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Got a sin? Phone it in!

Posted in My Chinese Checkered Past, News, Religion, tagged , , , on February 10, 2011| 11 Comments »

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession …”

And so started my first session in the dark closet that is a Catholic confessional. I was seven, and scared shitless. The rumors that flew through my particular gaggle of initiates ranged from a congratulatory bowl of M&Ms appearing to the floor giving way at the pull of a lever by a priest unhappy with what he was hearing, and although we’d been well prepped by having the required words drilled into our young brains, no one had bothered to explain the process beyond how bloody vital it was we get it right.

And how I wanted to get it right! After all, there was a brand new dress at home (Bridal white and with a veil, even, and what 7-year-old girl wasn’t put all aflutter by the thought of walking down an aisle in that?), the wearing of which depended upon passing the test of confessed.

Of course, I had by this time succumbed to curiosity enough to have taken a peek or two into the blabbing box … an action I was expected to confess, I suppose … but all had happened in guilt-ridden anxiety and I’d not had anything like a good look around, so its mystery held fast, and by the throat.

Nervous as a Catholic school girl in her first confession, appropriately, when nunned through the door, I dropped to my knees and began the ritual that was pouring out my soul. I told of pinching my brother and filching a cookie and might have mentioned skipping threesies in a game of jacks, all the horrific acts a child was compelled to tell if that dress was to happen.

I must have run on for at least five minutes, then …

a little screen slid open and the priest, who’d apparently been torturing listening to the kid in the closet on the other side of him, was ready to hear MY confession.

One more time, and from the top …

That was a long time ago, and, dammit, to think now I could have just phoned it in!

The news that the popester has given the nod to a new app for iPhones and iPads that makes confession a breeze almost makes me wish I was a Catholic school girl all over again.

Okay, that’s nowhere even close to true, but idea of the $1.99 app on sale through iTunes is cracking me up.

The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession.

The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99).

Described as “the perfect aid for every penitent”, it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament.

Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first.

The app takes users through the sacrament – in which Catholics admit their wrongdoings – and allows them to keep track of their sins.

Ah, the hilarity out of the Vatican!

A bit of explanation for those not familiar with stuff catholiky:

The Sacrament of Reconciliation, more commonly referred to as Confession by most Catholics and Christians, should be a vital part of the Catholic faith.

… When the person enters the confessional, he should kneel (or sit), bless himself (with the sign of the cross) and say “Bless me Father for I have sinned.” The person will then tell the priest how long it has been since his last confession. Then the priest will tell the person to confess his sins. From there, the person will tell his sins to the priest. Once he is done, the person should say an “Act of Contrition.” Once the person has done all of this, the priest will give the person penance. The penance will usually consist of a set amount of prayers (such as The Lord’s Prayer or The Rosary) the person must say. The priest will then say a prayer and absolve the person of the confessed sins.

… Confession helps to rid people of any guilt they may have been feeling because of their sins and also allows them to experience the love and forgiveness offered by God.

Got it?

Okay, so now a bit about sacraments in general:

A sacrament, as defined in Hexam’s Concise Dictionary of Religion, is what Roman Catholics believe to be “a rite in which God is uniquely active.” Augustine of Hippo defined a Christian sacrament as “a visible sign of an invisible reality.” … Examples of sacraments are Baptism and the Eucharist. Therefore a sacrament is a religious symbol or often a rite which conveys divine grace, blessing, or sanctity upon the believer who participates in it, or a tangible symbol which represents an intangible reality. As defined above, an example would be baptism in water, representing (and conveying) the grace of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Forgiveness of Sins, and membership into the Church. Anointing with holy anointing oil is another example which is often synonymous with receiving the Holy Spirit and salvation. Another way of looking at Sacraments is that they are an external & physical sign of the conferral of Sanctifying Grace.

Apparently, God is now “uniquely active” via iPhone. If one leans toward buying into the church stuff in the first place, this might be bloody fucking handy, dontcha think?

It looks like the new app gives a commandment-by-commandment rundown of possible infractions and provides a handy checklist, making it harder to “forget” transgressions, since lord knows! forgetting is no excuse for not unburdening and taking your holy lumps.

Kill anyone?
a) yes
b) no
c) Does a Muslim count?

Commit any rape?
a) yes
b) no
c) Just an alter boy.

Tell any lies?
a) yes
b) no
c) Only about the alter boy.

Piece o’ cake, heh?

And if that’s so easy, why not apps for sacs other than reconciliation?

There could be a do-it-yourself baptism app, a “Do you take this woman to be your wedded wife” tick-a-box app, and even one for performing last rites and burials. (Pre-order holy water, salt, unction oil, even vacuum-packed communion wafers through the post … $49.99 the set … and have all on hand for the next religion-related emergency.)

If you’re expecting a crowd, everyone will certainly have their phone with them, so have them download the appropriate app and join in the Kyrie, eleisoning. Think of the fortune saved in candles, since the soft light of touch screens would create the same sort of mood, and processions could be led by iPads raised in solemn tribute.

Yep. I think we’re on to something here, and at the right price iTunes and the church might both be happy.

And here’s a little something from me composed before this app thing made news:

The Sacraments

Water drip
Salt to lip
Hand that baby over

Tiny room
doom and gloom
all that’s just to cover

tongue to host
holy ghost
Quite the cool maneuver

Pick a name
now you’re tame
Don’t contain your fervor

Troth to plight
wedding night
doesn’t bind a lover

Finished toil
unction oil
No, you won’t recover

In a grave
no one saved
Now it’s finally over

Amen. Log off.

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The Price of a Year … or Poems by the Pound?

Posted in Friends, Island life, Loss, love, Men, My Chinese Checkered Past, Poetry, Seychelles, Writing for a living, tagged , on January 21, 2011| 6 Comments »

2010 was not a great year. It wasn’t the worst I’ve had, but certainly didn’t live up to my wish that it be a complete turnaround from the previous 365 days. Although I was extremely fortunate to get through those twelve months with no one I love dying, disappointments were rife and some great plans proved to be little but dust in the wind that often lodged in my eyes and produced prodigious tears.

Because I am who I am and I do what I do, the fallout also produced words, some of which rhymed or scanned, and in an effort to produce something to show for the year I’ve put them together in an eBook.

Some of the work included has been seen here on the blog, some hasn’t, and all in the book come with images, so even if some may have seen the words before, they’ve not seen them quite like this.

Titled, “It’s Gets Verse”, the book is dedicated to those who touched me in one way or another over the course of last year:

If you’ve made me laugh,
this book’s for you.
If you’ve caused me tears,
it’s for you, too.
Each hasn’t depth
without reversal,
and life, we know,
is no rehearsal.
For all who’ve had me
feel so much …
the good, the bad …
I’ve loved your touch.

In an effort to establish some value in my own mind for the collecting of all the bits of soot and ash from 2010’s burnt offering, I’m offering my offering for all of $5 a download. (PayPal works — sandra.splash@gmail.com — or cash through the post.)

I’ll be well pleased if I find that all the shit I went through last year was worth fifty bucks or so …

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Feckin’ musicians …

Posted in Celebrities, love, Men, Music I like, My Chinese Checkered Past, Writers, tagged , on January 8, 2011| 11 Comments »

Thanks completely to my dear friend Robbie, I’m now deep into Keith Richards’ “Life”. Not only am I enjoying the read, it’s setting me off in many directions through time, but criss-crossy-convoluted as Keith jumps through all of his.

I’m recalling events directly Stones involved, from the first time I saw them in concert … I must have been 13 or 14 at the time … Brian Jones was alive, of course, Jefferson Airplane opened for them, but before Grace Slick — a girl named Nicki Anderson (not sure of the spelling) sang with them then … to my personal experience with the charming Mr. Richards in New York many years later.

Also coming to mind are the times and the music, the many moments in life set against the backdrop the timeframe dictates and scored by the Rolling Stones. Although I’m not exactly chuffed by the fact that I am now a woman of a certain age, I wouldn’t trade the experiences my era provided for the perky tits of tepid Twentiesville or the smooth-faced bland of Thirtyopolis.

Nope. Although I’m quite a bit younger than Keith and without so much of the rode-hard-put-away-wet-look he’s earned and mastered, living through the time I lived provided something special.

I started young, which ended up being a good thing as by the age of 16 I’d been sent to the hinterlands. Before that, however, I was in the right place at the right time to witness the reinvention of the wheel that rolled over just about every aspect of life as it had been known, and being without much in the way of parental supervision or smarts I had access with buddies or a bus pass providing transport.

Art, literature, fashion, music … all experienced a rebirth, and what popped out was earth-shattering, unexpected. All these changes were considered by many to be mere flashes in the proverbial pan, but considering how many present-day teens flock … and pay a fortune … to hear Keith rockin’ it at 60-some, that would seem to have been a short-sighted view.

Reading through his version of life as I pass this day in paradise, though, I’m wondering how deep the impact of all that change had on me.

For sure, the image of being June to a Ward had little appeal as the world shifted from 50s dregs to 60s mania, although Ricky with the conga was pretty hot. And speaking of Ricky, Ozzie may have had the suit and the nebulous ‘job’, but when his youngest picked up a guitar … well, did they get any cuter? If anyone wanted to be Harriet, I didn’t know them.

Like every teenage girl of the time … and no few teenage boys, as well … I entertained fantasies of portions of life partnered with one of the rock gods who filled every corner of my life from the walls of my bedroom to the tunes playing endlessly everywhere. Not only were they amazing to hear and watch, creative, explosive and beautiful, they were also dangerous bad boys who literally marched to a different drummer.

I watched Jim Morrison stumble around and was enchanted. Coming across Jimi Hendrix blowin’ chips outside the Fillmore was almost a religious experience. (Apparently, it was the flu … yeah, right … ) And I still swear I levitated Country Joe McDonald three feet into the air once at the Avalon …. but the acid was really good in those days, and he didn’t seem to mind too much, although he could be grumpy.

No, there weren’t a lot of ‘nice young men’ taking the stage at that time, at least not in the classic sense of ‘nice’, and I liked that. The rude, crude and raw attracted me like a fly seeks shit and the drama of it all stripped the coating from the wires making everything alive.

What followed was a long string of musician boyfriends … mainly guitar players, although there were a few drummers mixed in, but they are a fidgety bunch … and some were very nice, polite young men who kept their manners about when my parents were looking. None were as dangerous as they appeared to be, nor mean, but some did break my heart and all required ego-feeding at regular intervals. (Funny thing is, the non-musical men had the same bloody ego issues with much the same bloody demands. Go figure. But the fact that they didn’t hang their dicks around their necks demanding adoration did make some difference.)

Gaps happened, years that had no musician serenading day-in-day-out, but soon enough … for sure … they’d pop up again. After my first divorce I went on the road with a wonderful bunch of guys … still friends after all these years … and came across more as decades passed. I fell in love with some. Some fell in love with me. All-in-all … well, it was what it was.

As regular readers know, my last relationship was with … yeah, you’ve got it — a musician … another ‘bad boy’. (And who knows if it’s really bloody over or just on pause, as the contact continues daily and the fat lady has yet to sing real loud.)

My lot now is to figure out if it’s the bad boy thing that draws me or the fucking music. Did Keith and his ilk ruin me for guys with regular jobs? Will I put up with anything as long as there are songs dedicated to me and named for me? Or … do I actually LIKE it? Can strife really be settled with a strum? Is there magic in music soothing my soul even when my nerves fray and my temper flares? Do I NEED the drama?

Reading Keith’s life reminds me that musicians aren’t “normal” people, and thinking on my life has me realizing I’m not “normal” either. As I wasn’t built for mopping in pearls, some aren’t made to put on a suit and head for a ‘job’ and a box and a handle… and maybe … just maybe … that’s okay.

OR …

Maybe it’s time I set aside my … what? fascination? attraction? tolerance? … for musicians and developed more of an appreciation for nice, for reliable & honest, for passions of a sort that don’t require being charted … for those who are satisfied being stars in their worlds and neither need nor seek wider adulation.

The rules broken by Keith Richards and the bulk of my childhood heroes left little in their wake to ski on since the ideas of happy coupledom continued to be based more on June and Ward than Mick and Marianne and that left some confusion over both goals and expectations. Sure, John and Yoko pulled it off, but for the most part musicians have not made for a whole lot of traditional relationships still thought of as ideal. In general, they are demanding, self-centered, self-indulgent, temperamental and insecure, traits that manifest in high levels of self-motivation and creativity, and in behavior not always conducive to a comfortable home life and monogamy.

I’m an artist, which means I must be crazy, and the art and crazy in others draws me … even when my art takes that infernal backseat to theirs. My art is words, and often my words are undervalued … used … considered less than what appears on canvas, sculpted, composed in notes and chords … yet demanded for adulation of all of those. Artists appreciate art and understand the requirements for creating, however, so although what I do may be seen as a useful appendage to musical endeavors it is valued and my work is validated and the processes that take me where I need to go are never questioned.

Writing happens in isolation, not on a stage in front of an audience, and kudos come … when they do … quietly and singularly –“Nice job. Really liked your story. It touched me.” — so is work requiring a different set of needs, but creation is creation, something I have a deep and abiding respect for.

I know how a book gets written, how a poem takes form, how an actor climbs into the skin of a character, even how paint can be applied to canvas with beautiful results, but musicians are versed in a language I can hear, yet never fully understand (and I don’t mean Spanish). The process of creating music seems like magic, magic that casts a spell. It always has.

Does that mean I will forever be subject to falling under the power?

Shit.

Gee, thanks, Keith …

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Things get worse, so here’s some verse …

Posted in Cambodia, Children, Loss, My Chinese Checkered Past, Poetry, tagged , on December 14, 2010| 2 Comments »

Wrapping my head around the holidays … looking happy about it … dwelling is not an option … cleaning out corners is …

My dog and stuff

My dog is called Mitzy
she’s ditzy
My cat is Diego,
hasta luego
The tortoise is Helmut
… the shell, mate …
I do with my critters,
their litter,
and fritter
away many minutes
with little else in it
My kids
are Sam, Cj and Jenn
and Jaren, of course,
although he’s now a “been”
I’ve a mother,
three brothers,
Larry, Tom and …
oh … Jim …
and, very thankfully,
a whole raft of friends.
There’s Andy and Gay
who both make every day
a tolerable passing of
whatever may
come hell or high water
show up when my daughter
the grown one (I miss her)
is beyond where I aughter
while I’m with her sister.
It’s life on this rock
that keeps me in hock
always missing someone
even as I keep stock
of those coming and going
I love them all, knowing
time passes so fast
What’s it mean? I could ask
my dog who’s called Mitzy

Cambodia in Seventeen Syllables
Always conflicted,
smiling through horror
Poison on the top shelf waits

X-mas

It’s ghosts I hang
on the Christmas tree
shades of all that
couldn’t be
Another year has
come and gone,
another season
thrust upon
all tinsel, balls and
shiny fluff
and meant to be
diverting stuff
but serving only to remind
of all that has been left behind

Leftovers

How does one finish with
stuff that’s not done
like a bird in the oven
still bleeding?

Can’t very well eat things
still moving now
can we? Not while it still keeps
its beating

It has stewed, it has baked
but no matter,
stlll kicking this thing’s not
completing

the process of dying
takes time and may
nevertheless bear
repeating

Hunger can’t rush it,
wishing won’t work,
but no worries.
We’re feeding

on scraps of leftovers
savouring each
it seems we are
still needing.

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I ain’t afraid of no Ghost of Christmas Past

Posted in Children, Family, Island life, Loss, love, Men, My Chinese Checkered Past, On getting older, Seychelles, tagged , on December 13, 2010| 9 Comments »

Jaren kissing me goodbye on his way to a Christmas Party

No, he doesn’t look a bit like the kindly grandfather-like figure in the 1951 movie version of “A Christmas Carol”, probably because I never had a grandfather. My Ghost of Christmas Past is a nebulous shape-shifter morphing around as he drags me from scene to scene. Since this isn’t about the guide, but the journey, it matters little since he does employ that cool fade technique.

Fade in:

Christmas morning. Suburban living room. 1950s.

An oval braided rug echos forest green drapes and the dark brown of a skirted sofa framed by blond wood side tables. Tree in one corner lit with bulbs the size of thumbs, some glowing white through scrapes and scratches in their paint and reflecting on massive amounts of tinsel. The sound and smell of percolating coffee invades from the kitchen. My maternal grandmother sits and smokes as we wait for Christmas to start.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, same house.

My brothers and I wear new flannel pajamas our mom made. A sewing basket sits beside the sofa. A sock with a light bulb stuffed in the toe awaits darning.

A walnut table has been added to the room. Intricately carved legs are my duty to dust. It had been in Grandma’s house before she died, now it is my mother’s.

A bicycle! What a beauty! Blue and white with a basket attached to the handlebars. Ribbons and bows.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different house, different town.

Oak floors polished by some guy sliding my brothers and me around on towels to buff the wax. Much bigger tree, same strings of lights with more scratches. Dad promised French pancakes for breakfast. Christmas Eve dinner had been at the hotel with us running in and out of the kitchen and getting festive with the cooks and waitresses that worked for our dad.

We go to Mass. I’m in the fifth grade at St. Joseph’s and Sister Mary Stanislaus would not be happy if I didn’t put in an appearance. My father refuses to go through the motions … no genuflecting, no standing, no kneeling … and although I’m embarrassed by the idea that he doesn’t know what’s expected, he impresses me with scoffing. The music was nice, though, and I like to sing.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different house, back to the first town, different family.

Crowded suburban house with a step-mother and five step-sibs in addition to me and two brothers. My mother sends fudge and a Barbie doll that looks like her. My brothers and I don’t share the fudge with the others.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different town, apartment next to the freeway so new it smells like paint and plaster, just us again.

Tiny tree on a table in a small living room. Y.A. Tittle gives my little brother a football uniform. All our gifts are from someone famous. None say they are really from Dad, but we get the joke.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different town, another new apartment.

Christmas dinner at a restaurant that makes great hot turkey sandwiches.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different town, different family.

Chinese food with a new step-family.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different town, different family.

Mom’s house in Small Town USA. Moronic step-father reads the paper upside-down … or might as well. Jenn and Jaren are little and my brothers wear out the batteries in their Star Trek communicators before Christmas Eve is over. I get a TV from Mom. A brother gets an ID bracelet.

A turkey neck simmers on a back burner, the grinder comes out from the bottom drawer and a turkey is stuffed with Grandma’s recipe. Green jello. Stuffed celery. Pumpkin pies on the washing machine.

Fade to: Calendar flipping through years …

Fade in:

Christmas Day, huge Victorian house in mid-town California city.

A tree stands fourteen-feet tall in the doorway, lights reflected in the oak floors. Burgundy walls and green rugs add a festive feel.

Husband once again has coerced me into letting him open one gift on Christmas Eve. As always, he chooses the BIG box with the fancy wrapping paper. As he does every year, he falls for the socks. Jenn is home from college. Jaren is living in the basement apartment. Brothers are there with girlfriends. Dad has written a poem and we give him a computer. Step-sisters come with Chinese food and their families. The guys play basketball in the living room once the mayhem of gift opening is cleared.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different, different house, different country, different husband.

Doors wide open to catch the morning breeze as the plastic tree rotates. Cj crawls around wearing Rudolf antlers. Sam waits for Christmas to start as the kettle boils. The mess from the annual Christmas Eve party has been cleared away. We open our gifts, smile, play with the kids and their new toys, then dress and head to Gay’s for Christmas lunch.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, same house, no husband.

Friends spend Christmas Eve with us and are still around in the morning to help open gifts and spread cheer. Fiance is on Skype from Mexico watching and commenting and hopes are expressed that the next year won’t see us so far flung. Kids play with their new stuff.

Fade to black.

If life is to follow Victorian fiction, these scenes should dovetail into a viz from a Ghost of Christmas Present where I learn yet more about the true meaning of this holiday.

Hm.

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Jingle Blahs …

Posted in Children, Family, Friends, Island life, Loss, My Chinese Checkered Past, Seychelles, tagged on December 11, 2010| 15 Comments »

I have something I need to get off my chest, and I need to do that now if it’s going to be out of my system by Monday. If you’re not in the mood to listen to me whine and watch me wallow, click here now and come back in a few days when I’ve managed to pull myself out of my own ass long enough to write about something interesting.

If you decide to stay for the train wreck, it starts with:

I HATE CHRISTMAS !!!!

The kids come home after a week with their dad day after tomorrow … that will be the 13th of December, more commonly referred to as 11 days before Christmas … and before they rush in all excited and ready to put up the tree I must exorcise the ghosts of Christmases past, work off my Grinchy Scrooginess, or Scroogie Grinchishness … whatevahhhhh … and be ready to put on some semblance of a show of festive cheer.

Oh, goodie.

Pathetic, aren’t I? And what a crap mom.

Guilt is only one ornament dangling from the just-slightly-too-green branches of the fake tree I’ll be un-boxing (Thankfully, the tree spins, so is tacky enough to be mildly amusing.), although its multifacets do make it impressive. From one angle it looks like memories and regrets over past Christmases, those occasions when Jenn and Jaren were small. From another, it’s Christmas present, this one right here, right now … the one Sam and Cj and I were supposed to be in Mexico for, but instead will find us opening gifts on the morning, then … who knows? Then there’s the future angle that will have me writing a summation of the year on Christmas night to go in the box when I take the tree down just in case this is the last one I’m around for.

Loneliness is another decoration pulled out for this fucking holiday, reminding me Christmas Eve will see me putting the gifts out, turning out the lights and sleeping alone … again.

Isolation, that dull, lead lump I’ll stick on a bottom branch, brings to mind the fact that all of my family but Sam and Cj and everyone I shared my life with before moving to this rock is thousands of miles away.

Worry is a particularly unattractive bit of fluff, but comes along with gift buying and the realization that the next Christmas will come around faster than a kettle boils.

Annoyance is bright and shiny and made in China. It hangs everywhere making shops here look like the aftermath of an attack of vomiting elves. What is it about this holiday that has people thinking astoundingly ugly sparkly shit all of a sudden has esthetic appeal? And what’s with that fucking music?

Yeah, yeah … I know how lucky I am. I have a roof over my head, wonderful children, amazing friends. I can walk and talk and write and drive. We’re not hungry. We don’t live in a war zone and aren’t likely to find ourselves forced into refugee status. I live in a beautiful place. And if I just focused on all that instead of the negative crap … if I quit indulging in self-pity … if I embraced the holiday … if I pulled myself out of my own ass and aimed my energy at Sam and Cj and at making this a joyful, happy time they will incorporate into their memories of a happy childhood … if I did all that stuff … this just might end up being a not-too-bad Christmas with some fun to be had with hugs and love and laughs going around.

But first I needed to get this out of my system. By Monday I’ll be ho-ho-fucking-hoing. In the meantime, please excuse me from the festivities.

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Chaos: a theory

Posted in Island life, My Chinese Checkered Past, Nature, Peeps, science, Seychelles, Writers, tagged , , , on December 6, 2010| 14 Comments »

I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms. You, gods, since you are the ones who alter these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world’s first origins to my own time.

Before there was earth or sea or the sky that covers everything, Nature appeared the same throughout the whole world: what we call chaos: a raw confused mass, nothing but inert matter, badly combined discordant atoms of things, confused in the one place. There was no Titan yet, shining his light on the world, or waxing Phoebe renewing her white horns, or the earth hovering in surrounding air balanced by her own weight, or watery Amphitrite stretching out her arms along the vast shores of the world. Though there was land and sea and air, it was unstable land, unswimmable water, air needing light. Nothing retained its shape, one thing obstructed another, because in the one body, cold fought with heat, moist with dry, soft with hard, and weight with weightless things.
~ Ovid, “Metamorphoses”

No, actually I don’t want to speak about changing bodies and I’ve spewed enough of my thoughts on Earthcentric views limiting human imagination, although Ovid does have the excuse of writing long before anyone had the technology to see stars as much more than interesting pictures in the sky.

It is, however, chaos filling my brain today … okay, most days … so imagine how thrilled I was, or wasn’t, to learn the etymology of ‘chaos’ also leads one to ‘yawn’.

Greek χάος means “gap, gaping void, chasm, abyss”, from the verb χαίνω, “gape, be wide open, etc.”, from PIE *ghen-, cognate to Old English geanian, “to gape”, whence English yawn.

Well, no bloody wonder I can have a head full of swirling shit and still be bored!

During a conversation the other day with my dear friend, Brian — he of the blog Truth is Freedom and a fab poet — he mentioned an interesting critter he described as, “chaos vital to creation”, apparently a beastie that can be traced back to ancient times and blamed for just about everything.

Some of our discussion involved various methods we’ve employed in attempts to rein chaos in long enough to force it to take form, allowing us to get on with things in ways … well … less chaotic, but throwing a lasso around “a rude and undeveloped mass, that nothing made except a ponderous weight; and all discordant elements confused, were there congested in a shapeless heap” … another translation of Ovid’s words … is not only difficult, but also an effort with consequences.

The exterior manifestation of chaos ... my office.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that grabbing free-floating ephemera and wrangling it into concepts easily shared pretty much kills off the free-floaty bit and morphs any given ephemeron into engraving, nor that grabbing hold of a “ponderous weight and all discordant elements confused” might not feel too great.

If I had a choice in the matter I might very well let chaos bubble away in a primordial stewing on a back burner instead of constantly caving to the inclination to turn it into something I can serve up.

There sure are a lot of folks that can do just that, and I sometimes find myself envious of those without curiosity, people who manage to go through days and years and lifetimes never hearing the background noise, much less wondering where it comes from.

“Ever wonder why mosquitoes exist … other than as food … or vectors … or … ”

“No … fucking things … SLAP. Got any beer?”

I find it interesting that the words “random” and “hectic” are now synonymous, amongst the young and hip with excellence, excitement and … well … missing the style boat. Of course, youth is supposed to be hectic and random, and chaos fits like a sparkly glove when your biggest worry is parents reading your Tweets.

I Googled “random thoughts” and found 6,960,000 results … and managed to resist clicking on most of them in fear of the “ooooh shiny” thing since I do have work to do today … but this did nothing to advance my chaos theory that was to be the topic of this post.

Shit.

In summation, then, I’ll simply ask, “Have you seen that story about living forever? I’m really not keen on the idea, myself, and can’t help but wonder …

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Free-floating Anxiety Before Tea

Posted in Children, Health, Loss, love, Men, My Chinese Checkered Past, On getting older, Poetry, tagged on November 28, 2010| 12 Comments »

Sounds almost pleasant, doesn’t it? It’s not. Oxymoronic in its essence, free-floating anxiety sees the anxious bit hijacking anything that might be considered free and the sucker floats like a anvil.

Anxiety that lacks a definite focus or content.

And that, folks, comes before the first cup of tea.

I have always lived with demons … depression being the biggest bugger with the fiercest bite … but anxiety is rather new to me. Sure, I’m a worrier. What woman isn’t, especially living alone and having kids to raise? But it’s not often my worries cause me to lose sleep.

In fact, I usually sleep fairly well; I drop off without effort, and if disturbed have little to no trouble drifting back into slumber. Yes, my sleep is dream-plagued/blessed and often not as restful as I’d like, but I do sleep and for the allotted hours.

No, it’s not the sleeping that’s my issue, my demon … whatever … but the waking.

Before my eyes open I now realize I’ve shifted from sleep to awake by the sudden onset of that free-floating anxiety thing. It takes a bit of time to recognize and even more to run it through the filters: I’m late; I’m early; I’m breathing; kids are okay; nothing horrible happened in the night; scan the list of what’s on for the day; yes, I’m here alone. Check. Check. Check.

So, why am I shaking and where is this panic over a new day coming from? Am I sixth-sensing portents of doom? Has a shit asteroid been plummeting toward me in the night? Why is every drop of sadness in my body rushing in to welcome another twenty-four hours of the same old crap? Is the day now tainted? Have I contaminated the glass of opportunity by dropping in a dollop of shite with my quaking hands? Will these backed-up tears cloud my vision? Or drown me?

Tea. I need tea.

And thus begins my day.

It’s not every day that starts this way. Thankfully, I do go through periods where I wake up like a normal person, slowy and with a lovely touch of fog misting my corners. On those mornings my eyes open, the view presents itself in all its glory and potential rolls out in front of me. Those occasions take a second cup of tea to bring recognition of and appreciation for the ease of sliding into what had been tomorrow.

More often than not, however, it’s choking sad and shaking panic that form my salute to the sun.

I can trace the roots of this relatively new … what? … affliction? … waking nightmare? … free-floating anxiety … yeah, that’s it.

Close to eighteen months ago my waking moments changed drastically with the 6-am-ish phone call that told me my son was dead. And although this will not only sound trite, but obvious, I’ve not been the same since.

It’s a fact of life that the older we get, the longer our loss list grows. Over the past few years I’ve lost a lot … a son, a husband, a great love, all semblance of security, the last vestiges of youth, a load of nerve, hopes, dreams, wishes … even, from time to time, the will to live. (Yes, I have a list of gains, too, but I’ve just passed a week being thankful and that’s not what this is about this morning.)

I can deal with each and every loss … one-by-one, please … but first thing in the morning and before I’m fully awake? Not so well. Not at all, actually, since dealing isn’t what happens when I’m trembling and feeling the sting of tears before my eyes even open.

The result, of course, of this free-floating shit is an effort to flail a lasso about and pull it close enough to examine just what the fuck it might be. That sure pulls out the list, and as my mind leaps like a frog across sinking lily pads I am forced to recollect most every crappy thing that has happened, may happen or will happen. And I haven’t even peed yet …

At least I get words out of it, heh? Here are a few from this morning:

Good Morning, Sword

Within my realm I awaken each day
to a view of the sea and bird song
It is in my power to make what I may
But the first works I utter are:
What’s wrong?

I don’t see the sword hanging over my head
but I know that it’s there and suspended
by something no stronger than one single hair
if should break means the world is
upended …

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Memo to self: It’s a day … live it!

Posted in Health, History, Loss, love, My Chinese Checkered Past, News, On getting older, science on November 18, 2010| 4 Comments »

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. ~James Thurber

Not that I have a lot of it spare, but I have been thinking about time quite a bit lately — the non-existance of, the travel through, the wastes of.

You reading me often and in various places must have noticed I have a monkey mind … and I’m not talking evolutionary remnants of a brow ridge but the aptly descriptive Buddhist term for one whose brain is: unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable. Yeah … that would be what happens under my hair most of the time, illuminated here in an article listing six steps to living in the moment.

“We’re living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence,” says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We’re always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

When we’re at work, we fantasize about being on vacation; on vacation, we worry about the work piling up on our desks. We dwell on intrusive memories of the past or fret about what may or may not happen in the future. We don’t appreciate the living present because our “monkey minds,” as Buddhists call them, vault from thought to thought like monkeys swinging from tree to tree.

I’m a worrier by nature, a ponderer by profession and with a conscience that rarely has me leaving things to rest, all which have me agitating and ruminating when I should just be experiencing.

Today’s Huff Post puts me in this moment, however, so I pause to consider the ideas in an article called: How Often Are We on Mental Autopilot? You Might Be Surprised.

Although I’m not surprised a study suggests people spend 46.9% of their brain time doing a wander, nor that most don’t consider it a particularly happy path, there is some interesting science in the report.

They discovered that people have two distinct ways of interacting with the world, using two different sets of networks. One network for experiencing your experience involves what is called the “study by Kirk Brown found that people high on a mindfulness scale were more aware of their unconscious processes. Additionally these people had more cognitive control, and a greater ability to shape what they do and what they say, than people lower on the mindfulness scale. If you’re on the jetty in the breeze and you’re someone with a good level or mindfulness, you are more likely to notice that you’re missing a lovely day worrying about tonight’s dinner, and focus your attention onto the warm sun instead. When you make this change in your attention, you change the functioning of your brain, and this can have a long-term impact on how your brain works too.

Living where I do and working from my veranda, I have developed the habit of pulling myself out of my work or my ass or wherever my head might be at any given moment at intervals throughout the day to take some time to gaze upon and appreciate the beauty on offer. Right now, it’s a sapphire sea, the viridescent forest and a few puffy, white clouds navigating their way westward that fill my soul right along with my eyes. Throw in a couple of long-tailed tropic birds and the fruit bats in my jack fruit tree and I’m breathing again in that way I forget to breathe when my mind is full of whatever I’m writing, my heart is heavy with longing for what is no more and my nerves fray with concern over the illusive ‘what’s next’.

Inspired by beautiful music, I once wrote for the description of the video that went along with it:

“For me, one of the most precious gifts the universe gives is the Now, and the Now embraced is the Eternal Hug … a gift without conditions of past or future, but only the joy of the moment. And what is life but a series of moments?

The moments bringing those words are now in my past, but I can and do continue to conjure their joys.

It’s remembering to do it that’s the key:

“Mindfulness is a habit, it’s something the more one does, the more likely one is to be in that mode with less and less effort… it’s a skill that can be learned. It’s accessing something we already have. Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is to remember to be mindful.” I love this last statement. Mindfulness isn’t difficult: the hard part is remembering to do it.

Having studied the work of Abraham Maslow way back when, I trust his assessment of moments.

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

But life does do its bit to beat that out of a girl, doesn’t it?

I’m not one for wallowing in regrets, and it’s too often the future that robs me of moments; not the desire of it, but the anxiety over having some asteroid of shit fall from this clear blue sky and splatter on my life. It’s an ancestor who provides perspective and a bit of solace on this concern:

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. ~Abraham Lincoln

True enough, thankfully, and one day leads to another.

Yep. This moment is now the past and the next is still the future and each letter I type becomes a sentence and sentence is a pretty good description of life.

As for quantum physics and that business about the past, like the future, being indefinite and existing only as a spectrum of possibilities … well, I rather like a poet’s version today:

Forever is composed of nows.
~Emily Dickinson”

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Nora Ephron’s new book … and a related tale

Posted in Celebrities, Celebs, My Chinese Checkered Past, News, Older women, On getting older, Writers on November 10, 2010| 9 Comments »

Nora Ephron has a new book out, I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections, and you can bet I’m ordering it.

In addition to the family connection … she and my brother have done a thing a couple of times … and starting long before that was made, the woman’s work has spoken to me … for me? … whatever … and very obviously, from what I’ve read so far, continues to do exactly that in this most recent work:

One good thing I’d like to say about divorce is that it sometimes makes it possible for you to be a much bet­ter wife to your next husband because you have a place for your anger; it’s not directed at the person you’re currently with.

Another good thing about divorce is that it makes clear something that marriage obscures, which is that you’re on your own. There’s no power struggle over which of you is going to get up in the middle of the night; you are.

But I can’t think of anything good about divorce as far as the children are concerned. You can’t kid yourself about that, although many people do. They say things like, “It’s better for children not to grow up with their parents in an unhappy marriage.” But unless the par­ents are beating each other up, or abusing the children, kids are better off if their parents are together. Chil­dren are much too young to shuttle between houses. They’re too young to handle the idea that the two peo­ple they love most in the world don’t love each other anymore, if they ever did. They’re too young to under­stand that all the wishful thinking in the world won’t bring their parents back together. And the newfangled rigmarole of joint custody doesn’t do anything to ease the cold reality: in order to see one parent, the divorced child must walk out on the other.

Yep.

Nora first spoke to me with Heartburn, hands down the BEST getback any betrayed wife has ever pulled, made even more appropriately brutal when it was made into a film. It lobbed key lime pie directly at the crotch of ex-husband Carl Bernstein, one half of the team that uncovered the Watergate scandal and wrote a book about it, and made it bloody hard for the man to get a date for a very long time.

It is said that revenge is a dish best served up cold, but Nora’s Heartburn warmed the cockles of damaged heart in very healing ways. I laughed … oh! how I laughed … as she got up the thumb-like nose of the bitch who’d aimed her sites on the married man and let the world know just what a prize he wasn’t, no matter the idolatry he fostered widely, and if I was the sort of woman who cooked, I’m sure I would have made good use of the recipes included in the story.

And speaking of stories … here’s a true one:

Once upon a time, I was in New York City on a night out with friends. We’d eaten well in a fabulous penthouse apartment, then danced to Brazilian music at a fabulous club … New York is all about ‘fabulous’ you see. Deciding eventually it was time for some great coffee and rich desserts, we headed for the West Side and the restaurant of another friend on Columbus Circle where we took up residence at one of the larger tables, cramming in chairs from left and right and setting up a right ruckus as we did what New Yorkers do at 3 am — discussing everything under the sun, arguing points and enjoying being one-upped by people whose knowledge is deeper.

Coffee doing what it does, a ladies trip to the ladys’ took up a good 20 minutes, what with all queueing and makeup touchups such ventures into basement toilets require when 9 girls all have to go at the same time and the geography of hip spots in Manhattan puts the bathroom down two floors.

Reentry created the desired effect, and most of the seats we’d vacated were relinquished to us previous tenants, but there were some new faces at the table.

One was a pleasant-looking gentleman seated to my left in the middle of an explanation to my friend sitting across from us on the ins and outs of dealing effectively with photographers from Architectural Digest invading a flat, his just having been featured, apparently.

Interesting enough a discussion, I suppose, but not one that grabbed my attention until some mention was made of the fact that he worked for the Washington Post.

At the time, I had a good friend working in the newsroom at the Post and the thought crossed my mind that perhaps this guy could fill me in a bit on how my buddy was fairing, so at a break in the conversation I asked, innocently enough: I’m sorry, but do you work for the Washington Post?

My friend on the other side of the table went apoplectic, perhaps embarrassed by what was apparently a blatant show of un-hipness causing my out-of-towner faux pas, and with barely an eye-blink passing … no time at all for the dude to respond to my question … she said:

Sandra … this is Carl Bernstein!

Light speed fast, the connections were made in my head: Woodward/Bernstein, Watergate, Washington Post, All the President’s Men … he’s shorter than I would have thought …

Yes. All that.

Now, it often happens that my mouth moves before my brain fully engages, and — blame it on the wine, the coffee, the hour, if you like — this was the case that night.

The very first thing I blurted out to this man who had just been impressing the shit out of the table with tales of fame and fortune and his apartment on the East Side was:

REALLY??? How cool. I LOVED your wife’s book!

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