If Barack Obama were running against Hilary Clinton tomorrow, who would you vote for?

The funniest thing about life is the jokes you don’t get for a long time. The funniest joke to me is the fact that we really have no control over anything, least of all ourselves. I have spent so much time worrying about what I said or did and how it would affect someone else. What that other person thought of me, how I could change what that other person thought of me. Tonight I was reading Warren Buffet’s new biography,  which is very interesting by the way, and he spoke of how one is scripted in life: whether it be from the outside or the inside. If on is scripted from the inside one lives life for oneself: the achievements are noted and taken in by one’s own psyche. Most parents raise kids to be scripted by the world in terms of what achievements mean and what is important. We praise our kids for accomplishing things that are meaningful to the community rather than encouraging  kids to find what is meaningful to them. Many really successful people I have known are interested only in what they look like to the world: they have little inner life nor have they developed real relationships with others. They are always moving on from successes looking for the next thing they “should” do for their lives to look really good. I am really trying to learn what makes me proud of myself and then enjoy it when it happens.

When I began to watch the news last evening about India I was transfixed: it seemed so frightening to me that a place like Mumbai or a hotel like the Taj would be under attack. The video’s of people struggling to find a safe place and the recorded sounds of gunfire and explosions were terrifying to watch. At first it seemed unreal and very far removed from our daily lives, but then a reporter who was from India stated calmly that the attack was as if a band of terrorists had entered time square, shot our civilians and forcibly entered the Plaza Hotel(or the equivalent as it no longer exists). When I heard her say this I was almost paralysed by the understanding that she was correct. The world we live in today is not safe anywhere and nothing can be taken for granted. Just as some day, when I have grandchildren, I will tell them of the time when we were able to stand under running water in the shower for hours if we wanted, I am certain we are watching on television things that will become more and more common. We are living in a world where differences seem monumental and borders , though blurred, create rage and fear among groups of people. Just as water will become a luxury we can no longer waste, so will the assumption that peace and safety are a natural and deserved part of our daily lives. As Americans we have been sheltered from war but not terrorism. As Americans we have been less than  mindful in spreading our peacemaking philosophy throughout the world. Now is the time to try harder to do this by developing compassion towards others and spreading that compassion to everyone around you. There is an article in the New York Times this morning written by Nickolas Kristof about the bravery of some woman  called “The Bravery of Heroes”. I think everyone should read this piece as it inspires those who do to get involved in unjust and violent behavior. I think we need to begin right now.

Last night I had dinner with an inspiring man. Actually a well known, inspiring man yet I knew nothing about him prior to the event. I found him inspiring to look at from the moment he walked into the room and when I was seated next to him at dinner I felt as if I had known him always. Now, some people might find this a fanciful statement, yet I believe there are those people we come across in our lifetimes whom we have known before, in other lifetimes. I knew I had known this man before and wanted to take his hand and walk out into the city and sit somewhere in a cosy corner and find out what his life had been like in this lifetime as I felt I knew about the others. All of this in about one minute came and went in my mind and I think I am lucky to be able to believe in dreams and other lives as in doing this I am able to understand these odd situations I sometimes find myself in. A connection with someone is magic and a great gift  and I am content with that. In the light of day I have learned the man is a well known hero of sorts, a great negotiator, as well as a passionate healer in the world. I am not surprised. I am glad I am traveling these days with an open heart and a path that seems to direct itself.

No matter how I try I can’t escape it! That abandonment demon that sidles up to my shoulder, places her hand on my head, whispers ever so softly in my ear, ” You are alone again!”. Each time I realize I have again involved myself with another person who is incapable of intimacy, who is an alcoholic, who is emotionally  removed, who can’t truly love me, I have to look at the amazing wall I have created around myself. I am actually a very creative builder: I use any raw material I can find: tears, anger, hate, joy or even ectascy. Like the little pig who built his house of bricks, mine is impenetrable. As I become “an older woman” , I am taking down the wall. It takes time. I have to move each piece far away to a recycling place where other defensive woman leave their debris. I have to carefully choose which brick I can remove without making the whole wall tumble. This work is tiring. Sometimes I give up and rest in the shadow the wall creates. Sometimes I am so excited at the deconstruction I race to the finish. Mostly I try to look at each brick and imagine who made it, how they did it, and if there was any joy.

The idea of a surplus of goods was not present in my family so even as adults we bicker and fight over who has more in their pile. At Christmas when we were kids we would each carefully count our pile of presents and then compare the number to other siblings instanting creating familiar pain  inside ourselves. Many in my family are so angry and hurt they live their lives in this same way: still looking to see who has the most gifts in their pile. Sometimes I buy into this behavior. Sometimes I don’t. Things have gone so far down the road that many of us don’t even speak to eachother. One family member is in charge of this non speaking policy and carefully monitors all the others to make certain it is obeyed.  I am always curious as to where her power comes from and I often see it is all of our fear of abandonment. Like animals, if we are fearful, we are vulnerable and lash out and try very hard to be the one who has the biggest weapon. I doubt there will be a disarmament policy in my lifetime and I pin my hopes on the next generation. This time of year when our hearts are open some in the family look for weapons and some look for love. I know that is why I work as a healer and isn’t it funny I have no power to heal the childhoods of my family?

There is an article in the December issue of Tricycle Magazine on the concept of “Lenchat” which is described as the attachment we  feel in certain  relationships in this life which are  painful or stressful  and come from a relationship with this person in a past life. I found this article to be very helpful as the principle of Lenchat  is to understand the connection we had with others in past lives that reoccurs  in this life and causes us pain, and bewilderment. When we are caught in the dynamic of Lenchat  we have a relationship in this lifetime that repeats patterns learned in other lifetimes. We feel the same bewildering pain and worry and do not have a rational approach to this person.It could be with a man or a woman: it doesn’t seem to matter. What matters is  we replicate the pain. We jump to the aid of this person feeling anxiety about fulfilling their needs, not really understanding why we are connected so strongly to someone we barely know, or,  in many cases, someone who is causing us pain by their treatment of the relationship. Lenchat explains to me the people I know who have caused me to use caller ID. They call me and I rush to see who is calling, knowing it is the person whose needs I can never meet and who will always seem angry to me. I peer nervously at the readout and see the number of the demanding one who I feel bound to and somehow believe I must obey, cater to, respond to, etc. The chase goes on. The pressure continues. The pain in my gut becomes more constant. I know that avoiding or ignoring the lenchat person will solve nothing. Eventually I will give in to this need of mine to connect, to believe once again in the power of change and goodness in this lifetime. I will be unable to let go of the feeling that only I can help this person be happy or safe or healthy.The author in Tricycle explains that in order to surmount Lenchat we must separate ourselves from this demanding dynamic and view it for what it is. He describes the origin of the term in Tibet by telling a  story of a lake where every year on a certain day the seals in the lake collect  and offer fish to the owls flying above. No one knows why this happens but it happens on a regular basis. The owls expect to be fed and are never satisfied, and the seals compulsively collect fish for hours offering it up to the skies,  and exhaust themselves. I wonder if we all play an owl or a seal from time to time and I wonder how we stop. If identifying the problem is the beginning, the  end might be noticing immediately the pain in my gut when I hear the voice of my owl, and understanding the fish giving will continue until I swim away.

actually that phrase isn’t what I mean…joyous new year would be more appropriate. We have been living with so much anxiety even our daily family lives are not serene. Everyone is waiting for someone to decide we are safe once again in our world.Spending money seems very risky and trusting our financial system even riskier. I feel stuck in my life and have felt stuck for almost a year. Perhaps it is because I don’t know where to live and have no sense of which way to move: east or west. When I make decisions about my life I make them internally without any conscious thought. Some people make decisions rationally by making lists of positive versus negative and then tally the columns. Were I to do this it would be a waste of time as no matter what the columns added up to I would just do whatever I had instinctively felt all along. The frightening thing about this time period is that I have lost faith in my own instinct along with many others in the world.What we might have known and believed in a year ago seems irrational, false, shaky or just plain unclear. I am meditating on fiinding my own instinct again and following it. I feel more hopeful these days that I will make a good decision and find joy and peace within it. Sometimes a little forward motion gets the car in gear.

After a holiday with friends and family I feel almost guilty writing about abandonment but I can’t help it. I am so blessed with wonderful family I shouldn’t complain. For those of us who live alone life can feel incredibly lonely at times and then again almost euphoric at other times. I struggle with abandonment a lot. It is one of those things we are not supposed to mention particularly in mixed company. It is not appropriate to speak of those harsh nights when you come home from work and know there is no one there to share your day with. Sometimes you go over in your mind your attractiveness quotient: how smart you are,  lovely,  sexually appealing, compelling, and still come up short for how could you be alone if all the previous categories were ranked on a high level? It is embarrassing to confess loneliness to anyone as it is an embarrassing condition. The world expects single people to remain silent on their condition. The world knows people who have partners are happier, healthier and generally more competent yet half the world is single. That is the interesting figure to me. Somewhere out there are many, many people who live alone and feel the same things I feel. That is what keeps me going.I think to myself I may be alone forever yet if I remember to remember there are so many other people who are living alone just as I am I feel comforted. I have to believe that someday I will find my heart’s desire:  just like the beach in Robert Haas’s wonderful poem, he will arrive on my doorstep and I will know him. The trick is to continue to believe this will happen.

I am trying to move back to California. I have been trying to do this since I left. I left nine years ago to be near to my mother who was at the end of her life. We had a very magical time together for  a few years until she died. Once she died, I was frozen into a state of wax museum status. I couldn’t move either way, east or west. The thought of another cross country transfer was too tiring to consider. I waited  and waited for some sign, some presence, transforming me into a knowledgeable creature. I was and am tired. I realize as people get older they resist change yet perhaps it is the very thing they should welcome. Change brings an ultra awareness of an environment and the need to adapt,seek information from it, and decide what to do. How to interact within it.Married people don’t usually change their environment at my age because they are settled within their own world. It is tiresome and tiring to change.Single people sometimes hold on to what they have and where they live as they feel letting go will deprive them of the dream they have held on to for a long time. The dream is safety and security and companionship. They don’t realize that this dream can only be actualized by learning to live safely within oneself. A happy life is one in which you feel nurtured and if you are nurturung yourself you are in control. That seems to be the most portable existence imaginable. I am yearning to be in California as it speaks to my soul and nourishes it.

Fear is a mean and nasty spirit that jumps into your body and wrecks almost everything you feel like doing because once you feel fear you stop doing it.The thing I try to remember about fear is to recognize what it is when I feel it. If I forget this crucial step I can be overcome by fear and miss out on important things that offer themselves to me in life. For example: if someone asks me to dinner with a group of people I don’t know I usually regret the invitation. I know this is ridiculous but I spend way too much time rationalizing this choice and telling myself I would have had a terrible time anyway.New opportunities in life are like the gold, frankincense, and myrrh that appear in the Christmas tale. They are offered to us in life as gifts that honor our lives and refuel them. Jump on these opportunities and bathe in the luxury of the unexpected.

I watched on the television this morning an extremely violent and graphic advertisement for an anti land mine group. The ad showed a family watching a soccer game during which one of the players steps on a land mine. The ad also showed the anguished mother’s cries as well as the bloodied stump of her daughter’s leg. It was horrible to watch. I felt as if I were watching a horror movie but much worse and it took me a few minutes to understand it was not a movie but an ad to raise awareness of the danger of land mines.

The other day I saw an ad persuading people not to smoke by graphically showing the affects of cigarettes on lungs. The ad showed a surgeon operating on a man with lung cancer and the damaged lung tissue. It was also terrifying.

I bring up these ads because they are so dramatically different from the ads used in the past to encourage people to stop an unhealthy behavior or to encourage people to donate to a cause. In the “olden days” the advertising world used positive reinforcement to encourage charitable giving. That approach appears to have changed.Scare tactics were understood to have little success in the advertising world and were tried for a brief time and then given up. I wonder why they are appearing once again? I wonder if they are more successful this time around?I can’t imagine they are but I may be wrong. Forcing people to watch terrifying situations doesn’t encourage them to donate to a cause but, rather, to turn off the image. Perhaps the new generation of TV watchers is responding to these graphic images and it is only my generation that resists them.Perhaps images of violence are so commonplace to those in their twenties, these ads serve to remind them of healthy behavior and benevolence  in a way they listen to.

I find this scary.

Yesterday a woman I know was raped and killed by a man in Puerto Rico where she was vacationing. She was five months pregnant, happily engaged to a man she was in love with, and out for a morning jog. Probably she was thinking about nothing but the morning air, what she would cook for lunch and how the baby within her was growing. Maybe she was talking to the child in her own way, telling him or her about what she loved to imagine. She was running along, noticing what was around her, probably listening to her IPOD, and enjoying her life. A man noticed her running and opened the trunk of his car. When she grew closer to him, he grabbed her and stuffed her into his trunk. He was a big man and she was a small woman with delicate bones and a delicate face. This man stole her  and took her to a place not far from where they started. She made a couple of calls from the trunk of his car, describing the man and his car and asking for help. The people she called couldn’t help her fast enough. This man did things to her that will never leave my mind as they are so violent and so obviously hateful of women. Violent things that I hope she never felt. I hope she was long dead before he started his disgusting and sick acts. I am afraid she was not. To say I am shocked by this crime would be too light a description. Everyone who knew her is shocked and deeply wounded by this single act of terrible violence. I can’t understand where this desire to hurt women comes from. How could a man decide in the blink of a morning to abduct a strange woman, happily jogging along in the morning light, stuff her in his trunk, and  take her to a place where he could torture her and kill her. The police caught the man and he later confessed. He said he knew it was wrong and that he had a daughter.The press announced his mother had killed two of her children almost as if it were genetic, this murder trait. Even as I am writing this I am aware of how simplistic it sounds. Where does this killing streak begin? Where do men and women become so deranged that a life becomes so meaningless  it can be extinguished in a second? Where and why do human beings commit murder as easily as they spit or go to the bathroom?The real question is how do the many friends and loved ones of this young woman continue to live their lives? How do her parents recover from losing their child in this way? I think I am a Buddhist but at time like this I wish our criminal justice system punished people who commit these crimes by doing to them exactly what they did to their victims and making certain they feel all the pain their victims felt. Shocking? Yes. But it is how I feel.

If we feel powerless we behave badly: people who crave power are usually people who feel in some way inadequate on this earth.It doesn’t seem to matter if we are seeking power through control of a few others, or one other person, or an entire country, it is a bad idea if we do not recognize why we are doing it.

I live in a condominium development where the people who are in charge are very focused on not allowing anyone to make any choices about their surroundings. They reserve the right to oversee almost every detail from where a new tree gets planted to where and how one can park a car. In the beginning I paid little attention to these people finding it is better in life to ignore anyone who seeks to control the lives of others. I have found in my life many people who enjoy positions of power in small communities as perhaps they feel powerless in the overall scheme of things. Yesterday I was lying in bed reading the paper with my small dog beside me when I heard a commotion outside my window. As I looked outside I saw a few men climbing the tree on my patio and trimming the boughs of this lovely old tree. When I moved into this place I was sold on the idea of condo living because of the privacy I found here. The trees outside my window afforded  real privacy for me and I loved the beauty of their graceful limbs.Once I saw this beauty being destroyed by workers who had no regard as to how the tree was growing I became angry and yes, fearful. I felt powerless. I called the management office and asked to speak with whomever was in charge of this work. The men outside told me the head person had been told of my upset at the trimming and had told them to ignore me and keep on cutting. When I reached this man later on and expressed my thoughts on the trees and mentioned it would have been correct to speak with me about the trimming rather than telling the men to continue the work, he had no answer. I knew this man was indeed a victim of powerlessness. In his life somewhere there had been an angry woman who had turned him against all other women who he viewed as attempting to control him.This may sound like a pat diagnosis of bad behavior but in my heart I know it is true. There was pleasure for him in this power over me.

It is my reaction that I am still surprised at as I continue to think if I just keep trying some day I will not react to bad behavior but I always do. I react to people who ignore appropriate communication and go with the way of power.I react to feeling controlled by anyone.

Dr Doolittle coined the phrase long before anyone else had a hold of it. I am talking about the dance in relationships of too near too far, too close too distant, or available versus unavailable. I suffer from all the above and have done so all of my life. When someone gets too close to me I find it pleasant, at times, and then suffocating, at other times. I am working on a peaceful coexistence with the world and my intimate friends but it will probably take me all of this lifetime and some of the next to work it out in a comfortable way. While I long for closeness the actuality of it makes me reach for my asthma inhaler. It is so interesting to me particularly during this time of struggle and fear in the world. I had a talk today with my friend, Jack Kornfield, who is a Buddhist monk and a great teacher. We went for a walk at Spirit Rock and came upon a place filled with small things people had left as gifts for the universe which made us both feel like children who had found magic.That’s what I love about Jack: he has an amazing ability to live from a child’s perspective and find wonder everywhere. We spoke of how much a place like Spirit Rock is needed in the world today as so many people have lost everything and have little idea of how to survive. One has no idea of what tomorrow may bring in terms of financial stability which places so much pressure on relationships and on human beings both young and old. The entire world is affected and everyone in every country is suffering from feelings of powerlessness and pain. The only thing we can really count on is our own self and our ability to stay in the present moment, aware and alert, and the ablilityto reach out to those near and far from us and offer them a hand. Sometimes I forget how important it is to feel the comfort of someone’s hand or to see a warm smile directed at me. When I remember to reach out I feel joy in doing so. Spirit Rock has some prayer wheels placed around the grounds which one reaches out and spins on passing. There are written prayers placed inside which then are sent out into the universe with each spin. I am going to look for a prayer wheel for my house. I think it will be fun to have one.

Today I had a meeting with my writers group which is composed of women who are many different ages and of many different types. I love this group of women as they are so diverse yet so interesting to me. One of these remarkable women is 90 years old and working on her second novel. She published her first last year at the ripe old age of 89. One thing I notice about this group is the focus and attention given to the work of each member. Another thing I notice is the focus given to grammar and punctuation in everyone’s work. Today I received a critique on my blog  and one of our members announced she simply didn’t read or believe anything that had spelling mistakes in it. She said this disdainfully without looking at me and she was a youngish women.I watched my reaction to her remark with interest as I was surprised at the amount of emotion I felt. I realized some in my group are uncomfortable with my sharing of emotions in this blog as they view this as too “exposed”.  I view my blog as a place where I express the true side of my soul. The critical member of my group must fall into the “uncomfortable” category and yet, I had to agree with her as I am not a fan of misspelling but I do it all the  time having had learning disabilities as a child. I think I felt as if it were a shame she had missed the content of the blog by becoming annoyed at misspelling and turning off her mind. I am a believer in good communication as I spent so many years studying the subject. I think we listen to feedback if we are given both positive and negative feedback in the same session. Here is what is good and here is what needs work. If we hear something good about our work we are heartened and more likely to listen to where we need to work harder. I appreciate this woman’s comments as I will now be more careful of spelling errors but also more tolerant of others who also make errors but may have something interesting to say.It is my hope that eventually my group will return to the point of writing groups which is to encourage new ideas and new work among  its members and to provide feedback on content. While editing is very helpful it should not be the most important thing we do for each other but something we offer as an aid to publishing the final work.Sometimes we get so focused on the imperfection of one tree we miss the beauty of the forest.Imagine if we were to edit life in this manner… we would miss sunsets in favor of counting the clouds obscuring the sky.

Each day the news has more articles on how we are going to solve the current economic crisis. There are lists of new rules to be  implemented as well as policies to be put in place by our well intentioned government that will supposedly stop the recession from continuing and prevent our world from falling into a downward spiral. All of the people making these rules are doing  so believing in the power of rules and in their ability to create order out of chaos. This line of reasoning is extinct and needs to be revised as it doesn’t work anymore. Rules only make more chaos and limiting the behavior of economic institutions or individuals only makes for more unreasonable behavior and more feelings of mistrust. Think about it for a moment. We have created an economic climate where there is no safe place to save money. Even treasury bills are unsafe as we have no idea if the United States government will hold up under the tremendous strain our bailout package is going to cost. Many people have lost everything  and many more will lose even more and yet we have speeches in Washington daily telling us not to worry and  this economic free fall is under control due to these “new rules”. Our leaders are desperately trying to get us to “buy in” to their ideas and beliefs so we will live our lives the way we used to by shopping and spending and having confidence in the strength of our government as well as our economic system. This is not happening and it is not happening for good reasons. Rules never make anything better, they tend to alienate and isolate individuals and create a lack of cohesion in a culture rather than a feeling of  safety. Safety is created through trust and the ability to rely on other individuals and on our own economic system. It’s quite similar to a marriage  in which trust has been violated and one of the partners has lied and been unfaithful to the other. If the couple decides to stay together and try to work out the relationship, there must be an openness in their communication as well as trust. This trust does not happen immediately as once a lie has been told,  it is hard to believe again in ones partner. The way to rebuild trust is to receive small truths over a period of time and be able to verify them. In other words, to ask where ones partner was when they are late in returning home and to receive an explanation that is verifiable. Unless the couple is able to go through the steps of this process with the expected falling back and going forward, the marriage may not survive and deepen from the experience.

In the case of our economy, it will take more than the recitation of new economic rules to create confidence among the people of the world. Interfering with an economic system is a debatable idea: allowing an economy to balance itself is not a popular tactic today yet it was once the only practice to live by. The first variable to be addressed is greed. This is such a big subject there is no way anyone could tackle it in one sitting. All of the countries in the world are watching the roulette wheel of our economy spin  and hoping the red or the black will pay off for them. We are all standing around the roulette table placing wagers on our future and some are doing this without considering the amount of risk they are taking in their wager. It seems we give lip service to cooperation and consideration of our fellow nations but we have no trust of them nor do we trust our own ability to save our country from this looming depression. We continue to make rules which apply today but may not apply tomorrow.

We need to take baby steps towards confidence by setting policies that have been agreed on through consensus building rather than rules. I don’t see this happening in the world, in our country, in the condominium development where I live, nor in my own family. People believe that rules will create order but it seems to me the more rules we have the greater the chaos becomes as no one likes restraint which they have not had a hand in creating.

When I was a kid and I was in trouble, I used to think to myself  ” What’s the worst thing that could happen? “I would then come up with the worst punishment I could imagine. I would lie on my bed in my room where I had been confined and imagine what further punishment I might receive for the wrong I had committed. This would usually take me a few minutes. I would imagine the punishments and how they would feel. I would imagine the pain received. I would then feel in control of the future. It seemed simple to me to imagine pain received and then, pain being over. In today’s world I can’t imagine the pain or the punishment as the economic future seems completely out of control. Each day brings a new report of another company hitting  bottom and closing, more people being out of work, more homes being lost and more economic chaos. It seems we have no idea of when this slide will stop nor where we will be when it does. Sometimes I try to think of ways to save or invest in something that will be a needed commodity in future times and I come up empty. All around me I see friends who have to give up their homes, tuition for their children in college,  hopes for their future retirement, and I wonder where it will end. Tonight on the news there was a report of a tent city in Sacramento where 50 people a day arrive to pitch tents and subsist on handouts and good cheer of others who are out of work and homeless. Still I do not see a solution being offered by our government. The problem is too great for any one person to solve. I wonder what will happen and what will be valued? “Invest in treasury bills!” says one smart friend, but what will happen to treasuries if our government goes broke? What value will cash hold if there is no backing to the dollar? I hate to be negative but I can’t feel any other way. I think I am not alone in this and I am worried for all of us feeling this way. I want to feel connected to my family and my friends and I want to believe in a circle of support but I am having a hard time doing it. I don’t feel depressed, I feel empty and powerless which seems to be a common feeling. Even Warren Buffet feels this way. I wonder where Warren keeps his cash?I keep thinking  if we all stick together we can get through this but I am growing tired of thinking this way as it doesn’t seem practical. I understand those that retreat to the wilderness and grow their own food. The thing I don’t understand is the desire to buy guns and larger guns and to stockpile ammo. We have had enough of wars to know they never solve anything and just create more rules. Yes, it is true that a war usually solves a recession but to what end? The current economy will produce more crime and more hatred if we don’t find a way to see our own commonality. I am trying to do that every day and I will keep on trying. I hope we all try as if we don’t we will become even more disenfranchised. “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” God only knows.

I mean it!  Though I would consider myself an optimist, I will not believe the positive news on the economy in the news media as it is improbable. There is no way the world can turn around on the head of a pin and become solvent, safe and economically sound in this short a period of time. There is no way our banks can become stabilized or our economic markets, balanced. We are simply unwilling to wait out this recession as we are all impatient with pain. I see people out in the malls carrying shopping bags and it makes me worried. I think about their credit card balances creeping up again and the amount of debt they are carrying. I think about how they will face their mortgage payment or rent due bill and I imagine the fear that will undoubtedly hit once people realize their spendable income is depleted and their assets have not grown.  In this country and perhaps in the world  people do not like to look at the future in terms of their own mortality but this is an exercise I have been practicing recently. I imagine how long I will live with all good luck and then I map out how much money I will need to live that long a period of time. I take into account the possible rate of inflation in future and come up with a figure I will need so that I will be self sustainable. It used to be clear to me that my future would be sound and money would not be a fear I needed to have. I think that many of us have realized that life as we knew it may not be the same in the future. Many of us have done the same exercise I have just described and realized that some changes will have to be made.I am not the biggest fan of changes in lifestyle, don’t get me wrong. I have been fortunate enough to have lived a great life and to have been able to do almost everything I wanted to do. I am doing a different kind of future reflection these days having just experienced my 60th birthday and noticing what has come up for me in terms of fear. I have always thought fear to be the most debilatating of emotions as it has the power to paralyse us right in our tracks and prevent us from moving forward or even sideways. I think fear is becoming an emotion we are losing track of as it is so appropriate at this time. We should be fearful about the world as we know it because it is only by being fearful that we will effect change and focus on stabilizing our world. I really believe we need to recognize that our lives are permanently changed and our behavior needs to change as a result of this. I feel like a punitive school teacher sayiing this but in my heart I know it to be true.

There’s a lot to be said for shelling peas on the back porch and then making the most delicious, bright green soup for dinner.I took my first trip to the Marin farmers market with a friend yesterday and decided that the $28.00 I spent was the best bargain I had made in almost my entire life. Not only was I satisfied in body but my mind was alive with the positive energy of the place, the young farmers as well as the young mothers buying fresh produce for their kids.A happy time that was priceless!

Today I went to the garden of a friend in Bolinas where there were a few wonderful women visitng for the day.I  wander ed about her garden and into her studio where she had many, incredibly lovely paintings she had done. As I was meandering around the place a woman came up to me to chat. She was dressed as only women dress who have reached a point in their lives where they know what they like and what pleases the eye. The particular shade of green she  favored was like a wonderful moss blanket growing around a happy rock in a woods where there were still magical things happening. Her face reflected calmness and a certain peace that comes from a warmth fed by slow fires and good books. This new friend of mine explained that Mothers Day had originated from  “Mrs. Howe”  who had gathered women around her during a war some years ago and asked the mothers not to send their sons to war. She believed that if all the mothers in the world decided not to allow their sons to fight, war might be stopped. I thought this was a wonderful story. I think many of us could do more to stop the fighting that is in constant motion all over our world. As mothers, we have a voice in what happens in the world and imagine if all of us prevented our sons from going to war and our daughter as well? Would the wars begin to slow down and eventually cease? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

My daughter was commenting the other night on how different men and women were when congregating in groups of friends. She said when her boyfriend went out with his guy friends some good business happened as they got together in a collaborative way and made it happen. He would come home and tell her about the new project they had cooked up or a new song they had all written together.  She was trying to understand why this didn’t happen when she was with her women friends and explained it by the “hunter-gatherer” instinct in males. She believes that men collaborate better together as they learned this as cave men when men had to work together to bring home the bison. Women have not yet learned this as we are still competing for the men not believing we can makeit on our own now and get our own bison. The end result is that when we are together with other women we are still competing with each other rather than collaborating with each other. Those were not her words, exactly, but they sure made me think. My daughter is a supreme feminist as I am,  yet she had noticed this  and did not like it. I remember when I was teaching communication in a business school how easy it was to work with the men students as I would give them feedback and they would thank me. My women students would argue with me and defend themselves, not wanting to be criticized. They ( the women) viewed my feedback as criticism rather than helpful feedback on how to get a job. I remember trying to word things differently for both sexes but I always remember knowing I was the same as my women students. I know I act differently with men than with women and that I prefer the company of men as they are easier to be with for me. There is no competition and an easy acceptance that I enjoy.I find this reflection an interesting one and that’s all I have to say on this subject for now.

I read somewhere the other day that women sometimes had heart attacks when they broke up with a significant other. Perhaps it was people in general. I can’t be certain but it makes me wonder about the pain of relationships  and the actual physical damage this pain could do. The heart pain is so bad that it makes you believe you will never ever survive it even if you remind yourself a billion times a day that it will get better in time. It seems to hit in waves of remembrance which feel like waves of actual physical pain starting in your heart and then sometimes flowing out into your chest. You have a hard time breathing for a moment. You feel a certain panic filling your thoughts. It is hard to detach and practice Buddhist breathing or even to remind yourself why you can’t be with the other person. When you love someone you love them and that’s all there is to it. Funny who we chose to love…I don’t completely understand the whys or the hows of it. I think, for me, there is a “child” connection where I feel an instinctive connection with a person and that connection feels safe to me. When the connection is broken I feel as if I have suddenly lost my best friend.

What the Hell does that mean? I really hate that phrase particularly when people say it who have small and mean mouths. What could possibly be the “right” reason to fall in love? That you found the object of your affection fascinating? That you were irresistibly drawn to that person for reasons you could never articulate?That when you were with that person you felt calm and content or crazy and agitated? There doesn’t appear to be a right answer here for any one particular person as it is different for everyone. The one constant is the desire of most people to want to find someone with whom they feel safe and secure and beloved. I happen to believe that in every relationship there is a lover and a beloved. I am always the lover. I am changing my ways and am going to take on the beloved role now that I am a true adult. It must be nice to be the beloved. You sit there and bask in the admiration of the lover who is always considering what it is that might make you happier, more comfortable or more cosy. The beloved has no problem knowing what name to put on the form at the hospital where you must fill in the name of whom to notify in the event of an emergency. I remember once taking a boyfriend to the hospital for a test very early in the morning. We had been dating almost a year and I felt things were pretty solid. I watched him fill out his form very carefully and then asked him whose name he had written in the space for notifying someone in an emergency. He looked up at me rather sheepishly and said that he had written the name of his ex wife in that space. I felt really angry at first and then I just felt sad. I have an “ex” as well but I would never put his name in that space on my form as we just don’t have that type of relationship.I know a lot of single people like me who have sadness around this issue.We all want to be in love for whatever reason there might be. When we believe in love we are very frightened underneath it all as getting older doesn’t make losing at love easier, it makes it much more difficult. Just as real wounds heal less fast in older people, so do wounds of the heart. Younger people don’t want to know this as most hope the pain of relationships will lessen as one ages. No such luck!

A friend of mine went to a benefit dinner recently where the hosts of the event were raising money for the blind. After the guests were seated , the chair of the evening announced that dinner would be held in absolute darkness so the guests would  ”know” what it was like to be blind. The lights were extinguished and the dinner served by waiters who were sight challenged. The dinner guests reacted by not reacting so used were they to shock tactics to get their attention. My friend was really furious as he felt manipulated, and rightly so, by the plan of the evening. The darkness frightened him and he felt controlled and manipulated by the situation. Evidently others felt the same way as the usual amount of cash did not appear afterwards though no one spoke up at the time.  I don’t blame him. I felt the same way today at a training I attended for healers in my town. At one point in the program designed to help volunteers work with those who were ill with cancer, a woman gave a presentation which was focused on the process of grief.  She asked us to write on 10 pieces of paper the things we valued most in our lives. Many of us wrote these things down with thought and some pain as we remembered our loved ones and our lives. The leader of this exercise appeared again in front of us dressed in a dime store version of an angel: wings and a gilt halo atop her head. We all laughed nervously when she appeared. She stated in a strange voice, “I am the angel of death! Give me three of your pieces of paper!” We all looked through our papers searching for the ones we could give up without pain. She then asked for three more pieces and we gave her three more. Finally, we were all left with one piece of paper. Supposedly, written on this piece  of paper was the most important thing we valued above all else in life. She asked that we give this to her. I substituted a blank piece of paper for this request. Though I clearly knew this was an exercise, I was unwilling to go along with this woman as I felt manipulated by her strange costume and impersonation of “the angel of death.” For me , this exercise was not successful in teaching the concept which I was unsure of. Describing it here in my blog is difficult as it seems relatively harmless but in the room there was an enormous amount of mostly painful emotion. These women were imagining all over again the losses they had suffered in their lives or future losses they might suffer.I believe from what I have experienced with death and loss people learn how to deal with others who have suffered by empathic understanding of the sense of loss. To dramatize the feeling of loss in a false manner and by introducing comedy to the exercise this woman created a feeling of deep sadness within our group. I later commented to this woman on how I felt and what I had done with my slip of paper. Her comment to me in return was that ” I must have a lot of issues surrounding loss to have withheld my piece of paper from her.” I was surprised by this reaction as I usually expect another person to listen to my feedback and not take it personally. She went on to say that she was going to use my story as an example of a person who had “control” issues.  I found this inappropriate in any number of ways. I think both of us felt frustrated by the interaction. I find that in todays’ world the advertising industry has decided that shock is the only way to reach people for behavior change. I disagree with this being a Buddhist at heart. I think we all feel enough pain today to last a lifetime and that we feel better and do more good in the world by being shown compassion and loving kindness. I think  an exercise in loss shouldn’t be necessary in a group of volunteers who have already decided to give up a part of their time to work with those in pain. Perhaps no one has vocalized this before  during this exercise but in vocalizing my feelings I found solace in knowing everyone has the right to be heard and respected. A clear and organized presentation demonstrating the stages of grief would have been a lot more helpful to me.

No one realizes how life is much simpler when you live close to the ground. I see things that rarely cross the eyes of humans and I know I am superior. I have known this for a while, actually.Despite the fact that my beauty surpasses most human women, I am a humble sort of girl and I can’t believe how stupid the average male human can be.They are still in the Neanderthal incantation that is for certain. The other night I had to lie through an entire evening listening to a woman friend of you know who talk about her guy. She couldn’t understand why he hadn’t followed her out of the restaurant when they had a fight. She drove back to her house and he never even called her! He told her the next day he thought she would come over to his house. Now that is just plain old silly. Of course a girl doesn’t just go to a guy’s house after she has walked out on him. The guy is supposed to follow her and say how much he loves her. When will guys get it right? They could have the most simple of lives but they just keep on screwing up!Girls just want to be told they are pretty and have their stomachs rubbed in a continual pattern.When girls turn and walk away they want to have their tails chased! What do human males do? They sit and eat their food! Ridiculous, really! If human males just chased the woman they loved and then caught them and then told them how lovely they were and  then scratched their bellies, they would get everything they wanted. When a human girl says she is sick of ” the relationship” she doesn’t mean it! What she means is that she wants more attention. It is that simple. Human men have no idea how easy it would be to have everything they want in a companion. All it would take would be a small chase and then a few licks!Today you know who went to the farmers market in Marin where she met a man she hadn’t seen for 20 years. He said,” There is the stunningly beautiful Lucinda!” and you wouldn’t believe the effect it had on her. She gave me four pieces of turkey jerky on the drive home and kept smiling in this funny way and looking at herself in the mirror at every stop sign and once during fast traffic on the freeway much to my chagrin! I swear I am sick of this. Why don’t people listen to me? Everyone wants the same thing. Food, sex and laughter. From my perspective I know what to do to get this though the sex portion of my life was violently removed some years ago without any informed consent from me! That’s one of the problems of being shaped like a wiener dog and having long red hair. Frankly(get it?) I don’t really care about the sex part anymore as I am a mature person who understands what is important in life though I see this isn’t the case for humans. Humans long for touch and that is a sad problem as they don’t see themselves as dogs. If they did they would get belly scratches whenever they liked.

Just the other day I was thinking why in the world did our president buy a Portuguese water dog for the White House? First of all, there is no Portuguese water in the white house. It has to be American. What will that dog drink? Bottled Portuguese water? Who will go out and buy that without a fanfare? Certainly not Michelle Obama! She can’t be seen buying Portuguese! That poor dog will have to give up his own water and  be converted. I know how hard it is to be converted. You know who decided to save money buy installing a filter on the water tap rather than buying bottled water. I liked the bottled water! Particularly Fiji water as it is sublime! Fiji water reminds me of springtime and mudlucious in the words of e. e. cummings  and catching frogs down by the shore. We used to do that a lot when she was rich. Now that our life has changed we go on walks in our neighborhood rather than to far away places that had room service and where the waiters always brought me treats! Oh!  How I loved those treats! Hamburgers swimming in butter and tasty chops with lots of  fat on the edges. Once I found some chocolate under a bed but that didn’t end well. Mostly those places loved me and paid me a lot of attention particularly during cocktail hour. How I love cocktail hour! All those tidbits being passed about. The thing about being a dog is that people have no reason to suspect you are perfectly capable of listening to whatever they say to one another. I have heard the most amazing stuff simply by sidling up to people. Actually, so has you know who. She does this thing of pretending to be asleep or in a trance so people forget she is there and just start babbling to each other. They tell each other everything that is going on in their head including some stuff that should stay in their head. Once she heard some people begin to talk about her and then she had to wake up as no matter how confident you are, hearing gossip that is mean about yourself is just not fun! What is fun is cosiness with warm meat thrown in. Let’s face it,  nowadays it is easier to be a dog that is loved than a human. I read over her shoulder in the paper today that during the depression of the 1930′s the divorce rate slowed. Humans today are so silly. Bickering is just a waste of time. Think about it. First, do what I tell you. Smile. Feel your face in a smile. It feels good, right? I must say I have a great smile for a dachshund. It is long and sweet and I have very pretty white, sharp teeth. Now try frowning or try growling, it is basically the same thing.  Feel how that feels bad on your face? Your face feels sad just doing it. We should be happy dogs with happy human owners because then us dogs would get more tasty treats! Forget the Portuguese water! Buy American! Smile! Take your dog to the pond! Lick your wife in the face!

She doesn’t really feel like writing much these days. I see her start to write and then wander off so I know it is my chance to blither on. I can understand why she feels like this. Frankly, a day watching Bloomberg can ruin any chance of fun for me. There are few treats when she feels like this. I am worried about my dinner! What if she can’t afford the good dog food I like? What if she forgets about feeding me all together? Tonight we had dinner with a friend of hers who has another friend who has a dachshund like me. This friend of his is thinking of giving away her dachshund as she says he is biting people. Now I know this can’t be true. not one of mine! We only bite when there is real danger. And I mean serious danger! We bite when someone is about to really hurt us or someone we love. Think about it! What would the world be like if we simply gave away our family members because we were sick and tired of caring for them? I think that is what Bloomberg is doing. We are all scared about where our next biscuit is coming from as we watch the dwindling resources of this country. The way the dollar is plunging is scary and the way the stupid government people are printing money is scary. I remember a few years ago when one of her young friends had a toy printing press. He kept printing out dollar bills in the excited manner of most five year olds do when given a new toy. He used this “money” to get his parents to buy him stuff. The parents complied with him. He kept printing. They kept buying. Sooner or later something had to give. The parents had given too much. The kid went to school and the parents hid the printing press. The kids came home and whined for a moment and then found another toy. The trouble is we have no parents to give away the printing press to stop this nonsense. This is no game. A dog doesn’t just begin to bite for no reason. An owner gets sick of caring for a dog when they are depressed and then the owner begins to fabricate stories about why they can’t keep the dog. The big wigs in Washington where I have never been are not paying  attention to what is really happening here. Dogs biting for no reason. Currencies dropping. People losing jobs. Families dropping their dogs at shelters. Families breaking apart. No bones for breakfast! I am worried. I wish I could write a silly blog but for the first time I agree with her.

For some time now I have been feeling powerless: powerless about my relationships as well as my work life, and completely powerless about what is happening in the world. Many great spiritual leaders claim that powerlessness is a good state to acknowledge as it is only from this state that we may live a present life. From the time I get up in the morning to the time I go to bed, I remind myself I am powerless in the world. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t. I find the world to be more frightening than it has ever been before as there is no real constant or nothing that is certain to count on. People used to say all one could count on was death and taxes. That is certainly still true but is a statement completely lacking in comfort. Our country is in a real mess and for a few months now newscasters as well as government leaders have been trying to persuade Americans that the crisis is over and the economy is on an upswing.People have invested their savings back into the stock market. That advice made me angry and frightened as well. In California behavior is particularly frightening as the malls are filled with people carrying shopping bags. Every time I go past the mall parking lot near where I live I am surprised to see there are no vacant parking spaces. People are shopping like crazy despite the fact that California has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Our social service programs are being cut left and right. Foreclosures happen about once a minute in this state and we may be forced to close some of our most beloved national parks. Granted, California is a huge state and one that has been mismanaged but other states will undoubtedly follow this same path. We simply can no longer afford the life we took for granted for so many years. People that are shopping must be bringing their credit cards up to the max once again believing that life will spring back to where it was. They are not considering what is really happening but are living in the present moment to a dangerous degree. Many people are doing this today. Many are afraid to really examine what is going on in the world as it is really scary to do so. Iran is on the edge of a major revolution, Korea is dangerously close to using nuclear weapons to assert itself, China is readying its economic policies to take over the markets and assume America’s place as leader of the world. Actually, China, Brasil  and India will all have to duke it out in the coming years to see who will take over as the biggest and the best. I would like to place my vote on India as I believe in the culture of education found there as well as the great sense of spirituality. I think I would lose in that bet so I won’t make it. It looks to me like China will win out as they are the greediest at the moment and perhaps the most uncaring about the rest of the world. You won’t see China jumping in to feed a country after famine resulting from internal strife hits somewhere in the world. You probably won’t see China jumping in to save another country from communism or from the perils of a disease that could have been prevented by inoculation. China will sit back and collect interest from the loans she will make to other countries in the world while ignoring whatever pain is going on. Do I think this is bad behavior? Not really. I think we have wasted countless dollars as well as human lives on wars we had no reason to get involved with other than the ego of our military leaders and our presidents.I think now we have to wait while the scene we have created unfolds. If the Mayans are correct, we will live to see a new world order which is more generous, loving and kind and which supports love and human life above all else. So far everything that has happened was predicted in their calendar many centuries ago. I feel powerless because I am powerless. We all are. Any attempt to fell otherwise will be viewed as a joke by the universe.

I had dinner with a new friend last night and we spoke of the necessity of social networking if one is living a single life. We both agreed that the process of keeping a calender filled required a lot of energy and devotion but, in the end, it was worth it. I find if I look at my week in scribbles of black and white and see I don’t have an open night, I feel satisfied and safe. I feel content as I know the end of each day will be filled with the presence of another person whose company I enjoy. If I were in  relationship with someone I lived with perhaps I wouldn’t feel so lucky. I actually have no idea how to survive with another human being in close proximity. I know this is a character flaw. I really do long for the cosiness of a body here in my house on a regular basis, not counting the long haired warmth of Rosie, that is. I can’t quite figure out why I am as old as I am and have not yet settled on someone with whom to share the remainder of my days. I am a romantic so I believe it will happen as long as I keep on believing it will happen.I greet each day with joy and peace and a longing for someone to shout out to and discuss the news over coffee. Then I imagine what this would actually be like and realize I have been alone for so long that maybe I wouldn’t like another body right there in the room with me. Maybe I am just fooling myself. Many of my friends have to make breakfast and dinner for their husbands on a daily basis. This seems really tiresome to me. I don’t like doing anything on a regular basis except sleep. I think I have always been this way. In my town I get excited seeing all the restaurants I haven’t been to: I don’t really like going back to the same ones as though they are wonderful, they lack the excitement of unexplored territory. I love unexplored territory and the darkness and light of it.

It is hot here today: so hot that my dog isn’t tempted to chase the lizard that slowly crosses the deck. If I were sailing I would watch the sail with a vulture’s eye  hoping for a movement. Time goes more slowly in the heat and it makes me want to smoke and sit and think…I haven’t finished reading the paper or cleaning up my small place and maybe I won’t.Maybe I will meditate on how to have a personality transplant or maybe on the beauty of the moment. It is a toss up at this point.

Recently Obama made a statement that perhaps he had “underestimated”  the state of the economy. This made me angry for any number of reasons. I don’t think he is a dishonest person nor an ignorant one. I do think our politicians start to believe the myths written about them in the press and go on to believe they have the power to walk on water because of these myths. By this I mean they believe they can actually influence the economy in a positive sense simply by announcing the economy is sound and people should jump back into investing in it. Many people did just that back in early spring of this year as Obama and his advisers were saying the period of crisis was over. Americans have no attention span for pain and so this was welcome news. Many believed this news and started spending again and placing their cash into funds invested in the market. Then the market started to falter and then more announcements were made by the Obama administration letting us know they may have been too “optimistic” in their assessment of what was going on. I wonder about what works in an economy like ours: truth telling or imagery? It seems in this case that it is too late for truth telling and that imagery has failed to inspire us.

I have learned the pain of truth telling too late in life. If one really examines the truth in any given situation and then communicates it, inherent dangers arise. I know my version of the truth is often very different from someone else’s, particularly in interpersonal situations. I have tried to  give up blame and anger most of the time and tried to believe that most misunderstandings happen because of a lack of information on someones part. For example: if you and I communicate over an issue and I am not really paying attention to what you are saying I may miss the fact that you are upset with me for some reason. Usually this will come up later in a dialogue that is filled with frustration and anger at the idea of being overlooked or worse,  unloved. The basis of most misunderstandings in life is fear, something I have commented on before. In this economy we are all fearful and the older you are , the more you are fearful. There is not much difference between interpersonal communication and communication in the press. I find it very interesting to discuss the economy with people who are under 40 as they have no fear about the strength of our country. I can’t decide if I think this is sheer stupidity or simple optimism due to lack of prior experience with recession.

I actually prefer the truth most of the time as it makes whatever pain that may come with it pass much more quickly. If the truth about any given situation is withheld, or worse, doled out in small drops over time, the pain is constant and the wound is always open leaving no time for healing.I remember once being in a relationship with a man who was divorced when we started dating. I fell very much in love with him, and he, with me. As time went on, however, he started to withdraw and act in a manner unlike him. When I asked about this behavior he said I was imagining it and that everything between us was the same. Our conversations became less frequent as did our meetings. At first I chalked this up to his work and his busy schedule. After a while, however, I knew something was amiss and so I asked him. He again insisted nothing was wrong but I later discovered he had returned to his wife. All of this took place over several months and I can still remember the pain I felt and the anxiety that was constantly present in my life. I still remember the abandonment I felt when I understood that during those months I had been feeling something was amiss, he had been rekindling his relationship with his ex wife. If he had been honest with me from the start, it would have been much easier for me to move on. I think he withheld this information from me as he wanted to avoid any pain for himself  or me, and any feelings of indecision. Instead he avoided the truth of our relationship until he felt connected with his ex wife, and still he never had a direct converstion with me about what was going on. It was devastating for me.

Looking back, I still fell pain which is remarkable to me considering the fact that 15 years have passed. The pain is caused by the period of knowing something was wrong, of feeling this on an instinctive basis, and having these feelings denied by a partner who kept on insisting I was  imagining things. This, to me, is the worst thing anyone can do to another. I hope I am wrong about this economy and that we will eventually be on a strong path once again.

Interviewing

I met two guys who know how to fix stuff:

Make things out of wood

Rescue women and children first

Keep a fire going

Laugh at farting and cry at war

But they’re taken.

I am interviewing men.

I have been continuing this process since January of ‘95.

There have been many applicants

Some more entertaining than others.

You have to watch carefully to determine

If they have a cage or a box or

Maybe a behavioral book

On their person.

And, oh yes, look at their tongues

For forkedness.

I have thong underwear,

A lie detector machine,

An American Express Platinum card,

Invisible children,

An enormous library,

A Sonic Care toothbrush,

A fast car,

Caller I. D.

And an endless capacity to giggle.

I am tired.

Just as I say I am giving up

Up pops another offering.

I am a sucker for nice hands.

In the end I say

Here are some poems to read

And they walk away into the night

White sheaf of paper a broken wing under their arm.

The Lion Still Roars

When my father died

Everyone ran for his stuff:

Clothes and cameras–

Cufflinks and chainsaws–

I got the lion,

His childhood toy.

Head dangling from a hole in the neck,

Fur worn down to a gray nub.

The lion jumps when you pull its string,

It sits back ever so slowly on its haunches and

Springs at you when you thought it wouldn’t.

The lion learned this from a master jumper.

A slapper, a dancer, a breaker, a chewer, a crier, a liar.

Right by the bedside the lion watched and learned.

One can’t repair this brain chemistry in animal or man.

Violence is just violence, after all.

My mother thinks I should have the lion repaired.

She is used to the simple act of pulling a string,

Comforted by things as they were.

But the lion and I have an understanding

About the unpredictable nature of life.

Happy to be back in my California garden where the storm is gathering over the jasmine vines and the air is filled with the scent of  possibility.

           Butter and flour, a little milk: a perfect roux, and that’s all you need for almost anything. Melt the butter with the flour, make a paste and slowly add the milk while stirring. She loved the stirring. She invited all her friends, old and new, to the party but never told them what she knew about each of them; preferring to mix the characters while they were fresh: add a little salt, some California white for headiness, some garlic for warding off bitterness and jealousy. The men arrived half dressed in starched shirts without ties, and the women came baring their breasts, their hearts on their lacy cut out bras as offerings to the night. The party began: music filling the ears: memories of nights never happening but hoped for, and sweet, sharp tastes of mouths kissed for too long a time, lips swollen but not satisfied.

          The group drew closer and closer as the wine slipped like absinthe through and beyond the coyote throats  thrown back, howling into the night: braying for a mate, a partner, an equal contestant in this game of love. Darker grew the pond outside the window, with its swamp grass entangled around the feet of the guests having slunk, stealth- like, into the room through louvered doors half open in the hearts and organs of the guests pulling them into a  place between dark and  light, “l’heure bleu”, the hour of knowing,  they went hand in hand often switching partners, as the swans folded their great white wings into themselves and the women opened their white breasts once folded so neatly into their  black dresses. The night became a tent: the world beneath it another world. There were no restrictions, no knowledge, no carnage, as this was the underworld of love.

A hurricane is coming.

People behave as if they were members of an ant colony

Industriously hauling water, batteries, duct tape, condoms, and Cheerios.

Unlike the ants, they are not cooperative;

The rise of the wind is commensurate with the level of greed.

All the fresh water is gone already and it is only 2PM.

By 5 PM there are barricades in front of the A & P.

The ant people have adopted military dress and are bayoneting steel belted radials

For misbehavior.

The queen ant is directing the sand bag people

Who are erecting a barrier between Greenwich and Portchester.

All the mid level ant people are instructed to remain in the center of the lot

And await being chosen.

(Just like dancing class, but no white gloves).

George Bush has declared a state of emergency

And organized a foot race for all presidential candidates

From Washington to New York.

Arnold Schwartzenager wants to participate, but

Is told he is not right for the part.

As the hurricane crawls up the coast

George crawls under the table in the White House kitchen,

Looking for plutonium.

Laura tells him he traded it to Tony last month

For some toy soldiers.

The axis of the world has shifted

As if someone hit us on our heads and

Our eyes can’t refocus.

We are all walking sideways.

Our perspective is so short.

We have let go of hope and its golden rope of sunset.

Our desolation is in our bodies.

Our souls have been eaten already.                                                                                             

North Haven Island

A family floats every summer,

On the Island of the warm and hopeful.

Electricity runs to each homestead:

Filling bedrooms with current events.

The bay around contains the fragile with circling currents

While trodden paths define the limits

Of their lives.

There is a house for every child:

Some old some new some mortgaged,

Some with memories not in safes,

Some with memories denied,

Replaced by wishbone walls.

Construction so brittle every word is heard

Every wish, forsaken.

At daybreak gulls cry the auk of sorrow.

At night ravens savage the lavender of sleep.

There are boats in the harbor

With navigational devices guaranteed to find the mainland,

They always fail.

Some families float for centuries

Bobbing on Penobscot Bay directed

By whales and dolphins

Eating sea crusts                                                                                                                                                               

Speaking no evil

The language of darkness.

There is an annual summer tea

Where all return to drink chocolate

And defer whipped cream

And hold their hands to their eyebrows

Searching the horizon for amazement,

And when it arrives

Refuse to feel it.

Wonder how to be a happy single girl? So here’s the trick…have a lot of men in your life and make certain they all adore you and hope they will get lucky one day or another. Never think the one you are with should be the one and only. If you do you will be shaky like the leaf at the end of October suspended from an old oak. Cultivate men like ears of cord: flatter them, fertilize them(dachshund secret!) and then harvest them. The next line I am leaving up to your imagination.We dachshunds have an enormous imagination: we needed it in the past for understanding other animals we were hunting. This use is no different! Use your imagination to cultivate men as companions as the more you have in your life, the happier a girl will be. Men are like great old quilts: you need to hand wash them and occasionally hang them out in the sun but not long enough to let their colors fade. If you know what I mean by that you are one step ahead of me. She is finally having a good time in life. I have been trying to tell her about the men collection for a long time but she always got it wrong. she thought you had to be in love with just one guy and  never see any others as that would be disloyal.Now that line of thinking is just plain old silly. I am not saying you have to be disloyal, just that you should have a lot of male admirers around if you want to have a happy life. Men are just plain old nicer to a girl than women. Men look at your ass as you walk away because they are thinking about the biggest word they know! SEX!   Women look at you ass as you walk away and think about whether or not it looks better than theirs. Men always think you are younger than women think you are. Men love the way you dress. Women are constantly wondering why your hair always looks good and whether you have had plastic surgery. Men love your smell and women offend you by wearing too much scent. The whole competitive business is ridiculous if you ask me. I find that men relate to me. Maybe it is because I have such a good nose for business. (get it?) I am an intelligent dog yet I know when to shut up. That’s another thing a lot of women don’t know how to do. She knows how to shut up. Actually I have heard her indirectly tell others to shut up. She does it by closing her eyes in the middle of a conversation and acting like she is thinking and needs quiet. Actually she is going quietly nuts as the other person is talking too loudly or shrilly. She hates shrill.I do as well. We dogs do have incredibly sensitive ears as you may know and high voices are hard for us. Now there’s a good place to spend money if you have a voice problem. Voice over school. I took classes there for a while. I have a lovely sweet voice and was offered the role of Maria in the sound of music in the dachshund chorus but I couldn’t take time off from being her dog. She needs me, you see, despite the fact that she has a chorus of men now.  Or should I say a bevy or maybe a bounty, or perhaps a flock, a herd, or a strategic alliance. Anyway life here in Lucindaland is good.

Looking for a Favorite Place

I move when the light between the hours of four and six becomes too strong,

And I am restless with waiting and counting.

I move when the house is explored and there are no more secrets

And I know where the carpenter ants have done their damage and someone has

found where I hide when I can’t work.

I move when the mailbox is too full.

I move when the newspapers repeat themselves with pictures of

Global weaponry and small photos of children with their animals,

And there are reports of coyote’s roaming in local fields.

I like:

Drawer paper peeling off the bottoms of drawers

Smelling of must, perfume, mothballs and exploding bullets.

People who live just across the street and appear out of nowhere from time to time.

I like finding things that don’t belong to me.

Photographs and thimbles,

Old tires and pet cages,

Annuals that forget they are annuals and regrow in the flowerbed

Without provocation.

Once I found a ring

And I can’t give it away.

I move because tomorrow is a word involving pursing of lips

And I survive on the pleasure of possibilities.

The future has no memory of pain.

The past belongs to everyone else

And I am a voyeur in it.

I float from house to house in an altered state,

Sometimes leaving boxes unopened until the next move

When I will unwrap a piece of a love affair or a dog’s toy

And the chambers of my heart twist into themselves.

I Love My Gun: a Confessional

 I love my 28 gauge Beretta over and under shotgun.

It came in a green case with leather

Straps strapping it in.

The case makes one think of medical instruments

Or maybe shoes for very tall thin people.

When you open the case there is a compartment

For everything.

This is one of the reasons I like it.

Small square places for chokes

And long narrow places for barrels,

My gun has two barrels that are interchangeable:

One for small kills and the other, for big.

I like to open the case and look at

All the compartments filled up.

Sometimes I lift up a barrel and smell it:

Oil, powder, dirt, explosions.

I often do this before breakfast.

I wonder why I am not ashamed.

I shoot flying clay discs

Into shards for an archeologist to piece.

I am comfortable shooting.

I hold the gun like a “born shooter,”

Says James,

An ex-marine wife-abuser deer-killer who teaches me.

We walk along paths

Wearing camouflage gear

Brown human clothes with hats and boots

And one can hardly tell we are not human.

James has huge leather pouches of

Ammo strapped to his trim waist

Like a male Scarlet O’Hara

When I shoot he never says “good” but

“Kill” when the disc shatters over primeval preserves.

There must be a genetic flaw here,

You don’t have to tell me.

As soon as I got the gun I felt powerful:

Long and cool

Ready to engorge

I could stroke it in its case

And put it away in the closet.

When I say I have scoliosis people nod as if they know what it is. I can always tell the way someone looks at me if they really know what this is or think I am making a mountain out of a molehill. I hate whiners, myself, so I try not to mention this condition to anyone as it sounds wimpy to me. Having scoliosis means your spine is crooked and many of us end out having surgery somewhere along the path of life. Some of us do almost anything to avoid it and I fall in the latter category. The curve in my spine is so severe that some doctors believe it may be compressing my heart and compromising my lung function. I think they may be right about my heart as it has always been tender but my lungs seem just fine to me. Most of my life no one noticed this “deformity” as the surgeons tend to call it but I have always know it was there. It is a struggle between my spine and my spirit, a constant fight,  I have to put a lot of work into this fight to keep ahead of the curve, so to speak. It is , at times, entertaining particularly when shopping anda saleslady will tug and tug at the fabric of a dress in a vain attempt to make it fall evenly from my shoulders. I am grateful for my sturdy body that has carried me  this far in life but I find now that I must lie down each afternoon for an hour to let the law of gravity do its thing. I couldn’t have a job where I had to stand all day as after 15 minutes of standing I am exhausted. This morning I started to take a look at the list of things I had to keep in mind now because of my spine and I smiled wryly at myself. This list was growing longer as I got older but I had neglected to take a look at how my life was being affected by my disability. I met a young man not long ago who is the head of a lab at U C San Francisco and he researches spine abnormalities as well as tissue growth often using stem cell research as a basis to his work. He promised me that within 5 years there would be an intervention for scoliosis in utero which made me really happy. I think one of the hardest things for a parent i to see is their child inheriting something that will cause problems in their life. I watched a child of mine suffer through scoliosis surgery and occasional pain and wished I could do it for her. I felt guilty she had this condition. I think every parent feels this.  

When I read that Walter Chronkite had died this week I was inexplicably sad for a long time. I felt as if he was a good father for many  in this country anda very wise man. The calmness of his approach to even the worst news was reassuring to us all. I remember meeting him once and was surprised at his genuine interest in my life and his great sense of humor. I think Sundays are sad days for many of us. They represent the end and the beginning. No one feels as safe as we used to and no one knows how to get this feeling back. I think for me it is through connections with friends. Today I went for a hike with some old friends who are becoming better friends and I felt blessed to be with them in the peace of the California afternoon with the sun in the trees and the lake water glistening around the trail. Lake trails are like a natural labyrinth as a walk around lakes gives you a sense of completeness and finality. At the end you go home and have a bite to eat and feel as if the day has been worthwhile and the best thing about the experience is that is is free!

 Scoliosis

 At fourteen someone noticed I wasn’t normal.

My mother took me to New York.

I wore a blue suit and stockings with flats.

It was raining.

We went to a small townhouse with expensive steps

And there we met a serious doctor who had five and one half minutes for us.

She will never have normal children, he said

There are a lot of things that can be done

Why not come back in a few weeks for a brace,

These deformities are interesting to work on.

My mother drove us home in her rapid small car

Whistling in and out of highways.

Her pointy toe tapping the accelerator in two-fourths time.

She said, “Look!

When we got home, his bill is here already.

He must have sent it before he even met us.

You look all right to me.”

She had never seen me naked.

As a matter of fact, no one had.

Later, at 34, a doctor held up my spine X-Ray to a light box.

An invertebrate, let’s fix it, he said.

Instead I offered up my daughter.

8 hours later she’s straight.

Unconscious, sliced, chopped, hammered, over and over

they made her normal.

Rodded her up, steeled her vertebrae, stole bone from hip to use as glue.

If you leave her alone, she won’t breathe by the time she’s 30.

They told me.

I am fifty-four and I am breathing.

I am breathing like I never breathed before.

Filling my Hawaiian sounding air sac lungs.

My spine so twisted my ribs compress my heart.

I knew there must be a reason it seemed so sensitive to pressure.

Riding

Take me for a ride in your big German car.

The one where the windows slide up over the world,

And we glide all over the city, not talking.

So silently and smoothly as I sit in the leather molding, me like a Hapsburg princess

bowing and waving to my sidewalks.

Take me in your big German car to Soho

Where we can eat in places with names like countries that have abbreviated

Themselves into booths and red leather seats and shared dishes served by waiters

With hair that is curled into spires of cities yet unknown to me.

Turn on your woman who tells you where to go, how to navigate the world,

With a voice that is low from under the dashboard,

Almost guttural,

So strict you do it even when I ask you not to.

Take me in your car on the highway above and around and we can see the city

Lights and we glide along you and me with the resting arm place between us and

The purr purr of the great German machine telling me not to worry

Until morning.

There’s music to be heard from azure squares and the BBC world makes

Everything all right,

The proper perspective as

I braid my hair,

Polish my alpenrose,

Lower my lederhosen, while you drive us into the night.

Vermont: Fall’s End

 Lying in a bath in Vermont in the early evening

With a small candle and a wet dog in the corner,

She wonders

If the man downstairs she came here with

Is as safe as the warm bathwater and the rain falling to music.

The window is divided into ticktacktoe squares

Misted from the heat.

In the warm bath she watches the oil and water

Play with one another

Breathing in lavender while she breathes out fear

Adding hot water every few minutes.

She watches her body appear

Through the soap and water letting her belly rise like a small mountain

And her toes peek back: as disembodied little villagers

Looking for supper.

Tonight there will be dinner and family to meet

They will bring magnifying glasses and notepads.

The man has begun to peel back her heart

And she practices putting it back together

just to make sure she can when he leaves

Creation

She wants to hold his head in her lap and each hand holding a side pull it split-open

Precisely so each cerebellum would be encapsulated like a walnut inside a split shell.

Then she would hold up first the left side and then the right to her eyes so close she

could see what was black and what was right.

Then she would look into the tiny pineal gland of the future and take the pulse of

his darkness and test the depth of his wounds.

She wants to take his head off his body and replace it with one that looks just like

him and carry it home to put on the kitchen counter right between the flour and the sugar.

She wants to further examine him using the ear thing and the light and peer into his

feelings and his history of loyalty to pets and his willingness to brush her hair

until they both crackle.

Then she wants to choose which side she likes best and she wants to go to her linen

closet where, behind the pillowcases, she has other split brains.

She chooses the left side of practical abilities and from the right she chooses lust

but they don’t go together correctly

so she goes to a psychiatrist and asks him to

put them all back together because now it was a big mess.

She forgets what she really wants.

She confesses she longs for the way it was in the beginning.

Then she was back where she started.

Impending

Driving south on 101 past the silt of San Jose,

Leapfrogging around monster trucks and family vans,

The mountains drawn like an ovulation chart,

Beyond the flat bed valley,

And I’m testing cruise control.

Faster.

Slower.

“At any time you may exit cruise control by pressing on the brake pedal.”

I am proud to say I have driven 67.5 miles without using the brake

Often at great risk to myself, not to mention others.

A sign grabs my eyes at the side of the highway:

“Easy catch trout.”

I think, at first, it’s some sort of promotion.

Maybe Odwalla. They believe in philosophy

And truth in advertising.

Then I see it is a real place.

There’s a parking lot.

Many are stopping.

I almost hit a large, silver family van with eight adults inside

All appearing to be wearing the same beanie with a propeller on top.

I have to admit

I hit my brake.

I hate a cheater.

Imagine, I think,

No sport whatsoever.

What images come to mind.

Always an opportunist I think:

Easy catch love. No hooks, catch and release, no mouth wounds.

Easy catch money. Spend it on anything and your life will change.

Easy catch health. No guesswork or lengthy procedures.

And then, of course, easy catch death.

When the time is right just come on down and die.

Right there. Simple.

IV.

My daughter asked me the other day why it was that when she is someplace really beautiful she feels lonely. I wasn’t sure how to answer that question as I agreed with her completely. I love nature and have found myself in a lot of incredible places but I often feel lonely iin these places. I am usually alone as I tend to wander off the beaten track when I have nothing to write about. I get up from my desk and look out the window, wonder if it is too early to swim or go to the gym, and then before I know it I am out the door. Sometimes I take Rosie and sometimes I know I am going to travel at light speed so I leave her under my bed where she will sleep happily for hours.I wander up trails I have no idea about. I drive down roads that have been calling out to me. I am an addict for a lovely sunset and it gets worse when there is a view attached to it. A sunrise can enchant me for hours.It’s hard to find enchantment in the world today. Most people are frightened about their lives, their jobs and their health. Enchantment is very important. I would like to be enchanted by a remarkable man and I believe that I will be some time soon.

Tonight is soft and gentle and Rosie and I are out at the beach where the noises of children playing in the lagoon filter in through the open windows.I am waiting for my friends to arrive for the evening. The day feels as if someone has stopped it. I am reminded of how I want to stop having expectations of people in my life: both new and old. For so many years I had a very critical internal voice who commented constantly on people in my life and what they did or said. It seems to me that I was never happy with any relationship but looked instead to what was missing  rather than what was there. Sometimes we want companionship so much we seek it from the wrong people: people who are not capable of being a good companion . This doesn’t make them evil or mean just not really interested in connecting with another. When I go on my outings in nature I often see others in pairs. Some of these pairs are walking togther with the same gait, dressed in a similar style, enjoying the same connection in nature. I have to admit, I look at these pairs with envy on some days just as I am envious of the pelican pairs I see out here at the beach. What I love about big birds is their loyalty to one another. If one bird can’t fly another goes down to the ground with her and waits for recovery. They never wonder when the next flock will come along for them to join, they wait until their friend is better or not.

I hope I can cure this problem of mine in this lifetime as I feel so joyous when I have no expectations and just stay in the moment. I find this practice harder that learning a handstand. That took me a year. This will take me a lifetime.

Bird’s Eye View of Flight

In the middle of his life.

He became a bird..

Hooked by a whooping crane

One morning in the slow fog of northern Florida,

Swept south to the keys,

Swinging over marshes like a circus act,

Distended by humility and wind

He was carried by the large crane who ate

Only on rainy mornings, mashing down fish still alive.

He was home-schooled in observation,

Exhalation, and weather prediction in crowds.

Being suspended in flight

Is actually comforting, he found.

He floated, held under his arms by the feet of the kind crane,

Hooking around him like handcuffs with padding.

The crane only  wanted company and to stretch out his legs.

The man had no control of anything.

There was music, loud and soft, in the beating of wings

And the whooshing of the inspirational air.

He slept through much of the trip.

It took a long time to be dropped off,

And suddenly he was on land, retired

In northern Florida.

The Great Blue Heron

The great blue heron returned last night.

Flew in under the cover of darkness,

Folding his wings into an envelope of marsh and beach grass,

Waiting to allow me

The pleasure of his return

Until morning.

In the dampness of November

The heron’s message of surprise

Is a secret gift I tell no one about.

The heron knows me like no other

And he returns just when the night seems too long.

As I sip my coffee in my slippers on the lawn

The heron watches:

Deciding when he will show his great deep beak

And his broad blue wings above me,

Deciding when he will fish for me

Or reveal a sliver of sun on this gloomy day in the beginning of winter.

The heron knows he belongs south but he is a loyal bird.

Refusing to take to the air on time,

He is my guardian: my winged seraph,

The keeper of my pond boiling in the early morning

With the steam of the earth raising her young.

The heron is the first one that has known I need him.

I hate being patient. It is annoying and generally makes my skin itch. I can’t sit still and I find myself longing to eat junk food or smoke when I am trying to be patient. I am usually trying to be patient about something: weather, traffic, doctor’s offices, airports, men, daytime, nightime, anytime, restaurants, men, finding Rosie in the house, finding Rosie in the garden, finding Rosie in the car, finding peace, finding happiness, men, finding water, finding a place to stop on the highway, waiting for the stock market to go up, waiting for the stock market to go down, waiting in general anywhere, waiting for it to be cooler, waiting for it to be warmer, waiting for the rain to stop, waiting for it to rain, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the something that has happened to stop. Men.

I have a new attitude. I am really trying not to wait for anything or anyone so I have taken up knitting. I bought pure white yarn that is very fat and squishy and large wooden needles that make a soft clack as I knit. In actuality I am a terrible knitter. I never learned anything other than the in over out off ritual of childhood. This works very well. I pick up my knitting anytime I feel impatient. The scarf I am knitting is now so long I have to wrap it around my arms in order to work with it. This is very satisfying. I feel the weight of the scarf and sometimes wrap it around my neck and imagine I am in Alaska with Sara Palin discussing the merits of rimless glasses and borrowed designer clothes. I have never borrowed designer clothes so this is interesting to me. I ask Sara what she is really going to do with all her time now that she is no longer governor. I ask her how it felt to have all that attention and then have none. I ask her if she has trouble with patience. I ask her if she really does love her husband. I ask her if she believed in herself and her ability to run this country. I find this question the most interesting one. I am fascinated  with her apparent confidence and freedom with her life.

Back to knitting. I think most people would benefit from knitting. Instead of texting or fooling around on the computer people could knit. Knitting would definitely bring up the GDP as people could sell their wacky scarfs to people in Alaska. Sara said she would help. She’s a good natured girl despite those weird rimless glasses. So that’s what his blog is about: kntting. It helps pass the time when you feel life is going too fast and too slow at the same time. We are in a time like that now.

In my next life I want to be a bartender. There is a particularly good one at Harry’ s Bar in Florence and I have his picture above my desk as my friend just sent it to me. His name is “Leo” and everybody adores him. He has a ready smile, a quick wit,  and a great martini. I loved meeting Leo when I went to Florence with my friend as I felt as if I were being introduced to his (my friend’s) parents and they liked me. Leo holds the key to the kingdom of disconnected travelers and locks and unlocks them as they arrive daily in Florence. People go to Harry’s just to see him and when they find him gone for an evening or a vacation break they are disappointed and often leave the bar to eat somewhere else. Imagine having that power! Leo hears everything that is going on in business, government and the personal lives of many who go there. Leo, as the saying goes, could really write a book! The interesting thing about being a good bartender is that you have to know the right combination of  listening to and divulging information. If this careful balance is off you will find yourself out of a  following. Leo must have learned this several years ago. I wonder why all the “Leo’s ” in the world are male? Are men better able to keep secrets than women?Are men better listeners? Yes and no are the answers in my book. Men are definitely better secret keepers though they are gossips and love a bit of tasty info about people they know. Women are better listeners as we can listen without needing to win. We listen without constructing our rebuttal  as the other person speaks.We listen as we are actually curious most of the time about what the other person has to say. Maybe we can learn something. maybe we can’t. I remember once many years ago sitting next to a guest at one of our dinner parties and having this man interrupt what I was saying to state, ” That is a pile of rubbish!” I simply stopped speaking and turned to him and asked, “Did you just say what I was saying was a pile of rubbish?” The guest seemed momentarily jolted out of his semi alcoholic haze and turned my way to stare. He said to me, ” I didn’t say that!” “Really ” I said, “I thought I heard those words.”. “Don’t be ridiculous! That was just an expression!” As I recall this man was the CEO of some mega corporation and about 65 at the time. It was my job to charm him so he would go home in good spirits. I was to be his  ”Leo”. Now  maybe I wouldn’t like being a bartender as this is a tough role for me. I can do it for just so long. After a string of rubbish words from a male mouth I have to let some estrogen rip. It comes out in a soft voice like bee honey, treacle and syrup, a trap so well made not even the most canny male can escape incriminating himself. I don’t even remember the exact words I used  but I do remember the reaction of my male companion. He suddenly got more sober. He sat up in his chair and looked at me more intently. He said to me, ” I never meant to appear as if I were not interested in what you were saying.” I was astounded. This very powerful testosterone male was actually apologizing to me and seemed very genuine about it.  somehow I had penetrated his psyche so he heard me.This incident has remained in my mind for many years as it reminds me that if you learn to speak from your instinctive self and say what is true without blaming the other, interesting things happen. This was an interesting night for a number of reasons. I think it is a good thing to speak from the gut and the heart. People can’t argue with your truth. As a matter of fact, people identify truthful words through tone and expression instinctively and it makes them pay attention. If people had more of Leo in them the world might function more smoothly. Imagine if all the world leaders actually listened to one another instead of constructing a response that would rebut another point of view. We are schooled to debate in our personal and public lives. We are punished as children for not telling the truth and if we do, we are often punished for doing so. I wonder how we can learn to not only speak from our instinctive selves but to know what it is we really want to say: to know what we genuinely want and what we desire for our hearts to be full and content. I find the most challenging place to do this is in relationship with another person for we risk desertion. That is our deepest fear and our deepest desire: to be known. If we reveal our true selves and are abandoned we believe we might not be able to survive the pain. Leo never lets things get that far. Conversations have meaning but never go too far in terms of opinions or accusations. If all of us were more like Leo life might be easier. I respect what you have to say and I will listen. I am able to hear opinions that differ from mine  and I expect you to listen to mine. Maybe I won’t come back as a bartender but as a shrink in a Woody Allen film.

Life

You get a chance to find a partner before the music begins.

Usually you are young and wide-hipped:

Mango ripe.

Slippery in the choosing.

Looking for wariness, bicep curls and safety

As one can be fooled by the scent of lust.

It’s life– then you dance:

It’s a hip bending back swaying errata series

And you wonder if you are making an impression.

Like the movie star ladies with heavy breasts

On the sidewalk in Los Angeles.

My mother says listen to the music.

Sit below men and look into their eyes so they are convinced

You believe in their strength and that you have none.

I sit below them listening and I see pouches of disappointment,

Eyes full of mistrust,

Memories of mothers like me,

And my hips are frozen: transfixed.

The music in life is temperamental.

I am a dancer

With no partner.

My hands are marked with large, fat veins

Transgressing each other.

Working so hard at refreshing me.

Sometimes, I push on one hoping it will back up,

Form a pool: an untapped source of joy

I might slide into for a time.

A kind of folding chair at the side of the room.

The Wedding Veil

In our family we have a wedding veil saved by our grandmother.

It is yellowed, has small curls of lace woven into it and a scalloped edge.

The bride wears it on her head like a hair band.

Lace scallops are stiffened on the band and circle her head like a crown of thorns,

Or one of those metal halo’s spine surgery patients have on.

Brides in our family that have worn the veil are divorced

Yet we preserve the veil after each wedding,

Have it carefully repaired by a lace expert

Boxed up by a boxing expert

And then decide, as a family, who should store the veil.

Now, it is stored in my house.

I suffer from an overwhelming sense of responsibility.

What if there is a fire?

Would I remember the veil?

The box containing it worries me like impending hurricane clouds.

My daughter asks me if she should wear the veil

And I weigh the odds:

Antiquity versus reality.

My sisters like to know the veil is safe

Yet no one wants to be veiled.

The keeper of the veil

Is the keeper of the curse.

Ladybugs can survive on their body fat for days drinking just water.

Humans can’t survive without beauty.

Hawaii smells sweet like the heads of our children.

Every word ends in a vowel.

night seem longer when you fly west.

Days sound different from the palm tree rattle.

Everywhere I go I imagine living there alone.

Animal spirits live here out in the open.

I forgot what language I speak.

I think I am thirteen and I have to do it all again.

The sky is always threatening us with anger but no one listens

unlike California.

The fish swim upside down and dance with their Asian eyes.

Maybe someone will smile.

The constant is no constant.

Tonight there will be a full faced moon which is filled with knowing.

I am invisable and I like it.

I will sleep walk and catch someone’s dream

and never give it back.

take a bath.

fix something broken.

pay no attention to someone else.

eat the corner of a rose petal.

feel the cobblestones on the path of longing.

braid your hair.

drink nectar from the pear tree’s root.

Turn into a frog and hope someone kisses you.

Have no expectations for recycling.

air conditioners

dial tones

static

sprinklers

breathing

beating

place your finger carefully on the ground and maybe the day will stop again.

Look down when you walk to breakfast

Where Are You

Yellow Hibiscus

White Frangipani

Plumeria Alba

Maylay Apple with seven Hawaiian names

   Malay Rose Apple, mountain apple, water apple, swollen stalk fruit of the cashew nut

Rise around me

And within me

This morning

I could describe to you here how to travel through space without having to bring your hand luggage or your body but then I know you might find me too weird to keep on reading my blog. Suffice to say sometimes I do it.  I learned in the same way people learn to communicate without words : trial and error. If you try too hard sometimes it really backfires on you. In the first few levels of Healing Touch I learned there were different levels of “power” to use while working on clients. One client of mine had to rest in my living room  for several hours as she felt “completely undone” by her session with me.  At first, I thought she was slightly hysterical and tended to overlook her complaint. No one likes to hear complaints. Then I realized there were levels of power one should use while using Healing Touch as each person required something different. This was a real revelation to me as it was a bit like driving a car on different roads. If the road was bumpy you slowed down and if the road was slick and smooth you could go faster. It took me a while to figure out how to find the appropriate level of energy to use with my clients, and now that I have a system the sessions work more smoothly. “Tell me the system” you might ask.  Well, that is an easy thing to say but not so easy to explain. The system involves allowing your ego to step aside and asking the universe to come in and moderate for you. It’s the age old AA saying of giving up control to a higher power and allowing and accepting the fact that you have no control over the outcome. I trust in the universes ability to moderate the level of energy I ask the universe to apply it to the places the body needs it to be. I am trying now to use this “step aside” theory in my relationships which is challenging but very rewarding.

The New York Times had an article recently in the MODERN LOVE column written by Laura Munson entitled “Those aren’t fighting words, dear”. The article was very powerful for many women and I hope you googleit as the author explains what she did in reaction to her husbands decision to tell her he didn’t love here and that he was moving out. Her reaction which was apparently unplanned was to refuse to involve her own ego and feel hurt and broken by these words. Instead she removed her ego from this dynamic and saw that her husband needed time to recover from whatever torment he was suffering. She went on to live her life with her children and allowed him to behave badly all summer by coming home late, ignoring family plans and basically ignoring the family and his role in it. Eventually he returned to the role he had always played and life went on as before. The author explains that she was able to see that her husband had lost his pride in himself and needed to get it back. She also admits that this period was extremely difficult for her. I read the article and marveled at her ability to sustain this role. I couldn’t do it. If someone I loved told me they didn’t love me anymore I think I might fall into a mess of sobbing and depression. I would have a very hard time detaching and believing this didn’t come from a real place but was the result of my partner’s loss of self esteem. I would feel anger and panic, grief and terror.

When I think about this article after a few days have passed since my first read, I am feeling skepticism and disappointment. In reflecting on this example of how to react to anther’s painful statements about the relationship you are in, I am suddenly angry as I realize the reaction of the author is one  that is typically female. I try to imagine a man reacting in this way to being told he wasn’t loved or that the marriage meant nothing and I can’t come up with the image. Please let me know I am not alone in this. Or please let me know I am wrong. I find that men just give up for the most part when confronted with pain or anger. Suddenly, right in front of your eyes, they become like a turtle and back into the shell goes the head. Men are seemingly much more ego sensitive than women. They never allow the opportunity to arise where they might be vulnerable while we run out into the oncoming traffic never thinking of ourselves.

Therefore….what is my point? Saving a family is important but is this family saved? How can the author forget the callous things said to her as well as the callous behavior over the summer?  What kind of example did this set for the children?I know I couldn’t. I would want to forget so I could move on but I can’t be certain I would be able to. Is this an example of allowing ones ego to step aside or is it another example of women allowing themselves to be trampled on for the sake of the male ego?

I think that it is time for astral travel….don’t you?

In reflecting on what I wrote this morning I have a slightly different point of view….Perhaps if you were to say to a man you didn’t love him and you needed space he would simply give it to you but for different reasons. He wouldn’t want to get into a discussion involving painful things and would hope it all would go away… Maybe instead of thinking all those complicated thoughts about ego involvement and pain you might be better off pretending to be a man. Sometimes I do this. I lower my voice and walk with a swagger and shut down my mind. Sounds crazy, right? Actually it makes life easier to focus on work rather than relationship and when I do it I am much happier. Let me know what you think.

Diagnosis

What I hate most is the moment

The doctor turns to you and says, rather sorrowfully,

“There’s a small problem,”

The moment when your body doesn’t belong to you.

You nod, appearing to listen carefully,

However there is a churning inside you louder than any small part

Of Niagara Falls and you can’t hear what she is saying.

Maybe if you make her words into scrabble letters, hard and square

You could jump on her quickly while the door is still closed

And force them back inside her mouth,

Hold her nose and sit on her chest

Rumpling her white coat

Until she opens her mouth and agrees to swallow.

Make her the one with the small problem.

She appears not to notice when you begin to cry.

You have to ask for Kleenex.

What you would really like is for her to be older and more sympathetic.

You would like her to offer you tea which she would have ready behind her desk

On an old lace doily her grandmother made.

She pours the tea, takes your hand, and tells you no matter what

She will take care of you. That you will survive.

There will be no fear in her voice when she says this.

Nor will she look at her watch.

You will sip the tea together

And you will gather your things and leave.

When you go to sleep you will dream of one stone on one beach in Maine.

Assisted Living

The waiting room is where you are

When no one wants you in their house

And you can’t live alone because you don’t know when it’s

Time to eat or shit

And maybe you think it’s morning

When it’s night and your eyes aren’t so good

But as far as you know your heart

Is in the right place

Which is on your left breast.

The waiting room is where you go

When no one can

Look you in the eye

And they nod when you ask if it’s time to go home.

You are home and there’s no leaving

Whether you like it or not.

Frankly, there’s no one left who cares.

Either you’ve been a bitch or you haven’t.

It doesn’t matter because in the waiting room

There’s no one to help you

Except if you draw a lucky bingo ball

And get put to bed early

Then you can dream if you stored anything up

That was interesting

Or sweet.

If not, you are out of luck.

In the waiting room there are no commercials.

The attendants come and go.

You get the back of their hand

Unless you can reflect their future

In your eyes.

Witness

I want to be there when the last few molecules of oxygen

Begin their journey through her lips and esophagus,

Past her lung surface,

Because, I wonder if we die on the intake or the outtake.

I want to slide into her nose and up into her brain,

Surround myself with her spirit and follow it as it rises.

There must be an opening that happens at the top

Of her head and I want to feel it.

I want it to stay open so I can return with this new knowledge

Back into my life.

I want to rise up with her and feel the transformation–

The shooting rushing willingness to embrace:

The glad tidings being told:

I want to know what those tidings are

So I can return with them to earth and believe it is all worthwhile.

I am like a child waiting to see when this death will happen.

Peering into her rheumy eyes, perching on the edge of her bed,

I want all the other mourners to leave.

I want to be the only one there for the leaving.

I want to be the only living witness for the last hope we have.

In summer it is a good thing to travel with hand luggage,

eat fruit colored orange by the sun somewhere else

sleep on white sheets

avoid things  needing long periods of chewing

arguments

swim underwater anad open your eyes

play ocean noise over and over

the waves like an angry lions paw

on the beach.

I am interested in stopping time.

Yesterday on the airplane I saw a woman repeat herself

walking up the aisle.

She was older and yet

in a younger costume thinking it would make her life begin again.

There are wild rose hips here and it isn’t even Ireland. No one touches them . The lone dog wanders the beach.

I wish I could see my father’s hand again and tell him what I think

and this time he would listen.

There is someone in the room turning the round ball which holds the bingo numbers and I am waiting for B 61.

Getting Around Town

It was late morning when she first forgot where she lived,

And deep November in northern Vermont

and the car heater was still working;

Puffing prodigiously on the way to town.

Crossing her eyes with desperation in the post office

She turned away from the simple white paper with cold black lines

And drew a rabbit on the Formica table

Lying like a morticians tableau

Below her.

She turned her head very slowly as an owl does

(Not disturbing the hump in her spine),

When wondering who you might be,

Her owl eyes clicking

A slow semi circle to the left of the line

Of mailers,

Waiting to post money or love,

Hate or anger,

Give or take,

She was looking for who she was.

She would be any of them

In the blink of an eye, if they would let her.

Choosing

It was at thirty thousand feet when she decided

It was all right to die without making a sound.

The Boeing 767 was throttling through air pockets

And the flight attendant was flashing her large white teeth

When the unplanned descent began.

Strapped into her blue, contoured seat

Hair electro sized to the overhead bin

Eyes widened by lift, thrust and drag

Gone askew,

She free fell into her own reality.

She wondered if it would hurt,

Then she thought of her children.

She wondered if there would be any remains

For people to speculate on,

Or her cell phone with final call lists.

She thought of him and imagined

Sadness like a tea bag on his eyes.

Flight was so appealingly lifeless

As if she were halfway between inspiration

And exhalation.

Round circles in the side of the plane

From which to examine the world,

And seat belts to control reflexes of any kind.

Food brought in controlled portions.

It was easy to die at thirty thousand feet

For ten seconds

The Snake, the Lobster, and the Woman

The snake, he leaves it by the road:

Shrugging out of his skin,

Leaving it lying

Like a curled eucalyptus leaf.

The lobster, she eases out of it with dignity:

Days spent on one claw,

Months on a right tentacle,

Perhaps 17 days on the belly,

Until the lobsterman thinks there’s two

In the trap.

What I Really Wanted for Breakfast

The damp, warmly tropical smell

Of the wisteria vine planted Thursday,

Passed earlier today,

Scent like a Venus Fly Trap,

Capturing practicality,

Tossing it out of mind.

Bringing images of dim,

early morning bodies,

Damp and tangled sheets,

Inner hip skin and

The taste of salt.

Otherwise I’d have been fine,

But for that vine.

In the soft, smooth part of the August afternoon in the summer house on the upper floor  someone listens to the quick inhale of arousal  across the hall. Sticky smooth heat melting bodies into one another: breast into breastbone, belly against belly, thigh laying onto thigh,  thick and sheen ready scent of earth soil , deep bergamot, violets and rain, all  twist across the hall into the single room  unfolding into a banner of loss. The guest from New York lies on top of a single bed with hands folded and open book folded over breasts.There is an ache beginning in her heart she will ignore so used is she to ignoring this ache. The banner of love scent will taunt her: wafting around her left nostril until she is forced to turn onto her left side and place her nose into the deep starch of the pillow. Even then there is a glimmer of memory and a glimmer of the present and a glimmer of the moment when she forgot she was alive.

Real

A woman is walking her dog in the park.

She passes a very old man carrying an infant in a basket.

She wonders: first,

Is this his grandchild?

And then, Why are they allowing him to care for the child?

And then, Why is he carrying her in such a way?

Then she wonders if the baby is real?

Perhaps she is mistaken and has imagined the baby.

Perhaps there is no baby.

Perhaps it wasn’t a baby but a doll.

Yes: That must be it.

It was a doll in the basket and the man is crazy.

The homeless man is taking the baby that is a doll to the park.

Then she thinks she really didn’t see the man at all.

She has imagined him.

She has made him up in her mundane morning.

Her morning is mundane because she is loosing her mind.

She can’t remember how old she is or leaving her apartment.

Or, (more importantly),

How old her dog is.

She is crazy but so far no one knows.

No one has noticed the slippery thoughts sliding in and out of her memory

And she is scared.

The winter is long.

The park is cold.

There was a baby

And she is loosing her mind. The baby was hers though.

There was a baby that was hers. The baby was stolen from her.

She never knew why

Yet she knew she was crazy. So where would she go now? She wondered where

she lived?

If she sat long enough on the bench perhaps it would come to her and then

She could go there.

She sat.

The small brown leaves crumpled and reassembled at her feet.

The squirrel rasped some nuts.

The wind blew in some daily park people like characters on a treadmill: silent.

Here a bent over nanny there a passel of ladies

Who knew their direction like nervous birds in formation?

Would she stay the night? If she sat completely still

Would she be invisible? Her skin so white and her hair

So pale? As she forgot, she faded. As she faded she forgot.

Babies lost, imagined people, squirrels trained to execute summersaults,

Old age arriving before she knew it,

Stealing her life right out of her head.

Thanksgiving

Suddenly:

A flock of small, black birds

Swoops over the pond,

Like a magician’s clock, snapping.

He blinks.

She sees the birds as a sign:

Refusing to blink, she watches the flight.

She has missed her flock now

And will have to remain here.

They are both standing on the wall

Above the pond wearing sweaters

With wreaths knit around their necks.

A hawk dips with a long hook,

Dips down just over where they stand.

Then, he is gone, towed up and away.

She doesn’t remember blinking.

In one moment everything changes.

She is alone.

He is thin air.

Her sweater begins to unravel

On its own.

People say they are sorry.

She can’t tell them how he left.

No one will believe a hawk could tow away

A man.

Quentin Tarentino is considered to be a genius by many film lovers in today’s world. I am writing this blog to ask why this is? I have made this my research project for a few days. I asked people I respect both old and young why they like his films and whether or not they liked the violence in them. Most people liked his films very much and did not object to the violence. Men and women felt this way. One friend said he found the violence “appropriate” and not “gratuitous” I now wonder why so many people find it appropriate to have violent films be considered entertainment? After I saw the newest Tarentino film I had to go home and watch  “Bewitched” through three episodes. Luckily there is a channel that repeats them for a while. I had visions in my head of people being scalped, guns exploding and blowing apart someones head, and lives ending all over the place. Where does this love of violence come from, I continue to ask. One friend said he liked it because it was the bad guys getting their due. This was a whole new thought process for me. Revenge was at issue here, I thought. Bloody and instant revenge which produces a sense of joy in the beholder. Again I thought how frightening this was in a culture. It is much like our children being exposed to needless violence on television but more important, on the nightly news channels. Do they grow up wanting more violence to be entertained? I know I am alone in thinking this way and many consider me to be old fashioned but I find this love of Tarentino something to be frightened of. I don’t like violence and I don’t like blood and I hate to be scared. There is only one place I like to be scared and that is the roller coaster. I couldn’t wait to be tall enough to go on the Cyclone at Playland in Rye, New York. The slow and jerky crawl to the top of the first big hill was the high point of my childhood and the sudden drop down the hill with a scream in my throat is something I will never forget. I still love remembering that moment today and though I wonder if I would like to repeat it again it is very satisfying to me.

I think terrorism is scary. I think letting terrorists go free is scary and I think governments who do that are incredibly stupid. What frightens me about the recent incident in Scotland is that Scotland has gone from being a romantic and fanciful place  filled with visions of queens and lake monsters to being a country that was now suspicious. I can no longer think of Scotland as a benign place but have to see it as a country with unstable leadership making illogical decisions. What kind of a deal could they have made in order to release this terrorist?

So there you have it on this Tuesday. Terrifying films and terrifying decisions by national leaders. Maybe if there was a universal channel and we all watched Disney cartoon, Lucille Ball reruns and Bewitched, things would end out better in the long run.

The Mother

            Where the Hell is everyone? She is alone again. It’s cocktail hour and there’s no cocktail. No nice little frosted glass of that California chardonnay she liked. No nicely starched butler to serve it to her. The butler. Oh yes. The butler had died. No more Grasshoppers. No more being called Madam. She liked that. “Madam” Had a nice little ring to it. He was an annoyingly bothersome man but she had fun with him. She got him back. He thought he had won all those times he snotted her. She got him back after all. But she did miss him. Now there was no one to play with. No evening repartee. The sun set all by itself and there were no canapés to slip down with it or sly smiles to edge around the windy nights. His wife didn’t cook anymore she wept into the food, making the soup watery and the sauce, curdled. It really wasn’t any fun around the dinner hour. Not that there was fun around any other hour either. What the hell happened to fun? They had fun years ago when there were parties and people were over and they dressed up: wore clothes from the cedar closet and slipped away to corners of the house where no one was. Corners where things happened that you might have only dreamed have and the next day everything was back to black and white.  The trouble was with the weather, everyone knew that.

It was dark more often,

Hurricanes came: wars, rain, tears, liquid made from pain,

Explosions in our minds without warning,

Soon it will be too dark to see.

The world longs for another,

A sister globe to pull up alongside us,

And she can unload us, her human crop,

To start again on a pure globe, free of the knowledge of destruction,

Filled with rich ochre and rudimentary origin

A sister ship of optimism,

She will slide alongside before winter, and the first to go aboard are the ones

Who are dying from the pain of the watch.

Three days before the real world begins again and snaps us up with its giant zig zag grip of organized days and hours labeled with to do items. The last sweet days of summer meant to be filled with hyaciinth and jasmine, mustard and ketchup, cats and dogs, loud and soft, bitter and sweet, all jumbled together to make a memory. Where to go? What to do? An almost desperate need to hold on to the moon’s edge and dangle over summer night, dipping toes into the summer lake of dreams, walking barefoot over the sharp beach pebbles and feeling the last sweet breath of the night jasmine over the arbor in the meadow. Why not lie in the fragrant hay field and keep still for an hour watching the small ant colony pack up their wares and get ready for the move south? Split open a watermelon and suck the sweet juice from the corners while counting the small black seeds like many eyes upon your face. Make a costume for your dog out of scraps of felt and let them walk you in the parade on Main Street even if there is no parade. Have a Dusty Miller and be grateful for malt and coffee ice cream. When the dark hour of the day appears shine a light on your memory and wash out everything there but joy.

rent a room

when the air is so thick you want to be very still head to the shore and rent a room with a view. Lie on the bed and imagine the only thing you can…

A few years ago I was living in Connecticut where I had grown up and found myself vocation-less! I had returned to Connecticut from California  in order to be with my mother who was ill at the time. I had been working in the career center of the Haas School of Business at Berkeley for ten years teaching communication and though I enjoyed my work felt ready for a change. A move across the country was not an easy one at midlife but I believed it was the wisest choice at the time. I thought, at first, I would attend a graduate program in health advocacy at a nearby college but soon found the program to be lacking in material interesting to me. I worked at the local hospital for a few months as part of the graduate program and enjoyed this work very much. I really liked the interaction with the patients and their families as well as learning about specific medical issues.

In my own life whenever I have had a medical problem or someone I loved was ill, I have always enjoyed doing research on what the potential therapies were that might help. I have found that complimentary care has often been more useful to me than traditional medicine. I have had an ongoing back issue and without the help of my complimentary therapists who used  rolphing, Reiki , osteopathy and massage, I wouldn’t be able to function as well as I do. I found these angels through a long search using friends and others. One day back in Connecticut I was speaking with my sister about life and she suddenly announced she wanted to become a healer. She was closing her bookstore of 30 years standing and wanted a new career. She asked me to find the most reputable place to study.Well, before I knew it, I was fascinated by the idea of being a healer as well and embarked on a path to find the best place for our training.

I found Healing Touch by searching through databases showing practices used by nurses in hospitals as I wanted to find something that was recognized by nurses and doctors as well. My sister and I began our rather long and very rigorous training thinking we would just take the basic course and then go to work. Imagine my surprise when I realized , three years later, I had completed the certification process and was now a Certified Healing Touch Practitioer!

The journey was a long and interesting one and I am grateful for my clients and my mentors who helped me along the way. I was lucky to be invited to work at the Boyd Center in Greenwich, CT  and I set up practice in a room which was supplied to me by Dr Barry Boyd, and was eventually hired by the Greenwich Hospital Integrative Center as their Healing Touch Practitioner. I spent  three years working with many different types of clients: some were very sick and some were depressed and some were normal folks who wanted help with sleep issues or depression. I love my work and can’t imagine a better and more satisfying career at this point in my life.

Moving back to California has been wonderful in most ways but more difficult in others as it is hard to begin again and re-establish a practice in a community. I am diligently working on doing this and I know I will succeed.

Work is very important in life and it matters not only in terms of a livelihood but, more importantly, a vocation. The passion of work is the biggest gift we can give ourselves. Without this passion life is very mundane, rather like picking up the phone each morning and listening to a dial tone. Many people are surprised to find I have a career,  as it seems that I don’t need money. They are missing the point of life. It is interesting to imagine what your life would look like if you had enough money and didn’t have to work. I know most people are not lucky enough to have this oppportunity.  What would you do with your time? If your children were grown and there was no one to account to, ask yourself how would you spend your day? Many people think this is the best idea they have heard and imagine true and complete happiness at this freedom. Don’t get me wrong, I know how lucky I am in having this blessed life. I do think it is interesting to look at what we would really do if we didn’t have to think about salary because it isn’t as easy as it sounds. The hardest part of this search is discovering within yourself what work you truly value for the work  itself, and not the salary. You could be a gardener and not enjoy what you planted. You could be a psychologist and not be heartened by the strength you help nurture in your clients. Whatever you chose to do in life is only worthwhile if you believe it is worthwhile. The interesting part is discovering what you value and why.

I value my work with Healing Touch as I help my clients feel better. It is as simple as that. I get enormous satisfaction from hearing that a client feels better when they leave my treatment room and hearing they feel happier, lighter, and more positive. Healing Touch has brought meaning to my life in a way nothing has before and I am grateful to have found this path.

I have always had information come to me in unorthodox ways and it used to trouble me as I didn’t understand the method of transmission. It still troubles me  as I don’t understand the method of transmission but I no longer doubt the reality of what happens.  The first time I recall knowing what was going to happen in the near future was when I was about six. It was my birthday and we were having a party for my family and a few friends. My mother was insisting on using this strange contraption which we had used for all of my siblings birthday cakes over the years:  one lit a few candles on top of the cake and the heat from the candles caused this miniature merry go round thing  to spin.I asked her not to use this on my cake, giving her my very plausible explanation which was I knew it would catch fire. She ignored me and lit the candles. The cake was brought to my place at the long table and promptly caught on fire and my father used another plate to squash the fire and the cake as well! I remember thinking how powerless it was to be six and not have anyone listen to you. I also remember how troubling it was to have foreseen this event and not have anyone to talk to about what had happened. For many years this strange premonition stuck in my mind and I noticed that I had other, short term premonitions as well. I say short term as I would see things that happened about 12 hours max before they would happen. The most common lead time was about 2 or 3 minutes. I would hear people saying things before they said them. I would know what would be revealed underneath the brown paper of an unexpected gift. Sometimes I saw things happening in an almost film like manner and sometimes I just felt as if  I knew the outcome without playing it all out in my mind. This was fairly troubling to a child as not too many kids go around talking about their psychic hits and in my family there was certainly not a lot of talk about this type of thing. I gradually began to try to ignore what I knew rather than face how differently I experienced the world from most other people.

When I began the practice of Healing Touch I began to experience strong information about my clients through contact with their bodies. Often this information came in the form of a brief picture or a word in my head. I also felt changes in the bodies of my clients through disturbed energy  and information in my head about where they had problems. I ignored this at first as well. Then I began to let certain pieces of information fall into our sessions asking if they were familiar with a certain name I had heard while working on them or whether or not they were having pain in a specific place. I was usually correct in my analysis and I soon grew more confident in letting out the information I received as my clients found it reassuring. I remember one specific time during a session with my friend, Tom, when I saw the gravestones of three men and could read their names. I recounted the names to him at the end of the session and he said they were the names of his three uncles who were dead. They had all been very close to him as a child. I have also heard from special people who were no longer alive when I ask for guidance in working on my clients and I usually feel a presence in the room. On occasion I have had a client remove their eye bag and look to see where I am in the room. They tell me this is because they feel hands on their body when they know it is not me. This is a wonderful event for me as it tells me the guides of the clients are working through me to heal my client.

Now that I am older I realize I am lucky to have this gift and I believe we all have it but deny it. We doubt our own ability to hear and see things in our mind that do not come to us in the usual manner. I know everyone can do what I do , we just need to accept the fact that this type of communication happens. The simplest example of this is when you know a car is coming around the corner ahead of you. This happens so often to us we don’t even notice it. We are suddenly more careful to stay on our side of the road when driving around the corner and then we see the car coming in the opposite direction.

I ask for help from the universe all the time as I am always answered. When I lose something i ask for help in finding it. When I ask for more work it heads my way and when I ask for more friends I meet them on the strett where I live. I am always grateful for the connections I have with another realm and I find the information available to us is very useful in life.

It used to be that people got married and  stayed married for all of their lives. They had children and grandchildren and pretty much lived in the same house or town for most of their lives. Recently I have become very clear on one point. No one does this anymore.  Or at least no one I know.People seem to do all sorts of different things these days. Married people stay together for the “sake of their children” never thinking a marriage without love is a bad example to set for the kids. Single people have affairs with married people and forget about the fact they will never have a real life if they keep this up. Married people stay married because they don’t want to split up all their loot and live separate lives: insisting this is just like being divorced. Married men think it is just fine to come on to single women as having a relationship with a married guy is a good thing? No one is doing what we thought we would do when we were kids and no one seems particularly happy about it.

It was simple back then. We grew up thinking we would fall in love, get married, have kids and then grand kids and then die happily surrounded by our family. We never thought about recession, AIDS, health care, Viagra, the economy, flu shots, the economy, our pets, hybrid cars, bottled water, additives in food, running out of gas/oil/ coal/flu shots/tamiflu/canned food/milk/sleeping bags/blah blah blah.We thought about how much candy we would get on Halloween and whether or not the teacher would give us really hard homework that night. We thought about the Good Humor man coming down the road in his truck and how much money we had saved up to buy ice cream. I had a toy cash register with a tiny handle that you pulled down each time you added money to it. Once you had saved ten dollars the cash drawer opened up and the machine made a “cha ching” noise. I loved this cash register! Wish I still had it. It taught me the fun of saving and the reward of a job well done.

I think it is really dumb to get married and fool around. I think if you are married you shouldn’t try to hit on single people. Perhaps you should stick to other married people. If you are single you should refuse to date married people. If all the women in this world refused to get involved with married guys there would be a lot less heartache in the world.

All right. This is really preachy. I can’t help it. It is Labor Day weekend and a new year is about to begin.

I have been experimenting with a brain smoothing technique : no, not great sex! A technique used to heal post traumatic stress and commonly applied in therapy with war veterans. It is a really interesting technique and one that may change how one reacts to stressful situations or to loss or grief. I heard about this technique  ten years ago but it sounded more frightening than dealing with the stress so I didn’t pursue it. This year I began to think about all the money I had spent on therapy in my life and all the time as well and, as a result, I began to take a new look at EMDR.

I found a therapist who practices the technique near to me and made an appointment, having no idea of what to expect. The first session was two hours long and the therapist placed a vibrating disc under each of my knees and a set of headphones on my head. These devices emitted a series of tones spaced at regular intervals and the discs vibrated simultaneously under my knees. I was prompted to recall an upsetting situation while this was happening. Interestingly enough, once I had recounted the situation under the sensation of the vibration and the sounds, the incident lost its sense of power to me. In other words,  the memory had lost its sting. I was able to recall the specific situation without any sense of trauma or pain. The first time this happend I kept testing the theory by recalling the incident many times over to see if the sting was really out of the memory.It seemed almost impossible the technique could work this easily but it did.

I have since had about six sessions of EMDR and hae found it has dramatically changed the way my mind functions . I am less likely to suffer from obsessive thoughts and constant anxiety and more likely to move on from a situation causing these feelings. Instead of thinking about something obsessively, I will let it go and recognize it for what it is. My sister recently told me I was “unnaturally calm” and I should think about not doing any more treatments. This was my favorite comment as she has known me all of my life!

There is something in some of us that creates an underlying fear or anxiety in our daily lives. We may be perfectly safe, have a good job, live within our means, have a great relationship, yet still suffer from moments of anxiety we cannot identify. These moments paralyse us and make us a prisoner of our own brain chemistry often forcing us to live with people we know don’t love us or stay in jobs we hate because we are so fearful. I used to think years of therapy would help with this problem. I am beginning to see therapy is a good thing , at times,but not so useful over the long term. Some of us are just stuck with these very sensitive brains. You know if you have one. You know about the times when you have paranoid thoughts about someone or something and later realize how paranoid your thoughts are. Many of us take antidepressant drugs for this reason. While these drugs are effective , they cannot change things for all of us. I didn’t want to take drugs and struggled for many years with feelings of anxiety and sadness. I feel now as if I am living in a different world: one which is satisfying and happy.

Friends have told me I am such a happy person and a delight to be with because of my positive nature. Few realize how I struggled to keep up the public presence of good cheer. In my family there is a genetic predisposition towards anxiety and to having sensitive brain chemistry. This can be stimulated by a lack of soothing parenting or by an unpredictable household. EMDR helps with changing the way a brain handles emotion as the technique somehow makes past situations which created enormous anxiety lose impact in the brain. As the brain lets go of these memories, there is less emotional impact felt in daily life. 

During my first session my therapist asked me why I was coming to her at this point in my life. I commented on my lack of a healthy relationship with a significant other and described my desire to have a good relationship at this point in my life. I didn’t have much hope at the time of finding this but I clearly knew I wanted to try.  The interesting thing to me about EMDR is one learns to detach from what may be stressful and better reflect on the nature of the communication and the reality of it. This is a wonderful practice. I recommend this technique to everyone out there who suffers from anxiety and is in search of a more peaceful life.

I’ll let you know about the relationship.

Yesterday I ran into someone who gave me hope. It happened in a very regular way. I was shopping at a computer store in town and happened to strike up a conversation with a stranger. Before we knew it we were engrossed in a metaphysical discussion of life and how to handle it. The eyes of this man were so tired and sad yet he was filled with hope at the suggestion there was a divine order to everything. I believe this to be true. As we progressed in our discussion I became very fond of this man and wanted to make him smile. I admired his openness and his longing to find a true direction at this point in life. He was simply the kindest man I have met in a very long time. This gave me hope. I have been asking the universe for an answer to my life.Where I should live more of the time? Where I should establish my business? Where should I be when I think about the past and the future and chose wisely. I don’t long to be in the past as some do. My past was always interesting but often painful. I long to be in the moment and that is how I felt yesterday so I am very grateful to this man. I would like to have dinner with him and find out more about his ideas on life. I would like to know where he has been all these years to have developed eyes like his. I would like to know if he likes dogs and if he sleeps soundly and if he eats breakfast or is grumpy in the morning. This is what I do in life. I heal people. Only in doing this work will I heal myself. It happens each time I see a client. Don’t ever think there is not a pattern to life. There is a psychic tie between all of us and if we want to we can use it. The important thing is to believe. I believe in magic and look what happened to me yesterday~

If you read “The Fountain head” in high school, please keep reading…If you have no idea who Ayn Rand was  this piece will probably have no meaning to you. For those of us who read this book page by page with  hope in our hearts, please continue. You are welcome to join me in communal life.  I read this book and felt for perhaps the first time there were others who were feeling lost in the perfunctory nature of life. The true meaning of life was contained within this book for me at 15, and is still there today. The search continues, the night is still long, the moon rises on the navy night sky and I still feel the same conviction if I keep at this process of understanding I will find an answer at the end. This hope is what keeps me dreaming  and as John Lennon said so well, “Lose your dreams and you lose your mind.” Tonight the world seems dark and without comprehension. A woman was murdered in my neighborhood. I live in a peaceful place where the biggest problem is kids having fun late at night. This woman was 75 and lived alone having been recently widowed. She was in her garden when she was found shot through the head. An act of violence that is yet unexplained. People have called me today and said I should lock my doors. I should be careful. They said they hoped I used an alarm on my house. Surprisingly to me, I feel little fear. I used to be so afraid of the dark I would make my husband check the house often yet he would patiently arise from our warm bed and descend to the first floor of our house where some frightening person awaited him while I sat perched on the edge of the bed listening for his cry of alarm . I don’t know where that fear has gone and I wonder if it has gone too far. Maybe it would be better if I cared more about what might happen to me, but I feel confident in the protection of the universe. I believe I will be protected from all evil and people will want to love me not kill me. I wonder if this is how the murdered woman felt.

I am afraid of love more than death. I am afraid of loving someone so much I can’t imagine life without them. I am afraid of confessing this love to my beloved and seeing it is not returned. I imagine weighing my love on an enormous scale seeing it tipped out of balance by the power of this love. I feel fear so intense I will do anything to avoid it  including flight, lies and  seclusion.Seclusion is the first and the last resort in my life. Seclusion promises no pain and a certain amount of safety.Love is so painful and yet, so necessary. Without love you can never feel as if  you are alive. This is my quest these days. I have no talisman, no special potion to take for anxiety, only a dachshund to remind me of laughter and the promise of the morning light to soften my pillow and lighten my dreams. I am looking for the reason why love has escaped me and I am designing a net rather like a butterfly catcher to help me find it now. I will wear a suit of khaki and white and shoes of the softest leather. I will walk softly in search of my desire and  leave no footprints. Who knows what may happen.

I

It is interesting to look inside of things after you have looked outside for a while.It is Sunday morning and I have read the paper and am ready to embark on the day. These days I am not as restless as I was a month ago. The rest of the world seems to have become more restless, however. I went to the mall yesterday and there were a million people: so many people you couldn’t park. The lots were full and the parking lot behavior was very bad. I was surprised to see how many people were shopping and wondered why this was happening. The unemployment rate is higher than ever yet people are out there racking up credit card debt believing they will be rescued once again by God Knows who. I think this will be our next area of weakness: the credit card debt of the unemployed in America. What an enormous mess that will create! The good news, though, is people seem more likely to smile at you and more apt to help if you need it. There is definitely a sense of better cheer out there. I hope my observations about this are accurate.

Getting along with others is very important even if it means you have to fake it. I fake it more often than I care to admit  but I would rather get along than have an impasse in my life. Sometimes the best thing you can say to yourself in the eyes of bad behavior is: “Don’t take it personally, it’s not my problem.” and walk away with a smile on your face. I am writing this now because I have noticed many times in the past year people seem to decide they can’t get along with someone else so they just drop them from their life as if they were meaningless. As if their memory or relationship is meaningless. As if their family history is meaningless. This is not a good thing as once you have stopped connecting with someone it is so easy to lose the thread which held you together in the first place. Then you lose a bit of love in your life. Everyoone needs all the love they can have so before you decide to disconnect, remember what it sounds like to pick up the phone and hear no dialtone.

Phedre

Last night I went to see ACT’s production of Phedre which had received many good reviews. I had a hard time following the play, to tell the truth. Racine must have written this a few centuries ago yet some older plays still hold up under modern audiences. Last night’s audience disappointed me. They laughed when no laughter was intended and it was usually at the expense of the main character, Phedre, an older woman who made the mistake of falling for a younger man.

As I listened to this tale of woe, I wondered if the play would have been more entertaining and less offensive if the roles had been reversed: that is, if a king had fallen for a step daughter and had lost everything in the long run for this folly. Then I understood that play would have never been written as it was not interesting or different. Men fall for younger women all the time. If they are rich or powerful, they usually get them for as long as they want them.

 We women can be foolish particularly when we are young. We mistake money and power for strength and we sometimes choose it, believing our lives will be richer because we are attached to a man who has these attributes. We sometimes miss the knowledge that we will still be young when he is old. We will have energy and vitality and he will want to rest from life. We may miss being loved for our fine lines and I don’t mean those on our faces.

I think plays like Phedre shouldn’t be produced anymore. Why not remake them into something more interesting and less predictable. Make the heroine win! Make her get her younger lover as well as the throne! Make her the queen of all and the loser of nothing.

Now that would be a worthwhile play!

Bedroom Scene

In my bedroom atop a credenza (circa 1830)

A red robin sits alongside a great gray owl

Nebulosis

In color.

The owl, that is.

The robin never sits still

His breast plump and breathless

Effervescent,  optimistic, romantic.

The Great Gray swivels

Like a tennis match

His head.

Never sure who to listen to

I am confused.

That’s all there is to an  easy life

So today is Valentines day and most people seem to be slightly sad about it. Even if they receive a gift or a kiss, people still look around them and wonder what else there might be for them out there.

The photo below is from the 18th hole at Pebble Beach where there was a big golf tournament this weekend. I was happy to be invited as a guest and had a great time visiting my friends. In the end I am just as happy to be home with Rosie who has a mild case of fleas…. After a bath and a treat, she is recovering. I can’t say the same about me.

We all dread Valentines and yet, we all hope for some gesture of love on this day. The world can appear empty just as my photo of the 18th hole.

Inside each of us, however, lies an enormous secret. The secret of our imaginations and our dreams which can provide a respite from the commercialization of love and life. Our imagination is the rich place where we can go to find joy and we go on this journey alone. Some of us never look for the map to this place. Others of us find it easlily in our childhood and remember the route all of our lives. Some of us are lucky and know the path is there and we search for it. When we find the way it is often circuitous and lengthy and we wonder how we will ever find it a second time but we do. If we practice it becomes an idyllic journey that we can take at any time or in any place we choose.

it’s almost Spring and the warm moistness of the morning brings in the paper all by itself. There are buds on the bare trees which hold a promise of color and the cat that runs across my deck nightly has gone to the Bahamas. No one can remember a winter with so much rain. The children are still damp from pressing themselves against the windows. Anything could happen or nothing and that would be fine.All you have to do is sit in the chair of evening and sip your sweet wine and think only of the cry of the lovebirds in the bush in your garden: their breasts plump and thrusting with hope.

Still winter in Connecticut

There are tumbled rocks around this house with lichen curled about them and the snow which has appeared all winter still grasps their surface refusing to leave. I no longer like winter. It seems excessive to have to remind us we are fragile and that our hearts are easily frozen in time. The small dog prances over the crusty snow surface and stops, suddenly, feeling the bitterness of ice on feet, the rawness of winter here in Connecticut. All around us live others who stay in their houses all day lifting a corner of the curtains to observe life outside of them. If you watch carefully from your winter path you can feel a flutter of eyes on your shoulders from behind the bitter glass, like frozen vinegar or transparent whispers. When I come here I sleep in a room where another woman died and no matter what I do I can’t help her move on. She lies next to me in bed during the long, cold night wheezing into my dreams and whimpering for recognition. Her pain is not just the pain of illness but also, the unbearable pain of being ignored, becoming transparent, fading into the bed of death with no one there to keep pulling you back. She wants something from me but I can’t figure out what it is. Each night as I go to sleep I ask for my task from her:  my task to complete which will free her to move on. In death we are what we were in life but without any possibility of renewal, reward, refreshment or recognition.

I don’t really understand why Catholics are afraid of the Pope having been raised without much organized religion. My Dad would periodically take us to church and then spend the bulk of the service chewing gum and writing in his notebook. During our Sunday lunch sometimes he would ask one of us what we had thought of the sermon as he had not heard one word. I don’t think church made us better children or better people in the world. I  enjoyed Sunday School as I liked to examine the teacher’s mink wrap with its beady eyes and small claws. Once I actually pulled out a claw and took it home with me. This is probably why I will never go to Heaven. One single mink claw theft.

As of this moment I am disgusted with the Catholic church as you know, my good readers! I can’t help it as I find it unbelievable that priests have been able to abuse children over and over and still go unpunished. Their behavior is incomprehensible to me as is their lack of accountability and punishment.Some say it is because the abuse is not reported to the police but to the parish head. I hope Catholic parents begin to see the light here and change their behavior. If someone had abused my son they would no longer be living happily on this earth.I am not saying I am perfect, I am saying I have a strong protective sense of my children even now as they are adults.

Perhaps my lack of respect or terror for the church is a good thing as I don’t fear reporting abuse or any bad behavior. What I resent is the absolute power of the church instilled in children when in the presence of the clergy. It seems clear to me there is a much higher  percentage of abuse among the clergy than in the average population. Why is this, you might ask?I have no answer but I will continue to ask myself this question. There are a few very obvious answers. Until Catholics ask themselves these questions and question the authority of the church, these abuses will continue.

After reading the New York Times cover story this morning about yet another case of abuse gone unpunished due to our current Pope’s decision to overlook the “transgression”, I think Pope’s should resign when found guilty of major misdeeds.  Why Not? Our President’s are forced to. I don’t want to read another story about Benedict’s decision to overlook abuse. It is intolerable.

just enjoy the flower and the possibility of an empty table.

Please take a look at the video in this link and send a gift to Ploughshares Fund in honor of your mother! Thanks, Lucinda

Celestial Navigation:

When being guided by the night sky

It is important to keep your eyes closed and your ears, open.

Watch carefully the distance between stars

And don’t try to steal third base when you are on Mars.

If you find yourself feeling joyful on Jupiter

Take the first right and keep on until morning.

The answer is there is no answer.

Nothing you know will be known any longer.

Trying to hedge your bets will be ridiculous.

If I were you I would buy land somewhere

With a big house and a vegetable garden

And hope for a barn dance with a caller from the Moon

Where they always do everything so well.

If I were you I have no idea what I would do

As it is hard enough being me.

They just are not interested. I don’t understand why as I was fascinated by my mother’s life and her stories. Maybe we should all make up more interesting stories.

This morning on the news in London there is a home video of Sarah Fergusen, formerly known as the Duchess of York, attempting to get cash in exchange for introducing the undercover reporter to her former husband, Prince Andrew. It is very painful to watch the video as this is a member of the royal family and it is clear that the woman in the video is the real Sarah Ferguson. As I watched this on TV I was filled with shame for her and imagined what her life will be from now on. There is no doubt in my mind that she is under a great deal of financial pressure to have to have done this. I am sure the reporter who set this up was aware of that fact and devised a plan to seduce her into thinking she could get a lot of cash in exchange for a simple introduction. Poor Sarah Ferguson has a spending problem or some other type of addiction which has now become public.

Sometimes we seek the seamy side of people’s lives so we can feel more confident in our own. In this case I don’t feel more confident, nor will anyone else viewing the video. What one feels is shame for her and pity that she has had to stoop so low. I wonder what her life would have been like had she married a commoner. Would she have been happier, less troubled, more peaceful, and less apt to spend in an out of control manner? Who knows the answer to these questions but the feeling of shame is not a nice one.                                                                                                                          

Supposedly we suffer from either shame or guilt. Mine was a household where guilt was encouraged. I suspect many of us had this in common. Poor Sarah Ferguson. I feel ashamed for her now and sorry her life is so out of control and so obviously lonely. I doubt it is easy to marry into any royal family or to have been born into one. The only royals who appear to be blissfully are Camilla and Charles aned this is a wonderful romantic story. Can you believe I said that?

Ritual

When my grandmother died they laid her out

In the dusty, hazy, winter lit bedroom of her house.

The air moved in clouds around the family

Milling around noiselessly.

So we could bend and kiss her goodbye

They lined us up in one long row,

Determined by sex, age and family hierarchy.

Serpentine sprawl through

Long corridors lit by small monkeys

With torches for arms and watchful eyes.

I felt small

Smaller than my skin too loose over my knees my patent leather shoes like boats

With water in them sloshing my feet down the hall

Snaking through these old rooms a lavender tail

Swishing through a chamber lit by God’s spotlight,

The bed, a throne.

I moved out of my body and floated above the bed

Wanting to spit on her face.

Looking down I saw the gleam of her scalp through

Her fine silver hair and one small, daring, ant weaving its own path.

I took out her hairpins and shook her head

Tossing it for her

Cut the laces on her shoes and threw them

One by one

Out the window

And she rose and danced with me.

Danced like a wood nymph

Waved and bounced her dress a curtain that opened to me.

I saw her sorrow, her joy.

her prison.

I kissed her hand like a butterfly would

And sent her on her journey.

What else would you do?

It struck me recently that Googling someone is not such a great idea. Many times these days before we even shake someone else’s hand, we Google them. We think in doing this we may be learning something about the person and it will somehow be easier to talk with them. We think the person will be flattered by this research but I wonder about that.

You can find out all about almost anyone on the internet and if you are a good researcher, you can discover things even the person’s parents may not know. Google goes on and on and never seems to stop. I have so many Google entries I can’t even believe it. Most of them are repetitive. Some of them are accurate and some are somewhat off but there are now so many I am less and less interested in keeping track of them. We are told we need to keep track so we will know when we are being impersonated or lied about in public.

I find the act of Googling annoying as I see that it cuts down on civilized conversation. After we Google someone we think we know all about them and often jump too quickly into conversations that are too intimate, too knowing and too familiar as we have only just met the person. It seemed a better idea to me to have conversation and the dance of intimate conversation. I like the wait of self disclosure. One person shows a little bit of their life and then the other says a little more. We take time to play out this dance and we dance it carefully. Google has eliminated all of this because we know almost everything there is to know about our conversational partner before we start the dance.

I like the old days when there was an element of surprise when we asked what someone did or where they lived, what causes they supported and if they were democratically inclined. I like the period of discovery which could be extended for as long as we wanted to extend it. I think the Google thing has happened because we have lost our ability to deal with gray. We like black and white in this world and knowing all about someone before we even meet them makes people feel safe and maybe even powerful.

I didn’t know I felt this way until recently. It was such an interesting thing to figure out as it happened gradually and with only a small amount of annoyance. Suddenly I saw what was happening to relationships and it wasn’t fun. I like the “discovery period” of meeting a new person and I am going to work on my own Google obsession. I am probably one of the best of my generation, not that I would brag. I remind myself of my dog when in her hunting mode. My nose goes down and starts to sniff, my fingers begin to itch, and I’m off. Sometimes I can do this for hours particularly if I get sidetracked which I do often.

Join me tonight! No Googling for a week! Let’s try the old-fashioned way and see how it feels!