Taking a break from doing taxes

Not that you’re still waiting breathlessly but I forgot to tell you about what I wore and how I did my hair for my first post “launch” book talk. I was debating a few posts back between orange and dull, bold or blah, wondering if there was anything in my closet besides the new shirt and scarf I’d bought for the launch, or the new orange shirt and vest I’d gotten for Christmas.

Well, at some point in my day, I noticed that I’ve got these two pictures of me in my writing room. Mia gifted me with them (already framed, or they’d never be “up”) and they’re both from the same night. She occasionally insists that I do something fun or at least encourages me to grab a friend and hang out at a bar or an art event with her and her friends. These photos were taken on such a night in a bar where a band was playing and me and my friend Mary were feeling pretty loose. One picture is of me and Mary and one of me and Mia. I’m wearing an olive drab sweater with my vintage Levi jeans jacket. When I noticed them, I thought, “I look good in that,” and that is what I wore.

(I'll try to post these pics. Right now they're on my husband's computer and so it'll have to wait.)

Angie French braided my hair in the morning and in the evening, when it was still, (as it always is no matter what I do) damp, I unraveled it and let it hang loose. It felt like a lot of hair and I wanted really badly to pull it back and get it off my face, but I didn’t. And I never thought of it again or of what I was wearing once I got going. That’s all that matters. That’s what I look for when I dress every day. As long as I don’t ever think about it again, I’m cool.

Just thought I’d let you know.

P.S. What you wear is what you write about while you're taking a break from doing your taxes.

When it's time to do your taxes

It’s been two whole days. Two whole days since I was “on”…full of the energy of giving my presentation at the Unity Church.

Yesterday:

I’m mad right away because my mouse doesn’t work after Angie tried to use the mouse control disk as a thumb drive while I was out giving my talk. Then because my computer isn’t working right anyway. I sleep in (the morning after – couldn’t hardly sleep the night before from the “high” of it) and I’m tired and I only have an hour before work, and the darn thing is more sluggish than me. I wait and wait for it to boot up. Wait and wait for the internet. Even wait for Word. Then the computer decides it’s ready to shut off for no reason. It used to at least warn me that it was closing down for updates (which always bugged me to no end) and I’m wondering if Angie was on it and changed the prompt. I’m more bugged.

Then she’s got Henry crying before I even come out of my room and then a scene ensues in front of me. Does she think “scenes” are normal? I’ve got to call my therapist today. I think she does. She’s “teaching” him. This morning to not have his chocolate milk with his grandpa, drinking it from a spoon, because he’s got to grow up and use a cup. He uses a cup 99% of the time. Why can’t he have his moment with his grandpa? Five minutes in a long day? Why must she yank him away and make him cry? I can’t stand it.

Anger is a catalyst to change. Anger is a catalyst to change. Anger is a catalyst to change. So is love. Love is a catalyst to change. Love is a catalyst to change. Love is a catalyst to change. Got to remember that too.

Evening:
I tell Jimmy Joe (one of the two cockatiels—the loudest) to shut up. I catch Simeon (one of the two cats – the most persistent) from making his 23rd attempt to jump off the top of the couch onto my lap and my laptop. As I assist him (okay, kind of throw him) from midair over the laptop, past the edge of the coffee table and toward the door, he scratches my nose. It bleeds.

Today:
I’m up at 5:30, before, as Henry says, the day is here, but I don’t notice the sky until six when it’s already lightening.

It’s not even 6:30 now but I’m noticing and it’s a beautiful sky. Blue above, white beneath, orange on the bottom, then the ground still dark. I love that. Just the top of the yard showing – as if all that’s out there is tree “tops” and no ground level mess. Tree tops where there’s nothing to do. No problems. No angst. I begin to calm down.

Man, I was so blazing hot for a few days. My presentation came together when my talk was still a few days away and the creative zone didn’t leave me. I was inspired. I blogged. I wrote emails. I didn’t have enough time to put all my inspiration into words.

Since then, there’s practically nothing there. A few tendrils hung before the crash that’s left me unable to get inspired no matter how hard I try. (Note to self: trying never works.) Brought the latest book review of a Louise Erdrich title with me to get me going this morning if all else fails.

Sometimes, when all else fails, the best you can do is to complain. Or look at the sky.

Or be still.

But to be still in between one thing and the next, I have found, takes a little time. I know, I know. It’s only been two days. I know it takes at least three. Sometimes three weeks. You’ve been “on” so long in a good way that turning “off” feels like a plight. You’re brain dead and weary and restless rather than heart full and still. There is a difference. You’re in need of a certain movement back to resting, to gestation. You’ve got to be a fallow field because there ain’t nothing that’s going to grow out of your dirt. You’ve got dirt instead of earth. You’ve run dry.

I’ve got taxes planned for the weekend. It’s good timing.

From a purse to a suitcase

I packed a suitcase last night. It seemed the best way to cart books. You don’t ever know how many will attend a talk or how many will buy or what they’ll buy. Do I pack a dozen copies of all three books of A Course of Love? How many of The Given Self? Should I throw in a couple of The Grace Trilogy? Having determined to take the suitcase on wheels, I simply decided to fill it up. Why waste the space? I can always keep it on hand for the next time.

It got me thinking of the whole purse theme that I wrote of yesterday. I was fully prepared. Had $30 in one dollar bills to give as change. Had my notes. Had my bottle of water. Had my worn copy of A Course in Miracles in case I got one of those audiences that wanted to (what usually feels like) rake me over the coals about differences they see.

I didn’t need much of it. But I was prepared.

I reminded myself of the artists who used to show their work at our coffee shop. What a lot of work! They’d be hauling and hanging for hours and hardly any of them ever sold a thing. I’d start out feeling sorry for them from the first. I’d wonder if it was worth it.

My evening was worth it. The books looked nice displayed on the table. I used seven of the dollar bills. I could have gotten a free bottle of water, but hey, I had my own, and I don’t care what they say about the dangers of refilling them…mine get refilled at the faucet so it didn’t cost me anything.

The audience once again looked bored out of their minds. It got me rattled after a while and I wound down more quickly than I’d planned. Then I got the most sincere, and even courageous questions! Questions used to scare the beegeesus (how do you spell that?) out of me, but these were absolutely wonderful and almost (dare I say it) fun to answer. The bored faces quit looking bored. The hands eventually clapped, and then all of those who’d only pretended to be dullards started coming up and telling me something that I’d said was relieving or resonated or some such thing. One man told me about losing a six-month-old child.

My host, a beautiful man named Leon, sat on his haunches beside me as I re-packed my suitcase. I told him I'd misread the audience and had no clue they were relating or responding until the questions. He said, "This is Minnesota," and shared a similar experience he'd had. He told me about a book he’s writing, and we talked of Miles Davis and Irv Williams and hugged on the way out.

It’s all kind of a blur really. But it was worth it.

Like a purse

Day of the Unity launch. It’s just a talk but I keep referring to it inwardly as the launch…as if I got the launch of The Given Self stuck in my brain, and now every talk is some kind of launch.

Today there is wind and it brought a wave of cold that cleared the sky. For brief minutes it was the midnight blue I so love to see. Now it is mainly black and white again, but there is a swath of pink across the horizon. It appears to no longer be a steady wind. Not a thing bobbles for long stretches and then there is that gentle sway, as if the trees breathe, a lifting and a settling. I suppose that is the way it is with me.

I still find such talks a big deal. Just getting dressed is a big deal. When you don’t have to dress for the public often at all, having to do so becomes a bit of a trial. I’ll wear what I did for the book launch most likely. There’s really only one other outfit I’ve got that lets me feel that I look like “me” and that’s not too shabby. It’s an orange shirt and sweater vest kind of thing though, and I worry about the orange. Someone told me that the color orange is about creativity. That’s well and good. But sometimes it’s not easy to look at. I always thought of it as a cafeteria color – the kind that makes you want to eat a hot dog. I only bought it because I liked the style, not the color. So…we’ll see if I choose bold or bland. Orange, to me, is a bold color.

Then there’s, “What am I going to do with my hair?” Ever since I got my hair cut for a wedding last summer my braid looks like something out of an animated flick with exaggerated strands escaping wildly, especially around my neck. If I let my hair down without first doing something cosmetic (like using gel), or something artful (like having my daughter French braid it), it hangs or frizzes with an unremarkable dullness, and I look unkempt and not at all like those women who have hair that looks a mess on purpose.

And of course, I worry about why I’m worried about such things. Who cares? Men seem so able to get away with whatever. At a children’s book launch I went to recently, Michael Hall (Heart Like a Zoo), wore what looked like his everyday jeans and shoes and a sweater over a button-down shirt. Totally comfortable. Like he was ready to spend the day at home or go to the grocery store.

Last week, peace activist Marv Davidov hadn’t given (or you wouldn’t think had given) a thought to his clothes. I didn’t even notice them except for the hat. You might say he was more than casual but also a little flamboyant although I can’t say how (maybe just the hat?) His collaborator, Carol Masters, wore a dress.

I remember seeing an Andy Rooney monologue on “60 Minutes” one time where he said women would never be equal to men as long as they continued to carry purses. You can only say such things with the kind of humor Rooney has. He joked of how you can’t respond in an emergency if you say, “Wait a minute. I’ve got to get my purse.” Not that you don’t have everything you need for an emergency packed into them.

Luckily my talk is prepared like a purse ready for an emergency. I wish I didn’t need a script but I still do and I have it. I wouldn’t be thinking about clothes and hair if I didn’t. I’d be in a panic. The script is kind of like a purse. Once you know you’ve got what you need you sort of forget about it and you can get up and go (at least as soon as you’ve dressed).

"You Can't Do That!"

My daughter Mia wanted to do something with me for my birthday and so I asked if she’d go with me to a talk at the Unity Church. Marv Davidov and Carol Masters were going to be speaking on nonviolent activism. I wanted to hear them, and besides, it gave me a chance to check out the site of my talk on A Course of Love next Wednesday. (Unity Church - Unitarian, 732 Holly Avenue, St. Paul. 7:00)

Earlier in the day there’d been the chance of taking my mother and mother-in-law to church for Ash Wednesday services. We’d thought we might go at noon but it didn’t work out that way, and when Mia called about the evening, I said, “I think I’m taking Mom to church for ashes at 5:00, then getting a fish sandwich.” Mia wanted to go to church too, so the plan was formed. Later I learned that my mom had gone along to the noon service with her neighbor, Grace.

Maybe because I wasn’t thinking so much of Lent as I was of the evening ahead, the Mass didn’t seem like such a solemn affair, or maybe it was the whole talk of ashes reminding us of our fragility, the fragility of human life. Where some years this reminder has come almost as startling news, that wasn’t the case this year. I’m aware. And so the whole idea of Jesus leading us through death to new life was welcome.

I had a few friends I hadn’t seen in a while sitting across the aisle, but Mia and I rushed out as the final song was sung, before so many of the other parishioners that Father was standing alone to shake our hands. “Good morning, I mean good afternoon,” he said to Mia. I took his hand and said, “Good evening, Father” and we all chuckled softly. By then it was dark and as we exited Mia said, “Are you sure you want to do this? We’ll be so rushed. Why do you want to?”

So I gave her my reasons – that my mom and I had planned to see each other earlier in the day, and I’d missed seeing her over the weekend, and when her plans changed I’d said I’d stop by with fish.

Driving up Robert Street, the main fast food thorough fare on our side of town, I tell Mia that we’ll stop at Culvers and I had her call my mom to tell her we were on our way. (My own cell phone fell out of my pocket and into the toilet last night, and although it seemed to keep working after drying out, had now gone dark.)

“Oh, don’t bring me anything,” Mom said. “I went to Culvers for lunch and I’m still full.”

So we get our fish and stop at Mom’s to eat it, where I use the bathroom, and she gives me a checkbox full of lipsticks that she doesn’t like, a large bag of plastic store bags (since we’re always running out at home, what with cat litter and diapers), a birthday present, and a Pepsi to go with the fish that Mia and I snarf up in our 15 minutes before needing to be on the road again.

Fifteen minutes after that we’re driving on the roughly plowed streets of an inner city neighborhood, looking for our address in the dark, fairly confident of being able to find a church. Five minutes later we’re seated with about 40 others, listening to a sincere woman and a humorous man recount their lives as activists: she since the 80’s and he since the 50’s.

I hadn’t even known they had a book, written together as she interviewed him (even after a long-time friendship) while he had dialysis, and researched over five years to put his story in context along with hers and ours.

The book is called, “You Can’t Do That!” and neither the Minneapolis or St. Paul newspapers – who’d covered so many of Marv’s exploits, had yet to review it. (Don’t I know how that goes.)

At the end of the talk, Marv was asked how he kept from getting discouraged. He paused and gestured and ran his fingers through the sides of his hair that stuck out of his hat, and said, “You get discouraged. You get blue. This stuff takes time.” And then he quoted someone who once said to him, “It doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work, and then it works.”

Coming home Mia and I talked of a few of the historical places and names she didn’t know, and I drove down our well-plowed suburban street and dropped her off by her car, parked on the street near the mail box. She’d bought me Carol and Marv’s book for my birthday. I’d had it signed. We’d thanked them, and I thanked her.

Then I came in, took off my coat, flipped through the book, and looked up and saw myself in the mirror: forehead smudged darkly and boldly with an ashen cross.

Love Speaks

“Whether we are writers or not, words help us reach beyond ourselves to find and name and claim our greater wholeness. They help us summon our best possibilities, bridging between the world as it is today and the place of justice and peace that we long for it to be. ”
~Rev. Karen Hering, consulting literary minister


A Local Speaking Engagement -- All Are Welcome

February 24
Unity Church – Unitarian
732 Holly Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota 55104
651-228-1456
Wellspring Wednesday
6:00 dinner, $6 adult
7:10 program

This Unity Church has two marvelous programs going – well, far more than two – but two caught my eye. The first is Wellspring Wednesdays, of which I’ll be a part later this month. It’s simply a time when the community gathers to share a meal and engage in conversation with one another and with various speakers such as myself. The other is called Faithful Words, a new literary ministry. The quote above is from the website description of Faithful Words. You might want to check out these programs at http://www.unityunitarian.org/

I love the idea of a literary ministry and have been wondering about doing something like it. A friend asked me a while back why I don’t teach writing. I don’t really have the credentials to do it (if you want degrees anyway) but I knew I would love to do more that would bring me in contact with my creative kin. I don’t believe you “teach” writing once you get much past grammar school anyway. Kathleen Norris provided one of the best quotes about writing I ever heard when she talked of teaching poetry to kids. She said the best students were the worst poets because they worried about getting it right. Just imagine what creativity and spirit would be released if we could quit worrying about that!

That’s a lot of what my books are about – A Course of Love and The Given Self. It seems like you have to unlearn your “doing it right” tendencies in life as much as in artistic or spiritual pursuits. You’ve got to get to a place where words move you and call you to reach beyond yourself.

I was invited to speak to the theme of love (a February theme – you can guess why). It was a neat invitation; different than most. I’m loosely giving my attention to “The ways that love has spoken to me.” Being as I seem to have been born predisposed to the written word, words have had a great impact, and I believe in them as artistic and spiritual expressions that can touch us and take us away from our narrow views or concerns, or conversely, get us to behold them more deeply. But there’s all kinds of ways besides words that love speaks, and if you feel so inclined, I invite you to comment on the ways love has spoken to you.

Autonomy

About three years and seven months ago, my 27 year old daughter, fresh from working at a daycare, and loving the little ones, got pregnant, either accidentally or with a sudden urge to have her own baby (who can say for sure?). She was living at home at the time and made the announcement expecting those joyous responses that all newly pregnant women hope for. I gave her a hug, did my best to say something that wouldn’t hurt her, and commenced to worry.

My grandson just turned three and he and his mom still live with us. I still worry.

Being as they were housed in her old bedroom, Henry took to sleeping with her and has only recently been moved into his own room and own bed. He had the room for about six months before he got a twin bed to replace his toddler bed and actually started sleeping in it. This development is only about a month old.

Last night I put him to bed. It’s his mom’s second night out since the change and the second time he told me “Good bye.” This time it took a bit longer. His grandpa told him a story. I read Horton and turned out the light. Instead of falling right to sleep he was restless – not talking and urging me to let him get up – just picking at some dry skin on his lip with ferocious intensity while his little feet traveled about my legs, making me wonder if he was checking to be sure I was still there, or wishing he had more leg room. Finally he fell asleep and I got up. He followed me out the door almost immediately and asked me to come back. I did. But about five minutes later he was ready to be by himself and told me “Good bye.”

I am still amazed that he wants to be by himself, no matter how long it takes him to get there. I feel as if I’ve noticed and celebrated each of his steps to autonomy and I’m trying to brace myself for the big one when he and his mother move out. But this one – the one I know so well – that dawning of the desire to be alone! It still floors me. I wonder what goes through his mind, what he feels, what sense of himself he’s developed. To some he might seem a late bloomer in this sleeping alone business, but to me he is utterly amazing, as if he’s demonstrating a power to choose that is about as healthy as it gets.

He says what he needs: Stay. Go.

I talk about steps to autonomy in The Given Self: His. Mine. Ours.

Stretching out

It’s snowing…again. Letting Sam and Max out the back door, you’d think we haven’t been out in the yard all winter the way the snow has drifted and piled around the steps. There’s nothing sleek and smooth about this winter or it’s snow. It’s a sloppy mess.

I’ve turned to face it. There I was (in past days/past posts) writing, complaining, and generally belly-aching about my love seat perch – and now I’ve discover there’s a reason beyond my poor tolerance for scrunched knees and chasing mice – varicose veins. Yes, you heard it right. I am getting old. I have some inflamed something or other that has to do with these varicose veins, and so I have to put my feet up and apply a heating pad, and it is this that caused me to change my position. Where before I always sat closest to the window, now I am sitting away, my feet rather than my neck nearest the Fahrenheat. I’m all stretched out rather than scrunched up, and I’m facing the corner windows directly rather than at an angle.

It seems far too early to be light but it is. The sky is full of snow. It’s not the kind of snow that you see dancing down in large well-shaped crystals but the kind of snow you can’t see at all unless you look toward the light.

I’d like to turn this into a lovely metaphor but I’m kind of stuck on getting old. I don’t feel old but I will be fifty-five in a week. Prime of life I say to myself. You have to, you know, when your forties didn’t turn out quite like planned. I haven’t got a yen to live to 150 (read an article about how to get there in the doctor’s office), but I figure I’ve got ten, maybe twenty years tops, before I’m even less inclined than I am now to venture too far beyond my yard.

I am venturing. I will be giving talks in St. Paul, Boston, and Boulder in the coming months. This is good news on the book-writing front, and good news for my
55th year and the feeling that it’s time, and even good news in terms of progress of a certain sort – I am far better off this year than last when I was about to return to office work for the first time in eleven years. I’m doing work I love, the kind that has the feel of life and work being all of one piece, and I’ve got the opportunity to bring the vision that has arisen from all the various things I’ve given my attention to … well … to light.

Themes emerge with time and quiet and the one I see is focused on dying to the old and birthing to the new. Yes, I mean it in a spiritual way, and I’ve felt it in an inner way, but now it’s as though it’s time to take it out for a walk…to take it to St. Paul and Boston and Boulder.

It feels really great to stretch out.

The busting out day is here

I can feel a short wick inside myself. Sitting on the loveseat in the dark is not helping. It only really works when I don’t reach for coffee and when my knees don’t protest and when the mouse doesn’t scuttle off the arm of the couch and lie with it’s red-lighted underbelly blinking under the window – so far away that I have to get up for it. I close my eyes. Breathe. I need a shower.

I wait a lot. I wait until a proper time to take my shower so that if it wakes Henry it’s not too early, and so that it’s not too late to interfere with the schedules of those who have to get somewhere. I postpone vacuuming until no one is home if I can, same with washing the floor. Housework is not an easy thing to do with people about. When no one is home I least want to do it but I enjoy it most. I putter. Work at my own pace. Feel as if I’m tending my home rather than picking up after everyone else.

I just read that a ‘green’ initiative has a lot of janitors coming off the night shift and doing their work during the day. I wonder how that’s going to turn out. Will they vacuum at lunch hour? An hour before people get there? Pull the wastebaskets out from beneath peoples’ desks while they’re sitting at them? Will they be happier? Relieved to be working days, or will they miss the quiet nights and the ease of an un-peopled space? Will they learn to wait or will they become little dictators, mother-like in their instructions: Don’t leave your half-eaten apple on your desk unless you want it tossed, set your garbage can out or empty it yourself, don’t take your bathroom break at 10:30 – it’ll be closed for cleaning.

I wonder if janitors will feel more like janitors when they work days and have to plan their work around the schedules and habits of others. Will they feel more a part of the team and move valued, or like an irritating “other” whose work is an undervalued inconvenience? Will they chafe at feeling more invisible than they did when they moved about in the dark, or will they try to be invisible?

And will there be follow-up articles some day that track the progress of the change? Will it only be in the transition that it is hard – like so many other matters confronted as our many and varied jobs shift away from the roles that once contained them and leave the feelings and new actions that come of the container busting?

Waiting isn’t the worst thing in the whole scenario of doing our own janitorial tasks or awaiting our own transitions. The sky lightens while you wait.

As Henry says, “The day is here.”