Category: Phantasmagoria

Straight Up Medicinal

I am sitting in a fine little library in a small Southern town. Uncluttered open space. The unrelenting order of books lined up on book shelves. All at attention. Spines out. Neatly labeled. Looks like the Dewey decimal system from here but I could be wrong.

Big windows look out on local greenery and shrubbery. It is a big room, brightly lit both by sunlight and thoughtfully placed interior ceiling lights.

And it is quiet. So quiet.

So many of us struggle with externally imposed stress and relentless demands to perform and produce in this “modern era.” A library is a place where there are no demands upon you except to keep to yourself, keep your voice down and your clothes on. Generally agreed upon adult behavior.

Looking around a library imparts a clear sense of how much you don’t know and how much you have yet to learn. There are clear limits on what is possible for one human being to learn in one lifetime. I finally and reluctantly accepted that.

I had a crisis of faith midway through graduate school. Granted I was still very young. But I realized nothing I researched and wrote about in a thesis would add more than an iota of knowledge to all of the accumulated knowledge already available in the world. An atom’s worth at most.

Pretty piddly payoff.

The secret to studying something successfully for a long period of time is passion. You need to be pretty sure that the learning path you embark upon is going to to be just as fascinating to you years from now as it is now. And how would you know that? Well, there’s the rub. You likely won’t.

So much of life is coming upon something, sizing it up based on what we presently know and need, deciding whether or not that opportunity/experience/job/lover will fulfill our current needs and moving forward or back having considered all those things.

I’ve learned that passion sustains itself if it engages your heart and soul and not just your head. If you end up making a decision in any important areas – opportunity/experience/job/lover – using your head over your heart, the outcome isn’t likely to be all that gratifying or sustainable.

I should know. I used to make that mistake consistently. A job was likely to be a lot of fun? Oh no. Couldn’t take that job as it would be too frivolous. A job that would stretch my intellectual limits but had uncertain long-term prospects? Oh heavens no. I needed a steady, nine-to-five job with a predictable work schedule and future.

To my point and chagrin looking back, I remember a conversation with Carol Off, longtime host of the CBC Radio program As It Happens. She talked about a short-term contract she was offered and how she was looking forward to it and all that (her first season on-air with the national daily current affairs program).

I told her I would never be comfortable working like that and needed to find a “real job.” What a putz I was. I never ended up finding that “secure” job. To start, it turned out I hated the “predictability” of a nine-to-five job. I had more entrepreneurial spirit than I would own up to. I was looking for guidance from others and a “sure thing” for far too long into adulthood.

And as it turned out, I got a loathsome 9 – 5 government job. Carol Off went on to become a much respected, award winning multi-year national CBC radio host who kept working from contract to contract. So much for “real jobs.”

Happily, career angst was low on the list of neuroses I had to deal with. In the end, I worked. I made enough money to keep body and soul together. It “worked out.”

And all that I lived up until now led me to this beautiful little library where I am sitting today. In my working days, the library’s unflappable atmosphere of calm and order might well have driven me round the bend. Nowhere near exciting enough. Today I experience it as a tonic for the senses and the nerves.

Libraries never were designed to be social hotspots. They are designed for people who are comfortable with their own thoughts and self-directed intellectual pursuits. And little kids. Libraries are great for little kids with the right programs and activities and boundless learning opportunities.

Things I once mocked for what they weren’t and didn’t offer have now come full circle in my head. Libraries are oases of sanity and peace if you are inclined to appreciate that. Life is inherently risky and unstable. But if you have the courage to believe and follow your own instincts, you may end up where you wanted to be anyway.

Carol Off might agree with me if I met up with her now. The hell with security. Take the contract and run. You might just get a chance to learn what you are really capable of. Hindsight it is said, is always 20/20.

Collections

When I was a young girl, I collected post cards. Old ones mostly. It started when I came across a few old ones at my Nanny’s house. She let me have them and, from there, my collection grew.

There were lots of soppy old post cards. They must have been used for courting or keeping love alive. Full of romantic sentiments and wreathed in ribbons and flowers and birds. There were lots of birds.

There were several old-fashioned tourism post cards, too. One of Niagara Falls, I remember. Others of “Southern belles” who worked as window dressing and guides at Southern plantations. Beautiful young ladies clad in elaborate hoop skirt dresses in multiple colors, with perfectly coiffed hair. Usually blond.

Before I was a teenager, my post card collection disappeared in one move or the other. I miss it. It had grown to be about 6 inches thick with an elastic band wrapped around it. That’s a lot of post cards. I think it would be fun to look at them again and ponder the different eras that generated them.

Humans are great collectors. There is something pleasing and sometimes instructive about the order of collections. I think about butterfly and other bug collections we see in museums or old books. Or china collections, like a certain pattern we favor or maybe a variety of tea cups we have accumulated.

Collecting has something to do with our values and what matters to us. My Dad was famously unsentimental about holding on to anything. From about the age of 11, I had started collecting flotsam and jetsam from my life in a wallpaper book.

Wallpaper used to be sold from huge bound pattern books that most paint stores carried. There were large desks set up at the end of paint aisles where you could thumb through them and choose what you wanted.

Paint stores would often lend out the pattern books so you could take them home to check how the pattern would look in your home. When the patterns were discontinued and no longer available, the books became redundant. Paint stores were happy to give them away.

So one of these discards became my precious possession. The thing was about four feet by four feet and awkward to carry. It had a thick plastic carrying handle at the spine. For several years, I put all the precious accumulated things of childhood in that book.

Report cards. Birthday cards from relatives. Ticket stubs. Artwork I wanted to hold on to. Pictures of friends, family and events of interest in my life. Newspaper articles about an event I’d attended or that interested me.

It is still painful to remember the circumstances of its demise. Dad had moved from an apartment to his “forever” home while I was away at college. In the course of the move, my wallpaper book full of childish memorabilia was garbaged. It had been in the closet of the bedroom where I stayed when I came to visit.

I heard Dad report on its fate with a mixture of numbness, horror and despair. “What was done was done.” No histrionics or tantrum would have effected its return. I remember interpreting Dad’s act as a discard of me, or at least what mattered to me. It was a lifelong pattern. As many men of his era did, my interests were of little import compared to his pursuits. I loved my Dad, but remember telling a high school teacher: “I don’t think he is very good for me.”

His carelessness about taking care of things that mattered to me was a more general disregard for me personally and my pursuits. I expect it was projection. Dad had little self-regard so how was he going to extend that to his issue. It took years to develop my own internal cheerleader to sustain a belief and commitment to things in life that were of value and interest to me.

I have only a few, small collections now. A china pattern called Blue Eva Opulent by 555 Fifth Avenue. The pattern is discontinued so the pieces I have and ones that come up at auction are rare. I collect white china pitchers, too. This was a nod to my Aunt Anne who started me with my first one when I was a teenager. I have several ornate porcelain teacups that I keep simply because they are so fancy-schmancy.

And rocks. I love rocks. Pretty, little ones mostly that you might find on a beach walk or in a riverbed. I have bought special rocks in tourist and science shops just because they were beautiful and interesting. Hematite is a good example. If you’ve ever come across this shiny onyx black magnetic rock in your travels, you may understand the appeal.

I don’t know what that little blip of excitement is when you find something new to add to your collection. Perhaps it is because you know the pieces are rare and beautiful and pleasant to look at and handle. It is a peculiar vanity. These collections will be dispersed when I am no longer here to manage them.

But like other favorite pursuits on this planet, they are an enjoyable distraction and occasional preoccupation. They are not vital or necessary in the grand scheme of things by any means.

Similar to many human pursuits, building collections can bring life joy and just be a personal bright spot. For that reason alone,

The Birthday Box

Today is my birthday. A milestone, so that narrows it down some. But I am not going to share exactly how old I have become today. The reason is old-fashioned and likely a little vain. For my mother, it was a survival strategy. Especially in the workplace.

Mom used to talk about “the box people put you in.” Once people knew how old you were, she reasoned, they made assumptions. Often erroneous. Inevitably “limiting.” It is still the way it is “out there.” A 19-year-old singer on America’s Got Talent is viewed more favorably than a 27-year-old. Longer-term marketability, the younger they are.

In Mom’s case, she was a woman in a profession dominated by men. Truth be told in her generation, every professional field was dominated by men. There were a lot of truths about living in that reality, shared as sly witticisms that most women could relate to.

“To do as well as a man in the workplace, women have to be twice as good and work twice as hard as men do. Fortunately, that isn’t difficult.”

Or a more veiled reference: “It is hard to soar with eagles when I am surrounded by turkeys.” I remember a cartoon that circulated in Mom’s workplace. A down and dejected bald eagle is in the center of a group of blank-looking turkeys. The point hit home.

I knew the frustration of being expected to be a “hard news” reporter when that was the predominant role respected in our TV newsroom. If your strength was current affairs or my wheelhouse, human interest, you were clearly of less value than the ambulance chasers or political analysts.

Never mind that I actually enjoyed doing human interest pieces and that they were well-received. They were never going to grant me a shot at being a war correspondent or a bureau chief or heading up a newsroom.

Mom’s challenge was even harder in the 60s. There were distinct “ladies’ pages” in the newspaper business. And ladies, of course, were expected to “cover” issues of interest to other ladies. Teas, weddings, and significant births and deaths in the community. The social pages. Writing obituaries was clearly women’s work.

Mom fought for a “beat” like her male colleagues. After much cajoling and complaining she finally got her wish. She ended up covering the port of Saint John, New Brunswick with the comings and goings of major vessels and reports on the cargo they carried.

To my chagrin, she liked to announce to all and sundry when I was too young to see the humor that she had a job “working the waterfront.” The conjured image of my mother in fishnet stockings and too-high heels made me writhe in discomfort when she shared her little joke with my friends.

Today is more of a day of stock-taking for me. I look back on the other birthdays of other significant decades. I think about what I have and haven’t accomplished. Most poignant, of course, have been challenges that I did and those I did not overcome. Loss became a constant companion if not exactly a friend.

My dear friend Ursula Wawer, MD became a forensic psychiatrist. On a trip we once took, she seized upon a piece of art. It was a drawing of a maze of sorts with many paths but all leading ultimately to the same destination. She said at the time it was much like the healing path many of her patients took.

Not everyone comes to the same desirable destination of love, peace, and fulfillment via the same path. Ursula concluded it doesn’t matter how you get there. What does matter is that you keep putting one foot in front of the other. Do the work to eventually arrive where you want to be and not where others deem that you should be. That journey can take a lifetime.

And so it has been for me. Lots of learning along the way and many lessons I would rather have read about in a book instead of learning about them firsthand. Life isn’t fair and that is one of the biggest and most important learnings of all.

When you land at a point of your life at a destination you only once dreamed about, that feels like a life – if not consistently well-lived – then at least you can say it has been a life of some value.

As I “celebrate” my birthday today, just as you might be celebrating yours today or soon or certainly someday, that feels like the greatest present of all.

My life to date has been valuable to me for all the challenges, children, lessons, dear friends, adventures, and romantic experiences along the way.

I greet the upcoming decade with a warm welcome. Intention being about 99% of the success of any endeavor – another lesson I’ve learned. Bring it on. Happy birthday to me.

Oxpecker Haven

My good friend Dale Estey and I decry the fact that – as we’ve grown older – we’ve come to realize there really is “nothing new under the sun.” There are few stories or facts so amazing or unique or unpleasant that we haven’t heard of them before – in some variation.

It’s a truism nailed in Ecclesiastes 1:9.

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

It is true there is little – fantastic or horrific – that shocks or surprises me now. Folks be crazy. So many stories or objects feel like attempted recreations of familiar and well-worn themes. Stories follow well-worn paths to eventual resolution. Products ebb and flow in supermarkets and box stores. There is a certain sameness to them all, in spite of the come-ons promising “new and improved.”

My husband is an artist. For his doctor friend Dr. Marc Blasser, Hank painted a portrait of a rhino in situ on the plains of Africa. The rhinoceros is a special symbol for Marc. (His email handle is “King Rhino” for heaven’s sake. He is clearly committed.)

So when my husband delivered the painting some years back, Marc admired the finished product but, upon closer inspection, stared quizzically at the painting and asked: “Where are my oxpeckers?”

When my husband told me this story, I was a little taken aback. Oxpeckers? Seriously? Well, yes. They are a real thing. See all those little guys on the back of that hippo below? That’s them.

I knew vaguely of a symbiotic relationship that existed among African wildlife with some kind of birds. I did not know – until this recent conversation – what they were called.

Large African animals of many varieties – rhinos, hippopotami, giraffes, gazelle, water buffalo, et. al. – have an implicit deal with the oxpeckers. The large animals tolerate what might otherwise be the incessant and annoying presence of the birds.

The oxpeckers peck away at will on the lumbering beasts to rid their skin of pests, such as lice and ticks, and a variety of other savory and tasty bugs. In return for this favor, the animals do not kill the oxpeckers outright with a swat of their massive tails (like giraffes might do) or eradicate them en masse by suddenly submerging them under water without warning, (as in the case of hippopotami). That would be biting the bill that feeds off them.

It is a symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationship between beast and bird that you might be able to identify with if you’ve ever been covered with unwanted masses of lice or ticks. Personally, I have not.

Inspired by this story and the delightful and unusual moniker of these birds, I set out to integrate them into our life on a more permanent basis. We are in a new house and needed to set up a new internet domain. Oxpeckers Haven, I thought. Perfect.

There won’t be another domain name in the neighborhood to match it and it will likely cause the same sort of delighted comment that I had. Maybe a laugh or two, I mused.

Oxpecker. I admit I did not initially recognize the potentially obscene connotation. As it turned out, oxpeckers would not pass the internet service provider’s censors. Then I thought about it. Oh right. Well, it wasn’t as if I tried to call the domain name “bull’s penis” or somesuch. Maybe that would have made it through. I guess the offense was the suggestion of vulgarity.

I was doomed by the authority of the ignorant and presumptuous ISP censor. I was forced to concede that ours would not be the new internet home of Oxpeckers Haven. We chose a more banal, if personally meaningful to my husband, domain name: PanAmRTW. That may well be the subject of a blog post up the road.

Pity the poor oxpeckers. I sadly came to realize why I would never have learned about oxpeckers in geography class at the conservative and prudish school system where I received my elementary education.

Which, in the humble opinion of this lowly scribe, is bullpuckey.

Love Takes Time

A spiritual author and writer I follow reminded me today that things take time. I sometimes forget that. A counselor once said to me: “It took 25 years for you to get messed up. You can’t expect to undo that mess overnight.” Understatement of the century.

First, we have to recognize what is wrong. With us. With our environment. With how we were raised. That takes time to parse out. What is wrong with us usually manifests in unwelcome or uncomfortable feelings. Too anxious. Too scared. Too jumpy. Too intense. Some form of “too” that somehow doesn’t seem “normal.”

Dozens of jokes are made about “normalcy.” It is laughed at and derided. Unachievable say others. It is a definition that seeks to make us humans seem or be “all the same.” As if that were even possible. We all live life in our own way. We all learn how to love in our own unique way, too.

But when we feel too much inappropriately, it can hold us back from fully feeling the very emotions we want to express. Joy and love and peace. I remember a horrible feeling I had as a little girl. I would pick up a puppy and want to “love it” so much I was afraid I would crush it in my arms.

So I would look at it stupidly trying to mentally convey to it how much joy it brought me. I was paralyzed. That was weird but later I learned not so unusual when feeling big emotions. Remember the wild rush and uncontrollability of emotions around a “certain someone” when you first fell in love.

You stammered a little in trying to talk to them. If, in fact, you could even summon the courage to talk to them. You would blush like fury when they caught your gaze. Your stomach would turn over with butterflies so manic it would take you to the point of discomfort. If this was “love,” it felt like it was more trouble than it was worth.

And if that wasn’t enough distraction, in would wander unhelpful self-talk. “S/he is a dreamboat. I could never speak to her/him. S/he would never give me the time of day. S/he is much too good for me.” Talk about romance buzzkill.

Rockstar Tal Bachman – son of rock band BTO’s Randy Bachman – summed it up pretty well in his 1999 hit: She’s So High. Bachman’s lyrics play out entirely in his head as she idlizes the object of his affections with hyperbolic comparisons to Joan of Arc and Cleopatra and even, the Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite. When she wanders over to talk to him, he silently screams: “I freeze immediately.”

Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman – arguably one of the best all-time country and western love songs ever written or performed – has a similar theme. He is convinced the gorgeous woman he sees walking by will have nothing to do with him. It turns out he is wrong.

Most of these love and acceptance and belonging neuroses are afflictions of the young. But not always. I remember a colleague of a certain age uttering breathlessly how much more he loved his wife and childhood sweetheart now than he did when they first met. That buckled me.

So I am reflecting on time as my awareness grows of how long it took me to learn to love in a mature and healthy way. I was given an inadequate deck of cards with which to play the game of love. It took hard lessons to finally make my way to a place where it feeds my soul daily.

Not in a noisy, “take out an ad,” “plaster his name on a billboard” kind of way. It is quieter and deeper. I long to be where he is. I touch him at night just to feel his heat and energy. I am awash in tenderness whenever I look in and see the kindness and wisdom in those deep, blue eyes.

Then behold. I sense he is feeling the same for me. Changing from what was and who you were into something you want to be is not easy. It takes time. They say it is the journey that is most important, not necessarily the destination.

I would alter that only in this regard. When you arrive at the destination of your beloved, you can set off on another journey but together. That is the loveliest place of all to land.

Copping Out-ish

It was bound to happen.

I would eventually leave it too late to write a thoughtful post.

Or the greater truth is that I might be burned out, distracted, or overwhelmed.

No matter.

Whatever the reason, I went traipsing around the Internet for a solution to my “postlessness”
and found this. This is my solution for today.

55 Cool and Interesting Websites to Kill Time

It is so cool and so interesting that, if you’ll excuse me, I’m heading over there now.

My Internet neighborhood is much too small anyway.

Time to branch out.

Later.

BTW It is Juneteenth today. I hope to have enough material to write about it next year.