THE IRAQ WAR - FULL CIRCLE

I've posted this before -- found courtesy of the Wayback Machine -- of the post I made the day we invaded Iraq, on March 19, 2003.  This month, the war in Iraq officially ends, and our troops will be out of Iraq by December 31st. 

As we wrap up, and hope and pray that we'll be done in Afghanistan soon as well, I'd like to thank a few people who performed above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks to the "other" 1% -- the percentage of Americans who were actually asked to make real sacrifices for this war -- for all that they gave and all that they lost. Thanks to their families who lost them, for a while, or forever, depending on how or if they returned.  Thanks to President Obama for finally getting this done, despite my doubts that he would in the end.

March 19, 2003

My country went to war today. A deadline passed, a stand-off persisted, and then came the rockets.

If I had to sum up how I feel, I'd call it sadness. I'm so, so sad. I'm sad it's come to this. I'm sad that my feelings of overwhelming cynicism made me believe that it always would come to this. And I'm sad that so many people will not be satisfied, will not have had enough, until blood is spilled and people are dead.

When I was a child, I used to think that if we could just find a way to get out of Viet Nam, we would live in peace. After all, hadn't we learned our lesson about war? Now, nearly thirty years later, here we are again, sending troops to fight for something that vaguely resembles liberty. Something that's been dressed up in noble cloth and made to look like a noble cause. But try as I might, I can't see the Emperor's clothes. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Emperor is, in fact, naked.

My country went to war today. I pray that things will happen quickly, with a minimum of bloodshed and casualty, and then we'll bring our soldiers home in one piece. And maybe this time, we'll have learned our lesson.

The right lesson.

The lesson that we've learned? I'm not sure entirely. "Never bring a knife to a gunfight?" No, that's close, but not quite. "Who's the bigger fool? The fool or the fool that follows him?" Getting warmer.

Maybe it's something simpler and more straightforward. As a young man, my father served in the Air Force during the Korean War as a jet mechanic and one of his fellow mechanics, a big, gentle Alabama boy that never picked a fight, but never ran from one either had a favorite saying he'd use on my dad often.

"Don't let your alligator mouth run away with your hummingbird ass." 

Yeah... yeah, that's it....

What Penn State Tells Us About Us

I am in the middle of NaNoWriMo, and so I didn't want to take time out to write about anything else.  But this just won't die, and I have to state my piece so I can let it go and go back to the novel.

I have watched for the past several weeks about the events that have unfolded surrounding former college football coach Jerry Sandusky and the accusation that he has, for the past couple of decades, used his position as a college football mainstay to form a charity called Second Mile, which allowed him to gain access to and sexually abuse God-knows-how-many young boys, most of them pre-teens.  Worse still, it now appears -- and becomes more evident with each passing day -- that his colleagues and bosses at Penn State, both in and out of the athletics program knew he was sexually abusing these boys, and for inexplicable reasons, chose to remain silent.


In what I think is the most horrific story, in 2002, then-assistant coach Mike McQueary came across Sandusky, in a shower, in the process of raping a 10-year-old boy.  He told a grand jury last week that - the next day - he told head coach Joe Paterno, who reported the incident in turn to the head of Penn State's athletic department (Tim Curley), who in turn reported it to Penn State's president, Graham Spanier. The result?  What did these fine individuals, charged with the molding and shaping of Pennsylvania's young people do when confronted with this ghastly circumstance?


Sandusky was apparently ordered simply not to bring children from Second Mile to Penn State's campus again.

End of story.

Now, the buggering chickens have come home to roost, at last, Sandusky has been charged, and Joe Paterno has been fired. And how did many of the fine young people at Penn State choose to respond to this scandal? They rioted at Joe Paterno's firing. Because they were afraid that Penn State wouldn't have a winning football team anymore.


Okay, now that we've taken a little trip to Crazy-Stupid-La-La-Land, let's come back to Earth again, shall we?

If this were any other department in any university, the department would be immediately shut down and staff involved in this heinous cover-up would be fired. Pensions lost, futures shattered, law suits filed.  But this isn't any department. This is football. And football is what this country is all about. Sports and fame and the money that they generate rule the day.

Michael Steele and Joe Scarborough both took the stand on Monday's Morning Joe that the entire program needed to be shut down for a year while a huge house-cleaning takes place. Their argument was that, if the program was to continue over the long haul, a complete coming clean had to happen immediately. The opposing argument by Luke Russert and a couple of other folks at the Morning Joe table was that you couldn't "hurt the kids" in Penn State's football program for the crimes of their leaders.

And this is the crux, isn't it, kiddies.  Luke Russert's argument is that the young people at Penn State who trusted those who guided them in the athletics program should not be affected by this.  I say Russert couldn't be more wrong. The football program at Penn State should be suspended immediately, for a year, until every person in that department -- and in Penn State's adminstration for that matter -- can be rooted out and fired or prosecuted as an accessory after the fact.  Athletic scholarships should be continued, allowing students to continue to matriculate this year, at the expense of the athletic department, whether they think they can afford it or not.  I realize that football careers will be interrupted. I realize that television revenue will be lost. I realize that the entire school will suffer for this. So be it.

Why?

Let's look at the economy. (Yes, there's a point. Hang in there.) Because of the actions of a few incredibly greedy, incredibly irresponsible Wall Street gamblers, the entire economy of the wealthiest nation on the planet sits on the verge of collapse, still struggling to pull itself back onto dry land after an economic tsunami the likes of which hasn't been seen in the world since 1929.

I didn't own a home I couldn't afford. I didn't contribute to a hedge fund. I didn't bundle worthless derivatives and sell them.  Yet I, personally, have suffered from the economic disaster of the past four years. And so have you, and I'm guessing most of you haven't contributed directly to the crisis in any real way. But we suffer together, because we chose to make a community. We chose to unite in a type of social, economic and political collective where we pooled some of our resources and, in doing so, we yoked our fates and ourselves in a very real way to one another.  Because that's how community works.

If the bursting of real estate and bad debt bubbles all over the country send ripples through that community sufficiently to impact each of our lives, shouldn't the raping of one innocent 10-year-old have at least that kind of an effect? Are we really, as a community, prepared to do what Paterno and Curley and Spanier did almost ten years ago, and turn our backs on that boy and on all children who daily come into contact with the pedophiles we refuse to see in our midst who would do them harm?  Is that who we are? Right now, students choose to riot the firing of Joe Paterno, hold candlelight vigils in his honor and mourn his termination. But outside of a brief display last Saturday by the Penn State football team (which was moving, let it be said), no student at Penn State has made a public show of support for the children Sandusky raped and brutalized.  Proof enough, I think, of the need to readjust the timbre and tone of Penn State's academic leadership.

Right now, this moment in time, we as a country, as a people, are being asked to consider what kind of people we are, in a million little ways.  Will we provide the sick and the poor with care and sustenance? Will we stand together and end two immoral and illegal wars in the Middle East? Will we band together as one and rise to meet wealthy power brokers who think they can run us with no resistance?

Will we place the needs of a college athletics program over the salvation and protection of children in the community?

The side that each of us chooses in this debate is not a choice to save young people from actions of their adult faculty leadership. That ship sailed when Paterno, Curley and the others turned their backs on that little boy, and all the little boys they knew Sandusky had access to (including foster children in his own home, by the way).  Now, the choice is not how will we protect Penn State.  The choice is how will we, as a community, band together to make sure that it never happens again.

On The Eve of NaNoWriMo

Midnight tonight.That's when it begins. 

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) begins soundly at 12:01 am on November 1st.  Got my story. Got my characters. Got my outline.  I'm ready. Well, ready as I'll ever be.  I've been rereading writers I admire -- Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Gilbert, Garcia-Marquez... Just to remind myself that someone else has done it before.  Writing a novel at all is pretty much an impossibility. I know. I've tried. Yet these people I've just mentioned have done it -- more than once, in fact.  Sometimes, it just takes a little push. Sometimes, it takes a common enemy.

And sometimes, it takes people just crazy enough to be willing gather together for the month of November to engage in some hellish, feverish tippy-tapping on the keyboard that we like to call NaNoWriMo.

Some things I'm going to keep in my head while I'm writing:

• Keep going. Don't stop, no matter what
• You cannot create art when you're busy crtiquing it or apologizing for it. You are not the world's literary book review section.  Write. Don't read.
• Keep going. Don't stop, no matter what.
• All first drafts are shitty first drafts.
• Keep going, no matter what.

Armed with these little munitions, I will face NaNoWriMo head on and unafraid. Well, mostly unafraid.  OK, terrified, but I'm going to keep going, o matter what!!! Happy now?

iCreative v.2.0

Someone needs to invent a software that creates ideas. No, I mean, creates them -- out of whole cloth -- from nothing.  Because as I sit perched precariously on the brink of my third attempt at NaNoWriMo, I have nary a one.  I can't write the novel I'm in the process of writing -- that breaks the rules.  So, I have to come up with something fresh and new.  I've consulted my brainstorming journal -- the one where I furiously jot down any wild-hair notions that pop into my brain.  But most of those ideas are either short story premises or creative non-fiction essay ideas.

I need a software where I can plug in three random things -- an avocado, a martini glass and the Tibetan book of the Dead, say -- hit "generate" and have the idea software grind them up into a plausible idea for a novel.  Then present me with the idea, preferably one that begins something like "It's about this guy/girl who...."

See, now that Steve Jobs is dead, I don't imagine anyone will be conceiving such a software.  I have considered sending the idea to Applied Minds, Inc., because those guys specialize in the business of "Wouldn't it be cool if...." But I don't have any connections there (otherwise, I'd have a job there, dammit!!!). If I had paid attention all those years ago, when my dad was trying to teach me how to write code, I might be able to do it myself now.  Of course, if I learned how to write code back in the mid-80s, I'd be living in the Silicon Valley, living off my Microsoft dividends.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda....

Anyway, I haven't given up.  There are still plenty of programming fish in the sea.  I'd happily give up the idea, just to have someone invent it so I can use it.

That's pretty much what I came here to say today.

I'll be posting later on the current NaNoWriMo adventure, if you'd care to follow me. Of course, if I don't gestate an idea between now and then, I may have nothing but 50,000 words of stream of consciousness. Which could be an interesting creative take in its own self.

Awesome graphic credit: "A BRIGHT IDEA" by OwaikeO (deviantart.com)

Anniversaries...

A year ago, this little man came into my life, amid much drama and commotion.  Today, he is officially no longer an infant, but a dyed-in-the-world toddler (he's been walking for two months now).  He has grown from scrawny to plump, from inert to active (very!), from docile and content to curious and adventurous.  He is good and naughty, happy and put out, puzzled and all-knowing.  He is a miracle.

Happy birthday, sweet Sylas.  Nana loves you beyond all measure.

XOXO.

Photo credit: Kathy Valdez

Searching for Enlightenment

So much has been made lately about the significance of certain terms put into search engines, I thought I'd put myself on the hot seat, just to see what I was searching, and what people might glean about me.  In this endeavor, I personally discovered several things about myself.  I spend a lot of time online looking up stuff for work (I'll spare you those boring searches, since, technically, I'm doing it for someone else, and the only thing it will tell you about me is that I really would rather keep my job).  Also, I spend a lot of time looking for a new job (endless searches of studio, law firm, agency and entertainment employment sites).  I've now distilled that information for you in two sentences so we needn't bother with them.  Suffice it to say... I have a job that I do diligently, and I want another one. The end.

Now, on to the random searches -- the searches that come as a result of those momentary thoughts like, "Whatever happened to...?" and "How do you spell...?" or "What does that word/phrase mean?"So, here's the list of my top ten most recent, most intricate searches (searches where I clicked on more than one link to get my answer):

1. "post hoc ergo propter hoc"
2. Chicago Manual of Style
3. TIA transient
4. seafood stores in the SF Valley
5. Clarence Clemons
6. Haley Joel Osment
7. Applied Minds,LLC
8. "ergo ipsum"
9. National Hairball Awareness Day
10. mendacity definition

Now, for some edification:

1.  This commonly used Latin legal expression is usually abbreviated to "post hoc". I'm pretty sure I was looking it up to clarify the meaning for an argument with someone about circumcision and infant mortality, or vaccines and autism.  Take your pick. 
2. The best writers' style reference. Ever. Buy one. (They speak at length about the evils of sentence fragments, I believe.)
3. TIA = transient ischemic attack. It is a minor loss of blood flow to the brain which is characterized by temporary short term memory loss.  This is not the first time I've looked T.I.A. up.  I just can never remember what it stands for. (Gasp!)
4. My motto? "Less worry... more lobster...." nuff said.
5. He passed away this month. I liked his music.  That is all.
6. Not sure what this was about.  I like HJO.  But why was I looking him up? (CURSE YOU, T.I.A.!!!!)
7. I've been trying to get someone at this company to interview me for a job -- any job -- for two years now.  I think they think I'm trying to stalk them.  I think I might actually be stalking them. (Dear Applied Minds: Hire me, and I'll leave you alone! Sheesh! love, Amanda.)
8. "Ergo ipsum lorem..." are the fake Latin phrases used on web templates to indicate where text should go.  I've always wondered if the phrase actually meant anything. "Therefore, you are a big lumbering arse," or something like that.  Alas, it means nothing... (sigh)
9. There's a whole day... who knew? Well, I do now, cuz I googled it. Of course, by next year, I'll have had so many mini-strokes with my T.I.A. that it'll come as a surprise all over again. 
10. Mendacity definition... It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't know exactly what this mellifluous word actually meant. When I came across a book by conservative Roger Hodges entitled "The Mendacity of Hope", I felt compelled to clarify.  Mendacious means "given to or characterized by deception or falsehood or divergence from absolute truth".  I think for a conservative in this day and age to bandy about the word "mendacity" shows a lot of "audacity", and -- to quote Forrest Gump -- that's all I have to say about that.

So there you have it.  My internet searches.  Convict me, or leave me alone.  Given what seems to be a fairly advanced case of TIA, I won't remember anyhow.  But you can bet, should someone try and use this as evidence against me, my mom won't take the stand in my defense and commit perjury for me.  In her defense, she's been dead for twenty years (Way to dodge a bullet, Mom.).  So I guess I'm on my own here.  Let's hope "ergo ipsum" doesn't become some strange Al Qaeda code phrase, or that Roger Hodges doesn't decide to fly the coup and frame me.

On the upside, what with my T.I.A. and all, I can always claim diminished capacity.

What was my name again?

Oh. Yeah.

Summer Reruns: "The Smell of 'No-Palm' In The Morning"

Originally posted on Independence Day, 2008, I felt that, in the wake of electing an African-American President, it was important to revisit the issue of racism and bigotry in America this Independence Day. I think it bears taking a look at our attitudes regarding race in America, since I believe racism and the passion to which people cling to it are as relevant today as they have ever been. 

"Senator Helms certainly was no bigot. He was a man, however, not into subtlety. You know what he thought about a particular issue. You certainly knew because he was not into the kind of nuance and subtlety that so often divides American politicians." - Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), about the late Senator Jesse Helms, who passed away today at age 86.

I realize that when people die, and those that knew them try to eulogize them on the spot before microphones, some weird stuff can pass through the media ether. But I find this statement to be just plain bizarre.

Not a bigot? Really? Jesse Helms could be counted on in his years in the Senate for his vote against any kinds of civil rights, gay rights or reproductive rights legislation that came his way. He castigated homosexuals, civil rights protesters and activists, feminists and anti-nuclear activists without hesitation.

Now, I suppose, in some academic way, it could be argued that Helms wasn't arguing against civil rights, but rather for states' rights. If a state didn't want racial equality, we can imagine that argument would go, why should it be forced to tolerate it? Okay. I'll pick up that gauntlet.

Because racism is wrong.

Not just a little wrong, like, say stealing those orange roadwork cones or vandalizing bus benches. Big wrong. It's slavery wrong. It's witch-burning wrong. Racism is a violation of everything we say we believe as a democratic society. When it is practiced by local politicians on a local level, it is an insult to social justice and common decency. When it is practiced on the state and federal levels, it becomes an even bigger wrong, because it abrogates the very essence of the freedoms granted to all people in the Constitution. Five times in his life, Jesse Helms stood up, put his hand on the Holy Bible and swore, presumably with great reverence and a damp eye, to uphold and defend that Constitution of the United States. Then he turned around and said, in effect, that there were folks in this country that weren't entitled, either because of their sexuality, their race, their belief in equal rights for women and minorities, their stand against war and its instruments, to the freedoms and rights that Constitution guarantees. Which Constitution was he upholding and defending? The one written for only the white, straight folks who know for sure that a woman's place is in the home?

Since when does defending people who are being denied their basic, elemental human rights require qualities like nuance and subtlety? How about just a little compassion and humanity instead? Was he lacking in those qualities as well?

Merriam-Webster defines the word "bigot" as follows:

"a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance."

I know that Senator McConnell, a fellow Republican and Southerner, who grew up with stalwart traditions like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, was probably trying to pay tribute to someone he thinks of as a legend the best way he knows how. But how on this good, green planet Earth can he say with a straight face that Jesse Helms was not a bigot when Helms' own voting record so categorically defines him as such?

Rest in peace, Senator Helms. I can only hope you find the enlightenment and empathy in the next life that you so resisted and overlooked in this one.

~C~

Shouldn't You Be Writing Something Just About Now

And the answer is... of course, I should.

Isn't that why I started this blog? So I'd have to write something, sometime -- even if it was something brief and meaningless?  Of course it was.

So, where are all these golden words of yours, I hear you ask? Where is this brilliant literary reverie?

Hm. Well... er.... uh.....

If you'll just tell me what to write, I'll be happy to accommodate.

It's all soooooo.... I don't know.... been done before. I just need a fresh idea.

Don't I?

Of course, I do.

Good.

Glad that's all settled.

So... how are you?

The Miracle of Time and Timing

Have you ever realized that at some point in the past you knew more than you do now?  You find an old letter or a journal or a painting, and it occurs to you that, at that moment in time, something had imbued you with a wisdom you had somehow since forgotten?  It's a little gift, I think, to realize that at some point we were smarter and better prepared for life than we thought.

I've been lost a little in my life.  I've been taking huge spiritual leaps, I've fixed some minor-but-nagging health issues that were distracting me, and I'm finally losing weight again.  My finances are still in a tizzy, my home life is chaotic and bustling (or -- to describe more accurately life with a very active eleven month old, staggering, grabbing, shrieking, babbling, Veggie-Tales-watching), and I still have a way to go to find my true creative spot in the world.  I'm closer than I was, though.

I have come to see things about myself that I didn't understand before.  I see better now what I like and don't like.  I have been working on becoming more compassionate and forgiving. I have worked through much of the residual animosity I had for my mother through a couple of very pointed and illuminating sessions of regression hypnotherapy with the amazing Dr. Susan Fisher.  While Dr. Susan has studied with the amazing Dr. Brian Weiss, and does advertise that she does past-life regression, for the purposes of full disclosure, the two sessions to which I refer did not involve my being regressed to a past life, but rather to an earlier point in this one.

Regressive hypnotherapy -- where hypnosis is used to review a memory or scene from the past -- can be useful, because it allows you to return to a moment in time and remember with more clarity and, in my case, a completely different visual perspective a memory that has haunted or caused you pain from your past.  In both scenes, Dr. Susan sent me back as an observer of the scene, where I watched mother and daughter interact with one another, but I was the today me -- the grown up woman, who stood outside the scene watching, rather than participating.  Rather than see the replaying of a hurtful scene, where mother was unduly harsh or sinister with daughter, and daughter was overly sensitive and obstinate, what I saw was two people locked in a struggle to be right, each desperately wanting to be heard and understood, yet each mutually failing to do so for the other.  It was still painful, but it was the kind of pain that promotes sympathy rather than anger.  How sorry I felt for this mother and this daughter, who were so alike in so many ways, yet so unable to connect on any level!  How obvious it was to me, as an adult observer, to see that they did love each other and care for each other, but had somehow drifted apart and were now unable to connect.  These sessions made me much softer toward the memory of my dead mother, much more able to see that she wasn't evil. She was clueless and struggling, and she didn't have a Dr. Susan to show her the way.

When I came out of the session, I asked Dr. Susan if the memory as accurate.  She said, "Does it matter? Was it healing?"  Then I mentioned that these new memories, found in her comfortable, safe office, might be manufactured in order to make me feel better about my mother.  Again, she repeated, "Does it matter? If you walk out the door tonight, and you get in your car, and you soften your heart because it occurs to you that memories you've remembered as harsh or abusive were really just misunderstandings, hasn't this accomplished healing?"  Yeah. I know. I was stumped myself.  Dr. Susan won't debate the accuracy of regression, whether in this life or a past life. She will simply point out that healing is the goal, and if a "past-life" memory is really more the subconscious taking a little dip in the Jungian whirlpool, then what difference does it make? Healing is healing. And it allowed me to forgive both of us -- my mother, and the young me -- for our failure to see and hear each other.

Alas, I cannot afford Dr. Susan at the moment to help with the lingering ache of my weird relationship with my late father.  So how might I finally heal enough to soften my heart sufficiently to forgive both of us for our alternately abusive and neglectful ways toward each other.  Fortunately, I had something else besides my subconscious to draw upon.  I had my writing.  These blog posts, and my long letters to friends while my father lay wasting away from the ALS and the C.O.P.D. have made for a pretty accurate record of that time. I've been reviewing some of my emails to confidantes back then.  Today, I was reading through some of  my emails to my dear cyber-buddy, Buddhist chaplain and family therapist Bill Hulley, and I came across one that allowed me to do with my father what Dr. Susan had helped me do with my mother.  Mind you, this wasn't something Bill had said.  As a therapist, Bill's style leans toward the "give 'em enough rope to hang themselves" school.  He let me write to him.  Exhaustively. Endlessly. Voluminously, even. He sweetly read my letters, he commented here and there, and then he shut up and let me emotional regurgitate on his computer screen all over again.

In the years since my father's death, I have written a mental narrative (similar to the narrative I've always had where my father was concerned) that he did not really like me or care for me much.  I believed this, because he made it clear how much he disliked my mother and how much I reminded him of her.  Because this narrative was so firmly entrenched, it was easy to reapply after my father's death.  But, much like my regressions with Dr. Susan, my own writing of this time with my dying father betrays the way things really went down.

In May of 2007, after I'd burned out, moved out and gone to live in the cave in Northridge, my sister, who had taken over caring for Dad when I couldn't do it any longer, found it necessary to return to her home in Hawaii for a few days to take a well-needed break and tend to her life a bit, which was withering while she'd been living in L.A..  With some dread and trepidation, I moved back into the house during those days and reprised my role as caregiver. I'd had several months to rest and revive myself, and I was determined to approach this time with a better, calmer energy for him.  We did not know it at the time, of course, but my father only had a little more than two months to live.  I'd forgotten about these days completely, until I stumbled across a letter I'd written to Bill during that time:

May 2, 2007

My sister has been in Hawaii for going on three days now.  The first night she was there, she sent me a picture message of her martini.  And then her second martini.  She really needed a break.  Dad only awoke once the first night, with cries that he was falling out of bed.  When I got in there, he was not really falling out of bed, but he has no sense of kinesthesis anymore, no concept of where his body parts are in relation to the rest of him.  After I'd shifted, first his hips, then his shoulders, then his head, then his knees, he said that was perfect.  I swear, if I'd drawn a police chalk outline around his body when we'd started, it would have fit perfectly around him when we'd finished.  But it made him feel better, so I guess it was worth it.  He's sleeping a lot more (I mean, a whole lot more) than he used to during the day.  He asked me that first night who was drugging him.  I promised him no one was drugging him, that it might be the changing weather or maybe he was fighting off a bug of some sort.  How do you say to someone, "It's probably because you're dying."  You just don't, that's all.  He knows.  I know.  But dealing with it every single day gets tiresome and difficult. Let's just pretend its something else, since we can't change it.

It's getting easier and easier for me to disconnect the man who used to be so horrible to me when I was growing up from this man here today.  It's like this helpless, scared guy was inside that other son of a bitch the whole time, but afraid to come out (not that we can blame him -- we knew the other guy).  But that other guy is gone now, and this guy here wouldn't really hurt a fly.  Today, I was readying myself to leave for work, and we shifted him in his chair one last time before I left.  I asked him if there something else I could give him before I left, and he said, "Just your love and affection," and he reached his hand out to me.  It was the first time I can ever remember him asking for a kiss or hug.  In my entire life.  And if I hadn't come back to do this this week, I'd have missed it.  All that schpilkis I had over these five days, and its proving to have been all for naught.  One of these days, Bill, I'm going to just trust that the Universe knows what its doing, and then I'll quit my backseat driving. 

 What a blessing this find was for me!  What a gift! And how rare and grateful I am to have written it in the first place, and then found it again when I needed it the most.  The story I have told myself that he did not love me, and that I didn't not love him either, turns out to be grossly distorted. It turns out that the past can do more than cripple and encumber. It can also heal and liberate. And it can make you realize that, deep down, everything you need is inside you, waiting to blossom and come out.  In the words of a wise woman I used to know:

"And if I hadn't come back, I'd have missed it."

Pain -- Nature's Way of Getting You To Perk Up And Pay Attention!

Last blog post back in April, I went on and on about my intermittent, but persistently nagging back pain, and how it improved with the setting of boundaries.  Back then, the level of my discomfort, according to the chart at the left, registered somewhere around a 4 or 5.  By this time two weeks ago, it was up to around 7 or 8, and heading quickly into 9 territory.

Turns out, it wasn't back pain at all.  As I suspected, the cause was internal -- gastritis, which was causing inflammation in, among many other places, the regions of my lower back.  Though I had no diagnostic tests run to take a look, apparently, excess stomach acid was eating through my stomach wall, presumably so it could travel up to my brain and smack me upside the head.  (This is chronic pain's entire purpose for existing, I'm starting to realize.)

My fabulous MD, Dr. Simon, prescribed a pretty little orange pill, and I've felt fine ever since.  But the memory of the pain lingers, and with it, a desire to fix the root of the problem (why so much acid?) and not just handle the symptoms (ouchy stomach).  My father had a habit of constantly cracking his shins on objects around the house -- the coffee table, the hope chest at the foot of his bed, an open drawer at his desk.  I'd hear a "crack", a yelp, and when I'd ask if he was okay... he'd grimace, "Fine, fine... there's something about excruciating pain that lets you know you're alive!!"

True enough... you may not be happy you're alive when you're hurting. But at least you can rest assured that, if you're in pain, you're still here and kicking.

I have been working hard to make sure I meditate at least once a day, and I've even been getting two sessions in on a fairly regular basis.  Between the anemia and the gastritis, working out fell totally off the turnip truck.  But I figured, in those moments when the pain had subsided sufficiently to think clearly, I could at least take care of myself spiritually.  Meditation is very much like working out.  You might not feel a damn bit different if you do it once.  But do it once a day for two weeks, and it can change everything about your life.

And where my meditations -- mostly on gratitude, which I feel is the quickest way to feeling loved and loving simultaneously -- have led me is to the realization that, until I'm doing what I love, I'm wasting my life, my time, my health, my joy and my gifts, and the Universe is NOT going to let me forget it.  It's the infamous "pebble-brick-boulder" scenario.  First, the Universe pelts you with the pebble, then it hits you with a brick, and if you're still not listening, you get the boulder.

If there's one thing this experience over the past several weeks has taught me.... you really want to start paying attention before you get the boulder.  The boulder tends to be something like a heart attack or a massive stroke or a malignant tumor.  If you can catch it at pebble level (an achey and nonspecific mental ennui), or at the very least get it at the brick stage (gastritis, pancreatitis, a bladder or kidney infection), then you're going okay.  You can recover.

So, now that we've headed the boulder off at the pass, I am starting to take steps to change everything up, so that I can do what makes me happy, and actually get paid for it.  What makes me happy? This makes me happy.  Writing makes me happy.  Reading makes me happy.  Listening to other people read makes me happy.  Working as a legal assistant... does. Not. Make. Me. Happy.  (It does pay the occasional bill, however, and for this we are eternally grateful.) Doing the happy things makes me smile... kind of like that little yellow guy at the bottom of the pain chart, whose pain level is ZERO.

Because if everything is right, if it's going the way it's supposed to, life is really supposed to be pain-free.  Sans pain.  Absolutely, 100% painless.  That's how you know nothing is wrong.  Because it doesn't hurt when you do this.  Or that.  Or anything for that matter.

It's time to get right with the Universe and keep the boulders at bay.  There are phone calls to be made.  There is a business plan to draw up.  There are decisions to be made.  There is cheaper housing to find and there is packing to do.

Neil Gaiman's The Writer's Prayer

Because I need to read this every day before I write, I've decided to post it here.  Author Neil Gaiman felt he needed a Writer's Prayer to keep him in right with his muse.  I post it here, so I'll always be able to find it.  I have included a link to a blog that has posted the MP3 of Gaiman reading the poem (way sexier than reading it here), if you want:

A Writer’s Prayer*


Oh Lord, let me not be one of those who writes too much;
who spreads himself too thinly with his words,
diluting all the things he has to say,
like butter spread too thinly over toast,
or watered milk in some worn-out hotel;
but let me write the things I have to say,
and then be silent, ’til I need to speak.


Oh Lord, let me not be one of those who writes too little;
a decade-man between each tale, or more,
where every word accrues significance
and dread replaces joy upon the page.
Perfectionists like chasing the horizon;
You kept perfection, gave the rest to us,
so let me earn the wisdom to move on.


But over and above those two mad spectres of parsimony and profligacy,
Lord, let me be brave, and let me, while I craft my tales, be wise:
let me say true things in a voice that is true,
and, with the truth in mind, let me write lies.

Amen.

*Published on Gaiman'sTelling Tales, from Harper's Audio.

Who's That Girl?

I was about four when this photo was taken.  I'm not sure where the robot come from, but I think I appropriated it from a neighbor boy.  I love this picture of me.  I wish I had a larger print, but my dad (who took the photo) only printed a small test shot.

Somehow, though, when I look at this girl, I can see the entire world in her face.  She's never been hurt, never been made to feel small, never been judged or made to feel "less than".  She is a star.

I was a star and I knew it.  I went to Melrose Nursery School about this time, and for some reason, I got a lot of positive attention there.  The teachers loved me.  I have a general sense I ran the play yard. It probably wasn't true, since I was very small for my age. But that is how it felt at the time -- I was queen of all I surveyed. When Art Linkletter's people came to our school to recruit for "Kids Say The Darndest Things", I was the one they chose for the show, mostly on teacher recommendation.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I looked a lot like this when they taped the show.

I was confident, articulate, and unrestrained back then. Anything I thought, anything I wanted to do or be, it was all possible. I thought my mother was the most beautiful woman who had ever lived.  I loved her more than I thought I could ever love anyone. My father was a dark and mysterious figure that came and went sporadically, but seemed magical and interested when he was there. He was Merlin, appearing and disappearing on his own schedule, but bringing adventure and fun when he came. In my four-year-old mind, they were perfect, the pair of them. I had landed the perfect parents. And, for at least as long as it took to snap this photo, I also had the neighbor boy's robot.

I was unstoppable.

I love this photo because somewhere inside me, this little girl, with her DIY bob and her Mona Lisa smile, is still alive and well. I want to hug her and thank her for reminding me every time I look at her that there was a time when I knew no fear and the world was mine. If I know no fear now, I'm pretty sure the world can be mine again.

I love this little girl. She's my past and my future all rolled into one. I'm so glad my father decided to take up photography.  It is a gift that continues to give to this day, for which I will be eternally grateful.

Now... where do we suppose I can find a robot?

Boomers Gone Bust Come Back

Kent State University, May 4, 1970

Reading "The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife" (Hay House, 2009), Marianne Williamson's discourse on how our generation is handling mid-life, I was struck by what she had to say about why baby-boomers hadn't effected the kind of political change they'd so clamored for in the 60s and 70s.  I'm particularly struck by the fact that I happened to read it on the day when Barack Obama's team has submitted his intention to run in 2012. They wrote me (and about 20 million of my closest friends) to ask us if we're "in" for this campaign. I replied that I was, though with far less enthusiasm than in 2008.

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm part of the Boomer crowd known as the "Late Boomers" or "Barely Boomers". In fact, when I was in junior high school, anyone born after 1955 wasn't even considered an official "Baby Boomer".  In truth, I was only 12 when the sixties ended, and a naive and undercooked 17 when the last helicopter took off from that rooftop in Saigon.  I missed the tuning in, the turning on, the dropping out.  I don't listen nostalgically to Jefferson Airplane or The Doors. The music of my youth is The Eagles, Steely Dan and Linda Ronstadt on the one end, and Cindy Lauper and Pat Benatar on the other.

Here is what Williamson has to say on why the generation that gave us the messages of love and peace in the 60s did not follow through when they came of age and took the joint over:

With the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11, anyone who needed to grow up and basically hadn’t done it yet, did.  The prolonged post-adolescence of at least one generation ended at last. On that day, the music died…. It might have taken us 40 years, but we’ve finally matured to the point where we’re ready to manifest the dreams we embraced a long time ago.

What took us so long? Why 40 years? What stopped us?

More than anything, I think, murder stopped us.  The voices of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., along with the four students at Kent State University, were silenced violently and abruptly right in front of our eyes. Those bullets weren’t just for them; psychically, they were for all of us, and we knew it. The unspoken message of those assassinations could not have been louder. There would be no further protest. We were to go home now. We could do whatever we wanted to do in the private sector, but were to leave the public sector to whoever wanted it so much that they were willing to kill in order to control it.

And leave it alone we did. A generation with as much talent and privilege as any that has ever walked the earth poured the majority of our gifts into private concerns – mostly thing of ultimate irrelevance – while mostly leaving the political sphere to others. And for a few decades, that seemed to work. America can be likened to a house, in which many of us ran to the second floor (art, spirituality, careers, fun) and left the downstairs (traditional politics) to less inspired thinkers. We kidded ourselves that it was an okay arrangement, until those of us on the balcony began to smell the unmistakable odor of the house burning down.

Shouldn’t someone about now be yelling, “Fire”?

Collectively, our script has returned to us for a rewrite. We get another chance to determine the end. The first time around, we allowed ourselves to be silenced. It remains to be seen if we will be silenced now.

So, I'm in with this campaign, because not being in means leaving this country to what Williamson describes as "less inspired thinkers." (One of the things I love about Marianne Williamson is her gift for kind euphemism.)  She comes as close as anyone to describing what I see happening to this country.  We are being called by whatever higher power you care to name to contain our appetites, but unleash our loving compassion. We are being asked by the planet and the Universe to leave a smaller footprint, but extend the reach of our hearts. We're called to be enthusiastic, even if we don't fully feel it.

So, yes, I'm in.  I'm in.  I have no idea what being "in" looks like as yet.  But as E. L. Doctorow once said about writing a novel, "[it's] like driving at night. You can only see as far ahead of you as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

Things that Make Me Go... "Hmmm..."

I get eighty messages a day on my gmail, telling me that I could have my penis enlarged and that a Nigerian prince is desperate for some banking assistance.  But somehow, when it comes to letting me know my domain name on this website is set to expire, those emails never seem to get through.

Feels good to be back.

~C~

Love Everlasting At Our Neighborhood Starbucks

The old "Can I borrow your cellphone?" ploy -- that's how he approaches her.

"Can I borrow your cellphone?" he asks her. "I got locked out of my office."

She acquiesces pleasantly. And why not? He's cute, well-dressed, clean-cut -- not the kind of person you'd have to worry about handing your 3G smartphone over to for a moment.

He dials a number of a colleague (presumably someone with a key to the office), speaks briefly about being locked out, then hands the phone back to its owner.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Of course, that's not the end of the conversation. He asks her where she works, she answers.  She asks him what he does, he tells her.  And why not? She's very, very pretty, open and unguarded.

The talk continues. By the time he leaves, twenty minutes later, she knows he's a corporate transactional attorney who primarily handles securities. He knows she works across the street for a small property development company, but also has a marketing business on the side that is handling a new fitness video as its maiden project. He's Canadian. She's from Indiana.

He offers to introduce her to Richard Simmons, who might be able to mentor her on marketing fitness videos. She's appreciative.  Within twenty minutes, business cards have been exchanged, complete with logos, names and phone numbers. Any observer seeing them converse would think, "They make a cute couple."

Or would.

Will he call her? Maybe. Maybe not.  He was bold enough to ask her for the cellphone, and then to start a dialogue.  And she liked his look enough to keep up her end of the conversation.  But the vagaries of sexual chemistry are mysterious.

Maybe, by the time he gets home, his machiato-fueled bravado has worn off.  Maybe she rethinks the wisdom of accepting an invitation from a man she spoke to only briefly in Starbucks (and, by the way, is it just us, or does he bear more than a passing resemblance to Ted Bundy?).  The business cards get tossed in the trash, and no further communication is exchanged.

On the other hand, maybe her sweet face is enough to inspire him. So maybe he calls. Maybe she answers. Maybe he asks, maybe she accepts. Maybe they go to dinner, a movie, a play.  Maybe more dinners, more movies, more plays.  A weekend in Santa Barbara. A vacation skiing in Aspen. A holiday dinner in Indiana. Then one in Canada.

And somewhere along the way, in the miasma that is human relationship, he learns that her vision of life and the future is so close to his, it's as if they conspired to construct the dream together. She learns that he is kind and decent and will defy her tendency to skip breakfast by always making sure she leaves the house with at least some tea and a piece of buttered toast.  He will learn that she wants three children. She will learn that he thinks three is the ideal number as well.

He will decide that for all her little quirks and foibles, life without her would be unbearable. She will realize that, in spite of his tendency towards untidiness, he has a heart the size of all of Canada.

He will surprise her with a ring. She will gladly show it off to her mother and sister. And they will never discuss the two big lies on which their entire relationship has been predicated. The first lie is that, that day in Starbucks, he had both his office key and his own cellphone tucked neatly in his pocket. And the second lie is that she suspected as much all along.

The First Decade of the Twenty-first Century: Taking Stock

I was not nostalgic at midnight this past Saturday. Not even a little.

I was so glad to see 2010 go, I almost cried from happiness.  The first decade of this century has not been an easy one, in any way. Starting with election of an utter and complete nincompoop as the 43rd President of the United States, to the terrorist attacks in New York City, to the war, to the crushed American economy, the end of a sweet romance I thought would end in marriage, to the illness and death of my father, and culminating in a complete upheaval and decimation of my professional hopes and dreams...

Well, to paraphrase Britain's Queen Elizabeth, this past ten years is not a decade I shall look back upon with undiluted pleasure.

Still, it wasn't a total loss. I started the decade as a pretty unapologetic college drop-out, and ended it with not only a bachelor's degree, but a master's as well.  I started the decade with a difficult teenage daughter, and ended it with a beautiful baby grandson. I started the 2000s as a confused Protestant, and ended it as a much less confused (though still searching) Buddhist-y infidel.  I began some friendships, ended others, said good-bye to an apartment where I'd lived longer that any other home in my life, but found a lovely new home to take it's place.

I have fallen in and out of love. I have learned I'm capable of more than I ever could have hoped for. I have learned that I deserve more than I ever let myself long for. I have some amazing, generous friends who've bolstered and bouyed me through this period, and I live with a family that is crazy and loud and annoying and completely and utterly lovable.  (And I'm speaking mostly about the baby now.)

No, the first decade of the 2000s is not one that inspires nostalgia in me.  But I suppose, because time does move for the human race in a linear fashion, that it was necessary to slog through it to get where we're going.  Wherever that is.

I'm looking forward to seeing if the second decade of the 2000s has anything better to offer. Peace would be nice.  Love would be great. But I'll settle for a job and the chance to watch my grandson grow up.

Happy New Year to all.