A Connection is Forged

"It's not about sharing the work, but about creating a connection. It's not about the writer or about the reader. Each is unknown to the other but, nonetheless, an intimate relationship is formed."

“What is it that won't allow us to live our lives? What is inside of us that doesn't let us fully enjoy life? You only notice that you're suffering when it gets worse than usual. And why do we have to think about ourselves all the time? Why are there so many thoughts that evolve about, me, myself, and mine? How often do you try to rearrange the world to please yourself? The answer is because you are not all right inside and you try everything to make yourself feel better. And, the only reason you think about your psychological well-being so much is because it has not been feeling well for a long time.”
Interesting stuff, indeed.
You mistreat yourself by giving your psyche a responsibility that is incomprehensible to attain. Self-consciousness, insecurity, jealousy, envy take over and binds all these element into one large rubber-band ball of fear. Any second dry-rot can cause one of the rubber bands to snap then your mind is constantly giving you advise how to make it all okay. I heard it explained once that in a physical sense, the turmoil in your psyche is equivalent to your physical body scaling a mountain or leaping over an ocean. Your body would get sick if you made it do the impossible and pain and weakness would set in. But the signs of a broken psyche is underlying fear and incessant neurotic thoughts. No wonder, most of us think we fix our inner problems by excelling at external games. It's instinct. It's survival.

Once in a while in the middle of all this inner chaos someone or some thing happens and gets you back on track, and thank God it does. Sometimes you need more than one nudge to believe in yourself and in your dreams again. One of those sources of inspiration I acknowledged in my last blog. He is a very special person in my life who can personally identify with exactly what goes on with your thoughts when they suddenly tend to do somersaults. This time, I want to acknowledge another very special person in my life, my son, who reminds me that my story does matter and believes with the right motivation and perseverance I can overcome the darkness than often surrounds my world.
  

If you know me well, you will know I believe in angels...truly believe in angels. And, I believe God puts people in our paths for a reason at a particular moment in time. You may not always recognize them when you see them, but in this case I think I did. I had an encounter with a stranger out of the blue on Wednesday. A stranger who happened to walk down my street and wave to me on the day it took all I could muster to work in my yard. She was a woman, face lined with age and a kind and caring aura about her. I don't open up to very many people, but she knew my life in a nutshell before she walked away almost an hour and a half later. We talked about family, about God, about life and it's joys and disappointments, death, about what it is to be a woman, and how crippling depression can be. She left and I was uplifted in a strange and unusual way. Instead on going indoors like I planned, I stayed outside and planted three lavender bushes. Two hours later, the nameless stranger returned bearing a gift. She said I needed an angel and brought me one in the form of a beautiful porcelain doll. I stood and cried. I didn't know what else to do. She left and told me she'd be around again one day. I didn't question who she was, or where she lived. It seemed unimportant at the time. But, I have a feeling she'll be around when I get to the place I don't need to be at again.

"Not Always So"

“What you do in your life you will often do in spite of your fear.”

“Where does the pain go?” asks Donna Masini in her poem “Eye of the Skull.” The poet just had come back from the dentist when she had a cavity filled. She walks down the street with her mouth numb and notices a crazy woman behind her. “An older woman / dressed as a young girl. She had gone to a good school / liked good things had them too. You could tell. / She is screaming into herself, into the air. Vulgar things, shouting them to no one in particular / that I can see.”
I read that poem with a shock of recognition and identified with the numb part and the crazy woman. I know the pain came from somewhere. I am afraid if I let myself feel the accumulation and the enormity of those feelings, I would become that woman and I would go to a place from which I would not recover or return.
The rest of the poem; “What is trapped in the bones, the gearlike teeth / that join the two cramped parts / of the shell? What clenches and curls in the marrow? / Did the pain surface, just then? Did all that / numbed pain come in one great rush?”
To write is to have an ongoing script with your own pain. To scream to it, with it, and from it. Do I keep it and try to study it at a later date, or do I scrap it like a passing thought? It's a hallowed mess inside me—something I wonder if I inherited. Who's genes can I blame when I try to reason with the crazy woman screaming behind me?
The Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield once said that all of life can be summed up in three words: not always so. We plan our day going one particular direction? Not always so. Can we expect people to behave the way they always have? Not always so. Do we know when we've missed the mark? Not always so. Life is a pattern, then there's a defining moment that depicts the pattern as life as we know it making each day more complex. Can we recognize or define that singular moment which changes how you used to think or how you used to feel? Not always so.
Occasionally, you can feel the momentum of a wrong day running against you, and if it does, maybe the best thing to do is crawl back in bed and wait for it to pass so you don't end up with gum in your hair, or step in something unpleasant. But ah, if it were only that easy. Life goes on and we learn to take the bitter with the sweet some say. We live with decisions we make for the better of the over all good. Do we think of others when we make those decisions? Not always so. Do we think of our self? Not always so.
Someone recently pointed out when I'm depressed I tend to fall back on the same language. It's the road map that maps out my most hidden and most sensitive wounds. And yes, I often tend to fall back on the same words—repetitive and tiresome to those who haven't been down the same road, but like poking a bruise to me. I use this darkness as an opportunity to externalize what's inside me. I don't always fully understand things that occur in my life, but writing affords me a different perspective, and allows me to work out perplexing events or emotions. When I do, the world recedes and my words are the only thing that will save me and bring me back to enjoy the rising sun of another day.

I am very fortunate to have someone in my life who understands these jumbled up, mixed up words and can read in between the lines. That person also knows depression and knows it's not worn like a badge of honor. It makes me know my misery has company and is understood as long as I take it one day at a time.

Curmudgeonness? Is that a real symptom?

 If you can risk getting lost somewhere along the day you might stumble upon openings that link you to your depths. ~Anonymous

Today is not unlike yesterday and the day before. I read and I write in the morning. I try to put my thoughts into written words before my mind is cluttered with an array of tasks. An open book laid on my desk and these words popped from the page like a neon sign, “infirmity of purpose.” It was a phrase that made me think now that we are into the early days of another new year and my own vacillation has turned me again into my first and foremost critic.

I feel I am becoming indifferent to many things that were once important to me and relish my alone time. If there was a medical term for the condition, I suppose it could be called the early onset of curmudgeonness. I dislike these thoughts since sometimes it seems so cold and so harsh. Am I that, I wonder over the aroma of piping hot coffee? In some people's eyes, I probably am. I envision myself at some point playing the leading role in life like Anne Ramsey who played Momma in Danny DiVito's movie Throw Momma from the Train, or a female version of Mr. Wilson in Dennis the Menace. I hate the thought since it denotes not caring and having little feeling for things that used to matter. Perhaps I am a simply tired soul who doesn't have the energy for anything but inertia, shutting down and keeping my feelings to myself. I wonder if this happens to people who've been single most of their life or does it only seem to happen to those married several decades? Is it a “woman thing” for those who are approaching or in post menopause? And, is it actually spelled men-o-pause, a need to pause from men and is it possible all women in long-term relationships crave a separation to regenerate to grow stronger? Or, maybe it's a part of that seven year cycle my mother mentioned when I was was young? Who knows. I'm still in search of an answer.

If you've followed my blogs for the past several years, you know my life is pretty much an open book. Some people would say they know me, others are still trying to figure me out. I don't believe one can know another entirely. I've tried to always retain a part of myself that is nobody's business, which is not always an easy feat. I have always strived for some level of autonomy and as I write this, I think my first real stand of independence is when I moved to a new town as a young teenager. I always hated my given name and my thought at the time was, a new place, the new girl, a new name. I kept the same initials so it wasn't too odd when I ordered my class ring, strange reasoning, but then again, I was fourteen. My given name was a two-name first name which the nuns at the Catholic school I attended for eight years seemed to always emphasize to embarrass me in front of the class. It took me nearly thirty more years to legally change it, because in the back of my mind I could hear my mother saying... “My daughter is blankity blank...” With a strong emphasis on “my daughter.” It was one decision in my life I never caved-in on nor felt totally guilty about.

I confess I have never known real independence. In which, I have never stood on my own two feet and tackled the world head on as a singular entity. I have never lived on my own or experienced how I would face the following day without someone at my side. The decisions I've made never included aloneness. Yet, the reality of total independence scares the hell out of me. I imagine if and when that day may come, what I wanted and desired the most would feel like pure and terrifying abandonment as the resonating phrase, “be careful what you wish for” pounds my brain into useless gray matter. I'm not sure I wish to be alone as much as I desire it. But, the constant need for change and independence is as strong as it was when I was that young dark-haired girl in needing of something hotly cold to bite my soul.

It's All In The Eyes

 

The eye is the lamp of the body; so if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.

~Matthew 6:22

 

 

Eyes wide open.  Eyes on fire.  Eyes in motion.  Lying eyes.  Crazy eyes.  Eyes are windows to the soul. The eye is the window to the universe. The eyes of an old soul.  Evil eye.  The all watching eye. Bedroom eyes.  The eye of the tiger.  Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.  The apple of my eye.

 

Language is filled with metaphors referring to eye contact. It's a major factor through which we communicate our wants and needs. It's said that by looking into the eyes of a person one can see their hidden emotions, attitudes and thoughts. We associate identity with the eyes from the day we are born. I was taught when I spoke to someone, I made eye contact. It not only showed good etiquette, it showed respect. My dad once told me not to date a particular boy because he couldn't look him in the eye when he shook his hand. It was another case he knew more than I did. He taught me a lot more useful knowledge about body language and I may have even been the twinkle of his eye, but that's irrelevant to this post. I truly believe the eyes is the space where your true identity dwells and allows you to see your inner light shining dim or bright.

 

I'm writing about eyes because I learn a lot about people in a non-verbal way. I have seen tremendous pain and sadness, I have seen liars and dishonesty. I have seen sincerity, hatred and evil. And I have seen love and forgiveness. One time or another, we all have picked up on one or more of these attributes. Which now brings me to why I am writing about eyes.

 

I love antiquing and I confess it's a bit of an addiction. It's not the kind of addiction where I have to hock something to purchase something else that reminds me of days gone by. I would say it's more of finding something that touches my heart or an object I think I absolutely can't live without. Every where you go, antique shops are popping up because people need or desire to touch something of their past. An object that reminds them of grandma, grandpa, mom or dad or just a reminder when life was less complicated.

 

During our recent vacation, we found a very unique shop in Florida with the most unusual things. It housed a large collection of 50's and 60's Hollywood art, framed Vargas prints and the largest selection of working console stereos I had ever seen. I was reminded of the wonderful earthy sounds my parent's fabulous Hi Fi, my mother's pride and joy. One record after another played on the shop owner's prized stereo while we browsed the delightful store. My husband goes his way, and I go mine. We search every nook and every shelf looking for a new found treasure. This day, both of us found something we couldn't live without.

 

I saw my husband gravitate towards a collection of knives then I went my way. Up and down the isles, in and out of rooms dedicated to a specific eras, I saw things I grew up with, toys, jewelry, vintage clothing, furniture, even a huge collection of unique ashtrays. I was awed picking up, touching and reminiscing around the shop when I saw it, a beautifully matted and framed photograph hanging waist high. It wasn't the picture or how it was framed that attracted me, nor was it the person. It was the eyes of the woman in the photograph. I sat on an ivory upholstered chair next to the picture, stared only at her eyes and began to cry. I have never done this before, at least not in public. I dabbed the running mascara and walked away. I meandered towards the back of the store a little embarrassed and saw my husband up front negotiating with the owner about a knife he was holding. After 43 years of living with this man, the look on his face told me he was having an emotional moment too.

The next thing I know, I'm standing in front of the photograph again having the same reaction. This time my guy is standing next to me wanting to know if I needed a hug. I turned away and said, “No. I want the picture.” He was miffed why I needed a picture of her. It's not my thing, nor has it ever been to have framed pictures of celebrities. When I was a teenage I had dozens of pictures of teen heartthrobs plastered on my bedroom walls. But never had that desire as an adult. 

“Can't you see the pain in her eyes?” I asked with tear filled eyes. He shrugged. He didn't understand. “Her eyes evoke something deep within me. I can't explain it,” I said. Without a single word, he took it off the wall and handed it to me. I took it to the counter to negotiate a lower price with the owner and once again I could barely maintain my composure. They didn't understand either. If I had a bad day, or I felt the world was crashing down on me, I could understand why I reacted the way I did when I saw this photograph, but it wasn't the case that day. It was her eyes and only her eyes.

My husband showed me his purchase and began to tell me why buying this ivory handled switchblade was important to him. His eyes softened and he choked on his words. “I had a knife identical to this. I gave it to Angel for good luck before he went to Nam.” He went on to tell me the story when his friend returned and thanked him for the good luck piece. I heard the story before long ago, but I listened with compassion once again. When his friend returned home, he apologized for losing the knife. He told him it saved his life when he had to use it on “Charlie.” It's been years since he's seen or heard from his friend, but the memory of the day he gave his blade to his buddy is still embedded in his mind and in his heart.

 

We left the shop of oddities and treasures with our heartfelt purchases. The price we paid was nominal for what we thought and felt was priceless that afternoon. The picture of Marilyn now hangs in our guest room. When I look at her beautiful face and into her eyes, it still evokes a soulful emotion. Like all art form, it's understood in the eye of the beholder. And I understood. The knife is polished, sharpened and placed in a handmade case. It makes my guy smile.

Marilyn Monroe

Photographed by Milton H. Green

Pensive Ballerina, 1954

 

"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.