Today was a good day--starting with a visit to my favorite chiropractor who said that aching all over is pretty much to be expected with all these changes. I hope he's right.
Tonight, a whole bunch of us went to yoga together--and let me just say that the class is a real challenge. I've got miles to go before I sleep.
When I look back on my life up to now, I wish I had been more physically active, drunk more water, walked four miles a day, and avoided bad habits like Diet Coke.
To quote scripture (which those of you who know me will be surprised that I can do so well): "All those edifying and healthy things I should have done I didn't get around to doing, and a whole bunch of the things I shouldn't have done I did."
Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Ways of Looking
Sometimes people are named just the right name--as is the case with my friend of forty years, Joy. We've just had a three-day house party at her house at Medina Lake, just the two of us and Max, the Golden Retriever.
Or so I would have said--before Joy showed me something intriguing in one of her slide shows. I'll tell you more about that in a minute.
Joy is a painter and has illustrated several beautiful books for children, including Miss Lady Bird's Wildflowers; Bloomin' Tales; David Crockett Creating a Legend; and Sam Houston, Standing Firm. She's also a master naturalist and gardener. Every time I'm with her, I come away with a deeper appreciation of nature, art, healthy food, and Joy.
We made clay bunnies and we watched several episodes of Super Soul Sunday, including a session with the creator of Soul Pancake, another with Jean Houston, and another with Ed Bacon and Mark Nepo. When anyone asked a question we liked, we'd stop the program and talk about it:
What do you miss most about being five?
What has been your hardest lesson to learn?
What does your soul look like?
How do you imagine your life when you're 75?
(Joy said her soul was probably purple and what she misses about being five is swinging on a swing and singing real loud! I said my soul probably looks like a vintage Mini Cooper.)
It's amazing how much conversational territory kindred spirits can cover when we give ourselves time to take a break and Just Be. Joy's house is a treasure-trove of things to look at: her paintings and Frank's, a lifetime of treasures made and saved. I looked through some books of hers that I used to look at thirty-plus years ago in that very room! We read some poignant, handwritten letters from Frank's grandfather to his grandmother, Frankie--who died in child birth. Reading those letters his mother had saved in a blue vacuum cleaner bag was like traveling back in time a hundred years!
I tend to call flowers by their colors: the pink ones, the yellow ones. Joy knows the actual names of every plant and flower she's ever seen. When she drives around, she likes to take the back roads, too--but for a different reason than mine: she likes to see and recognize plants and trees she hasn't seen in a long time. It's like re-connecting with old friends, she says!
It has always fascinated me what people see. What's equally fascinating is what we don't see. At one point she showed me a photograph of Max. "What do you see?" she asked.
"A dog," I said--thinking: what an obvious question!
As it turns out, the photograph of Max was part of one of her slide shows on "plant blindness." When she gives her slide presentations to students, she includes this picture of Max, and everyone answers the question just as I did: they all see a dog. But what about the hundreds of grasses and flowers in the picture? Most of us focus on the dog and don't even notice the "background."
We take things for granted that are essential to the life of animals and humans. What we don't have names for we often don't even see.
So when I said earlier that it was just Joy and Max and I in her yard--I was focusing on the three of us and ignoring the hummingbirds traveling back and forth above us, the wren going in and out of her nest to feed five newly hatched babies, and the dead tree trunk Frank and Joy have left in place because the squirrels like traveling in and out of it.
I can imagine re-taking any one of the road trips I've taken--with Joy as my companion! I'd say: "Look at that"--and point to an old house in a field or a line of laundry or reflections in a pond. Here's a picture taken in Rio Medina on a foggy Thursday morning driving to Joy's place at Medina Lake. I love the way five objects are lined up against the white sky like words on a page.
Joy would say "Look at that!"--and I'd see a brand new tree or flower that I'd never even noticed before--and before long, it would be something I'd always notice after that because it would have a name and someone would have told me what it is!
Isn't that why we write and paint and take pictures, after all? To say: Hey, look at that! Isn't it amazing, heartbreaking, beautiful? Isn't that why we read and look at other people's art--to expand the ways we see and appreciate the world?
Or so I would have said--before Joy showed me something intriguing in one of her slide shows. I'll tell you more about that in a minute.
Joy is a painter and has illustrated several beautiful books for children, including Miss Lady Bird's Wildflowers; Bloomin' Tales; David Crockett Creating a Legend; and Sam Houston, Standing Firm. She's also a master naturalist and gardener. Every time I'm with her, I come away with a deeper appreciation of nature, art, healthy food, and Joy.
We made clay bunnies and we watched several episodes of Super Soul Sunday, including a session with the creator of Soul Pancake, another with Jean Houston, and another with Ed Bacon and Mark Nepo. When anyone asked a question we liked, we'd stop the program and talk about it:
What do you miss most about being five?
What has been your hardest lesson to learn?
What does your soul look like?
How do you imagine your life when you're 75?
(Joy said her soul was probably purple and what she misses about being five is swinging on a swing and singing real loud! I said my soul probably looks like a vintage Mini Cooper.)
It's amazing how much conversational territory kindred spirits can cover when we give ourselves time to take a break and Just Be. Joy's house is a treasure-trove of things to look at: her paintings and Frank's, a lifetime of treasures made and saved. I looked through some books of hers that I used to look at thirty-plus years ago in that very room! We read some poignant, handwritten letters from Frank's grandfather to his grandmother, Frankie--who died in child birth. Reading those letters his mother had saved in a blue vacuum cleaner bag was like traveling back in time a hundred years!
I tend to call flowers by their colors: the pink ones, the yellow ones. Joy knows the actual names of every plant and flower she's ever seen. When she drives around, she likes to take the back roads, too--but for a different reason than mine: she likes to see and recognize plants and trees she hasn't seen in a long time. It's like re-connecting with old friends, she says!
It has always fascinated me what people see. What's equally fascinating is what we don't see. At one point she showed me a photograph of Max. "What do you see?" she asked.
"A dog," I said--thinking: what an obvious question!
As it turns out, the photograph of Max was part of one of her slide shows on "plant blindness." When she gives her slide presentations to students, she includes this picture of Max, and everyone answers the question just as I did: they all see a dog. But what about the hundreds of grasses and flowers in the picture? Most of us focus on the dog and don't even notice the "background."
We take things for granted that are essential to the life of animals and humans. What we don't have names for we often don't even see.
So when I said earlier that it was just Joy and Max and I in her yard--I was focusing on the three of us and ignoring the hummingbirds traveling back and forth above us, the wren going in and out of her nest to feed five newly hatched babies, and the dead tree trunk Frank and Joy have left in place because the squirrels like traveling in and out of it.
I can imagine re-taking any one of the road trips I've taken--with Joy as my companion! I'd say: "Look at that"--and point to an old house in a field or a line of laundry or reflections in a pond. Here's a picture taken in Rio Medina on a foggy Thursday morning driving to Joy's place at Medina Lake. I love the way five objects are lined up against the white sky like words on a page.
Joy would say "Look at that!"--and I'd see a brand new tree or flower that I'd never even noticed before--and before long, it would be something I'd always notice after that because it would have a name and someone would have told me what it is!
Isn't that why we write and paint and take pictures, after all? To say: Hey, look at that! Isn't it amazing, heartbreaking, beautiful? Isn't that why we read and look at other people's art--to expand the ways we see and appreciate the world?
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Red Shoes and Gilded Carriages
Women Who Run With the Wolves is one of the most profound books I've ever read--though it reads better in parts than if read in one big gulp. For me, it was a life-changing book when I read it twenty years ago, yet it's even more amazing on this second reading. Each chapter is a long (yes, wordy) analysis of a folk tale or fairy tale in which the author analyzes the components of the female psyche as expressed in that story.
It means more to me now because I now have a little wild girl in my life--and I mean that in the most positive way.
When I was a parent of young children, I was--as my children are now--too busy with the nuts and bolts of parenting to sit back and gaze at them for hours. I was too busy with groceries and meals and school clothes to fully observe the instinctual freedom and joy of childhood: spontaneity, emotionally honesty, moving from this to that as they feel inclined to, knowing what they want and claiming it with confidence. As I read this book, I see that the loved and cared-for child is the essence of the "wild woman" Clarissa Pinkola Estes encourages us to find again in ourselves.
If you're lucky enough to have a two-year-old in your life, you see how fiercely she expresses what she wants and you see how innately kind she is. I've never seen a "terrible two" in my life. At two, the child gives as much affection as she receives from the big people in her life--and usually in the form she receives it. From the time she was a baby, Elena has always hugged whole-heartedly, patting the holder on the back--just as her big people pat her on the back. She's grateful for every little thing. She wants to touch, taste, do, ride everything around her.
In the chapter on Red Shoes--which is enough to meditate on for months before going to another chapter--Estes tells the tale of the motherless child who loves her handmade shoes. In her red cloth shoes, she can dance her own way and she is full of joy. But she is "adopted by" an old woman in a gilded carriage and offered "better" things. The old woman takes away her old red shoes and teaches the girl to adapt to luxury.
It would take me too long to summarize the full story here--but it's a psychological reading of the pattern of creative and free females who fall into various kinds of traps. They marry the wrong people, or marry too soon, or join the wrong tribes; they allow someone else to take away their red shoes--and it's a long road back to finding them again and saying: no no, never again, can you take away the shoes I made for myself. Your carriage and your fancy house may be fine for you, but not for me.
Wiser older people don't take away the red shoes; they guide the child and love the child while she's wearing them. But what if there are no wise women (or men) to protect the girl child? What if the big people in the child's world are too wounded themselves to allow the child to be free to be who she is?
I remember my daughter listening to the record, Free To Be, You and Me, over and over. I remember the ways she made clothes out of scraps of this and that, including green felt elf shoes. She'd ask me what to wear to school and I'd give her my suggestions--usually pairing things that more or less "matched"--so as to send her off to school looking like she had a mother in the house. But no! Day was inclined to wear what she decided to wear. The more outlandish the better. The more original the better. She didn't care what people thought.
If we watch little girls being little girls, we remember what it is to be wild and free--in the best possible ways. To Re-member is to reclaim the "members"--or parts of ourselves--that we've let someone else, something in the culture, take away: Thanks for the gilded carriage (the ill-fitting marriage, job, house), but it's too small, all wrong, not friendly to my wild and creative self.
To be like wolves (who are loyal pack animals with intact and healthy instincts), we get to know the woods we live in and we know how to spot the traps. We may fall into the traps again (like wolf cubs)--but we don't stay in them. Many of the years of our lives are spent finding our instincts all over again, claiming them, and living by them.
It means more to me now because I now have a little wild girl in my life--and I mean that in the most positive way.
When I was a parent of young children, I was--as my children are now--too busy with the nuts and bolts of parenting to sit back and gaze at them for hours. I was too busy with groceries and meals and school clothes to fully observe the instinctual freedom and joy of childhood: spontaneity, emotionally honesty, moving from this to that as they feel inclined to, knowing what they want and claiming it with confidence. As I read this book, I see that the loved and cared-for child is the essence of the "wild woman" Clarissa Pinkola Estes encourages us to find again in ourselves.
If you're lucky enough to have a two-year-old in your life, you see how fiercely she expresses what she wants and you see how innately kind she is. I've never seen a "terrible two" in my life. At two, the child gives as much affection as she receives from the big people in her life--and usually in the form she receives it. From the time she was a baby, Elena has always hugged whole-heartedly, patting the holder on the back--just as her big people pat her on the back. She's grateful for every little thing. She wants to touch, taste, do, ride everything around her.
In the chapter on Red Shoes--which is enough to meditate on for months before going to another chapter--Estes tells the tale of the motherless child who loves her handmade shoes. In her red cloth shoes, she can dance her own way and she is full of joy. But she is "adopted by" an old woman in a gilded carriage and offered "better" things. The old woman takes away her old red shoes and teaches the girl to adapt to luxury.
It would take me too long to summarize the full story here--but it's a psychological reading of the pattern of creative and free females who fall into various kinds of traps. They marry the wrong people, or marry too soon, or join the wrong tribes; they allow someone else to take away their red shoes--and it's a long road back to finding them again and saying: no no, never again, can you take away the shoes I made for myself. Your carriage and your fancy house may be fine for you, but not for me.
Wiser older people don't take away the red shoes; they guide the child and love the child while she's wearing them. But what if there are no wise women (or men) to protect the girl child? What if the big people in the child's world are too wounded themselves to allow the child to be free to be who she is?
I remember my daughter listening to the record, Free To Be, You and Me, over and over. I remember the ways she made clothes out of scraps of this and that, including green felt elf shoes. She'd ask me what to wear to school and I'd give her my suggestions--usually pairing things that more or less "matched"--so as to send her off to school looking like she had a mother in the house. But no! Day was inclined to wear what she decided to wear. The more outlandish the better. The more original the better. She didn't care what people thought.
If we watch little girls being little girls, we remember what it is to be wild and free--in the best possible ways. To Re-member is to reclaim the "members"--or parts of ourselves--that we've let someone else, something in the culture, take away: Thanks for the gilded carriage (the ill-fitting marriage, job, house), but it's too small, all wrong, not friendly to my wild and creative self.
To be like wolves (who are loyal pack animals with intact and healthy instincts), we get to know the woods we live in and we know how to spot the traps. We may fall into the traps again (like wolf cubs)--but we don't stay in them. Many of the years of our lives are spent finding our instincts all over again, claiming them, and living by them.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
They really do....
I keep reading that children laugh 300 times a day, adults 12 on a good day. Smiling--I could buy that--but 300 laughs a day?
So I intended to do a bit of research today as I kept Elena in Helotes. She was probably up to about 57 when it was time to go get Nathan from first grade. After that, it was a laugh fest until bed time.
I already had my phone in the car, so I couldn't get a picture of the two of them laughing, but by the time I left, I had well over my adult quota for the day!
Burping, reporting body sounds ("I tooted!") and using spoons to make mustaches and weird noises--these bring the house down for a seven-year-old and a two-year-old.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Creamy Carrot & Orange Soup
I was looking for a recipe to replicate the soup served today at the Planned Parenthood luncheon, and this one looks delicious!
http://www.food.com/12357
--
Food: Home of the Home Cook
http://www.food.com
http://www.food.com/12357
--
Food: Home of the Home Cook
http://www.food.com
Saturday, March 22, 2014
San Antonio Poet Laureate
Laurie Ann Guerrero, my nominee, my former student, my friend, has just been named Poet Laureate of San Antonio!
After meeting Laurie through her husband David (both students at Palo Alto at the time) I knew she was a firecracker! These past years of watching her leave for Smith College, come back, complete an MFA in poetry, publish and win numerous awards made me certain that she should be the poet laureate, and the committee agreed.
On her invitation to the investiture, she has this quotation from Adrienne Rich: "The moment of change is the only poem."
Ten years ago, Laurie, Promise, Amanda, Nellie and I went to Italy together. It was to be a writing workshop, but frankly, we did more sightseeing and tasting than we did writing.
To change, to poetry, to Laurie--This is wonderful news!
After meeting Laurie through her husband David (both students at Palo Alto at the time) I knew she was a firecracker! These past years of watching her leave for Smith College, come back, complete an MFA in poetry, publish and win numerous awards made me certain that she should be the poet laureate, and the committee agreed.
On her invitation to the investiture, she has this quotation from Adrienne Rich: "The moment of change is the only poem."
Ten years ago, Laurie, Promise, Amanda, Nellie and I went to Italy together. It was to be a writing workshop, but frankly, we did more sightseeing and tasting than we did writing.
To change, to poetry, to Laurie--This is wonderful news!
Conversations
One of the best things about pre-dawn driving is having a conversation--often with myself, spurred by the conversations of the previous days or someone talking about something interesting on NPR. This morning's conversation was with Alain de Botton, a favorite writer, and Mike Rowe--someone who was talking about "dirty jobs" on the Ted Radio Hour.
http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2014-03-21
I often wonder how people get by who don't listen to NPR--because it has the best conversations on the air. You get to hear the back stories, the ramblings, the honest telling of the truth from different points of view.
In Mike Rowe's piece about "dirty jobs," he challenges the notion of "following your passion"--and speaks up for alternate versions of success. What kinds of work make people happy and successful, both? He interviews a septic tank cleaner and goes with him to his work one day. They are up to their necks in a rather stinky job environment, but the man is both happy and wealthy.
"What did you do before this?" he asks.
"I was a guidance counselor and psychiatrist," he replies--to Mike Rowe's surprise.
"Why did you quit doing that?" Mike asks.
"Because I was sick of being up to my neck in other people's crap," the man said.
Conversations challenge me to think differently about things. Conversations open up new pathways in the mind. Conversations are ways that two people can "move together" in the world of ideas.
http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2014-03-21
I often wonder how people get by who don't listen to NPR--because it has the best conversations on the air. You get to hear the back stories, the ramblings, the honest telling of the truth from different points of view.
In Mike Rowe's piece about "dirty jobs," he challenges the notion of "following your passion"--and speaks up for alternate versions of success. What kinds of work make people happy and successful, both? He interviews a septic tank cleaner and goes with him to his work one day. They are up to their necks in a rather stinky job environment, but the man is both happy and wealthy.
"What did you do before this?" he asks.
"I was a guidance counselor and psychiatrist," he replies--to Mike Rowe's surprise.
"Why did you quit doing that?" Mike asks.
"Because I was sick of being up to my neck in other people's crap," the man said.
Conversations challenge me to think differently about things. Conversations open up new pathways in the mind. Conversations are ways that two people can "move together" in the world of ideas.
Friday, March 21, 2014
For the Birds
Just the very mention of pound cake a couple of days ago made me start wanting to make one for Sunday--when I'll be watching Elena while her parents help paint Eddie and Vickie's house. (Vickie is Veronica's sister and just had a baby boy.)
So tonight--Friday nights being pretty uneventful nights--I made a big round pound cake, forgetting that my oven is unreliable. After an hour and a half of baking, it looked like a giant pancake. I hope the birds like the treat that is now scattered all over my front yard in crumbs.
Happy Spring, Birdies!
So tonight--Friday nights being pretty uneventful nights--I made a big round pound cake, forgetting that my oven is unreliable. After an hour and a half of baking, it looked like a giant pancake. I hope the birds like the treat that is now scattered all over my front yard in crumbs.
Happy Spring, Birdies!
Janet Penley, Elena Pritchett, and the new horse
Janet and I drove out to Helotes today to meet the
new horse....
A beautiful Texas day--the second day of Spring!
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
On March 19, 1922
Lloyd Harris was born in Ringgold, Georgia--the second-youngest of five children. If he were still alive today, I'd call and wish him a happy 92nd birthday--and he'd answer the phone singing, "Happy Birthday to me!" He always did that.
He was the kind of daddy whose presence a daughter feels every day, not just on his birthday. He was funny. Unlike me, he could always remember jokes and he knew just which person would appreciate which joke. He delivered many one-liners that we still repeat in our family.
Like "Hide the pie!" If someone came to the door during mealtimes, he'd say "Hide the pie!"--whether we had pie or not.
Like "Letting the raw side drag....."
On our last visit, May 2002, before he died the following July, he was a strong and healthy 80-year-old with twinkly blue eyes. We were walking in his neighborhood when he said, "Linda Gayle, I can tell you're living your life your own way--just letting the raw side drag."
"What does that mean?" I asked him.
"I don't know," he said. "Sometimes I say things I don't know what it means."
When I drove into their driveway, he was always standing at the door waiting, then he'd rush out to the car and hug me and say, "Come in this house!"
He could get on tirades about things that struck him as wrong in the world, but he never once expressed any anger toward me. I never saw him yell at anyone.
The last time I saw him, he was in intensive care for pneumonia. When I arrived at the ICU, he hugged me through all the tubes, then he wrote on a cardboard fan, "Pencil, I want to write you a note."
He was confused--in that he was already writing with a pencil--but I went out into the hall as if to find him one. When I came back, he was asleep. I never knew what he'd have written in that note.
On the day before he died, I got an email from my friend Gary in Texas (he who himself died a year and a half ago): "Linda, you've had more than most people ever do. Lloyd will never leave you because he's given you yourself, a deep sense of worth and belovedness....Nothing can undermine that. You'll always have your daddy."
It's true: I'll always have him, in my heart, in memories, and in hunches I feel from time to time that seem like messages from him.
Even so, I wish I had him right here, at my house, and that I could make him a pound cake or a banana pudding! I wish he could see what a cool little house this is, the one he gave me for a Christmas present. I wish that all his great-grandchildren could know and love him--like everyone who ever met him did.
He was the kind of daddy whose presence a daughter feels every day, not just on his birthday. He was funny. Unlike me, he could always remember jokes and he knew just which person would appreciate which joke. He delivered many one-liners that we still repeat in our family.
Like "Hide the pie!" If someone came to the door during mealtimes, he'd say "Hide the pie!"--whether we had pie or not.
Like "Letting the raw side drag....."
On our last visit, May 2002, before he died the following July, he was a strong and healthy 80-year-old with twinkly blue eyes. We were walking in his neighborhood when he said, "Linda Gayle, I can tell you're living your life your own way--just letting the raw side drag."
"What does that mean?" I asked him.
"I don't know," he said. "Sometimes I say things I don't know what it means."
When I drove into their driveway, he was always standing at the door waiting, then he'd rush out to the car and hug me and say, "Come in this house!"
He could get on tirades about things that struck him as wrong in the world, but he never once expressed any anger toward me. I never saw him yell at anyone.
The last time I saw him, he was in intensive care for pneumonia. When I arrived at the ICU, he hugged me through all the tubes, then he wrote on a cardboard fan, "Pencil, I want to write you a note."
He was confused--in that he was already writing with a pencil--but I went out into the hall as if to find him one. When I came back, he was asleep. I never knew what he'd have written in that note.
On the day before he died, I got an email from my friend Gary in Texas (he who himself died a year and a half ago): "Linda, you've had more than most people ever do. Lloyd will never leave you because he's given you yourself, a deep sense of worth and belovedness....Nothing can undermine that. You'll always have your daddy."
It's true: I'll always have him, in my heart, in memories, and in hunches I feel from time to time that seem like messages from him.
Even so, I wish I had him right here, at my house, and that I could make him a pound cake or a banana pudding! I wish he could see what a cool little house this is, the one he gave me for a Christmas present. I wish that all his great-grandchildren could know and love him--like everyone who ever met him did.
 |
| On my wedding day, 1967. |
 |
| "I wouldn't change a thing about that boy!" Lloyd always said about Will. Here he is, in Helotes, teaching Will to play the guitar. |
 |
| These two were "best buddies." |
 |
| Daisy and Granddaddy and Will |
 |
| I wish Lloyd knew that Will and Veronica would get married! This was back when they were dating in high school; they went their separate ways for 13 years, then found each other again. Here we are celebrating their 18th birthdays!  I hope Jackson remembers this day in some way! I wish Lloyd could see him now: almost a teenager! |
Books That Made A Difference
Without even looking at your bookshelf, I'm sure that you can think of three or four books that made a difference in your life, probably books you wanted to go back to and re-read to see if you could remember why they impacted you the way they did. I would love to hear what those books are!
One of my all-time favorites was Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Estes Pinkola. When it first came out and was given to me as a gift, I put it aside for a while before reading it. It seemed too wordy, too complex--and I just wasn't in the mood to tackle it at the time. It's a tome, this book, and not one to read through in a hurry.
Many years ago--about 18, I think--a group of us went to La Madeleines once a month to discuss a chapter, working through the whole book. What the author does is to illuminate fairy tales and folk tales in psychological terms. As a Jungian therapist, she takes each tale apart to describe certain features in the development of the psyches of women.
I hadn't read the book in many years, but when I found my copy last night it was falling apart and there were so many underlinings and notes in the margin that it took me back to the time when I read it, right after my divorce. Luckily, I have a second copy that's not falling apart so much, and I'm reading the fresh un-annotated copy now.
Thanks to the fullness of the moon, I'm wide awake at one in the morning and the wordiness can indeed induce sleep if you let it. It will take weeks, maybe months, to read it all the way through; it's more like studying than pleasure reading--but it speaks to me now in new ways.
While I also read a lot of fiction (probably a novel every other week or so), the books that made the most difference to me, that stayed with me longest, are often nonfiction books, including memoirs: May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude; Ann Morrow Lindberg's Gift From the Sea; memoirs by Nancy Mairs; Alice Koller's An Unknown Woman; Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life--and so many other books in which women told the truths about their own lives.
I'm not sure why--but I'm drawn right now to re-reading all of them. They are all lying beside my bed in various stages of openness, along with Terry Tempest Williams' When Women Were Birds and Phillip Lopate's A Portrait Inside My Head.
One of my all-time favorites was Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Estes Pinkola. When it first came out and was given to me as a gift, I put it aside for a while before reading it. It seemed too wordy, too complex--and I just wasn't in the mood to tackle it at the time. It's a tome, this book, and not one to read through in a hurry.
Many years ago--about 18, I think--a group of us went to La Madeleines once a month to discuss a chapter, working through the whole book. What the author does is to illuminate fairy tales and folk tales in psychological terms. As a Jungian therapist, she takes each tale apart to describe certain features in the development of the psyches of women.
I hadn't read the book in many years, but when I found my copy last night it was falling apart and there were so many underlinings and notes in the margin that it took me back to the time when I read it, right after my divorce. Luckily, I have a second copy that's not falling apart so much, and I'm reading the fresh un-annotated copy now.
Thanks to the fullness of the moon, I'm wide awake at one in the morning and the wordiness can indeed induce sleep if you let it. It will take weeks, maybe months, to read it all the way through; it's more like studying than pleasure reading--but it speaks to me now in new ways.
While I also read a lot of fiction (probably a novel every other week or so), the books that made the most difference to me, that stayed with me longest, are often nonfiction books, including memoirs: May Sarton's Journal of a Solitude; Ann Morrow Lindberg's Gift From the Sea; memoirs by Nancy Mairs; Alice Koller's An Unknown Woman; Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life--and so many other books in which women told the truths about their own lives.
I'm not sure why--but I'm drawn right now to re-reading all of them. They are all lying beside my bed in various stages of openness, along with Terry Tempest Williams' When Women Were Birds and Phillip Lopate's A Portrait Inside My Head.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Diane and Penelope
At the end of Diane Keaton's memoir, Then Again, she writes about her lifelong search to understand the meaning of love and about the awfulness of her mother's loss of memory. Three men have figured in her life: Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, and Al Pacino--though you can feel her insecurity in her relationships with all of them.
"Maybe I wasn't pretty enough for Al [Pacino]. Maybe Al, like Ronnie...back in high school, wasn't attracted to my face. My face was my failure."
She's insecure about her looks, but she seems to value ideas and change over her appearance.
"If I wanted to be pretty I could put in an order for a face-lift, with an eye job on the side....But why start experimenting? And besides, pretty, with its promise of perfection, is not as appealing as it used to be. It's the death of creativity, that's what I think, while change, on the other hand, is the cornerstone of new ideas. God knows, I want new ideas and experiences."
I'm reminded of a magnet on the refrigerator that someone gave me when I was 50ish: "Change how you look, not how you see."
Diane did a brave thing--adopting two children as a single mother, the first when she was fifty. In the interview with Anna Quindlen after the Afterword, the two mothers talk about how their children "saved" them--from themselves.
Then Again is the most rambling autobiography I've ever read--but in the end, I felt like I could invite Diane over and we could be friends. Don't we all like people who are at least a tiny bit neurotic? Her book was more like the collages her mother made (great pictures of them after the Afterword and before the interview) than a well-crafted memoir, I thought--but in the end I liked it for (or in spite of) its randomness. It was more like a very long email from a friend than a memoir.
Last night on Fresh Air, Terry interviewed Penelope Lively--a prize winning author of so many novels it makes my head spin. At eighty, Penelope has written a memoir which she calls "a view from old age." I read the sample on Kindle last night and will definitely download the entire book and read it before I say more--but the interview with Penelope Lively was lively and intriguing. Her memoir is called Dancing Fish and Amonites. Here is a link to the Fresh Air interview:
http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/
When her parents divorced, her mother didn't want custody of her child, so Penelope was raised by two grandmothers. It was interesting to hear about her take on childhood, parenting, marriage, feminism, writing, and motherhood.
"Maybe I wasn't pretty enough for Al [Pacino]. Maybe Al, like Ronnie...back in high school, wasn't attracted to my face. My face was my failure."
She's insecure about her looks, but she seems to value ideas and change over her appearance.
"If I wanted to be pretty I could put in an order for a face-lift, with an eye job on the side....But why start experimenting? And besides, pretty, with its promise of perfection, is not as appealing as it used to be. It's the death of creativity, that's what I think, while change, on the other hand, is the cornerstone of new ideas. God knows, I want new ideas and experiences."
I'm reminded of a magnet on the refrigerator that someone gave me when I was 50ish: "Change how you look, not how you see."
Diane did a brave thing--adopting two children as a single mother, the first when she was fifty. In the interview with Anna Quindlen after the Afterword, the two mothers talk about how their children "saved" them--from themselves.
Then Again is the most rambling autobiography I've ever read--but in the end, I felt like I could invite Diane over and we could be friends. Don't we all like people who are at least a tiny bit neurotic? Her book was more like the collages her mother made (great pictures of them after the Afterword and before the interview) than a well-crafted memoir, I thought--but in the end I liked it for (or in spite of) its randomness. It was more like a very long email from a friend than a memoir.
Last night on Fresh Air, Terry interviewed Penelope Lively--a prize winning author of so many novels it makes my head spin. At eighty, Penelope has written a memoir which she calls "a view from old age." I read the sample on Kindle last night and will definitely download the entire book and read it before I say more--but the interview with Penelope Lively was lively and intriguing. Her memoir is called Dancing Fish and Amonites. Here is a link to the Fresh Air interview:
http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/
When her parents divorced, her mother didn't want custody of her child, so Penelope was raised by two grandmothers. It was interesting to hear about her take on childhood, parenting, marriage, feminism, writing, and motherhood.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Diane Keaton
A friend has invited me to attend the Planned Parenthood luncheon on the 24th of March--I'm so looking forward to hearing Diane Keaton speak there.
I just started her book, Then Again--which I'm liking very much. I see that she's coming out with a new book in April, too.
In this book, she is writing a combination of her mother's memoir (which her mother never actually wrote--but which Diane is gleaning from her mother's 85 journals and letters to Diane's father in the forties) and her own memories. I'm only about three chapters in, but it's delicious to have a whole day spread out ahead with a book to read that I already know is going to be good.
I called Carlene on my coke run just now and asked her what she was doing. "Taking the collar off a blouse!" she said. Carlene's always doing something--either repairing an outfit or hauling things off in a wheelbarrow or taking a trunkful of stuff to Goodwill or going to lunch with her friends.
"If you ever called me and I said I was taking the collar off a blouse, you'd think I'd lost my mind!" I said--which she agreed, yes, she would. She's always buying blouses and taking the collars off. It's kind of a hobby with her, I think. Plus, she doesn't like collars rubbing against her neck.
She'd spent last week with her sister, Dot, three hours south, and they'd been shopping at Kohl's and she found this blouse: $36 with 30% off plus a five dollar coupon or something. "So it only cost about eleven dollars," she said--she who doesn't actually have to worry about the cost of blouses, but getting a bargain is part of the hunt.
I was telling her about Diane Keaton's book and she's going to download and read it today, too. Diane's mother and mine have a few things in common. For one, Dorothy and Carlene both taped quotations on the walls of their kitchens. Until I read the first chapter of this book, I didn't know anyone else ever did that.
So far, I think Dorothy left the collars on her blouses. I'll read on. I'll let you know.
I just started her book, Then Again--which I'm liking very much. I see that she's coming out with a new book in April, too.
In this book, she is writing a combination of her mother's memoir (which her mother never actually wrote--but which Diane is gleaning from her mother's 85 journals and letters to Diane's father in the forties) and her own memories. I'm only about three chapters in, but it's delicious to have a whole day spread out ahead with a book to read that I already know is going to be good.
I called Carlene on my coke run just now and asked her what she was doing. "Taking the collar off a blouse!" she said. Carlene's always doing something--either repairing an outfit or hauling things off in a wheelbarrow or taking a trunkful of stuff to Goodwill or going to lunch with her friends.
"If you ever called me and I said I was taking the collar off a blouse, you'd think I'd lost my mind!" I said--which she agreed, yes, she would. She's always buying blouses and taking the collars off. It's kind of a hobby with her, I think. Plus, she doesn't like collars rubbing against her neck.
She'd spent last week with her sister, Dot, three hours south, and they'd been shopping at Kohl's and she found this blouse: $36 with 30% off plus a five dollar coupon or something. "So it only cost about eleven dollars," she said--she who doesn't actually have to worry about the cost of blouses, but getting a bargain is part of the hunt.
I was telling her about Diane Keaton's book and she's going to download and read it today, too. Diane's mother and mine have a few things in common. For one, Dorothy and Carlene both taped quotations on the walls of their kitchens. Until I read the first chapter of this book, I didn't know anyone else ever did that.
So far, I think Dorothy left the collars on her blouses. I'll read on. I'll let you know.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Yurts, Lofts, and Tree Houses
Oh wow--I'm feeling homesick for the road!
I've been checking out Air B&B sites--and just loving looking into the open windows of these amazing little places. There's a tree house in Buckhead (Atlanta) with twinkly lights and a swinging bridge; an Airstream in Austin; a converted gas station in New Orleans; lofts and cushy cabins everywhere.
In my opinion--thanks to the experiences in most of the Air B&B's I stayed in during my September/October trip--this is absolutely the best option for traveling. Wherever you go, you can find an interesting quirky place to stay--or a luxury place, such as my new friend Bonnie's place in Santa Rosa.
Not only can you see photographs of the place and the hosts online, you can read reviews by all those who have stayed there, so there are no unpleasant surprises. The best part of it is meeting the hosts who love introducing guests to the best places and eateries in the area.
Check out this beautiful tree house in Atlanta:
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1415908?s=SfXw
I'm ready to roll!
I've been checking out Air B&B sites--and just loving looking into the open windows of these amazing little places. There's a tree house in Buckhead (Atlanta) with twinkly lights and a swinging bridge; an Airstream in Austin; a converted gas station in New Orleans; lofts and cushy cabins everywhere.
In my opinion--thanks to the experiences in most of the Air B&B's I stayed in during my September/October trip--this is absolutely the best option for traveling. Wherever you go, you can find an interesting quirky place to stay--or a luxury place, such as my new friend Bonnie's place in Santa Rosa.
Not only can you see photographs of the place and the hosts online, you can read reviews by all those who have stayed there, so there are no unpleasant surprises. The best part of it is meeting the hosts who love introducing guests to the best places and eateries in the area.
Check out this beautiful tree house in Atlanta:
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1415908?s=SfXw
I'm ready to roll!
Advice, Part 2
Back in the days when I was acquiring my decision-making muscles, Betty used to say I made decisions "by consensus." She was right. Sometimes I still do.
However, I chose a profession in which I got paid to give advice--in the form of grading papers. As a lover of sentences, I spent many years trying to whet the appetites of college students for well-crafted sentences. I wrote MM and FRAG and AWK in more margins than I care to remember, and I inserted and deleted commas by the thousands, then I wrote encouraging helpful advice and explained the meaning MM and FRAG and AWK. I wished many times that the kids who wound up in my classrooms had learned to diagram sentences in seventh grade as I did.
One of my best students ever was a non-traditional student who has long since become a friend, Deb. We had so much in common that we soon became friends--and now she is right on the cusp of a Ph.D in English! We still laugh that her first reading of MM was mmmmm--as in yummy, when what it really meant was misplaced modifier. Deb, a voracious reader and excellent writer, has long since graduated from misplaced modifiers and is probably writing the same comment on her students' papers.
My advice-giving quotient for life was fulfilled as a teacher. As a lover of sentences and compositions, my mouth almost waters when I encounter one of either that is beautifully made. I wanted classrooms of eighteen-year-olds to discover the joy of making sentences with subjects and predicates, both, sometimes branching out to add subordinate clauses in the right places.
I did this for decades, but I will never know what percentage of those students read my advice. Usually, their eyes went straight for the grade without reading all my "helpful" advice. Once, my day was ruined by seeing a young boy crumple the paper and throw it directly into the trash--after I'd spent a half-hour on his paper, longer no doubt than what he'd spent writing it. This English teacher had led that boy to water--but apparently he wasn't particularly thirsty for that particular drink?
However, I chose a profession in which I got paid to give advice--in the form of grading papers. As a lover of sentences, I spent many years trying to whet the appetites of college students for well-crafted sentences. I wrote MM and FRAG and AWK in more margins than I care to remember, and I inserted and deleted commas by the thousands, then I wrote encouraging helpful advice and explained the meaning MM and FRAG and AWK. I wished many times that the kids who wound up in my classrooms had learned to diagram sentences in seventh grade as I did.
One of my best students ever was a non-traditional student who has long since become a friend, Deb. We had so much in common that we soon became friends--and now she is right on the cusp of a Ph.D in English! We still laugh that her first reading of MM was mmmmm--as in yummy, when what it really meant was misplaced modifier. Deb, a voracious reader and excellent writer, has long since graduated from misplaced modifiers and is probably writing the same comment on her students' papers.
My advice-giving quotient for life was fulfilled as a teacher. As a lover of sentences and compositions, my mouth almost waters when I encounter one of either that is beautifully made. I wanted classrooms of eighteen-year-olds to discover the joy of making sentences with subjects and predicates, both, sometimes branching out to add subordinate clauses in the right places.
I did this for decades, but I will never know what percentage of those students read my advice. Usually, their eyes went straight for the grade without reading all my "helpful" advice. Once, my day was ruined by seeing a young boy crumple the paper and throw it directly into the trash--after I'd spent a half-hour on his paper, longer no doubt than what he'd spent writing it. This English teacher had led that boy to water--but apparently he wasn't particularly thirsty for that particular drink?
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Elena and I went with Veronica to shop for a horse today.
And made friends with a border collie puppy while we were there.
Advice Advice Everywhere....
Last night at salon, we talked about giving and receiving advice.
"Do you give or receive advice more often?" was the opening question.
Some said give, some said receive, some said 50/50. (I went with "receive"--since I've made a concerted effort to give only solicited advice, and no one is banging down my doors soliciting advice.)
It got me thinking.
First, what is advice?
Most of us can remember "advice" being delivered as orders--either in childhood or in a former marriage. "Pick up your damned shoes!" is not advice. The tone is wrong, for one thing.
My parents never gave orders, nor did I as a parent. So when I married a man who did, I was flummoxed. How could one adult assume such authority, or bravado, or whatever it was, to tell another adult what to do, when, and how? I was young; I got conditioned to following orders and fearing the consequences of not doing the "right" thing.
As a result of spending decades on that road, my own muscles of decision-making got as flabby as my thighs are now. It took me a long time to exercise that muscle, but when I did, it was wonderful.
If you've lived under the thumb of a bossy parent or bossy parent-figure you married once upon a time, you know what I mean. Once you've set that muscle free, you rankle at certain kinds of "advice." You may say--as Elena says when someone is trying to help her do something she can do by herself--"I got it!"
Some of us last night recalled bad advice we were given; those examples were, only in retrospect, hilarious--often advice regarding what "nice girls" do and don't do. We've all outgrown being girls, nice or otherwise--but we're all of an age when we've worked hard to shed too much nice. We value real more than nice; truth more than conformity.
Mary Oliver begins her wonderful poem, "The Journey," with these lines:
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
This poem shook everything in me loose when I first heard it: one day you stop listening to bad, cautious, impertinent advice, and you set out on your own road, knowing finally, clearly, what it is you want to do, even if it's already late and even if you're already old. You take whatever journey is yours to take, "saving the only life you can save."
Most of us agreed last night that the best advice comes when a friend listens all the way to the end of whatever story we want to tell. When she says, "This worked for me" or suggests things to consider, we take her "piece of truth" and add it to the ones we already have. This falls under the umbrella of good advice.
There are as many kinds of advice as there are dilemmas. "Should I go left or right? Should I shop at this nursery when buying a lemon tree?"--these are the kinds of quick-answer questions that don't require long conversations. But the really hard questions, the sensitive ones, need friendship and listening, above all, especially if the listener knows you well enough to connect the dots to earlier such dilemmas.
Usually, we don't want outright advice; we want to be heard. How many times do we walk away from a great conversation with a friend-who-listens thinking how wise she is? After talking to her, we suddenly know what to do.
Jean Houston tells a story about Edgar Bergen, the ventriloquist, and his puppet, Charlie McCarthy.
One day, someone walked into an empty theater to find Edgar alone, asking questions of Charlie! What should I do? What is the meaning of life? And Charlie was answering!
The person who walked in on this strange scene may have wondered about Edgar's sanity for a minute. After eavesdropping for a while, he asked, "Edgar, are you talking to Charlie?"
"Yes," Edgar said. "Charlie is the wisest person I know."
"Do you give or receive advice more often?" was the opening question.
Some said give, some said receive, some said 50/50. (I went with "receive"--since I've made a concerted effort to give only solicited advice, and no one is banging down my doors soliciting advice.)
It got me thinking.
First, what is advice?
Most of us can remember "advice" being delivered as orders--either in childhood or in a former marriage. "Pick up your damned shoes!" is not advice. The tone is wrong, for one thing.
My parents never gave orders, nor did I as a parent. So when I married a man who did, I was flummoxed. How could one adult assume such authority, or bravado, or whatever it was, to tell another adult what to do, when, and how? I was young; I got conditioned to following orders and fearing the consequences of not doing the "right" thing.
As a result of spending decades on that road, my own muscles of decision-making got as flabby as my thighs are now. It took me a long time to exercise that muscle, but when I did, it was wonderful.
If you've lived under the thumb of a bossy parent or bossy parent-figure you married once upon a time, you know what I mean. Once you've set that muscle free, you rankle at certain kinds of "advice." You may say--as Elena says when someone is trying to help her do something she can do by herself--"I got it!"
Some of us last night recalled bad advice we were given; those examples were, only in retrospect, hilarious--often advice regarding what "nice girls" do and don't do. We've all outgrown being girls, nice or otherwise--but we're all of an age when we've worked hard to shed too much nice. We value real more than nice; truth more than conformity.
Mary Oliver begins her wonderful poem, "The Journey," with these lines:
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
This poem shook everything in me loose when I first heard it: one day you stop listening to bad, cautious, impertinent advice, and you set out on your own road, knowing finally, clearly, what it is you want to do, even if it's already late and even if you're already old. You take whatever journey is yours to take, "saving the only life you can save."
Most of us agreed last night that the best advice comes when a friend listens all the way to the end of whatever story we want to tell. When she says, "This worked for me" or suggests things to consider, we take her "piece of truth" and add it to the ones we already have. This falls under the umbrella of good advice.
There are as many kinds of advice as there are dilemmas. "Should I go left or right? Should I shop at this nursery when buying a lemon tree?"--these are the kinds of quick-answer questions that don't require long conversations. But the really hard questions, the sensitive ones, need friendship and listening, above all, especially if the listener knows you well enough to connect the dots to earlier such dilemmas.
Usually, we don't want outright advice; we want to be heard. How many times do we walk away from a great conversation with a friend-who-listens thinking how wise she is? After talking to her, we suddenly know what to do.
Jean Houston tells a story about Edgar Bergen, the ventriloquist, and his puppet, Charlie McCarthy.
One day, someone walked into an empty theater to find Edgar alone, asking questions of Charlie! What should I do? What is the meaning of life? And Charlie was answering!
The person who walked in on this strange scene may have wondered about Edgar's sanity for a minute. After eavesdropping for a while, he asked, "Edgar, are you talking to Charlie?"
"Yes," Edgar said. "Charlie is the wisest person I know."
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Getting to be all the characters
Sometimes we hear a line that makes us think, Yes, that's it exactly! Yesterday an excellent writer in my Saturday group, Regina Moya, shared such a line from her novel. (And this morning she gave me permission to quote her.)
Unfortunately, I do not read Spanish (had to go to the online translator for my sentence last week), so Regina translated it:
de nada sirve escoger SER un personaje, porque al final, en una sola vida alcanzamos a ser todos.
Choosing to BE someone in life is not worth the effort, because at the end, you get to be ALL the characters.
She related how she used to be horrified if one of her children pretended to be someone she thought was a bad role model. Now, mother of three, she is more relaxed--thinking, that's just who he is now; he'll be someone else next week.
Unfortunately, I do not read Spanish (had to go to the online translator for my sentence last week), so Regina translated it:
de nada sirve escoger SER un personaje, porque al final, en una sola vida alcanzamos a ser todos.
Choosing to BE someone in life is not worth the effort, because at the end, you get to be ALL the characters.
She related how she used to be horrified if one of her children pretended to be someone she thought was a bad role model. Now, mother of three, she is more relaxed--thinking, that's just who he is now; he'll be someone else next week.
Smoking and Mirrors
Well, last night I took a couple of men to bed with me. Their voices anyway. I have a thing for men with British accents.
Allen Carr got rich helping people quit smoking--though he actually died of lung cancer in 2006 after twenty years smoke free. (He'd been a chain smoker from the age of 14 until twenty years before his death.)
Paul McKenna is the hypnotist who helped Ellen Degeneres quit on one of her shows--and it was his voice that I fell asleep listening to last night, a relaxed, resonant, and encouraging voice.
I didn't know that Ellen had struggled for years to quit smoking. Coming out of the other closet was easier than coming out of this one! I get it. Smokers feel shame about smoking as it's often referred to by non-smokers as a "filthy habit" and "stupid." But smokers of a certain age started smoking in a time when smokers were not pariahs. Doctors often smoked; people smoked openly in cars, restaurants, other people's houses, even on airplanes. Teachers lounges were like the smokers lounges in airports today.
I started in the late Sixties when we invited a chain-smoking girl my age to come from another state and live with us until she gave birth to her baby. It was the way it was back then: the parents of the girl sending their "wayward" daughter away for a mysterious few months to hide her condition. We were both 19, and she was the sister of my husband's friend.
Throughout the years of my marriage, I discovered that I found a particular kind of peacefulness if I smoked in the bathroom--which I continued all these years after divorce. I don't smoke my American Spirit menthol lights in the car, I never smoke the regular brands of American cigarettes that are loaded with additives, and I wouldn't go into a smokers' lounge at the airport on a bet. But I smoke after every meal and before bed--more when writing.
Smoking and writing go together like bread and gravy, birthdays and cake, music and dancing.
I'm not alone on this "road of my own" in the journey to quit; only other smokers know how hard it is to move from the smoking road to the non-smoking one. Cigarettes are the look-forward-to at the end of the day, the come-down after something stressful, the tension-relievers, the company when you're lonely, the happy candles on the birthday cake, the providers of an extra buzz when making decisions.
Last night, I watched a clip of Ellen Degeneres being hypnotized to quit smoking. I watched videos about the good changes that occur seven hours, seven days, seven years after quitting. I ordered the book that helped a friend quit. I made an appointment with a hypnotist for this week.
In years past, I've tried it all: hypnosis (wound up dating the hypnotist a few times and he bought me some super expensive cigarettes: "If you're going to smoke, you should smoke the best," he said); acupuncture, you name it.
I know that the mirror shows what smoking does to the skin--and that's just the surface damage. I know all the facts, and I know all the reasons to quit. You don't have to feel ashamed of the smell of smoke in your hair and clothes, for one thing. But switching to another road is going to take a turbocharged engine and some giant tires and four-wheel-drive climbing power to navigate the bumps and hills I see in the distance.
Allen Carr got rich helping people quit smoking--though he actually died of lung cancer in 2006 after twenty years smoke free. (He'd been a chain smoker from the age of 14 until twenty years before his death.)
Paul McKenna is the hypnotist who helped Ellen Degeneres quit on one of her shows--and it was his voice that I fell asleep listening to last night, a relaxed, resonant, and encouraging voice.
I didn't know that Ellen had struggled for years to quit smoking. Coming out of the other closet was easier than coming out of this one! I get it. Smokers feel shame about smoking as it's often referred to by non-smokers as a "filthy habit" and "stupid." But smokers of a certain age started smoking in a time when smokers were not pariahs. Doctors often smoked; people smoked openly in cars, restaurants, other people's houses, even on airplanes. Teachers lounges were like the smokers lounges in airports today.
I started in the late Sixties when we invited a chain-smoking girl my age to come from another state and live with us until she gave birth to her baby. It was the way it was back then: the parents of the girl sending their "wayward" daughter away for a mysterious few months to hide her condition. We were both 19, and she was the sister of my husband's friend.
Throughout the years of my marriage, I discovered that I found a particular kind of peacefulness if I smoked in the bathroom--which I continued all these years after divorce. I don't smoke my American Spirit menthol lights in the car, I never smoke the regular brands of American cigarettes that are loaded with additives, and I wouldn't go into a smokers' lounge at the airport on a bet. But I smoke after every meal and before bed--more when writing.
Smoking and writing go together like bread and gravy, birthdays and cake, music and dancing.
I'm not alone on this "road of my own" in the journey to quit; only other smokers know how hard it is to move from the smoking road to the non-smoking one. Cigarettes are the look-forward-to at the end of the day, the come-down after something stressful, the tension-relievers, the company when you're lonely, the happy candles on the birthday cake, the providers of an extra buzz when making decisions.
Last night, I watched a clip of Ellen Degeneres being hypnotized to quit smoking. I watched videos about the good changes that occur seven hours, seven days, seven years after quitting. I ordered the book that helped a friend quit. I made an appointment with a hypnotist for this week.
In years past, I've tried it all: hypnosis (wound up dating the hypnotist a few times and he bought me some super expensive cigarettes: "If you're going to smoke, you should smoke the best," he said); acupuncture, you name it.
I know that the mirror shows what smoking does to the skin--and that's just the surface damage. I know all the facts, and I know all the reasons to quit. You don't have to feel ashamed of the smell of smoke in your hair and clothes, for one thing. But switching to another road is going to take a turbocharged engine and some giant tires and four-wheel-drive climbing power to navigate the bumps and hills I see in the distance.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Road Trippin' To Utopia
Sandy, Kate and I had one of those amazing days you want to last for a week! Sandy was checking out some cabins on the Frio for a June visit with family--and Kate and I got to ride along. The cabin she found is perfect, in a secluded area on the Frio.
We stopped at Haby's Bakery in Castroville--and I bought Turkish macaroons. At the cabin office, we were advised to have lunch at Vinny's in Leakey. (If you want some terrific pizza, this place is well worth the drive.)
Here is Sal, the owner, who will be--if you can believe it--84 next month. Here he is showing Kate around his immaculate kitchen. When I asked what he thinks contributes to his health, he said, "My mom. She just died three years ago at 109." He showed us a framed newspaper article featuring his mother, a midwife with not a wrinkle on her face.
We stopped at Haby's Bakery in Castroville--and I bought Turkish macaroons. At the cabin office, we were advised to have lunch at Vinny's in Leakey. (If you want some terrific pizza, this place is well worth the drive.)
Here is Sal, the owner, who will be--if you can believe it--84 next month. Here he is showing Kate around his immaculate kitchen. When I asked what he thinks contributes to his health, he said, "My mom. She just died three years ago at 109." He showed us a framed newspaper article featuring his mother, a midwife with not a wrinkle on her face.
The weather was beautiful for photo ops and poking around, winding up at the Lost Maples Cafe in Utopia for pie.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Salon and Writing Groups
Gerlinde sent me this picture this morning, (Gerlinde who appeared in an earlier post as the star of the dream party.)
Kate and I are sitting on Charlotte's red sofa at salon last week, the night we discussed clothes.
a Mexican dream
I had a dream last night in which I was at the border of the United States and Mexico, shopping in a little village. I bought two bags of jelly beans on sale. I should say I attempted to buy two bags of jelly beans. It was Christmas day. I couldn't get anyone to tell me the price in English and I only had five American dollars. I was begging everyone in the store to tell me how much jelly beans would cost, but nobody would talk to me. Before I got an answer, the five dollar bill blew away.
A dream of jelly beans and borders is probably not about jelly beans and borders. Dreams of frustrating miscommunications are rarely about actual languages.
So maybe I'm in a border region, wondering about the cost of something....
A dream of jelly beans and borders is probably not about jelly beans and borders. Dreams of frustrating miscommunications are rarely about actual languages.
So maybe I'm in a border region, wondering about the cost of something....
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Me encanta esta niña!
Elena has an amazing capacity to pick up the entire house and shake it. We have diapers and raisins and paper dots from the hole puncher on the kitchen floor; wooden giraffes walking from one room to the other; blocks and books everywhere.
To slow her down a tad, we watched The Little Rascals--and I enjoyed it as much as she did. I like the updated version that reminds me of watching the old ones in the fifties.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Oscar Night
With Ellen at the helm, last night's show was top notch Oscar night. When she ordered three large pizzas, then handed out slices on paper napkins, did anyone else worry about a blob of pizza falling on Merle Streep's dress or on Brad Pitt's tux?
One of the highlights was the acceptance speech given by Lupita Nyong'o for Best Supporting Actress in Twelve Years a Slave; another was watching Sidney Poitier walking a bit unsteadily to the microphone as a presenter, then urging the younger actors to keep up the good work. He's always struck me as the grand man of moviedom.
Bette Midler's performance of "Wind Beneath My Wings" was an excellent tribute to the people honored "In Memoriam"--including Karen Black, Peter O'Toole, Robert Ebert, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Here's a line from Ebert's memoir, Life Itself/A Memoir:
"'Kindness' covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts."
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Terry Tempest Williams
When I was her student at Breadloaf (1995, I believe it was), Terry gave me very encouraging advice about the book I was then writing: Women and Houses: "You must publish this book. It will be a healing balm to all women." She wrote those words in the flyleaf of her book, Refuge.
I meant to publish that book, but I never did. Instead, I came home, got a divorce, and started a new life. The writing of that book was a healing balm for the writer--as books sometimes are.
In the past two days, I've had two amazing conversations with friends, Kate yesterday, Deb on the phone this morning. Isn't it amazing how just the right real authentic person can set you back on your feet when you're having doubts about--your writing, your life, your now-what? next step? The energy for creativity goes underground sometimes, then emerges again fuller than it was before it plunged. There must be a law of physics or something that says something to that effect?
Anyway, the renewed energy for the book I am now writing has taken me back to a wonderful book by Terry: When Women Were Birds.
This underlined passage stood out for me:
The world begins with yes.
Changing women. We begin again like the Moon. We can no longer deny the destiny that is ours by becoming women who wait--waiting to love, waiting to speak, waiting to act. This is not patience, but pathology.
Friends show up (on porches, on the telephone, and in the pages of books) just when we need them most. We re-member who we are in the presence of friends--as in taking back the "members" of ourselves that we have cut off.
I meant to publish that book, but I never did. Instead, I came home, got a divorce, and started a new life. The writing of that book was a healing balm for the writer--as books sometimes are.
In the past two days, I've had two amazing conversations with friends, Kate yesterday, Deb on the phone this morning. Isn't it amazing how just the right real authentic person can set you back on your feet when you're having doubts about--your writing, your life, your now-what? next step? The energy for creativity goes underground sometimes, then emerges again fuller than it was before it plunged. There must be a law of physics or something that says something to that effect?
Anyway, the renewed energy for the book I am now writing has taken me back to a wonderful book by Terry: When Women Were Birds.
This underlined passage stood out for me:
The world begins with yes.
Changing women. We begin again like the Moon. We can no longer deny the destiny that is ours by becoming women who wait--waiting to love, waiting to speak, waiting to act. This is not patience, but pathology.
Friends show up (on porches, on the telephone, and in the pages of books) just when we need them most. We re-member who we are in the presence of friends--as in taking back the "members" of ourselves that we have cut off.
Fog
My favorite mornings are mornings like yesterday: everything in a thick fog. It's as if I'm riding through a painting, every tree, every house, everything in sharp relief against the backdrop of all white. Things are isolated, and I notice shapes and textures in fog that are quieter and more muted, blended in with everything else, on sunnier mornings.
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