Eternity Made Visible

Upon reading Merton’s elegies
To Hemingway, Thurber and the Monastery Barn
In days closer to my ashes
I appreciate the container – eternity, formed in words.

My Mom tells her Doctor

I am the last. There are no others. I lost my brother.

In this moment she does not belong to the remaining quintet of her children, broken                        two decades before when she lost a son, her favorite.

In this moment she is wandering an eternity made visible, in skies undiluted by humanity.              Her captcha distinguishes her soul from the involuntary carrying-on of her heart.

In this moment her face lightens as if a Spring sun just reminded her of a new season, or                  her one good ear heard the caterwauling of their youthful mischief.

My Mom tells her Doctor

My brother did not know his present. He would not have known                                                                                                     I was not there.

My Mom tells her Doctor

They said "He had a smile on his face." Me too.                                                                                                                                  When I remember.

In this moment I kiss her brow and we carry on.

illusion

Three decades ago I said I want to go to Chicago to live and study and for three decades I owned this, the shallowest of illusions. But today my middle is there with the same mantra and 1000% more potential to claim the city and maybe even someday have it claim him.

I have had the pleasure of visiting twice. This is more than I truly expected I would do when I first claimed the illusion.

I have said of this path not taken, that it was an opportunity stolen. But the truth is that fear of large doors and the cracks made from a short memory are the true source of cement in my Buster Brown loafers. Today, I am year three in Finn Comfort and much less likely to travel afar. Vicarious is my only mode and even there I may be out of my depth.

consuming but MUCH more rewarding

So I am hearing or rediscovering more trigger phrases that deserve exploration or commitment via this space but the next few months are still designed as Overload: Transitions, renovations, new and discovery. A few technology bumps...much relearning, and interesting challenges like making TV with thumbprint digital images.

Much of what I am accomplishing is with my grown children and others like them whose mothers I have yet to meet.

If children do not believe that you care, they will not care what you say,,,,

It is great to see values grow into accomplishment; especially, in the service of others.

Time it passes...then something reminds you of just that

Time notations.
My best gift - from the middle...24 years ago today.
My job 30 years - a token award to select - most challenging - shall it be a watch.
My last entry - many iterations of bruises and floor plans.

I fail at habits.

I get inspired by random stories of lives that random did not devour.

I seem to know more of muddle, than middle these days.

Daylight will soon be saving time again.

in all cultures the people love the trickster until it is too late

What has been an almost unspeakable hope, may be crushed by pettiness, in the next few hours.

Community Service lacking community requires volunteers to have a larger vision and a tremendous aptitude for pain. How does one decide the tolerance of pain appropriate in the service of others? Is martyrdom a reasonable life choice?

I have a wise child. He reminds me that truth is not always easy to hear, or swallow and that there is an incredible role model serving our country as President.

Free Speech, community dialogue, and the consensus are challenging. When the facilitators of such things in a community fear the word democracy because it sounds too much like Democrat which sounds partisan -- what is the strategy?

My stomach hates my head today...no consensus on how much to tolerate within the body politic.

quake & waves --- the world became even smaller

Of the Sea - it is hard to imagine the magnitude of the ocean horizon so the tremors of that same ocean is even more remote a plausibility to imagine. But the mother in me suspects its vastness does not compare to the distance created by not knowing about someone dear who is in harms way. I am blessed not to have a child in a war, or ill, or desperately lost in circumstances ... but today I was given a taste of what if. It is so crushing.

Prayers seem an inadequate but appropriate response.

For those in harms way today, I will add my prayers.

[Response to American Samoa - Towering tsunami waves spawned by a powerful earthquake.]

open door policy

We have had a dog door for years. The cats discovered it and have liberated themselves and appear to be living 99 lives. One rescued cat, Artimus, timid and in the basement for 6 months is now a confident hunter happy for a brief respite among his humans. My bird feeder has become a death trap. Jake, whom I have introduced already. rarely used the dog door after midnight. But he has recently joined the cats on raccoon patrol which starts about 2 am. We original discovered peppermint wrappers on the floor, then heard a scurry of all the animals running through the house knocking the dry cat food feeder off its bench. There was a replay the next evening. Papa heard the noise and attested to seeing at least 6 racoons

Conversation and the value of versus: Poems

Tension is a building block that can engage the audience within story; it is known to add challenge to conversation and is said to exist naturally between science and faith. Its value is 2 sides of a coin: and often a headache. As an element of style - it must be worked, to work.

The New Poet Laureate is getting air time. I listen. I wonder if a good poem every 10 years does a poet make? I wonder if a poem a day is a good expenditure of time. And then I know the truth: calories need burning. So I borrow an impromptu haiku from the poet from my middle and smile knowing birth is not under-rated, poetry is.

Time displaces truth

Tumbling down the rabbit hole

I am far too late

25 cents is the price of a miracle

Charlie is my Dad. His refrigerator magnet says WORK is a 4 letter word. He retired at 55. He is now 80. He putters, finding ways to save dollars and cents. He dabbled in stocks and bonds for a decade or so, but got out before all that went totally bust. He spends his days being Judge Judy trained. Other lifelong learning is aided by History, Discovery and the Weather Channel.

This weekend we shared lentil and cactus soup which he made, followed up on some health insurance claims, and discussed the behaviors of our mutual companions, feral cats and my rescued Bull Mastiff pup, Jake. I can not play cards well enough to bet a quarter, so I watch him play one of the 100 something ways to play solitaire. We chat. He mumbles about gardening in pots. We do have some healthy basil and a few strong tomato plants. I say we because I purchase the starter plant or seeds and he tends to them. The price of motivation. He has discovered our Hot Tub. Now that I mark his calendar on the date when it has been treated, he is using it regularly. I needed to learn how to communicate this readiness for use in a manner that would not offend. It was challenging. I failed a few times but I think I am finely on track. And as to the Hot Tub, he is on track as I fail to use it. More chat or exploration about short term memory. I try to remember tidbits from the news which I think may be triggers for conversation and potential stories. I work at conversations. I had scribbled a few things down that are not handy at the time we chat. I think hard: mental gymnastics and then realize that the term I was trying to recall intellectual aerobics. The differences discreet would be fun to follow. The memory was a description Tony Snow used to describe Meeting with the Press. I then think that if I have a storied life I will be a success. Both references come from elegies of the kind the video world provides: Sunday Morning Articles. Then distractions abound within me and Dad is no longer in focus. The miracle I wish for is that a card player will appear that will risk an occasional quarter. It does not take much for Dadto put up walls. Failures with neighbors and Senior Center - mostly bad timing but he took it all too personal which make me the only community he truly has. It is a tall order being a community and it does not take much for me to be distracted. The voices in my head say you need you time now, dad has had what you can give today. Balance too is difficult.

Sometimes I sense too much in common with this hermit who lives like a troll in the back house. So much unsaid here.

transitions abound

A year of substantive change:



Graduations: Graduate School for Cliff and High School for Heather
Global volunteering by Dan (shown here with nephew Alex).
a baby born to Valerie and Paul (MacKenzie J.) on the 4th of July.

All are solid moments of accomplishment for them and pride for the family.

Just Days Away - Cape Town - my middle

And he replies in draft: In my ideal internship I would be making a difference helping to empower others using the skills of writing and performing. Any internship that can combine these subjects of study (Language Arts, Theater) with an opportunity to work with youth as a teacher or collaborative group leader would be a perfect fit for me. My primary training is as a writer/performer of theater but I have extensive experience as a performance poet and coach.

I see internships as emersion learning, collaboration experiences, participating in something larger than self and potential or practice for making change in the world. It is real life. It is not safe. It is not predictable, maybe even ubiquitous. I come to the process in formation of myself – a person with natural ability for idea making but desire to acquire a greater understanding for idea actualization. I want to learn how to better organize and mobilize myself and others in order to achieve concrete goals. I believe in follow through and have had success in the past but I have never truly pushed the boundaries.

Leaving for Cape Town So. Africa in 3 weeks:

I anticipate that working in South Africa can speak to my sense of immediacy and relevance. I believe I may better understand my countries transition from the 1950s to the 1990 by experiencing Cape Town 20 years after fighting apartheid and censorship. Cultural transformation creates new struggles and maybe the civil strife of Cape Town today will inform my understanding of my own country, the nature of change, power and the potential of cultural diversity. And most of all I want to learn more about the role of storytelling in defining culture that is a distinctive, spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional way of living together with underlying values, traditions and beliefs.I want to get a better understanding between culture and education. I want to explore how cognitive openness to new styles of living, new and different understandings of one’s world, and new instruments of aesthetic and intellectual engagement can open up the possibility of culture being a helpmate of education.

He the best thing ever to come from my middle. I already miss him and anticipate his discovery will serve others as much as himself. Blessed.

Where should I be, where is my mind?

My spiritual mentor would always correspond to me on a transformed scrap of paper. A sample of such a transformation circa 1993 is shown here. I found it difficult to throw away even with its tea stains.

I am at my work table where I access work from home and do community tasks via computer. The presumption is that on occasion I collect my thoughts here via this blog which is concurrently a collection of past and future memories. This process is expressed via a Maxim which is keeping a diary supports personal development.

So I am here but I just drove some distance. Driving is now a rare occurrence given I have one eye tracking left. This makes the passenger more aware of my vulnerability than myself. Dad was my passenger today. We arrived late to the commitment to heaven ceremony (which requires either faith or imagination) held by the family of Rosalie Catherine Cook (his sister, my aunt and mentor). Gathered were unfamiliar faces that were connected through Rosalie. The gathering was small and polite. Charlie broke the ceremonial sounds with a how do you do to the person to his right. This fella married into the family via the youngest daughter of Bill, niece to Charlie and Rosalie. Yes there were cousins in the room. People who once participated in games of tag, kick-the-can, hide & seek all cousins from the occasional family picnic of decades ago.

Rosalie had been a beacon of family connected-ness in a older sister fashion while she lived in CT. That changed more than several years ago. Family distances were not bridged – hearing impairment and other aging issues taking the reigns of daily life when she retired to Florida. The rest of us entered lives after teen years. Her recent return home was brief. It allowed for one visit which included the expected squeeze of the hand…the ‘good to see you my dear' whisper in the ear, the 'what can I feed you discourse. Odd disconnected memories of Rice Pudding made me bring her some. She just smiled. Maybe it should have been Tapioca. (The absence of cigarettes was very pronounced. She had been the embodiment of the meaning of Virginia Slims for me even as the cancer sticks poured from the pack of Camels or Marlboro.)

But the mind has no focus as the heart tries to reflect: cousins, pieces of art and some craft pull me in several directions. I do not turn on the radio in near fear of more connections that I cannot trace.

My sister has Dad now. They were part of the procession to the burial site along with another aunt and cousins. I returned to my table with a promise to myself to visit here before attending to the external loci of control. Upon returning, I did walk myself and the dog first because it is at this too that I fail daily.

Back to the main event: Dad did not recognize his daughter. She resides on the other ocean’s side. Many years have passed. Today as most days she embodies confidence. She was simply and smartly dressed with color accents. I immediately considered how “Rosalie would have just loved how she looks”. I did the basic black attire. it fit and the random thought for what stylish colorful item in my closet would Rosalie like, passed into nothing she would like would fit today – so the 'do not go there’ voices in my head won and I wondered in thought too much more pressing tasks at hand feeling I would be lucky to be dressed and on time. Not lucky.

Rosalie. You grace every room in my home. There is no more to write.

the most beautiful lessons are plain to see

As I start sharing words in this public space I am reminded that words have been gifts of insight and love. To all, beyoutiful.

boy,

lis'in up you hear, the most

beyoutiful thin' in this h're world

is yuz bein' yuzself.

My pappy taught me this h're

iz d'truth. Pappy he done knows

many thin'z 'bout fiztin' up

an' maken' thin's do

what thay waz meant fur.

But, like he says, fitzin' what wuz

broke in him wuz the key.

I'm here to tell you

that man was ugly to look at

but he was beyoutiful.