The Lesson In A Smile

I’m not sure who I had living in my heart yesterday but she was not walking a path of peace and loving kindness. You see this doddering fat older man with an overflowing cart of crap he didn’t need cut me off as I was going to be the very next person in the line behind someone with only three items. I was all “Score!” and chest bumping myself because I had also found a great parking place near the front doors and was able to finagle the big boat van into it without a lot of parking and reparking. I found everything I needed easily without any questioning prices or comparisions and I stayed on task the whole way through so when this guy obliviously toddled in front of me and it harshed my whole mellow. I needed that mellow because almost up until that point, I had spent the afternoon nagging my sons to just do their chores and stop whining about it. In fact, the drama surrounding the dishwasher and light cleaning duties were why I was being so pushy because I stopped at the store on my way to a little celebration at the salt mines and stood every chance of being late.

So I got stuck behind this guy who probably didn’t have a life because why would some one wear ratty looking sweat pants in 90 degree heat with beat up old shower shoes and why else would anyone move that slow unless they didn’t have someplace to go. Like me. I had somewhere to go. Of course all my tappy-footed fuming and glaring at him through my sunglasses thinking all sorts of uncharitable thoughts about how rude he was to just walk in front of me without noticing I had fewer items. And how dare he miss the fact I was moving quickly because my life is much more important and meaningful than his so I should be allowed to go ahead of him. Finally, I was obviously dressed for something other than a trip to Walmart. Because, really? If I wear a fancy blouse and silk cigarette pants to shop at Walmart, I must be worse off than he is… And then my uncharitable voice went for the passive-aggressive and I called one of my coworkers and told her in a very loud voice I would be late because the lines at the store were really long and someone was rude enough to cut in front of me. The cashier looked over at me when I was talking to my friend, just a quick glance, probably noticing my cart wasn’t terribly full and no doubt noticing my impatient demeanor and automatically bracing herself for an abrupt and rude customer.

When this man finally finished his transaction, dithering over his change and receipt and then pausing to exchange pleasantries with the cashier it was my turn and the clock in my head stopped ticking: goingtobelategoingtobelategoingtobelate. I could breathe a little easier and it was my turn. I looked up at the cashier noticing her beautiful smile and a warm spirit radiating through it. I was suddenly swept up in her quiet energy and felt myself further slow down and a spontaneous genuine smile spread across my face. smile and not a polite return-of-the-smile smile. I noticed her name was a lovely old fashioned name you don’t see very often and asked if she went by the shortened version or the long version. She told me she didn’t like the shortened version very much and pronounced it slowly making it even prettier. Grace went by another name yesterday and it was Beatrice.

After I slithered back to the car, thoroughly ashamed of my childish behavior. Murmering a little prayer of “Sorry I’m such an asshat God. Can you help me?“ I switched on the radio. A song was playing which described how someone had been lost and doing bad things discovered grace and his life was turned around and away from that person he had been before. The way this guy described his life he had been a pretty bad guy, not just suffering from a momentary lapse of human kindness. It made me remember I can moment by moment change my heart and my outlook. I also realized grace doesn’t have to be gigantic or have long term life changing repricutions, and no matter how big or small, the moment just after I have been transformed by God’s grace I am shiny like a baby just out of a bath. A baby who usually runs out of the bath and within five minutes or so is besmirched with the grim of day to day living as a human being.

Thank you Beatrice, I needed this wake up call. Yesterday was hardly the worst day of my life but it wasn’t terribly easy either. The lesson in your smile will be what I remember and not my petty disappointments.

Waiting For Anne

I’ve been sick for what feels like a week when it’s only been for a few days so I haven’t been writing like I usually do. I did spend most of Sunday in the yard and gardens. It was so immensely satisfying to clean up my lovely plants so the new growth was revealed. A few things didn’t make: a couple of relatively hardy things which really surprises me when meanwhile my Pinks wintered over and a couple of delicate hard to grow perennials are thriving. The fruit trees have started to bloom and Wally even noticed how beautiful they were on his run this afternoon. We are leaving for Texas on Thursday and when we return it will be just the right time to clear mulch and prepare soil for the expanded veg bed. I’ve ordered golden beets and English cucumber from Burbee along with the usual suspects: Cosmos, Zinnias and Hollyhocks. My friend, Charlie, has a small green house and has started our heirloom tomato plants. Sometimes, I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve such generous friends. I will gift him and his wife a large tin of my special herbs d’Provence blend and a couple bottles of tarragon and rosemary oil. I’m already looking forward to playing with the herbs. I swear, the weeds are worse this year and I spent two hours pulling stupid little weeds out of the rocks and out of the garden. It seemed like they would sprout up behind me as I walked away. If I were really talented I would do a CAD piece a la where I’m walking away as dandelions sprout up behind me. The dogs (Buddy was visiting Sunday while his mama went on a ski date) enjoyed each other’s company while I worked. Those two yard apes crack us up. They charge the fence whenever a dog walks by (frequently on a warm weekend afternoon) and act like they are going to kick some dog ass any minute. After they have finished “taking names” they run around one another in a sort of victory dance. If they were people, I swear those two would be trash talking at the fence and then doing airborne chest bumps like a couple of fraternity brothers on a bender. I must say, spending the day in the yard was a two-edged sword. The sun was good for me but the pollen, not so much.

I actually called in sick to work not one but two days. I never call in. My paid time off is too precious and is really just for vacations, right? Screw using it for actual sick leave! Had there been someone to replace me on Thursday I would have stayed home sick that day, too. I slept most of the two days I was supposed to be working. On Friday I resurrected myself from bed just in time to pick up Beav from school and managed to pull it together and go to Annie LeMott’s reading at the our big and famous indie bookstore. A couple of times I just wanted to slide off my chair and curl up on the floor for a little nap. Not feeling well saved me from spending any money. I sat on the floor in a corner waiting for my number and wrote in my journal. Writing in public makes me feel extremely pretentious and a little fake. Complete projection on my part because I think most people who sit and write in public are completely fake and pretentious. Writing is a private act and in order for it to be work worth reading it must be preformed in quiet isolation. So no one can see--at times--my desperation.

The reading was at the downtown version of our well known indie bookstore for the reading Friday night, plopped on the floor with my notebook out and head buried deep in my own thoughts and almost oblivious to the people around me. I felt like a “wadded up piece of paper” and really didn’t want to engage with the other LaMott fans. Besides, this bookstore intimated the Hell out of me what with the uber librarian type clerks. It’s not like they treat those of us from the suburbs like a hick at the Saks jewelry counter they are nice and helpful folks. The customers are mostly well-heeled “downtown types” equally intimidating to me. My assumption is all the customers and all the clerks hold a couple of MS degrees and a PhD or two so I feel like I can’t intellectually keep up with them and I just duck my head and go to the back of the line and sit on the floor with my moleskine and scribble madly hoping I don’t look as goofy as I feel. The other night as I was scribbling, I realized when Anne LaMott wrote Bird by Bird she didn’t have a degree. I’m not sure if she does now, either. This cheered me because there isn’t anything that makes me more discouraged than the back flap of a book lauding the author’s work at University Of Iowa, Princeton or Brown. So I it gave me hope that a college drop out was READING at this fancy bookstore and I was going to hear her read. Finally after six years of admiring her from afar.

I found LaMott late, I didn’t read her blog at Salon nor did I read Operating Instructions Wally is just a year younger than her son, Sam, and I didn’t read books about babies when Beav came along. But a few years later, I did read Bird by Bird and it changed my feelings about my own writing and made me realize, just like nursing, I am called to write. And all you have to do is read the archives of this blog to see how I feel about LaMott’s Christianity and her idea of Grace. I was very nervous about even speaking to her if I had the chance. My biggest fear is I would have some sort of fan girl melt down resembling a ten year old girl at a Jason Bieber concert. The notebook was my shield against getting all worked up with the people around me. Because the people around me, were complete fan girls and it was a little embarrassing.

As I waited for the reading, I started reminiscing about the other signings I had attended. The first one was Rita Mae Brown and I was mesmerized by her. Of course, the book was forgettable but it was still a big experience for me to hear her soft accent intoning the details of her fictive universe. Next up was William Least Heat Moon. I was so crazy about Blue Highways I carried a copy of it around with me for a few months and talked Ward into taking a small dirt road off a highway near Missoula Montana because a placed named “Rivulet” was at the end of the road. I wanted to see a town called Rivulet and it felt like something Moon would have done. Rivulet was a ghost down with a few shacks but the road through the deep forest was worth it. Besides, Rivulet is one of my favorite words. A few years later, Velkram Seth read from his book which followed a A Suitable Boy and it was a delightfully personal experience. There were very few people there and he had conversations with each one of us. He was completely charmed by my story of cutting his 1400 page novel into two pieces because the hardcover edition I had was just too heavy. His disappointment I didn’t bring it to be signed was endearing. My least satisfying experience at a signing was Joyce Carol Oates. Such a strange little woman who seemed to work at appearing affected and otherworldly. Oh if you are so utterly precious and ethereal spare us your drama by staying at home.

I do like to watch the people at these things; despite not wanting to engage with them. My fears of being an overwrought fan girl were in vain because the very idea of carrying on like a couple of the women who had been there since lunch time (it was six-ish) to be the first in line made me want to reach for a vodka martini with a Xanax garnish. The woman sitting next to me was in her seventies and terribly elegant: tall, willowy with her lovely white hair pulled into a chignon. She moved and looked like a dancer. She was sweet and did try to talk to me a couple of times but I wasn’t forthcoming. Mostly because at that moment a wave of malaise had swept over me and I wanted to lie down on the floor in the fetal position and sleep. I imagined this ballerina beside had once been Balanchine’s mistress; never fully recovering from the brief but passionate affair. When the affair ended, devastated, she left dance and moved to Marrakesh where she organized the first micro loan group. Sure, we would exchange phone numbers and after one coffee date she would realize I was too ordinary and offered nothing to her life and would then find it necessary to spend a few months avoiding me while I continued to try and set things up with her, blind to her disinterest in a friendship with me. Behind me were the quintessential 30-something housewives, over earnest and over thinking. These women make me wistful that I didn’t enjoy my children when they were little; they make me wishful for my youth. These women were way more self-confident than I was at they age, too. Not one single hand wringing comment over preschool. The last woman to enter the room had the most self-assured and thoroughly together continence I’ve ever witnessed. She was like Harrison’s character Dalva in the flesh. Her hair was wildly curly and swept back in a simple pony tail and she had on the hottest red Frye cowboy boots I’ve ever seen in my life. Had I not been sick I think I would have tackled her and stolen her boots; forget the reading.

Surrounding this crowd of adoring women and the few men who were good sports were pictures of the writers who had read at the bookstore before. The first picture my eyes landed on was of David Sedaris. Of course. Because I want to be the lesbian version of Sedaris. Regrettably, I’m almost the lesbian version of his mother sans cigarettes and alcohol. I do have terrible fantasies about just letting myself go, drinking gin out of a white coffee cup and locking my kids out of the house in the snow so I can be alone. I’m not sure I’m qualified to be the lesbian version of Sedaris because my childhood wasn’t messed up enough either. Nor did anything funny like the Miss Coppertone contests happen. There was not a photo of Raymond Carver, one writer I regret discovering shortly after he died. Carver is the reason why attending readings by favorite authors is important to me. The tenuous quality of life is one of the lessons I’m learning this year. It is becoming important to me to seize opportunities when I can do and see those things which matter to me. Seeing LaMott read is one of those things.

I am happy to see I didn’t cry or squeal or say something asinine or stalker-ish which has resulted in a restraining order against me in Marin County when she approached me (as she did many people) and asked if she could sign my book. She looked me straight in the eye and fully engaged with me for about thirty seconds with a presence that seemed natural without pretense or force. I could feel her pray a silent prayer for me. She was probably begging God to please not let me breath on her.

The Only Way Does Not Exist

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” Fredric Nietzsche (image from losanjealous.com)


I'm not sure where to begin purging all the ideas, thoughts and feelings I've had over the last week or so. In fact, this blog is only going to touch the surface of what I’ve been feeling; a feeling I wasn’t able to isolate until the other day when I posted a well thought out “status update” on Facebook and received flippant replies. Yeah, I know, it’s freakin’ Facebook, so get over it. It's not like I was blogging on Open Salon. And my friends aren’t mind readers so they didn't know I wasn't being light-hearted. The replies didn’t upset me as much as it pushed in my face something that has been bothering me a lot lately. The malaise this country operates under. It’s a malaise of cynicism and bitterness. A malaise I am prone to suffering. And I know it’s all chic and hip to be morose and gloomy and malevolent and snaky but really? Enough! The political left bitterly blames the right for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (ok, then all you folks on the left, stop driving your cars, riding trains, planes or buses and buying manufactured good because then we won’t need so much petroleum for products and gasoline.). The political right blames the left for the out of control debt and plague of terrors called health care (alright then all you folks on the right you can stop driving on the public highways and while you’re at it, if you’re 66 or older can we have all that money we put into Medicare back?) Yeah, the country--if not the world--is in a big mess and yeah, religious zealots and greed and capitalism is to blame. So don’t participate, go find a cave and be bitter and angry and cynical there. BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE ANY OF YOUR STUFF WITH YOU.

Some of my friends will call this a crisis of faith (I heartily agree, and will click the “like” button) but other friends might say it’s because we are at the “end times and Jesus is coming” (I would have to push the “meh” button on that one because we won’t know when the end is because that’s just how God rolls) And then I would have friends who would snark at me because I’m ignorant enough and unsophisticated enough to even believe in God much less the idea of Jesus.(the dislike and ignore function would be activated) And you know what? That kind of snark is just sad. I’m sick of snark. I’m sick of defending my faith to my acquaintances who are atheists. Fortunately, I have been vocal enough that most of my friends who happen to be agnostic or atheists just leave me alone and let me have my “Invisible Sky Friend” Actually, I love this moniker for God, and it makes me giggle and feel warm and cozy all over. Probably not Keith’s intent when he was sneering about evangelical Christians and let that lovely gem drop.

I’m guilty of sneering at evangelical Christians. But the one’s I sneer at are the judgy media whores and the judgy gay bashers who get caught with male escorts and their pants around their ankles. But then I’ll sneer at anyone who queer bashes because chances are they are and it’s too scary to contend with so they pour on the hate. I also sneer at people who refer to themselves as “Christians” when they protest at Veteran’s funerals with ugly, hateful signs claiming God hated their loved one for serving in the military because God hates fags so that’s why we were attacked on 9/11. Just thinking about Fred Phelps and his church makes my blood boil and my heart sad all at once. Because in some very small liberal minds Phelps is your typical Christian. Uh huh, just like the Palestinian who blow up cafes is your typical Muslim and the dumb mo’ fo Israeli who thought it would be an excellent strategy to take Muslims hostage in a Temple so the PLO would force everyone to start shooting--and the Jews could call foul--is your typical Jew.

One of my favorite people I get to share this Earth with is a very devout born again Christian. God only knows what she thinks of my foul mouth and my lifestyle and my ribald sense of humor but she loves me anyway and I know she prays for me because that’s what Jesus would do. How lucky am I to have a friend like that. Anyhow, K went to Israel a few years ago, with the intent to convert Jews to Christianity. I bristled when she told me she was going to do that but I told her I hoped she would have a safe and meaningful trip and I was (truly) looking forward to hearing her stories when she returned. K was supposed to travel with another woman but it feel through and she ended up alone and depending on a network of strangers, some Christian, some Jewish and some Muslim. Her daughter had a friend in Israel and they had friends and so on and so on and everyone, no matter what flavor of God they worshiped, welcomed K into their homes and hearts. She never got a chance to witness to them because they witnessed to her through their actions. She came home transformed and even more Christ like. My guess is K transformed their lives in ways she will never know because she is just that sort of person. K had a front row seat and experienced the futility of war and told me everyone she met just wants it to stop and feel the governments--all of the--are the driving force feeding the crazy on either side.

Our national past time of Beating Down Those People We Don’t Understand Or Agree With feeds the crazy here, too. It also feeds the malaise of fear and the malaise of anger and the malaise of anxiety we are suffering globally. But with our information explosion, it’s hard to turn away from the train wreck. At least, I’m having a hard time turning away. But I must turn away because I strongly believe my psychic vibration can affect my life for better or worse. God gave me this force but it is I who must tap into it and create my positive existence. But I can’t do it if I’m a partake in the Train Wreck Slide Show. In short, The Net is harshing my mellow. So what am I doing to stop--what feels like madness--in my plain? There are snaky blogs I’ve stopped following and sites specializing in doom and gloom and blatant scare tactic journalism. I have left a community I’ve been a member of for many years because I was sick to death of defending my spirituality which is accessorized in believing that Christ is my particular religion’s son of God. (Dude, it’s all God. Flying Spaghetti Monster, Loki, Allah, whatever) All I know and care about is my belief in God’s limitless and boundless grace is what gets me through most days. I was also sick to death of the malevolence directed towards any member of a particular political party. Finally, I had had enough of the smug, self-serving tone most of the participants had and their predilection to thinking they were the smartest, wittiest people on the planet. I beg to differ, they are actually some of the most mean-spirited and culturally bigoted people I’ve ever run across but it took me about ten years to figure it out. (Some of these people I love and will continue to keep in contact but that’s a handful) As an effort to take the high road, and walk the way of peace talk, I’m not mentioning the name of the community. Rather than fight it any longer because I’m not as well educated as the most vocal and erudite in the community, I’m pushing away from the table and declaring the relationship over. But it wasn’t without getting angry about it a few weeks ago. I was letting my anger seethe and boil but I gave it one more go yesterday and all my lurking prompted was my status update someplace else who’s ill timed and not thought out responses further flamed the fire of a marvelous egomaniacal fantasy.

Yesterday, I imagined shouting loudly enough so even earthlings whom were asleep would awaken, those who were fighting in wars would hear over the chaos of death and those who were working would listen:

“ stopSTopSTOSTOP bickering and just live and let live!!”
“Use the next five minutes to breath deeply and think about whatever it is that makes you the happiest, be it Jesus, Zeus, your dog or gold or opium crops. Just stop whatever it is your doing and take five minutes to contemplate what makes your heart soar.”

And the erudite left is not the only guilty party in this game. Another place I frequent has a mix of ideologies; one of the members--in the middle of a discussion of the Fort Hood shootings--had the audacity to blame Obama for them. Whatever, dude. Sheesh crazy is as crazy does. But this is typical of the hysteria coming from the right. I can’t whine too much about the right because I pointedly avoid most US news outlets because of the fear mongering. (I have enough fear conjured up in my head, thanks, I don’t need any flavor of wing nut telling me what to fear or think.) And frankly, I am more left leaning so I don’t know of many right leaning publications. But the crap The Huffington Post spews out could tip me over to the other side. No wonder the right hates the left. We act like a bunch of know-it-all-assholes because they act like Holier-than-thou-demagogues who hate everyone else in one breath but tell us we need to all be more like Jesus who didn‘t hate anyone and probably would be happy to have dinner with just about anyone who would have him.

But isn’t that the beauty of the human condition, this duality, this flawed-ness. We are all so deeply and beautifully flawed. The Girl blames Adam and Eve but I think it was all part of God’s divine plan and he would have found a reason to kick us out of the garden anyhow. Because God was like that in the beginning, pretty much impossible to please and quick to anger. It wasn’t until he calmed down somewhere after Jacob and started thinking about giving Earth Jesus who could be his mouthpiece for peace since he hadn’t done such a bang up job before then.

So if you name yourself a liberal, shake right-winger’s hand. And if you are right wing, shake a bleeding heart liberal’s hand and after that, don’t forget to breathe and let your heart soar for a minute cuz it’s a great feeling.

Bad Fashion Judgement and Cute Little Planes

Thus in silence in dreams' projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all dark night - some are so young;
Some suffer so much - I recall the experience sweet and sad...
Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, 1876

photo courtesy of agnosticpreacherskid

DC? Seriously cool. Like raising the cool bar and wiping out NYC for the coolest place I've ever been. Dupont Circle? So cool there needs to be a velvet rope around it and Brooklyn has to wait in the back of the line for the head tilt and nod to join the party. So cool that San Francisco hangs her head in shame because despite her best efforts they are furtive and even the tragically hip of The Mission can't keep up with DC.

What a day! Me and the Beav powered through The Freer Gallery, The American History Museum and The Natural History Museum after we toured the Air and Space Museum.

It's like my brain had a big meal and all it can do is sit back, sigh and belch.

Love at first sight yesterday. The quote on the walls of the north entrance of the Dupont Circle metro station got my attention (never mind the escalator is terrifically steep and like Orpheus' Descent to Hell) but the people here have me hooked. We were standing on a street corner and heard three separate conversations in three different languages. The diversity is wrapped in the lovely facade of old buildings--most of them older than the oldest ones in my city--topped of with a friendly southern vibe. The only other place I fell for this hard was Baltimore. The locals here are very patient with tourists, too. Millions of people stumble through their city and yet, they smile and tell you you are walking in the wrong direction like they have never been asked a question before.

The Beav has never been to the east coast before and coupled with the foreign landscape are masses of people. Many more than he is used to on most days in our city. On the airplane, as we made our descent Beav noticed the wide rivers and the lush landscape. I agreed with him and told him this foreign feeling makes me feel like a hick, especially if I'm on the east coast.

"Golly, Lookat fancy old building! They is big an' old, ain't they?"

"Hot diggity! I'm from the Western US of A! All y'all is so fancy!"

"Woo Doggies! Look at all these folks! An' all of 'em so diff'rent, too!"

Coupled with feeling like a hick I am also an idiot when it comes to directions and I can't find my way out of a paper bag without directions and maps. My family thinks I'm completely OCD because I have itineraries complete with walking directions to and from sites when I travel. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. I don't mind getting lost, some of my best times traveling are when I'm lost. Fortunately, the kids and TG are like human GPS units so I can leave the directions to them. But today, even Beav was confounded and we spent thirty-five minutes--in the rain--wandering in circles looking for a metro station (this is how I discovered the people here are very patient with tourists).

Aside from the kindness of strangers and the scary escalator the four things which made the most impression on me:

1. Julia Child used The Joy Of Cooking more than any other cookbook.

2. Mamie Eisenhower wore the wrong dress to the inauguration. The dress she chose accentuated her thick torso and the foofy ruffle thingy over her left hip made her look fat.

3. There was a motorcade of Secret Service agents with a shiny but sinister looking Cadillac moving down Connecticut Avenue today. It was cool.

4. Amelia Earhart's airplane is the perfect shade of red and if I didn't know Earhart was a serious aviator, I would assume she chose the airplane strictly based on the pretty shade of red.

Beav, being the adult on this trip, was moved by the majesty of the capital building, The Wright Flyer and The Spirit of St. Louis. He assumed they would be models and was thrilled to stand next to the first biplane and the first airplane to cross the Atlantic. When I cooed: "Oh look at the cute little red airplane, why is that here?" I could hear his eyes roll.

It wasn't the first time this week and I promise it won't be the last.