Category: Writing a Book

Aging a la Anne Lamott

This is not the first time I have dragged writer/author Anne Lamott into the spotlight for well-deserved laud. I love her voice and a whole lot of other things about her.

Sardonic, witty, spiritually grounded and insightful in a no-nonsense, non-preachy way. She’s funny. She gets that god must have a sense of humor to absorb and deflect the mess we masses have made of his/her/its many gifts.

So this piece she has written and had published in The Washington Post is her take on aging. I found it hard at first to put Anne Lamott in the crone category. But, according to the US Bureau of Statistics, at 70, she surely is.

So enjoy her essay/rant about the skulduggery and indignities of aging. And some of the good stuff, too. Lamott is such a pleasure to read and has such a quirky insightful voice that she almost manages to make aging sound fun.

I said almost.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/30/aging-health-strength-mind-heart/?_pml=1

Bibbity, Bobbity, Boo

I kinda love witches. Well, I love them to the extent I know anything about them. Which I don’t. Not really.

I really liked the three good witches in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty: Flora, Fauna and Merryweather. They were kind of like maiden aunts who always had Sleeping Beauty’s back and her best interests at heart.

I could have used a couple of them when I was a girl. Maybe I had them but they were all in my grandmother.

Witchcraft always seemed to be a fairly limited career choice. I mean, there was all that mystery and spell casting and multiple spiritual dimensions to get a handle on. And the danger of spell blowback haunting you. Like Mickey Mouse’s curious, if hapless, novice magician in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Sounds dangerous and exhausting.

And then there has always been the very real danger to witches of being beaten or banished or burned or basically, disrespected.

Wait. That still sounds vaguely similar to the risk of any woman lives with. 

The world of spirits and the occult have largely gone out of fashion in the secular world. Well, except for today, of course. Halloween is the one day of the year when we can all express our inner witch by sporting pointy black hats and corn brooms and painting on shrieking blood red lipstick.

I got a particularly stunning shade of red Mac lipstick as a gift from my daughter’s girlfriend. Fashion forward and high marks for good taste. I still pull it out when I need an instant power boost.

I deliberately mixed up my witch costume one year by taking a Rocket stick vacuum cleaner with me as my ersatz transportation. A modern upgrade from the trusty corn broom. People looked at me funny.

Witches have had a real and traumatic, if compelling, history. I recently read on a self-identified witch’s website that the beauty of the “craft” (so-called by its practitioners) is in its simplicity. Many spells and potions can be concocted with readily available kitchen ingredients and implements, like a variety of spices and essential oils.

The allure of witchcraft to women in days of yore was understandable. Constrained by biology and narrow-minded society to dreary lives of minding the hearth and repetitive childbearing, it is easy to imagine women who would have been up for a good time dancing around a roaring campfire in their birthday suits.

Exuding a hint of witchery (aka mystery) was a useful tool for women whose power in other spheres was excruciatingly limited. My mother was a storyteller and would recount tales of backwoods provincial witches.

She may have been a tad more personally familiar with their witchy ways than she let on publicly. Just a guess. She was certainly drawn to the craft.

I remember the story Mom told of Granny Bubar, in particular. She was a “widder” (widow) woman of wide reknown in the 100 mile circumference of the Nashwaak River in backwoods New Brunswick.

In other locales, she might have been seen as crazy. In her circle, was feared. No one dared cross Granny Bubar for it was a known fact she was the real deal. A genuine witch. There was proof.

Local farmers recounted stories about Granny Bubar planting herself on a gatepost where the cattle had to go through. Each night, they were herded in from the fields to the barn for the night. But the cows wouldn’t pass by if Granny was near.

They bolted and mooed and generally made a fuss. Granny just sat there, quietly, and unmoved with her arms folded across her concave chest. It was reported she took much delight in the frustration and fear oozing from the farmers.

After a time, and much pleading by the farmers, Granny came down from her perch and sauntered slowly home. Once she was out of sight, the reluctant cows hightailed it through the gate and into the barn, leaving the farmers perplexed and shaken.

My mother would recount the story of Granny Bubar with unabashed glee. The story had more interesting roots as we discovered years later. Mom happened upon a PBS documentary about witches. The script explored some women’s deliberate attempts to curry respect and fear in their communities.

The deflection of cows and other livestock by certain women was a common tale. It turned out, women would smear their bodies with bear grease under their clothing or roll about in a bear or polecat den.

There wasn’t a right-thinking cow out there who didn’t know that odor. Granny Bubar likely sauntered slowly home chuckling to herself from her fence-post vigil to wash and freshen up.

Serious spiritual traditions swirl around the night of Halloween in the Celtic traditions, or Samhain as it is called. And while I come from that cultural stock, I still don’t know much about it.

This is the one night of the year, I gather, when the veil between the spirit and material worlds is most transparent and permeable. It is the night when offerings and thanks should be freely given to our ancestors.

Honoring ancestors has disintegrated to practically nothing in our material world awash in superficial bling and Grey Goose vodka and fast cars and money. This lost contact with other dimensions out there seems a profound loss to our culture and to us, as individuals.

So tonight I think I’ll give my ancestors a sacred shoutout. Many dear relatives have passed and I wish to honor and reflect on them tonight as I occasionally do during the year. I will give thanks for the gifts they gave me while they were here. I will forgive their trespasses.

The only difference I might expect tonight, I’m told,  is that on this one night, my ancestors may very well hear me. They may even respond in some way or another with a signal or a sign.

In any case, I’ll be watching and listening.

If they do reach back, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Take My Own Advice, Maybe?

Self-isolation is a gift. When the world has been nipping away at you for longer than you can stand to meet its own particular needs, we all have the right to call “time out.” The trick is learning we have that right.

I am working on recognizing my own complicity in allowing the nipping to happen. If I’m not available, no nipping can happen I theorize. But there are times and tasks that must be faced and worked through to avoid unpleasant consequences. There are people and tasks we must face to accomplish certain ends.

Too often we put ourselves out there and on the line emotionally for no good reason whatsoever. Okay. I often put myself on the line emotionally for no good reason whatsoever.

The trick is to catch yourself in your own wrongheaded thinking. I have come up against some challenges of late that have me questioning what is going on in the world today.

My primary physician’s staff resolutely refuses to release my own medical records to me. That was so wrong and crazy I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

People recently charged with my well-being literally walked away from their posts. They were not even mildly apologetic or disturbed by my distress. Rather they were defensive and accusatory because I took issue with their shabby behavior.

Someone I hired to do a task didn’t show up and hasn’t bothered to explain or apologize. That person “ghosted” me after making a commitment I relied on. I’d writhe in shame if I did that to someone. I honestly don’t know how to make sense or put any of that into a relatable context. The world seems to have gone mad.

I operate on what I guess are old-fashioned and out of date rules about keeping your word and doing your best and treating everyone you meet with respect and decency. The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

That often makes me feel like a social Luddite. When I talk about the importance of honesty, I can hear some people chuckling under their breath. “Nice thought, but get real. No one is honest these days.”

And we wonder why the world feels so screwed up? I don’t follow the Golden Rule to make someone else feel better. I follow it to make myself feel better. Mostly to apply some consistency and predictability to my social interactions. Some days, though, it feels like that rule no longer works for me.

As a result, the circle within which I live is getting smaller. As I meet and interact with people who seem devoid of kindness or decency, I psychologically and physically recoil from them. And I certainly hope I don’t need them up the road.

It is not that person doesn’t have my full compassion. I simply recognize we are not operating on the same level with certain key values about how to build and sustain social relationships.

No use trying to push a string, I often say. It doesn’t do any good to expect an elevated level of behavior in people who simply aren’t mature enough to be there yet. That would be like expecting a three year old to drive.

It is often said water seeks its own level. That is, we tend to seek out and build lasting relationships with people who are more or less in tune and simpatico with who we are. Even if some people are not at the same social or economic level, it is relatively easy to sort out decent and authentic folks from charlatans. Mostly.

Of course, there is an inherent cost to longterm self-isolation. There is a danger of losing touch with what is going on in the society around you. Your relevance to the world may diminish. Your awareness of societal trends can wither. Humans need one another to grow and thrive. Isolating for too long can rob you of that connection.

But it is useful when your extremities are bloody from being incessantly nipped at and your body and soul need rest. Self-isolation can be a highly desirable doorway to duck into for a time. You can fill your days with things, like music and books and beautiful things and nourishing food.

So many of us, especially women, are fed the lie that our presence is indispensable to others and our self-worth often centered on making sure others around us are well taken care of.

I have come to believe that absenting myself for a time to take care of my own needs is an opportunity for others to learn to take better care of themselves. Win-win.

With that single, simple decision, think of the drama and burnout and suffering that could be avoided in our relationships. I sure do. All the time.

Facing Forward

Today the curator of the Ultimate Blog Challenge on Facebook asks us to plan the 90 days after the challenge ends on October 31st. Halloween for those of you who have been sleeping under a rock.

God knows I’ve tried to ignore the incessant commercial come-ons. How many Kit Kat bars and Reese’s Pieces can one person eat anyway?

This will be the third monthlong Ultimate Blog Challenge I’ve finished this year. Ninety days ahead takes us through November, December until the last day of January. Oy, do I have plans.

November 1st is always a new year’s day of sorts for me. It is loosely associated with All Hallows Eve or Hallowe’en. According to pagan Celtic traditions, it is said that on this day the spirits of the dead are most clearly present on planet Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

It also marks the time of harvest and beginning of the “dark part of the year.” The only harvest I participate in is doing my part in filling up the sacks of local trick and treaters.

As my spiritual “New Year,” I do have some modest resolutions for the next ninety days.

Stay healthy. That’s always Number One and always will be. I am a devotee of the “health equals wealth” philosophy. Without health, wealth don’t mean much except applying it to attempts to restore it.

Develop a debt management plan. This is also a perpetual theme in my life. I would love to be one of those people sitting on bags of money. I’m not. I’m a very low profile, ordinary financial citizen. So I manage debt.

Survive the holidays. There is a swack of them coming up in the next ninety days. If you go by the dictates of advertisers, you could go broke tricking out and tearing down and retricking out your house for the tsunami of “blessed events” coming up.

My strategy is to do as little as humanly possible for each of these events: Halloween (in a couple of days); Thanksgiving; Christmas celebrations (which is essentially the whole month of December); New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. And all of January for recovery.

If the marketing strategy is to keep us on our toes by distracting us with one holiday after another that we are expected to execute “perfectly,” it is rather brilliant.

And if we don’t have the spirit or means to pursue holiday perfection, no matter. A whole lot of compensatory products are available out there to make us feel better about not “being perfect.”

If we are single and don’t have an existing or created family to go to all the trouble for, so much the better.

And, of course, I plan to keep writing. This blog has surprised me. Over 225 days in a row so far. The biggest surprise has been that I’ve managed to keep doing it every day and plan to continue. It centers me and reinforces my own views about the world and what’s happening in it. I wish I were more unfailingly optimistic about what I see.

By January 31, 2024, I expect to be six weeks away from the goal I set up on March 14th, 2024 of writing a daily blog post for a full year. I set out thinking I would have a book manuscript by then. That seems unlikely.

There have been an inordinate amount of distractions this year. Challenges I didn’t expect. Challenges I took on that cost me more emotionally and financially than originally anticipated.

External demands that ranged from irritating to overwhelming. I was never quite sure starting out which way a challenge was going to turn out. Life is surprising that way.

In spite of the roller coaster I’ve been on this past year, I am happy to report that marketing soaked holiday celebrations have not been among them. And won’t be, dieu merci.

The American Buffalo

I’ve never seen a Ken Burns documentary I didn’t like. Burns’ epic two part, four hour documentary on the American Buffalo that aired last week on PBS was no exception.

I sometimes delude myself there is nothing new for me to learn. That is because I have no interest in learning astrophysics or nuclear fission. But this documentary surprised me.

It turns out there was tons I didn’t know about the history of the American Buffalo in North America. More important, I didn’t fully realize how intimately intertwined the fate of the buffalo was with the indigenous peoples who relied on them.

There used to be millions of buffalo roaming free on the open grasslands in North America back in the mid-1800s. Millions. The indigenous peoples who hunted them for food, clothing and shelter, had a deep and mystical connection with them.

Buffalo were so embedded in the life and well-being of indigenous peoples, it would have been hard for anyone to imagine they could disappear. But the American Buffalo was nearly wiped out. The tale of how the buffalo was nearly eradicated goes hand in hand with the cultural and actual genocide of many native American Indians.

Ken Burns’ documentary ostensibly starts out to teach us how the greed and violence of Europeans decimated the great North American buffalo herds. His story inevitably explores the concomitant demise of indigenous peoples who lived here first. It was shocking to see the parallels drawn so clearly.

I, like nearly every other North American kid, grew up witnessing depictions on film of the struggles between white Europeans and Native Indian tribes as a fight between good and evil. And in that order.

There was an Indian reservation quite close to a friends home in the little town I grew up in. I still remember the solemn warnings of my friends mother. “Stay away from there. The Indians are known thieves and rapists.”

Couldn’t think of a much more effective way to strike terror into the hearts and minds of two pre-pubescent girls. Even if we didn’t quite get what rape was, we knew it was very bad and we didn’t want it to happen to us.

Sadly, the buffalo didn’t have anyone to protect them. They were shot and killed in the millions by greedy white hunters. Only selected parts of the buffalo were taken as trophies or to cash in on whatever body part was in demand – their coats, or tongues, or heads. The rest of the corpses were often left on the Prairie to rot.

So we white folk – as the now predominant culture in North America – depicted the Indians as cutthroat savages who would kill us as soon as look at us. It seems ironic that white folk under similar threats – which European settlers and military battalions certainly were to them – such action was not only expected, but lauded.

History is written by the winners. If winners is the right word to describe the victors in widespread murder and land theft. It is understood that indigenous peoples did not understand the concept of private land ownership. I understand they believed themselves to be part of and stewards of the land they lived on – not owners. This lack of discernment cost native people dearly.

I watch the mealy-mouthed machinations of the predominant white culture now trying to make amends with indigenous peoples’ for the wrongs of their ancestors’ past. Canada’s truth and reconciliation commission generated an apology from the sitting government and a national day in honor of the horrific treatment of Canada’s First Nations people, especially in residential schools.

It’s something I guess. But that’s the thing about winning. The sharpest operators know it is better to beg for forgiveness, instead of asking for permission beforehand. What’s done is done, we say.

Possession is nine tenths of the law when it comes to property ownership. Conveniently, that law came into being long after the bulk of indigenous North American Indians were pushed off the lands they occupied for thousands of years. New game. New rules.

It’s little wonder indigenous peoples are working hard to reclaim what they once had and lost. They are creating a new game with their new rules.

Defragmentation

Sometimes I feel like a police scanner – to the extent I even know how a police scanner works. I scan constantly through my computer and phone throughout the day, every day. It is kind of a ritual but more of a neurosis, if I’m honest.

It is an odd combination of FOMO (fear of missing out) but also a form of hyper-vigilance. I look and constantly wait for “things that need to be tended to.” A utility bill. An enticing post or meme. A bank statement. Friends’ birthdays. All things that may need my “urgent” attention.

I am so familiar with this pattern now and the feelings it is trying to manage.

My life’s work has been trying to pull back together the fragmented pieces of myself that flew apart when I was a child and young woman. Pieces of myself flew apart on several occasions before I hit the proverbial brick wall.

When I was younger, I suffered from a bad case of arrogance of youth. I overestimated my importance and ability to change the world. It is a common arrogance that life thrashes out of most of us.

Most of us settle into familiar routines as we grow into adulthood. I see that as a gift life gives us. Even plants have to find a place to dig in and take root if they are to become fully mature and productive. It underpins the philosophy “to bloom where you are planted.”

These days, I am not so sure young people are able to access and develop those routines as easily. Young adults fret and fuss about the basics way too deeply into adulthood. Their conversations are an all too familiar commiseration about how difficult life has become. Houses are unaffordable. In longterm rental accommodation, equity cannot be built. And equity has always been the most familiar and reliable route to financial security.

So people everywhere – just like me – are enraptured by the world available to them on their rectangular anchors. Problem is – and the problem is becoming much clearer to many – the online world is illusory. It is full of bias and singular POV’s and fragments of truth.

Constantly surfing the internet is like eating and eating at a buffet and yet never feeling full. It is like watching kids play on the other side of a chainlink fence. It is like blowing kisses to loved ones on the other side of a glass wall.

Nothing can take the place of that perfect first bite of something sinfully delicious. Nothing can replace that extremely particular sensation of joy and pleasure. Nothing beats good old-fashioned hugging and giggling to bond us to each other.

So I’m devising a plan. To wean myself away from this obsessive ritual of device scanning and become more deliberate about how I spend my time. The aim is to calm my mind. To stare down the internal “to-do” list. The aim is to settle down incessant demands that are largely self-created.

For the past several months, it seems all I needed were tchotchkes from online stores which I was sure would add heaps to my sense of peace and security and wholeness. Those tchotchkes have not done that and the message is coming through loud and clear that I need to shift direction.

So I have set a path. The boundaries of that path are ill-defined at the minute but that is the process new ideas go through to get born. Less time online. More quiet time with myself and in nature.

I could wrap this up by saying something clever like, “I’m heading to the internet to find articles on exactly how to do that!” But I won’t. I’ll take my coffee outside to listen to the sounds of our community starting its day in the distance and the birds in the trees around us waking up.

There is inherently more comfort in nature than chasing illusions on the Internet. We all need to relearn that.

I’m pretty sure those birdsongs will comfort and settle me. Excuse me while I turn this off to go do that.

Fuck Fear

Fear swims into my chest unbidden and swirls around my solar plexus in aching, incessant revolutions. Dead center in my body. Unbidden and heavy … triggered by what I assume will be bad news.

It is said that while we cannot control what others do or think or what happens around us, we can control our reactions. When fear hits, I immediately think all of that is pure malarkey.

My solar plexus fills up with fear without any conscious thought on my part. It is downright creepy.

I do not invite fear to fill up inside me overwhelming my senses and my reason. But fill up inside me it does. As surely as gas goes straight into a tank when the nozzle is depressed.

Unlike pumping gas, however, the fear doesn’t stop once the nozzle is released. It feels like a more automatic process.

I have learned some remedies for managing uncomfortable feelings of fear. Intellectually, I realize the highest and best road to take in the face of fear is simply facing it.

But that is usually my strategy of last resort. I play games in my head. I avoid picking up the phone or confronting the perpetrator. I avoid whatever will connect me to the bad news I fear. My stomach churns incessantly and the fear dances and coagulates in my body’s middle region.

As a stopgap measure, avoidance is actually not so bad a choice. It gives me time to collect myself. It gives me time to steel myself for the words I emphatically do not want to hear. In the poem Desiderata, there is a line I often refer back to: “Nurture strength of spirit to shield yourself in times of sudden misfortune.”

For me, getting to that end state is unreliable. When I am already feeling run down, maybe a little vulnerable, hungry, angry, lonely or tired … the well-known HALT acronym, I tend to be even more avoidant.

I have my fair share of memories where fear and terror swooped in when my defenses were at their very lowest ebb. I had no emotional or psychological defenses as no small child does. Yet my childhood world was full of fearful happenings and sudden wrenching losses.

Dad would frequently come home drunk and beat up my mother. I could do nothing but sit on the top step of the staircase outside my bedroom and shake from a combination of fear and cold in my thin cotton nightdress. Mom told me I once put myself between the two of them and pushed them apart when they were fighting. That was a pretty ballsy move for a four year old.

My beloved golden cocker spaniel Gus and my best buddy as a toddler was killed by a car when he bolted across the road in front of our house. He had been after a quicksilver squirrel. The squirrel got away.

Noone talked to me about how Gus died. As I recall, they didn’t even actually tell me he was dead. Probably one of those incipient “white lies” parents make up, presumably to “protect” their children. Maybe at the tender age of two or three years old, they saw no need to “traumatize” me with details I could not understand. Or so they thought.

I knew something must be wrong because Gus was nowhere to be found and didn’t come to my call. I also knew when I came upon a large red pool of liquid left in the front porch after Gus’s lifeless body had been taken away.

The sadness of that loss was compounded by the secrecy and hushed voices of adults around me who talk in that sotto voce way when something terrible has happened.

I know when I make that call today, I am going to hear: “Nothing more can be done. The builder can proceed and there is no legal impediment to prevent him from doing so.” I am steeling myself for the bad news.

By contrast, yesterday, my heart filled up with joy and hope for a few hours. An investigator came from the local authorities yesterday. I was temporarily cheered and encouraged by his very presence.

In the back of my mind, however, I knew my elation and optimism was sitting on flimsy evidence. Still, hope is a powerful analgesic.

An analgesic which is about to wear off.

Fuck.

No

no

is a necessary magic

no

draws a circle around you with chalk and says

i have given enough

— boundaries

McKayla Robbins

If we are lucky we learn this early. Most don’t. Life mostly makes it impossible to learn this early. We want and need too much. There is little way of knowing early in life that we are the most important audience we are ever going to have.

In youth, we are still searching and experimenting. There is too much competition for our time and love and enthusiasm and strength. There are too many people who want to take advantage of those precious qualities. And do.

I sometimes believe there is nothing new under the sun. The trouble is we are unlikely to learn that until we have invested a great number of years and a great amount of energy in coming to that realization.

Life for the most part is an endless cycle of learning and changing. If we’re lucky. Life’s bits are doled out in manageable portions in accordance with our age and stage and ability to handle what is thrown at us and what comes up in our path. Again, if we’re lucky.

I have learned that saying “no” can be the profoundest statement of self-respect and respect for others. I once read of an author after a book reading who was offered a fan’s manuscript.

The fan wanted feedback on her writing and jumped on the chance to take advantage of the opportunity. The author politely and firmly declined: “Honey, I will never have time to read your manuscript. You’ll have to find someone else.”

That anecdote resonated with respect for me. Did she hurt the fan’s feelings? Probably. Maybe she even shocked her a little. Shocked her because the automatic knee jerk response in society from most people is to feign interest and accept such an offering without objection.

The manuscript might be heaved in the waste bin minutes later but they have greased the wheels of polite social discourse. And diminished their own integrity and self-respect in the process.

I love that story. I could only hope I could hold myself to such a high standard in a similar setting. I am sick of people who pander and strive to protect “someone else’s feelings.”

I am not suggesting we go out of our way to gratuitously hurt or insult people. But this anecdote is different. The author was asked directly to do something she did not want to do. So she said “no”.

It injected a necessary dose of reality in that aspiring-fan-cum-author. Not a pleasant experience but also not devastating. Just real. A win for everyone from where I sit.

There are no shortcuts in life really. If you circumvent the apprenticeship and required stages of trying and failing and learning from your mistakes and trying again and again until something begins working with greater frequency, you give yourself short shrift.

I sometimes think of kids born to money who make nothing of themselves or their lives because they never really had to work all that hard for anything. What comes easily is never appreciated as much as what we have fought for and worked hard for.

It has to do with investment of time, energy and love. It is the pursuit of what is inside you that really matters to you. The happiest people have listened and followed the dictates of that still, small voice within. It is still an elusive goal for most people. There is often way too much noise and distraction that drowns out the nudging of our own inner direction.

It a distressingly common tragedy.

I am getting better at “no.” I am getting better at saying “no” with love and kindness. I am getting better at recognizing what is worth pursuing and what is worth turning down. For me. The paths I do pick usually reflect some inner urging or passion or preoccupation. Those pursuits usually work out better than pursuits I have taken on half-heartedly.

So thank you for dropping by and checking in here today. Thank you for saying “yes” to what I put out there in the world. There is no expectation from any of you to do so. Just gratitude.

If it should happen one day up the road at a reading I have just given, you wish to gift me with your book length manuscript for my review and comments, remember this post. I will be honest enough to tell you (I hope) that I likely won’t read what you have written and you are best to try another tactic.

I hope I am kind and polite but firm. I hope you will recognize it is an expression of honesty and respect – both for you and for me.

Turning Point

How I love early mornings. Around 6 AM is ideal. This sacred state can usually last up until somewhere close to 8 AM.

I love the birdsong behind our house. We have a scruffy patch of untouched forest where committees of birds consort every morning to plot and plant their day. Or so it seems.

Lately, a murder of crows has taken up residence in the remaining live oaks behind us. I don’t actually know how large a group of crows has to be to be a “murder” but there is a bunch.

Straight out of birdworld central casting, they caw incessantly. Sometimes in unison and at other times, a single crow with a particularly large and booming caw rings out over the others.

The crows occasionally fly away in unison on whatever mission they have decided is necessary. I am struck by how little I know about birds as I listen to them and watch their aeronautic displays. It piques my curiosity.

I love early morning when it is quiet and the only voice I have to listen to is the voice in my own head. Uninterrupted by abrasive external distractions, I can enjoy my own sense of peace and calm.

I hear garbage trucks way off in the distance. A small aircraft buzzes by overhead. There is traffic way, way off in the distance. Soon cars will start up around me as neighbors head off to their jobs. I am no longer part of that morning migration and I am so grateful that is so.

Yesterday, I wrote what was for me a fairly disturbing post about an art installation replicating our collective Sisyphean task of chasing money to sustain our lives with increasingly diminishing returns until we die. I used to be acutely aware that there was an inherently unbalanced tradeoff between time and money in my life and that of others.

When I had enough free time to pursue personal interests, I rarely had enough money to freely do so. When I was employed and earning money, the time I needed to pursue personal interests was eliminated. A devil’s bargain.

I am at a stage where I am resetting my goals. I am no longer convinced I will write the Great North American novel or bank countless millions with which to address the world’s ills. In truth, I never really had those goals but, at least when I was younger, they seemed attainable. Of course, almost everything seems possible when you are young.

I have come to one simple conclusion for my future direction. My life, my rules. I fervently pray (and hopefully believe) I will never have to work at a boring and unfulfilling job again. I grieve for the people that do. I grieve that I had to for so long.

I will no longer “dress to impress” anonymous others whom I hope may look kindly upon me and bestow some favor or another – financial or emotional.

I will no longer be silent or cagey in the face of outrageous circumstances. Strategic maybe, but not cagey. Life has taught me the truth of that you can attract more flies with honey than vinegar … if it is flies that you are out to attract, of course. And for the life of me, I can’t imagine why one would.

This is a time of transition in my life unlike so many other transitions that preceded it. Life used to feel like having a bolt of fabric from which you could endlessly pick patterns and play with design and create costumes ad infinitum. Now I know the bolt of cloth I was handed is not infinite. Going forward, I must pick and choose the patterns and designs much more carefully and wisely.

Even these thoughts about my future are just forming. So much that used to drive my ambition and thinking has ebbed away. I am not as angry or tortured as I once was. I am wiser. I have made immutable choices in career, children and partner which have created a clearly boundaried paddock within which I will live out the rest of my life. Best make it the best it can be for me and my loved ones.

Dangers abound on the road ahead [like they always did] but so does adventure. And learning. And friendship. Blessed friendship. There are so many people without whom I would not be here today.

It is the harvest time in my life. To reflect on where I’ve been more deeply than where I’m going. To appreciate what went right and forgive myself and others for what went wrong. And for the most part, most of it no longer matters.

In a hundred years, it will matter to no one, except in one way. The external dragons and internal demons I’ve slayed will be a lesser threat to my children and theirs and the children of my great grandchildren ad inifinitum. I hope.

Knowing this in my bones has, if for no other reason, made all of the struggle worthwhile.

Read and Weep

This is not my photo down below. These are not my words.

This is a piece about an art installation. An installation that deeply affected writer James Kricked Parr. Had I seen it in person, I imagine I would have felt the same. I imagine I would have written about it in the same way. Grief stricken.

The truth of this upsets me. To read a more detailed background of how this art installation came about, check https://www.truthorfiction.com/cant-help-myself-robot-arm/

I agree with Parr that the concept and how the artists manifested it is deeply affecting. Truth can be a troubling mirror. The piece ends on a relative high note. It urges us to take good care of ourselves. To rest and heal regularly. Even while living inside this system that most of us are trapped in. None of us are getting out of it alive.

“No piece of art has ever emotionally affected me the way this robot arm piece has. It’s programmed to try to contain the hydraulic fluid that’s constantly leaking out and required to keep itself running…

If too much escapes, it will die so it’s desperately trying to pull it back to continue to fight for another day. Saddest part is they gave the robot the ability to do these ‘happy dances’ for spectators.

When the project was first launched the robot danced around spending most of its time interacting with the crowd since it could quickly pull back the small spillage. Many years later… it looks tired and hopeless as there isn’t enough time to dance anymore.

It now only has enough time to try to keep itself alive as the amount of leaked hydraulic fluid became unmanageable as the spill grew over time. Living its last days in a never-ending cycle between sustaining life and simultaneously bleeding out. (Figuratively and literally as its hydraulic fluid was purposefully made to look like it is actual blood).

“The robot arm finally ran out of hydraulic fluid in 2019, slowly came to a halt and died – and I am now tearing up over a friggin’ robot arm 😭 It was programmed to live out this fate and no matter what it did or how hard it tried, there was no escaping it. Spectators watched as it slowly bled out until the day that it ceased to move forever.

Saying that ‘this resonates’ doesn’t even do it justice. Created by Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, they named the piece, ‘Can’t Help Myself’. What a masterpiece. What a message.”

Parr’s extended interpretation: the hydraulic fluid [represents] how we kill ourselves both mentally and physically for money just in an attempt to sustain life,

How the system is set up for us to fail on purpose to essentially enslave us and to steal the best years of our lives to play the game that the richest people of the world have designed.

How this robs us of our happiness, passion and our inner peace.

How we are slowly drowning with more responsibilities, with more expected of us, less rewarding pay-offs and less free time to enjoy ourselves with as the years go by.

How there’s really no escaping the system and that we were destined at birth to follow a pretty specific path that was already laid out before us.

How we can give and give and give and how easily we can be forgotten after we’ve gone.

How we are loved and respected when we are valuable, then one day we aren’t any longer and we become a burden…and how our young, free-caring spirit gets stolen from us as we get churned out of the broken system that we are trapped inside of.

Can also be seen to represent the human life cycle and the fact that none of us make it out of this world alive.

But also can act as a reminder to allow yourself to heal, rest and love with all of your heart. That the endless chase for ‘more’ isn’t necessary in finding your own inner happiness.”

– James Kricked Parr

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