Calling all germs

With the new baby, I haven’t felt like writing much.  I’m coming out of this experience with a keen appreciation of doing nothing but looking at a baby, feeling his downy head under my chin, feeling him rustle and rumble and toot.  What an absolute delight.

So I was listening to a podcast this morning with John O’Donahue talking about the inner landscape of beauty.  He’s an Irish poet, former priest and a part of that great Celtic tradition of mysticism, spoken and sung language.

The thing that struck me today was something he said about the spirit not being allowed out for public view.  By spirit, he doesn’t mean woo-woo stuff.  He’s talking about that little germ within us that cannot be erased.  The usness in us.  That bit of god.

It can be warped, it can be manipulated, it can be pushed so far underground in a human being that it doesn’t emerge if at all in public.

But it persists.  I know this because I’ve experienced it.

I have a little germ.  My spirit is stubborn and my father didn’t like it.  I believe he was a fact-based organism.  He could relate to sin (confession once a year), but I believe the spirit, the music of the spheres was beaten out of him, or teased out of him, or simply not recognized by him.  How horrible.

We would get a little glimpse of my Dad’s spirit when he got older or maybe when we got older and could recognize it.  He was a damaged soul.  But that’s the thing.  We are all damaged one way or the other but we don’t have to give up our spirits.

That little germ, like a tiny boring worm is right there.  I call on it when I write.  I call on it when I work with people.  I call on it when I am with people I trust.  Now that’s an interesting statement.  I suspect I’m not the only one.

That little germ is the truest expression of ourselves and I think it is what we mean when we talk about the God in each of us.

We now live with constant stimulation if we want.  Stimulation without meaning is bullshit.  It’s like a 24 hour orgasm;  it’s exhausting and we cannot get enough.

Without all that noise, visual and aural, who are we?  Did our spirit move on to more hospitable hosts?  Nope.  Your spirit hangs in and if you can shut up your head, shut your mouth, turn off the radio, podcast, Facebook, Instagram, cellphone and TV off, you might find the little creature curled up in a ball at the bottom of your psyche saying over and over again “excuse me, excuse me”.

We can’t all have a grandbaby but we can visit our spirits whenever we want.  Shhh, quiet now.

“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.”
― Meister Eckhart

Bivalves, clams and other stuff

How do we help one another?  How are we empathic without overwhelming the person who hurts or being overwhelmed by their needs.  How do we keep ourselves to ourselves but also engage in the world?

Oh shit.  It’s back to boundaries my friends.  Always boundaries.

It is easy to visualize a boundary.  A fence, a wall, (hey Trumpie), a closed door, headphones.  It’s hard to erect a boundary between people that works in the real world. Why?

Because a boundary between humans needs to be a living breathing thing.  It needs to be responsive to what’s happening right then. It needs to be a boundary that lives and breathes. Like a valve of some kind.

I am picturing a heart valve.   Valves are cool. They aren’t doors, so you don’t feel like you’re slamming a door in someone’s face.  It’s certainly not a wall so you’re not creating a permanent boundary.  It’s made for a specific thing and only allowing things to either come in or go out.  One way please.

A valve in the late 14th century was defined as  “one of the halves of a folding door, from Latin valva (plural valvae) “section of a folding or revolving door,” literally “that which turns,” related to volvere “to roll to turn, revolve.”

I looked for an image of a valva and of course I got a picture of a vulva and also a clam(bivalve).

A vulva is a perfect example of the kind of boundary I’m thinking of.  It’s receptive as well as protective.  It protects the host(ess) as well as being receptive to those she chooses to let in. It does both.  A valve for any situation.

I want all of us (especially women) to understand that it is okay to be emotionally protective.  It is okay to say “I can’t hear this right now because I’m drowning in my own shit.”  I want women to honor their emotional limits.  Actually  it’s not just women. There are givers and takers in the male world too.  So humans of all stripes, hear this: We can’t be all things to all people, or we won’t be enough for ourselves.

Learn to say “No”, “Not now Josephine” or “back the fuck up.”  However you want to do it, however is comfortable for you (and when you get more comfortable you might not have to use an expletive).” I can’t listen right now.

Might a sign help?

And now, I’m going to clam up.

 

 

The Quilt

I have been sitting at my dining room table working over an old quilt.  This quilt is a hodgepodge quilt;  mended many times with all manner of colors and shapes.  This is not an elegant quilt but a workaday quilt.  It could keep you warm in winter if you would like, but for me it is the perfect picnic blanket quilt.

I like to mend.  I like to make funny little patches and sew them on carefully with little stitches.  I do this when I listen to music or podcasts or watch Game of Thrones or The Handmaids Tale.

Busy fingers.  I don’t know why I’ve begun doing this in August.  I just started it.  It seems like this should be an activity for the lengthening days of Fall And Winter, but, oh well, I was never much good at following directions.

I shall follow my fingers wherever they lead me, for good or ill.  This is good.  Repair is good.

I still have the sock egg that my mother used to repair my Dad’s socks.  She would sit and mend his socks in front of our TV in the family room when I was a kid.  She would be humming.  Not a song you would recognize.  I think of it as the mender’s hum.  Repairing the universe one stitch at a time.

Totality

Rob said today as we sat in the garden discussing the eclipse “I paid for totality and it wasn’t delivered.”  I tried to explain the path and how far off the path we are, but he was having none of it.

I saw the moon take a nibble off the side of the sun, then a bit more and a bit more.

For us, there was just a little sliver of the sun left when it was over.  I said to Rob it was as if the sun were mimicking the moon, waning and then waxing.  The world is topsy turvy, what’s up is down, what’s usually light is dark.

I sat with my coffee and those silly little glasses and looked to my hearts content.

The light was surreal in our garden and as I walked around the house, I saw the pattern that the eclipse made on the cedar siding.  It looks like little eclipses doesn’t it?

It may not have been total here but it was totally wonderful/strange/disturbing.  We are not the masters of the universe.

 

 

Here I am

Sitting here in my office chair aware that I have a lot of energy swirling around in my chest.  Too much:  Charlottesville,  Barcelona, Trump, money, garden, Wilder, Emily and Joe, Tessa, swirl swirl swirl.  Like the whirligig of all time.  Kind of a tornado of thoughts and feelings mostly just this sensory feeling of churning.

What’s happening?  I need to swirl and swirl and then come down into my chair, my now, take a deep breath and settle.

Whoosh!

Here I am.  Happy.  Eating a caramel.  Hanging in my office with my dog.

Fault Lines

If my children are unhappy, it’s my fault, if they are struggling with money, jobs, spouses, it’s my fault; if life is not all it’s cracked up to be, it’s my fault.

When does this stop?  Never.  Why not?  Because I’m Oz the all powerful.

Pull back and listen to this unceasing chatter in my head that says, your fault, your fault and confront these statements and say:  No, not really, maybe a bit but not really.  Sometimes I believe this more than other.

It’s expectations.  Expectations hammered out, I think, by the dreams we feed ourselves and our children.  It’s so sad;  life as it is and life as we want it to be.  If our lives don’t shape up around some image we have, then we blame ourselves. It is true that if we have no ambition to shape our lives the way we want them to be, then they may be shapeless, lifeless things that have no meaning.  It is also true that a life without hope is a pallid thing.  What a balancing act.

The realer I get, the better I feel.  That may be true for all of us.  Get real.

Our lives are finite.  We can save neither our children or ourselves from that truth.  What happens between birth and death is so complex, so varied, so “luck of the draw”, that our best intentions, our plans, and dreams are for naught.

Only love survives.  Dreams die, grand schemes fall apart, just when you think everything is lined up, locked and loaded, it implodes.  There is no certainty.

I worry about my children because I want them to have lives of no turmoil or unhappiness.  But that’s silly isn’t it?

We chose to engage in the world as it is, and hammer out something we can live with.  Be happy and grateful when times are rough and times will get rough, and put your head down and make it through when times are difficult.  Make it work.  Don’t take it personally.  It’s not your fault that life is tough.  It’s the nature of the beast.

And now simply because I can, a little something to make you smile:

Regrets.

 

 

Hot potato

Have you ever played hot potato?  It’s a game usually played by children where a small object, like a ball or bean bag, is tossed around and the person who has it when the music stops owns it.

It can also mean a situation or subject that people disagree strongly about and that no one wants to deal with so they delay dealing with it, or shunt it off on one else.

Have you ever played emotional hot potato?  We take our concerns and self criticisms, our self loathing and project them on others as if they were doing the criticizing, and then get angry at those others because they are mean, judgmental and just downright nasty.

Sound familiar, remind you of anybody?

Thus we play hot potato with others and they have no fucking clue what’s going on.

This game, to get more bang for your buck, should  be played with people with whom you are close.  Then, they will get angry and defensive and prove to you that you were absolutely right.  They are mean and judgmental and downright nasty.  You have every reason to feel belittled and shamed and inadequate.

Then, you can get angry right back at them and everyone is angry and everyone has been burned by the hot potato.

Or… recognize how sad we are and how impotent we feel.  Know that many people feel this way too.  Sit down and breathe until you start to cry and blubber or just feel all of this.  Then, call a friend.  Go out and have a drink (Not drinks best beloved.  Too much booze enhances the blues).  Realize the commonality of these feelings.  We can’t all be great writers, scientists, artists, etc.  Most of us are just regular people.  Figure out how you can change your life to better reflect who you actually are.

You are angry at yourself because life didn’t turn out the way you wanted it too.  Join the human race.

Goodbye

Nellie the elephant

packed her trunk

and said goodbye

to the circus.

 

Wi

I spent quite a bit of time today with a small bundle on my chest.  My lovely grandson, Wilder.  Em calls him “Y” or “Wi”.  He is lovely and warm and real in a world that seems to be neither warm or real.  He is a small quiet being who is new to all this.

We heard the Blue Angels soaring overhead, and I listened to the news and read my books and read the papers and yet he remained warm and real against my chest.

Why is it that that is not enough?  Why is it that love and connection and just the sheer joy of it all is not enough.

We all come from histories.  We all come from years of wars and disagreements and disappointments.

Yet in this luminous, quivering and striving new life, I find hope.  In the purse of his lips and the look in his eyes as he searches mine I wonder.  Is he the hope we have all been searching for?

There is a baby out there just waiting to herald a new beginning.  Not all can be glorious, not all can be divine.  But all can be a call for Hope.

Wilder James.

 

 

What, Me Worry

I offer advice.  I breeze by with a song in my heart and a laugh on my lips.  But, I worry.  I tell others to meditate, to breathe deeply, to let their scary thoughts be pricked like bubbles. But, I worry.

I worry about my children, I worry now about my grandchild, I worry that life will not be kind to them.  I worry that life will not be kind to me or to the people I love.

I worry near and I worry far.  I worry about the state of the world, climate change, and I worry about those demons that rest close to me.

Worrying is destructive.  It wakes you up at night and preoccupies you during the day.  It takes away enjoyment of the moment, the now.  Worry is a worm that sucks you dry.

There are things that I can do something about and there are things that I have no control over.  Marching is good, letters to Congressmen and Senators, also good.  Obsessive thinking about loved ones and their futures is a waste of energy.

Live in the joy of the moment and let this constant quisling go.  Oh I wish I could.

If I can’t let it go at least  I could quit pretending that everything is great during the day.  If only to myself.  Acknowledge that yes I am worried.  There is nothing I can do about it.  I am a hapless soul in the arms of an uncaring universe.  And I carry on.  I choose to be optimistic.  I choose to offer succor and joy and keep my worries to myself

But at night, best beloved, the monsters creep out from under the bed, and rummage around in my head.

Not to be too melodramatic.

Worry is not love.  Worry is anxiety about everything.  When concern morphs into worry, it’s time to take it out of your head and examine it.

What can I do?

What didn’t I do(realistically)?

Have a drink of water

Go back to bed you big idiot it’s two in the morning.