I happened to open one of those gift books today and that act prompted this post. The book was a gift from my son for Mother's Day several years back. In it he wrote, “Mom, I hope this helps spark the fire for many more ideas, just like you sparked many of the fires in my life...” Tears welled in my eyes after I read the rest of the message. When I wiped my eyes, I thought how he must have believed in me and my ability to produce the one thing I wanted to do more than anything in my life, and that was to write a book.

I had personal things in my life to conquer so writing was put on hold for a while. Those of you who have read my earlier blogs will understand this unplanned sabbatical. Two books, shorts stories, and a stack of poetry patiently waited for me to return to the beautiful purple heart and cherry wood desk and chair my husband made me. He believed in me too. He always believed in me, even when I didn't believe in myself. I brooded upon the sins and mistakes of yesterday so exclusively that I had no energy and mind left for living a day. Then one day, not long ago, I squinted at this familiar woman in the mirror and said, “I know you. Aren't you the procrastinator?” Well, you know what my answer was, and I said, “Yes, that would be me.” It was on that day, I sat back down at my desk to write.

It is the nature of our minds to create its own conditions whether we live in the past, stay content in the present, or build a beautiful set of wings to glide into our future. Every established mental condition is an acquired habit, and it is by the repetition of our thoughts. A thought constantly repeated will become a fixed habit of the mind, and from such habits proceed the life. So when I told myself I wasn't good enough or that no one was interested in what I wrote, I didn't give myself the opportunity to keep striving for that letter from someone, somewhere that my work was finally accepted. Instead, after a few rejections or lack of response, I tossed my work aside and dabbled again in self pity. It's just like the thief to refrain from stealing when opportunity occurs, because he has lived so long in desirous and greedy thoughts he renders unto his craft.

A dear friend who is a successful author and published playwright reminded me again that she didn't get where she was overnight. It was a compilation of years of hard work, rejections, and perseverance above all. She reminded me that when the right path is begun, success will come if it is not abandoned. First struggle, then victory. “You can do it, and you will do it well,” she affirmed. I promised, like I was ten years old again, I would once again try. As long as I am posting on my blogs, the words are flowing and I am working on other projects as well. It's a nice reprieve from a bigger project. My dad used to tell us kids, “Find something you love to do, then make a career out of it and then you will find happiness in all you do.” I have loved the arts and literature all my life, so dad, if you're smiling down on me right now, and I hope you are, I promise I will finish that damn book and my bucket list will be fulfilled. (Sorry dad, I didn't mean to say damn... :)

Sharing of Time

"One tries to cure signs of growth, to exorcise them, as if they were devils, when really they might be angels of annunciation."

 

 What a release it is to write that you forget yourself, your companions, forget where you are or what you're going to do next...to be so drenched in work your work that you feel you're drenched in sleep or in a body of water. Keystrokes coming alive on the laptop in front of you. Then, pricked by hunger, I rise in a daze for an afternoon snack. Reeling from my self absorption, I come back to the chore of providing nourishment, as if it were a lifeline to reality after almost drowning in a sea of words. I welcome the firm ground under my feet. I hate taking breaks, but I know it's a necessity to reduce a growing number of physical boundaries. Lazily, I grab a bowl of fruit and sit outside in the thick humid air. The lack of blue skies haven't clouded my thoughts but inspired a longing to run again. I hate that the feeling comes often, but I have learned to accept it as my nature.  

 

I have the desire to pack up again and find that place of aloneness by the ocean for a week or preferably more. This time I would like to share a part of it with a girlfriend. Waking to the soft rustling of the palm trees and the gentle sleep breathing rhythm of waves on the shore. We'd run bare-legged to the beach, which lies smooth and glistening with fresh wet shells after the night's tides. The morning swim would be a blessing, a baptism, a rebirth to the beauty and wonder of the world. We'd run back tingling to hot coffee on the front porch. With legs in the sun we'd laugh and plan our day. And since communication is more important to us than chores, the dishes and sweeping sand off the floors will wait.

 

Out on the beach for the afternoon, we would walk the beach in silence, but in harmony keeping track of the sandpipers ahead of us move like a corps of dancers keeping time to some interior rhythm inaudible to us. Intimacy is blown away. Emotions are carried out to sea. We are even free of our thoughts, at least of their articulation, clean and bare as the sun-bleached driftwood, empty as shells, but so willing to be filled again with the impersonal sea, sky and wind. A long afternoon soaking up God's creation.

 

And when we are heavy and relaxed as the seaweed under our feet, we return to the intimacy of our cottage for the evening. We sip wine in leisure in front of a fire. We start dinner and we talk. Because good communication is stimulating as strong coffee, it's hard to sleep after. And so we go out again into the night. We walk up the beach and when we are tired of walking, we lie flat on the sand under a bowl of stars and take in the magnitude of the universe.

 

This is what I thirst for after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy and even communication.  I thirst for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into my soul like a fresh tide. Then at last, from the immensity of this heavenly body, we walk back to the small cottage glowing from the mist of darkness with the embers still smoldering in the fireplace.

 

What a wonderful day this would be I think turning it around in my head to its starting point. What has made it so perfect? It was freedom. A setting not cramped in space or in time. It was a balance of physical, intellectual and social life. It had an easy unforced rhythm. A friendship balanced on a shaft of air like a seagull.

 

I am reminded of these kinds of things when I talk to other women friends. We all want the same...a pure relationship not weighted down with irrelevancies, just life itself, the accumulations of life and of time. It is free of ties or claims, unburdened by responsibilities about the future or debts to the past.

 

I realize my life lacks this quality of significance because there is so little empty space. Too many activities, and things to occupy my time. There are too many pages to fill with words, too many hopes and dreams to fulfill.

 

For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a second flowering, a second growth or even a kind of second adolescence? So, when I am reminded by my women friends that sometimes playing with makeup and getting a new hair style matters more, then I will take those few precious moments and run with them with joy in the now, and peace that I am where I am supposed to really be.