Zippety-Doo-Dah

One day when I needed an uplifting movie, I saw Saving Mr. Banks, and it delivered an entertaining story for that afternoon.  But in the days after seeing it, I decided to investigate the truth of the story in several sources.  As I'd suspected, it wasn't a true story; it was, as one writer said, "a lavish infomercial" for the Disney brand.

I'm not a fan of the Disney brand--but I did go to Disneyland once, probably the same year Travers is shown to have visited the cheery theme park, early sixties.  In the movie, I got a glimpse of the park just as I remembered it.

In the story on screen, the avuncular Walt convinces the author of Mary Poppins to sell him the movie rights for her popular book.  They both had scarred childhoods and he promises to make artful use of hers--as he claims he's done with his own.  She finally agrees--though she's portrayed as an uptight author intent on not having her story made into one of his cartoons.  No animated penguins, not one stroke of the color red.

The best scenes in the movie were worth the price of admission: the interactions between a young girl with her fun-loving, adoring father; the scenery of her childhood; the chagrin on her adult face when she walked into her Hollywood suite to find it filled with stuffed animals, balloons, and fruit baskets.  She tosses a big grinning Mickey into the corner--where he will stay until he learns to be "more nuanced."  She takes one look at the cartoonish Winnie the Pooh and says, "Poor Milne!"

Disney Disneyfies everything--and this movie was Disneyfied to the hilt.  But what more can we expect from the master of cheerful endings and creators of characters who break into syrupy songs?

Consider Cinderella.  In the original Grimm tale, we don't have pumpkin carriages and fairy god-mothers and happy ending; we have bleeding feet and eyes plucked out.  Grimm's stories were grim, gutsy, bloody, and good. Disney and his crew plucked the nuances out of those stories, turned everything into cutesy fluff, and sent audiences out into the world humming happy tunes.

Seeing this movie was nostalgic--I'll give it that--and I wasn't tempted to walk out.  The cast was good, the story engaging.  But it wasn't a true story, and to me that's important--since it's based on the conflicts of a writer.  It was sanitized with a fakey happy ending tacked on, Disney style, the truth flattened into a sweet tasty pancake.

Br-r-r-r-

Well, my friends and family in Virginia and Massachusetts will find this amusing, what with their blizzards this week--but it's COLD in Texas!  When I got out for my morning coke run, the grass was crunchy and the paving stones slippery and it took me twenty minutes to de-ice the windshield.  The car's thermometer said 26 degrees!

I'm just glad Elena and I snagged a warm day for riding the choo choo  on Wednesday before the cold arrived!

Like most San Antonians, my closet is stocked for the temperate weather we usually have.  I got an email this morning from Linda in Cape Cod showing her son's dog dressed up for a car ride, wearing a sweater and doggie shoes.

Every Texas dog to whom I show that picture gets a giggle over that dog wardrobe.
But on this particular morning, crunchy grass and all, I bet they wish they had themselves a sweater and some boots!

Spending the Day With a Two-Year-Old Reminds me to Look at Everything

First, we went to the dollar store.  The dollar store had bells on the door.  "I touch it?" Elena asked.

Then we went to Fiesta on Main, where Elena looked up close at every piñata in the store. "One, two, three, more."  That means a lot.

We were headed to the children's museum, but Elena preferred to give bread to the ducks.  After they got their fill of bread, she said "I feed them goldfish"--meaning the kind we had in the car.  "Yenna, they swimming!" she said as the cracker goldfish floated on the surface of the river.

I'd bought her a helium balloon at the dollar store and she sang "Happy Buhday" with it in the car.  She took it with her when we rode the train through the park.  "Do you want to ride the train?" I had asked her earlier.  "No, I don't like it." she said.  "You can sit on my lap," I said.  "Oka-a-y!" she said.  She has the most delightful "okay" I've ever heard--stretching it out into three syllables. 

We lost the balloon in a parking lot.  "Bye bye, Boon!" she said, as we watched it float far away into the clouds. 

"Ride choo choo again?" she asked as I was driving her to meet her mom for her two-year check up. 

"I want candy," she said, walking to the place where I store a little stash.  I'll never forget the delight of watching tiny fingers slowly unwrap each Hershey's Kiss.  "I open it!" she said.

What sweetness will I unwrap today, I wonder?  

Look what I found at Central Market today !

Meditation

Happiness

Happiness is a thread that weaves through each day.  Sometimes it's the dominant thread, sometimes just a pop of color I have to strain my eyes to see.

Someone once said that there are only two emotions: love and fear.  I don't buy that.  Each person's emotional weather is like the nuances of the seasons, full of subtle shifts and shapes, a vibrant palette of mood colors.

What brings happiness varies person to person as much as our choice of partners and friends, the kinds of cars we choose, the ways we arrange our living spaces, where we like to travel.  

My son, Will loves to climb very tall ladders and hang from ropes at dizzying heights. (I have trouble with six-foot ladders.) As a captain in the rescue division of the San Antonio Fire Department, he cuts open crashed cars and pulls people out of water. He loves the adrenalin and adventure of it.  I have never spoken to a firefighter among his many friends who doesn't "love" his work.  Love of work is closely aligned with happiness. 

My friend Freda loves opera and travels great distances to hear good opera.  I know nothing about opera. Maybe happiness (as an appreciator of any art form) comes from understanding what that form can do and being surprised and delighted by the excellent execution of it. 

My mother walks three miles a day; I only walk when we're together and I can barely keep up with her!  She's more disciplined than I am, but it also makes her happy to walk.  

My daughter, Day, loves teaching high school English. That I understand.  I have taught all levels from sixth grade to college and have always found happiness in classrooms.  There's the thrill of organizing material and figuring out new ways to present it.  There's the happy click that happens when the proverbial lights come on in the eyes of students--very satisfying to the soul of a teacher! 

Among the people in my orbit, happiness often comes from creative self-expression and the appreciation of the creative endeavors of others.  The more we know the nuances of anything, the deeper our appreciation, the more potential for sparking joy. Mastery--our own or that of someone else--can take our breath away. The process of moving toward mastery, the losing track of time, so absorbed we are in the doing, can transport us into joy.  

In Janna Malamud Smith's excellent book, An Absorbing Errand, she writes:

"Lots of moments in any week, many of them hilarious and random, please me--especially when people dear to me are present.  Yet, when they all go well, each of the crafts I have attempted to master--writing, photography, and also psychotherapy--leaves me with a deep private sense of satisfaction. I feel stimulated, warm, slightly elated, or otherwise moved; content; purposeful. Though I don't think about it consciously, I sense I'm comfortably aligned with my ideal of myself."

One person's happiness can be another person's pain in the ass.  The question we have to ask--and sometimes ask again after the chewing gum has lost its flavor on the bedpost overnight--is, "What am I doing today when I'm aligned with my ideal of myself?"  What brought happiness a decade ago may no longer be juicy; it may be time to seek something new. 

I love massages, hot stones, reading good books, writing, taking pictures, road trips, conversations, cheese, chocolate, the freedom of a lazy day.  I love beautiful spaces and looking close up at flowers, as I did with some amazing lilies at Central Market this morning. I'm happy settling in for a nap around noon every day, choosing gifts, receiving gifts, making things.  I love learning new things--like Instagram and Photoshop, just for the fun of it.

The opposite of bliss is probably boredom or apathy--though it may be a temporary depression or sadness.  Something is off.  The heart feels claustrophobic. And then--out of the seeming blue--the climate shifts.  

A link from Nellie

http://www.lisasonora.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/FindingYourBliss-LisaSonoraBeam.pdf

Underside of Bliss

When I used to cross-stitch decades ago, the top side of the fabric was kept smooth.  All the little thread exes (is that the plural of X?) lined up perfectly and a design emerged that matched the design on the pattern.  After finishing whatever I was working on, I framed it and gave it away most of the time.  The underside of the fabric revealed frayed threads.

I have been feeling a sadness off and on this week--though I didn't say so at salon or writing group or in conversations.  It's nothing overt like its sister, depression.  I haven't tied it to its source, or maybe sources.  When tallying up the goods and not-so-goods of the last year, I realized that I prefer to show the top sides, not dwell on less appealing emotional states.

Writing about bliss, I had some dark dreams.  Writing about bliss, particularly "marital" bliss--which I have never experienced--I had dreams of being married and angry.  Maybe my unconscious brought up memories I'd rather not display to myself in the light of day.

Or maybe the sadness comes from somewhere else: certain fears or anxieties I'm not even aware of.  Maybe I'm feeling that I'm trying too hard to force the sunnier emotions to shine even when I'm not feeling them. Maybe I'm looking too long at the face of aging and real and potential losses?

Whatever it is, this piece right this minute is my attempt to frame the underside, the one where the threads are frayed and the design unappealing and broken.

Salon Tonight....

Ten women (one absent): we are in our forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies.
Janet, our leader, asked us to reflect on the year we've just had: our happiest, most challenging, best memories of the year.

We talked about itches and fears, losses and lessons learned.

What strikes me when women talk is courage to tell the truth and to find humor in remembering even the hard things.  I left with a larger sense of everyone's stories and how connected we all are.

As for me, I talked about the joy and losses of being sixty-five: losing certain confidences in the body that I had when I was younger, yet gaining serenity and curiosity as I continue to grow.

It's wonderful to have a group of friends of different ages and histories!

At the end of the meeting, Janet gave each of us a wrapped present from the junk drawer.  From whatever we got (bubbles or crayons, a rubber stamp of a postage stamp from Italy, a snow globe with Buddha in it, a little silver saint, etc) we all came up with what we'd like to discover in the year just starting.

Mine was a magnet with the cowardly lion and the tin man on it, and the words, Liquid Courage.  I suppose that my new year will ask me to strengthen my heart and my courage--either that or take up drinking!

Bliss, Part 3

Tonight at my writing group, we wrote about bliss.
I found it fascinating to hear what different people experience as bliss: from floating on a tube in the river to seeing one's grandchildren.  The writing on that topic was so diverse and strong--I've asked them to send me their writing so I can add it to the blog to share.

Nellie--my actor/visual artist friend in Florida--sent me this: "I have wandered down paths that would look like a maze when viewed from afar, but may actually be more like a labyrinth. Returning again to the center, maybe, but maybe not. Yet to be determined. Perhaps that is what following ones bliss leads to after all. Visual art, performing art...the canvas, the stage. The journey constantly circling around the center."

Bliss, Part 2: Leaves

Audrey--Elena's first cousin--turned two today.  Elena will be two on Thursday--so they shared their #2 birthday party.

Judging from my afternoon with  a yard-full of kids, I'd guess that they know bliss.  Far more interesting than the presents were the leaves. A few firefighter daddies started raking leaves into a pile and the little kids jumped into the pile, over and over, with absolute glee.  At one point, Elena said to her granddaddy, "Papi, you do it!"--and he did.

Not only that, but Papi wore the broken piñata on his head like a big ceremonial hat.  To get back in touch with glee, watch fifteen little kids jumping into the leaves and throwing them up over their heads in a huge spray.  Then, who knows?  You might decide to do it yourself!

Following Bliss

A couple of posts ago, I used the phrase, "marital bliss."  I was being ironic.

I started being married on the night in the picture--June 9, 1967.  I was eighteen years old, the groom twenty-five.  I was old enough to think we were in love, but way too young to know what that meant.  We were drugged by the sweet love songs of the Sixties.

I don't recall many moments of  "marital bliss" after running through a rice shower to the Volkswagen and driving away, tin cans rattling on the road.

What is bliss anyway?  When my children were little, I was reading Joseph Campbell who coined the phrase, "Following your bliss."  Here's what he meant by that:

"If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

Doing the things that align with how we "ought to be living" then--that's the road to bliss. We don't set out each day looking outright for bliss; we stumble upon it when we're so engrossed in the doing of something we love that we lose track of time.

One of the ways I "followed my bliss" in those years was taking photographs of round fruits and breads and vegetables, then assembling those photographs into grids and framing them.

Sometimes I'd put dye in the circles in onion slices and watch what happened as the onion dried and the rings spread apart to reveal wider lines of color. I went to Mexican bakeries to get perfect round circles of sweet bread with colored icing.

One day when Will and a friend came home from school, I heard him call out to me from the kitchen, "Hey, Mom, are these bagels to eat or take pictures of?"

His friend must have looked perplexed.  I heard Will explain to him, "My mom is following her bliss."

What are you doing when you follow your bliss?  Tell me in an email--if you don't mind being quoted in an upcoming post as I keep exploring this topic.

I'll be following my bliss to Helotes this afternoon to the birthday party of two two-year-olds, Audrey and Elena.  Watching children play--and watching a huge Golden Lab playing with a tiny Rat Terrier puppy: these are definitely bliss-track possibilities for me!

Kindred Spirits

Linda Jordan--whom I met in California (previously referred to as Dr. Linda)--introduced me via blog to another kindred spirit like herself:

Scott is a road-tripper, photographer and blogger.  I haven't met him in person, though his map looks like he may be driving through San Antonio about now.

http://www.petrolicious.com/datsun-roadster-road-trip

January 5, 2014

Today Betty came to visit at Carlene's.

The plan was to leave today for a three-day road trip to Asheville, but ice storms are arriving tomorrow, and neither of us relishes the idea of driving on black ice.

Betty was the maid of honor at my wedding.  Here she is (June 9, 1967)  dressed in lime green satin, kneeling, sending me off into marital bliss.

We've been friends for over sixty years.

I would like to include a picture taken today--but Betty refuses to look my way when she sees I have a camera in hand.

A Friendship of Sixty Plus Years

Betty and I Through the Years....

In the third grade, Betty is wearing a dark sweater. I am the second person to the left of her.
We were best friends.  But when we got mad at each other, we both claimed Brenda Cootie was our best friend. 

Here we are at Day's wedding in Washington, D.C. 17 years ago

In the seventh grade, Betty and I are sitting side by side.
We're on the bottom row, me in a dark dress, Betty in a plaid dress with white socks.
Brenda Cootie is beside Betty.

And here we are at one of my birthday parties (probably the 4th)--Betty in the white dress, me right behind her.