Sassyangelac
Penguin Tea
The Magic Teacup brings us a penguin today. The penguin brings me a fresh cup of intrigue today. AppleJack went down to the History & Heritage Society and found a thick juicy file on those dead relatives we discovered over the weekend. A fascinating history from the turn of the century would have never been discovered if we hadn't made that first stop to investigate those damn flags. It is incredible that we found this good stuff all because I love walking around in cemeteries. What a fantastic adventure this turned out to be!
We were specifically trying to find out why one particular relative was committed to an insane asylum around 1901 and we hit pay dirt. According to the court records the poor chap got old and developed what would likely just be considered garden-variety dementia these days and was sent away to the State Insane Asylum for Lunatics. More amazing than that was the fact that this was kept as a family secret for generations. This is why these names were not familiar to AppleJack when we stumbled upon their graves last weekend--because no one ever talked about them. This is also why when we asked older relatives for names of grandparents and great-grandparents no one could remember--they probably never knew anything about them. Having a "lunatic" in the family was a shameful thing back then; once they were locked away they were more or less written out of the family history and their names not repeated. Children and grandchildren were simply told the relatives died. Two relatives died in such asylums and never a word was spoken of them. Until now! AppleJack has liberated the secret!
Imagine being the first American-born member of your family and your direct descendants aren't even told your name! Imagine having no education at all, being a wounded veteran, and raising a family of seven children only to have your name conveniently "forgotten" so that in another generation no one would even know your story or how the family got here. Imagine being the forefather of a proud legacy of educators--teachers, principals, superintendents--after starting out an illiterate farmer and by the time your last grandchild is born your existence has been discreetly erased so that their children won't even recognize your grave. All because you got old and daffy--never violent--just confused and a little crazy. In 2012 you would probably be eligible for a variety of medical treatments, rehab, and maybe go into assisted living. In 1901 a judge declared you legally insane and you disappeared...forever...unless by some chance 111 years later a curious great-grandchild discovers your grave and searches out your identity. Imagine it taking 111 years to be written back into your own legacy. Imagine it taking 111 years for a member of your family to refuse to be ashamed of you.
Imagine.
(c) 2012, ACG
Liberate Your Art 2012
Kat Sloma's postcard swap is back for 2012 and I'm joining in again. If you'd like to join in too there is still plenty of time. The swap date is August 11th. See Kat's site for complete details. This was such a fun and fulfilling project last year. I met artists from as far away as Hong Kong through the swap! The element of surprise was half the fun for me; never knowing where the next card would come from or who the artist would be. I even got one completely handmade postcard and you know how that juices my lemons! No matter what your form of art might be it is easy to translate it into a postcard so give it some consideration. I doubt you'll regret it.
An Art Stroll With Mystery, Dance, and Sexy Baseballs
Central Arkansas has already reached 93 degrees. This is the coolest place to be in the heat of the day. I haven't bought a book in a bookstore in months.
AppleJack and I walk the dog in the evenings after it cools off. This was the vintage brick fence around one of the old houses for sale in the neighborhood. It's a treasure but of course it needs a lot of work like most old houses do. It would make a beautiful yoga studio. Every time we pass a house for sale my first consideration isn't usually what it would be like to live in such a house but rather how that house would function as a yoga studio.
When I ran my half marathon a few weeks ago my friend Jesse surprised me by personalizing my race bib. Instead of the standard race number I got my name. The name with no number thing is a privilege usually only enjoyed by elite runners. He really is awesome, isn't he?
When AppleJack and I made a stop at the Spirit Shop for adult beverages I became intrigued with several constellations of white dots on the concrete floor...
...so in the playful spirit of the moment I made him dance with me above the stars (as opposed to under them).
Since we live in a dry county this is the weekend mecca at the county line. Always busy. Always hoppin' with folks who imbibe on Saturday and repent on Sunday. As we danced AppleJack said "People are going to think we are weird." I said "Well we are weird!"
A sassy rock given to me by a coworker. On a break I was playing around with the light and reflection in my office with a beat-up picture frame in the background. It turned into such a cheerful little image that you would never know the whole scene sits atop a big utilitarian office printer.
I was out on the side of the road last week taking pictures of my clients participating in the Special Olympics Torch Run. The junk store in the background caught my eye with her bold make-up. Lipstick and eyeshadow to attract shoppers who need secondhand furniture and used tires in one location.
On the sofa, playing with shadow and ambient light, trying to make a baseball look sexy.
At the end of a very long, very stressful day I was trying to break the mood so I wouldn't take it home with me. Seeking a spot of serenity in a stormy atmosphere I found Little Chill Monster whispering "chill out, man" from his perch behind the ironside teapot.
AppleJack drove me out to an old cemetary to visit the graves of the family veterans for Memorial Day and to prove to me that he really wasn't making up his grandfather's name. See my pics on Facebook for those details. While we moved through the rows of fallen Gattins laid to rest we found this little girl's grave next to great Grandma and great Grandpa. No one knows who she was. We can't find any record of her being born to a relative yet there she lies. So my project over the summer will be to try to find out who this mystery ancestor was. We think she might be Tola, one of their daughters. As we sift through the family archives the handwriting and poor spelling of the census takers and record keepers is fairly hilarious with errors. Flora might have been written to look like Tola. There are no records on Tola other than her name listed as a daughter. In the meantime I made her simple little headstone into art of the Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil style while I work on solving the mystery.
Nice strolling with you. Enjoy your holiday!
(c) 2012, ACG
Internet Condolences
Just found out my Grandpa died.
Just found out my Grandpa died 7 months ago.
Just found out my Grandpa died 7 months ago via a Google search.
Yep; had no clue. What a way to find out! What a world we live in these days, huh?
Remember when I found out that my mom died two weeks after she was already buried? Now I found out her dad died half a year after he was buried. Crazy.
It all started because we were riding down a state highway and just could not fathom why we were seeing Confederate flags blowing in the wind. AppleJack and I were on our way back from the library and saw the flags at the local cemetery. It didn't register at first--war veterans, Memorial Day weekend--d'uh. The Sons of the Confederate Veterans had decorated the soldiers' graves with Confederate flags but we didn't figure this out until we stopped the car, got out, and stomped across the cemetery to investigate. Oh right; the Civil War. Double d'uh.
Since we were already parked and browsing through the cemetery we decided to keep strolling through the old grave sites. It was fascinating. These were some of the town's original families--founders, pioneers--with very primitive graves. Some of them seemed to be only buried halfway below ground with big humps over their graves covered in concrete or gravel. A few graves had some kind of rustic sarcophagus mounted above the ground that were crumbing with age. Some of the inscriptions were hand-printed with very poor spelling and grammar. Some sites were so eroded by time and lack of maintenance that it was impossible to tell who was buried there. The graves that had sunken in were especially interesting; you know, in a creepy way. We stopped to talk to a volunteer tending the graves and learned that there was no map of the cemetery in existence anymore. There was no perpetual care on the original property so this retired lady and her husband tended over 400 graves all by themselves. By the time we left the whole place felt like a community treasure (minus the flags) that we had never even noticed (until the flags).
So after we left AppleJack drove us over to a smaller and much shabbier cemetery where his paternal relatives are buried. His grandpa's name was so unusual that for awhile I actually thought AppleJack was making it up. Nope. We found the grave and he proved it to me; the old fellow really did have one of the funniest names I've ever heard and even passed it to his son! So of course I had to take a picture to go with the story to tell the Apples later. That grave led to another, which led to another until we discovered many more relatives than AppleJack ever knew had been buried there. We just kept finding more until we were finding folks that AppleJack couldn't identify. So of course we went home and starting tracing the family tree to find out who these folks were. For two days we scoured records and called relatives and searched the old census reports trying to connect what we knew to what we couldn't figure out. There are only about three people left living who could give us clues. By the time we got our answers we were able to trace AppleJack's line back through four generations to the first immigrant from Scotland. So cool. I love this stuff.
This was so much fun that we dug out the paperwork for the bloodlines on the maternal side. Luckily someone else had done all the work for us many years ago and we inherited the records when AppleJack's mom died. We didn't have to do any legwork; all we had to do was read all the way back to the 16th century. As we perused the births and deaths and marriages I began looking up the family crests and ancestral histories of the surnames. Then out of curiosity I wondered about the surnames in my own family. So on a lark I googled my Grandpa's name and found his obituary in the search results. Never knew he had passed. Never knew he had served in the Korean War. Never knew he was a Mason. Never knew he had cancer. Crazy. Haven't heard from a soul in his family for something like 20 years now and then one day--bing!--Grandpa is dead on the internet. Crazy. I'm positive that none of my uncles would know how to contact me and since my mom is already dead there would be no one to call me or write to me. Grandma is still alive (as of the date of the obit) but I don't even have her address so of course she doesn't have mine. I'm sure that probably seems crazy too. For my family it's completely normal. It's probably who I'm so preoccupied with AppleJack's roots; I more or less don't have them.
This of course means I didn't/don't have any kind of emotional bond with Grandpa so there is that funky void where all the emotional distress would normally be at the news of his death. I know I'm supposed to be sad but I don't feel sad. We had no attachment to each other. We didn't share anything significant except other relatives. There was no affection. The most remarkable thing I feel is that it's remarkable to learn of his death via the internet. I have no loss because I never had a relationship with him.
Now that I have spent the weekend bringing back to life the memories of AppleJack's dead relatives I felt compelled to at least acknowledge the passing of one of my own even though it feels like I hardly knew him. I'm trying to remember everything (anything) I can about him. Before my parents divorced I saw him on visits, a few holidays, a weekend here or there, but all 20 years ago or more. Here's what I have left:
He could really, really cook. I mean really cook.
He made me cornbread in the old fashioned cast iron cobbette pan.
He fed me my first oysters. They were fantastic.
He was short. Stout. Big nose. Wide mouth. Big metal glasses.
He woke me up from across the room when I spent the night--bellowing that the sun had been up for hours and that I would sleep my life away.
He drove me to basketball practice once when I was in high school and then stayed to watch. I was embarrassed that I couldn't make any free throws without jumping. My coach wouldn't let me jump so Grandpa thought I couldn't make them. I totally could when I jumped!
I think his nickname was Red but I don't think he liked it much.
He wore white sleeveless undershirts around the house. With belted shorts and high socks.
He built robots in the basement, which was really just a storm cellar. You had to leave the house and walk around back to the little slanty doors in the ground and clomp down stairs to get under the house. He kept a little shop down there. We weren't supposed to mess around in there.
He liked pecans. Kept them in the kitchen in a giant bowl and cracked them with a pair of pliers.
He wasn't a hugging Grandpa. He was friendly but I don't remember ever touching him.
He read the paper every day in a Queen Anne chair next the fireplace they never, ever used.
He was rumored to have a bad temper (my mom's memory I overheard once).
He never owned a house the entire time I knew him. I found out when I was a teenager that Grandma and Grandpa's house was rented. Then they moved away somewhere. Never knew where.
He retired from General Electric but I never knew his actual occupation.
He had five children. One died as a baby. My mom was the only girl. She died several years before him.
That's it. That's all I can remember, other than his name and what he looked like when he was still in his 60s. He was 82 when he died. 11 grandchildren. 18 great-grandchildren. The picture that accompanied the obituary showed him standing in a field near waist-high tomato plants. Looked like a farm. I don't have any other pictures of him.
After my mom left us (when I was 12 years old) we tried to find her from time to time by asking Grandma and Grandpa. They always said they didn't know her whereabouts but one time we showed up for an unannounced visit and my dad was sure they were hiding her--maybe even hiding her in the house while we were there. They were already divorced by this time but she had disappeared from our lives completely though she had liberal visitation rights. Grandma and Grandpa kept saying they didn't know. The connection just seemed to slowly die after that and we never saw them again. Then she died and Grandma and Grandpa didn't tell us even though they still knew how to reach us back then. Crazy. Crazy coincidence that we repeat the anonymous death experience now with Grandpa all these years later.
Not exactly the rich traditional history of AppleJack's regiment of war veterans (see my pics on Facebook) but this is the best I can do with what I have--a crazy history of a crazy abnormal life that never stops producing these crazy stories. But I tell the truth no matter how crazy it is and this is where I come from; this family of people who don't talk to each other. We die and no one even knows it. We know each other's names but not each other's addresses. This is our truth. It's not sad. Don't write to me and tell me it's sad. Saying it's sad transfers the focus from dealing with what it IS to comparing it to what it isn't. Then all we do is lament what it isn't. Not productive. Leads to shame. Ain't playing the shame game.
Being ashamed of your family makes about as much sense as being ashamed of the weather. Maybe that's the lesson of this experience. The only family value that really matters is the one that values all families, even the crazy ones, like mine. The chances that it can ever work differently are very slim if we don't first start with how it works now. My family matters even if it doesn't work the way everyone else's does, right now or ever. Point taken by me.
So.
With a polite nod I bid you Sayonara, Grandpa. Thank you for your military service and your DNA. Whenever I eat oysters I think of you and remember you out loud, so wherever you are, we'll always have that.
(c) 2012, ACG
Institutional Delight
Luckily I don't work in a cubicle anymore (whoo hoo!) and my hand-me-down L-shaped desk has a low end and a high end. I rearranged the desk so that I could work on the low end and look what happened:
I finally face the windows! This building is 50 years old and built in an institutional style that suited the institutional attitudes with which the public once treated people with developmental disabilities (make everything indestructible and easy to lock down). The only things that keep a small cinderblock room with concrete floors from feeling like a cell are windows. I may not have office furniture that fits but I do have windows. Now, thanks to my cranky neck, I can actually bask in their glow. Even with the bars the exposure to natural light and elements of nature make a huge difference. Now when I raise my tired eyes from paperwork and spreadsheets I will notice that difference first. I may have a dandy brain up there at my disposal but right now I am considering my neck to be an independent genius.
Yes, that canister on the file cabinet that looks like an urn is the infamous container from my story Angela's Ashes. Wherever I work, it goes where I go. I keep tea in it now; tea and laughter.
(c) 2012, ACG
One Sucky Commie
I gotta tell ya, my fellow Americans, that while I am thrilled to death that my blog is now being observed by over 9800 readers, I certainly never dreamed in a million that it would be for being a suspected Commie. Wow--just, wow. Sassy a Commie. Really. What a hoot!
I don't think a quasi-Buddhist can be a Communist, can she? Can a bleeding heart Liberal also be a Communist? Can a registered voter (Independent) who usually votes blue be a Red? I certainly never thought so! As I said in yesterday's blog I never even knew that my work ethic loosely paralleled a former Soviet law; I thought I made it up all my own! In any case, since I was careful to point out that the requirement that this work ethic be completely voluntary was just as important as the ethic itself, I assumed that would disqualify me as a Communist. I also thought my celebration of a Russian tossed out on his can for not being Communist enough moving on to acclaim as an American scholar and national representative to the Library of Congress would also disqualify me as a Communist. Apparently not. Apparently Robot J. McCarthy just plucked the rhetoric of my post out of its context and put me on The List.
A-freakin-mazing. The beautiful irony of this is of course that only in a country as free as the good ole USA can someone produce a web crawler designed to identify, condemn, and borderline libel other freedom-loving Americans. This is part of freedom too, you know. Well rock on with your fear-mongering, @RedScareBot. You are free to do that here with as much patriotism as I am free to memorialize a great Jewish Russian-American poet and citizen. As for my Red work ethic, well, I've been cheerfully paying 22 years worth of American taxes with it that fund both the U.S. Senate and the State Department where McCarthyism was born. So it obviously sucks as a subversive Communist activity.
(c) 2012, ACG
Poetry Friday--Social Parasitism
My long-time readers and friends have heard me say many, many times over the years that I consider work to be a civic responsibility. I believe that everyone who can work should work. Whether that work is through gainful employment, volunteer work, civil service, or other socio-economic contribution, every member of a society should contribute to that society in some way that sustains it. Raising children is not enough. Donating large sums money is not enough. Everyone who can should do some actual work toward the sustenance of our communities and society at large. Until today I had no idea that I shared this conviction with the former Soviet government. Now it makes sense that the unemployed daughter of a very wealthy man once called me a Communist. While I am not now, nor have I ever been a Communist, I do feel strongly that this should be a national ideal. Where I differ from the former Soviets is that I would never consider it a crime! If we don't want to do it then it isn't a soulful investment in anything.
In this case Communism ended up serving us plenty well. The Soviets' loss was our gain; Brodsky became Poet Laureate of the U.S. some 20 years after his exile. For our Poetry Friday feature this week I celebrate his contribution with one of his poems.
Part Of Speech by Joseph Brodsky
...and when "the future" is uttered, swarms of mice
rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece
of ripened memory which is twice
as hole-ridden as real cheese.
After all these years it hardly matters who
or what stands in the corner, hidden by heavy drapes,
and your mind resounds not with a seraphic "doh",
only their rustle. Life, that no one dares
to appraise, like that gift horse's mouth,
bares its teeth in a grin at each
encounter. What gets left of a man amounts
to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech.
As for my high-falutin' ideas about civic responsibility this definitely means that even if I struck it stinkin' rich I would still consider it my responsibility to work. You bet. I would do different work, I am sure, but I would still always work at something. As long as I am accessing our society's public resources (and it is nearly impossible not to do this in some way) I should be contributing back to those resources. Paying the electric bill doesn't count. It's not just about compensation--it's about giving back something of added value to society--like time, creativity, problem-solving, sweat, assistance, expertise, etc. I wouldn't be working for money anymore but I would still be responsible for working for a better world and pulling my weight within it. I believe we all have this responsibility whether we acknowledge it or not.
Poetry counts as work toward that end but only if you share it.
Join in Poetry Friday! Post a link to your poem--here's how it works: http://blog.sassyangelac.com/2012/04/05/poetry-friday-is-a-go.aspx
With the exception of J. Brodsky's poem, (c) 2012, ACG
Fondling The Long Shot
It's been a bleak week here for writing. It's certainly not for lack of inspiration; it's mostly because I've been dealing with a giant pain in the neck. I mean that literally. I've strained my neck and believe it or not it hurts to sit in front of a computer. Ironically sitting at a computer is the most painful position whenever I strain my neck. It's an injury I repeat from time to time. About seven years ago I strained it badly lifting weights at the gym (military press) and ever since then it has been super easy to re-injure, which can happen in my sleep or with too many hours at a desk. Most people assume it's the yoga but I'm always crazy careful with my neck in yoga class. Hard to be careful in your sleep though. It flairs up from time to time but this week was a bad one. Still hurts but I'm tired of not writing.
That doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I submitted one of my stories to a radio show. If it gets chosen to be on the show I will read it aloud for public broadcast with other authors also chosen. I think my chances of being chosen are pretty low because the story I submitted is one I wrote about childhood bullying and that is a darker subject than is typically featured on this particular show. Most of the stories that get chosen are of what I call the "country charm" variety and while mine has an epiphany and a happy ending it doesn't have any country charm. However, I didn't submit this story to blend in; I meant for it to stand out. If by some stroke of luck it does get chosen it won't be one that's easy to forget. That would be more important to me than submitting a cheerful story sure to be included but also sure to be forgotten amid all the azalea blossoms and butterfly anecdotes. Deliberately Sassy.
So how does this qualify as busy? Submissions had to be 500 - 1200 words. It took hours to cut my story down to 1200 words and still tell it well. I think much was lost from the story since I had to cull about half of the sass out of it but if my story was going to be rejected I wanted it to at least be read first. If it didn't meet the submission guidelines it wouldn't even be read. It took some major work to take one of my long wordy tales and compact it down to fit inside a radio show's time slot. I hated doing it too. By the time I finished butchering it down to 1200 words it didn't even feel worth submitting anymore. I sent it in anyway; partly because I didn't want to waste all those hours I spent on it and also because you just never know what's going to appeal to someone else. Last night I got two emails in response. One thanked me for the submission and indicated that they looked forward to reading it. An hour later I got a second email from them that was completely blank. Hard to know what that means.
They hated it so badly they couldn't think of anything nice to say and therefore said nothing? They loved it so much they prematurely hit the Send button before composing a glowing acceptance letter? Just a glitch? Started to tell me to revise it but then decided too much needed to be revised, said the hell with it and botched the aborted reply? Stunned silent with a finger seizure? Who knows? I'll wait. Submissions close on Sunday night. We'll see what happens.
(c) 2012, ACG
Base Layer Pink
These cups ask "With which mind will you drink this tea?" When I first had these tea cups made the emphasis was on the first part of the question--which mind. Then last week I had a string of long, tough, emotionally intense days at work that shifted the emphasis to the last part of the question--this tea. We've seen with which mind you drank that tea but now how 'bout this tea? With which mind will you drink this tea? I was being served very different tea than I was used to drinking--which of course means I was choosing very different tea or bringing a very different tea into my life. How was I gonna drink this one?
At the end of each of these days in which I drank the new tea I didn't just feel tired; I felt raw. I felt chapped. I felt skinned like a knee. Pink instead of blue. I tried to carry on my normal curricular activities (cheerful work) and extracurricular activities (yoga modeling and running) but I did it without my usual verve, prompting concern and inquiries from those that care. What was wrong with me? Was I okay? I seemed down/blue/morose. I was beyond blue, really. I wasn't just down--I was turned inside out--pink. Worn down to a base layer. So when Bella asked for a pink image this week I felt a zing along the Kindred Conduit that connects all creative souls. How did she know?
Nothing was wrong. Things were very, very right. I was being served some strongly challenging tea and I had to figure out how to drink it with the same mind I would drink all the happy harmony teas. It was good work--damn good work--but it was hard. It was a testy tea. Professional grade. It squeezed me and shook me down and demanded a this-hot-minute growth spurt that just left me spent with the effort. I took that tea and got it down and then got quiet and pink. Completely tapped. No need to worry. This is how you grow. Blue may be what you feel when you are sad/lonely/depressed but pink is what I feel when I'm so exhausted from growing that I cry as an act of surrender to the process of emptying the reservoir so that it can be refilled. Pink is the warm tender bottom. Get down to the pink and you've gone all the way.
But then, when that reservoir gets filled up again, it can take (and brew) stronger tea than before and you'll get all your colors back.
(c) 2012, ACG
A Weekend Doodle
Here's a little doodle for your Sunday morning. It was inspired by reading the blog of another writer who has a lovely professional headshot on her home page. She is beautiful in this photo with all the flattering elements in perfect harmony--hair, makeup, lighting, expert composition. She looks glamorous and approachable at the same time; a perfect welcome when you visit for the first time or any time. However, this week she put up a more natural picture of herself on her blog and I was mesmerized by how much more beautiful it was. I don't think she was wearing any makeup at all. It was a candid shot of her leaning over her son's head and turning to smile for a snapshot. Small smile, no time to fix hair; no time to adjust light. I couldn't look away.
Her blog is set up so that the pro headshot rests on the right side of the screen whenever you read her blog. The candid shot went up front and center at the top of her blog post so you got to see both photos side by side. Here she was on the right all prettied up and perfect and here she was on the left all real and natural. I could see wrinkles and the motherhood under her eyes that was washed out in the glam photo. I could see the life in her face and as I stared in wonder at the experience around her eyes I said to myself She knows things! This is a face I can trust. I can believe her. Right between her eyes were those three fine lines that I have between mine and I felt my heart quicken in acknowledgement that these were the marks of a deeper beauty. I really couldn't look away. The strength and ache and simmered wisdom in her face made the companion photo with lipstick and mascara pale in significance even as it sparkled with magic. I felt drunk on her gorgeousness.
Here, this will be easier--see for yourself.
So now when I'm looking around and noticing the beautiful women around me my regard has completely changed. I'm recognizing women who know things now. I'm attracted to the visible evidence of their wisdom the way I used to notice just a pretty face or a great haircut. I see a kindred beauty in the shadows not filled in or covered up by makeup. I believe in wrinkles. The deeper they are the deeper she probably goes. The eyes that stop me cold now are naked eyes. The mouth I trust is the one I can see and that little boys can touch with their fingers. So this doodle is for those beauties. My eyes are now passing over the painted dolls and glamour pusses to find YOU and savor a beauty in which I can believe.
(c) 2012, ACG
Diapers, Monkeys, Baseball Legends
I know my long time readers are blowing the bullshit whistle here and saying Hold on a minute! How is it possible that this chick who never spent 10 consecutive minutes with a grandmother managed to spend enough time with a great-grandmother to fall in love with a sport? Well it was possible because every time my mother got pregnant we had to move out of state. Yep. It's true. Not making it up--ask my siblings. It went something like this:
Parents met in Kentucky (mom's home) and conceived me.
Moved to Missouri (dad's home).
I was born.
Moved back to Kentucky and conceived my sister.
Moved back to Missouri.
She was born.
Moved back to Kentucky and conceived my other sister.
Moved back to Missouri.
She was born.
Moved back to Kentucky and conceived my brother.
Moved back to Missouri.
He was born.
Moved back to Kentucky for the last time and never went back; became estranged from the Missouri relatives for the rest of our existence.
But while we were in Missouri (off and on over six years) I spent time with my great-grandmother (dad's grandma). I called her Nan Nan. I am the only one of the four of us that can remember her because each time there was a new baby in the house I got to go stay with Nan Nan. I think I was seven years old when we left for good but my memories of her are astonishingly clear. She was a real weirdo but in the coolest way. She had no teeth (and no dentures) and wore diapers (before they made adult diapers) but she never seemed like an old lady to me. She also never treated me like a little girl; she talked to me as if I was an interesting person so that made her the most interesting person to me.
Nan Nan never made me shut up and go to sleep; she laid beside me in the dark and talked to me until I fell asleep. If I woke up early in the morning we would lay together and talk while waiting for the sun to come up. We made up stories about the shadows on the wall or ceiling. She left a strong imprint on my memory as someone who took me seriously as an important person when everyone else dismissed me as a little kid. I confided in her that I planned to grow up "too fast." She didn't try to talk me out of it. She must have known that was my fate anyway.
Nan Nan loved two things--soap operas and baseball. Her soaps were a standing appointment and she didn't suffer interruptions that couldn't wait for a commercial. She watched them all, every afternoon, a solid three hour block and then she switched over to baseball. You could interrupt her all you wanted during baseball. You could talk and ask questions during baseball. She would get up and make you a sandwich during baseball. Her favorite part was the butt slapping. She always giggled and pointed it out to me when the base coaches slapped the base runners on the butt. When pitchers got relieved they got a slap on the butt too; she thought this was so charming. She also taught me the basics of the game while we were looking at butts.
But the best part of watching baseball with Nan Nan was that she had no favorite team(s) and never took a side. If I asked her if she wanted the guys in the red hats to win or the guys in the blue hats to win, she never cared which won. She just loved the game. She was the only person I ever knew who loved baseball that much but watched it completely objectively--a fan of the sport but never of an individual team, not even for one game and not even during the World Series. After the game was over she would cheer "Yeay! The Yankees won!" The next time she would cheer "Yeay! The Red Sox won!" She was captivated by the action but whoever won was fine with her; she didn't really care. Then we moved away and I didn't get to watch baseball with her anymore. I only saw her once after we left. I was twelve. She came to Kentucky for a short visit and I never left her side. Then she went home and died. We didn't go to her funeral. I saw a picture of her lying in her casket but she looked like a stranger to me.
The first significant man in any girl's life is usually her father. It was certainly the case with me, the firstborn. After that there were three significant other men but my sports education beyond Nan Nan was overtaken first by my father. Dad was a football man. The only time I remember watching baseball with Dad was when the Kansas City Royals were playing in the World Series. The rest of the time it was all football all the time. When football wasn't on we watched a little college basketball but I grew up with football on the brain and in the blood. He loved it. I loved it. I still love it and I enjoyed it so much with Dad that I forgot to miss baseball. I stepped into adulthood a full-fledged football fan for life. Then came the significant others.
You know their names: The Worm, The Toad, and The Pimple. (The reasons that these are not derogatory monikers are explained in The Glossary.) The Worm didn't like any sports at all--didn't watch any, didn't follow any, didn't give a rip. He practiced martial arts as a formal disciple, not a sport, and wasn't interested in the sporting aspect. He had a general disdain for most sports because he considered intellectual pursuits more worthwhile. I took up martial arts by default for several years too and then gave it up when I gave him up.
The Toad had a strange habit of changing his favorite sport every time he changed peer groups. As a military man his circle of friends changed constantly and he always changed accordingly to fit in with the new crew. If his friends liked football then he liked football. When he made NBA friends he got into the NBA. When he made hockey friends he suddenly loved hockey. When ultimate fighting was the hot ticket among his buds he was obsessed with ultimate fighting. When his coworkers started running then he started running. When NASCAR friends arrived on the scene he threw himself into NASCAR. I would soooo love to say that I broke up with him because he got into NASCAR but I can't. That happened to be a fortunate coincidence.
The one sport The Toad never embraced was baseball. He never made any baseball friends so there was never a reason. The only cohesive thing about his being a temporary fan of all of these different sports is that the opposing players were always called asswipes even if they were superior athletes. Anyone not playing for the team he liked was an asswipe, even the winners. Score a touchdown--asswipe. Beat down the other fighter--asswipe. Win the race--asswipe. I did my best to weather the jumps from sport to sport to sport (with the exception of NASCAR) because I could always return to football on a Sunday afternoon no matter what the flavor of the month happened to be. In the meantime I forgot to miss baseball.
The Pimple had open contempt for all sports but one--college football. Every other sport was a waste of humanity as far as he was concerned. Professional football was tolerable but still considered a bad version of the real thing with overpaid thugs. He ridiculed all athletes that weren't football players because he believed that men only turned to other sports when they couldn't cut it as football players. All other sports were a bad joke and that went double for women's sports and triple for European soccer. The Olympic Games? Forget about it. We were all sheep being suckered into paying attention to the greatest waste of global resources ever invented.
The Pimple despised baseball most among American sports and claimed that it would soon die out because no one with a reasonable amount of brain matter cared about baseball anymore. I clearly remember a protracted argument in which many beloved American youth sports were reviled because they always funneled money away from football. He thought Title IX was an attack on football by women who suffered from penis envy. You can imagine how protracted that argument was!
The most significant thing about The Pimple's hatred of all sports other than football was that football was the sport that always drove him to violence. Football made him throw furniture. Football made him punch walls. Football made him stomp things. Football made him destroy every remote control to every television unlucky enough to be the one broadcasting a fumble or interception. Football made him scream curses. Football made him threaten other men. Football made him cut off other drivers in traffic and brandish soda bottles he meant to throw at their cars. Football made him get into a shoving match with an opposing team's fan on the way out of a stadium that resulted in me getting pushed down the bleacher stairs. Once he even wrung his hands in such fury that his watch flew off his wrist and smashed into the wall behind the sofa. If this his how his favorite sport caused him to behave you can bet there was no point in trying to watch any sports he hated. So by all means there was no baseball!
Then I married AppleJack. AppleJack loves football too but he was raised on baseball. He also likes soccer, hockey, running, and is generally accepting of most sports (including European soccer!) but baseball is the biggie. We love watching the Olympics. We even developed a mild interest in curling during the winter games just because it was such a hoot. Last weekend we watched a lacrosse match. I get to watch all the football I want during football season but during baseball season I've been cheerfully watching along with AppleJack. At first I joked that he was slowly turning me into a baseball fan because I completely forgot that I used to be one. We usually watch his favorite pro team when we aren't watching the University of Arkansas baseball team so it wasn't until the day I sat beside him watching a non-partisan game that I remembered.
AppleJack is a lifelong Yankees fan but on this particular day we were watching Arizona at Colorado. Neither of us have any interest in either of those teams but the game was getting good as we waited for dinner to come out of the oven. I was musing that I was just as interested in this bottom-of-the-eighth nailbiter as I would be if we actually cared who won and then--PING!--I remembered Nan Nan. I remembered that I wasn't becoming a baseball fan; I had always been a baseball fan--I just forgot for about 30 years. All it took to remind me was a game in which I had no favoritism and I was seven years old again sitting on a cushion beside Nan Nan's chair. I was coming home to baseball all this time when I thought I was just enjoying the Yankee games with a man who can take a loss without breaking things or declaring the winner an asswipe. The memory of Nan Nan and our baseball afternoons had gotten buried under all the dating crapola until AppleJack's ambient light caught the edge of it and illuminated it like a lost treasure in the attic. He always does that. It's his quiet way of changing my life.
So tonight AppleJack is taking me out to the ballgame. This was planned before my little epiphany but the timing is nothing short of butt slapping funny. Our city's minor league team is playing at home and we are going with a gaggle of our friends because it happens to be Monkey Dog night. I know this is hard to believe. I didn't believe it myself until AppleJack showed me a video on YouTube. There is a traveling sideshow act featured at baseball games all across the country in which monkey cowboys ride border collies and herd goats during the seventh inning stretch. No joke. Monkeys ride saddled up dogs--in little chaps and wearing little cowboy hats--while the dogs herd a handful of goats around the outfield. Real monkeys. Real goats. Real famous act that we just had to see with our own eyes.
You can google them if you don't believe it--their professional name is The Ghostriders. I think they are ghost monkeys. On video it is hideous and awesome at the same time. I expect it to be hideous and awesome in person as well. My friends and I chose our seats in the stadium based on placement to the monkeys as opposed to a good view of the game. I suspect my great-grandmother would pee her diaper laughing at them.
I hope wherever Nan Nan is tonight she is not resting in peace. I hope she's whooping it up somewhere with sizzling ovaries, a viable bladder, and all new teeth. When I told Dad I was writing about my baseball memories with Nan Nan he revealed that while she didn't have a favorite team she did have a favorite player. She was apparently all hot under the housedress for a pitcher named Catfish Hunter. This guy:
Yep. A Yankee. I say go ahead Nan Nan, you slap that ass!
(c) 2012, ACG
Poetry Friday--Wisdom Where You Are
Welcome back to Poetry Friday; it's been quiet around here among the poets. This week I've been watching film noir, stimulating muscle repair, and arguing mathematical ethics with my peers. I've been inspired by a woman wearing a stone around her neck and by my own view of chains around my breasts. Sometimes the artistic process is a fondue pot. Have a dunk.
If you are still enough you can feel your heart beating
without putting a hand to your chest.
Quiet. Rest.
Breathe.
There it is.
This is also how you can feel the motion of your breath
without watching your chest rise and fall.
Whole body.
Aware.
There it is.
You can be silent and still and breathe and notice and feel
without changing any of your religion.
Moment. Another.
Present.
Here you are.
You can know and learn and discover mysteries and answers
without asking anyone a single good question.
Observe. Listen.
Wisdom.
Where you are.
(c) 2012, ACG
Join in Poetry Friday! Post a link to your poem--here's how it works: http://blog.sassyangelac.com/2012/04/05/poetry-friday-is-a-go.aspx
Holding Hands In The Valley Of The Shadow
This my latest art acquisition made from more recycled parts--an old typewriter key and two silver spoon handles. You may remember the MarRel key from previous blog posts in which I discovered typewriter jewelry and chose the misfit orphan keys no one else would love. Typical Sassy. I so jive with the metaphor of releasing our margins that half the thrill of wearing it is waiting for someone to ask me what it means!
It was especially relevant this week when I was faced with the predicament of supporting someone expecting a family death and finding a series of close calls to be some kind of divine torture. You know how it goes, I'm sure. When someone is close to death there are sometimes a few episodes of "almost dying" before the big day of finality comes. Everyone scrambles and waits and worries and cries and then like some kind of backhanded miracle the loved one pulls through only to go through it again and even again. Sooner or later it becomes clear that the loved one will definitely die but the persistent boomeranging between life and death leaves the survivors in a constant emotional whiplash until it's all over.
In an effort to alleviate the bitterness growing in my friend after yet another close call I offered a margin release. My friend willingly acknowledged acceptance that her family member was going to die but she couldn't understand why "God didn't just go ahead and take her. It's so cruel!" Trying to respect my friend's faith, I responded:
Maybe you are being given extra time so that you can adjust from clutching her so tightly to letting her go. Maybe this time isn't for her; maybe it's for you--to help you get ready to face letting her go.
Her head snapped up and she stared at me wide-eyed for a moment. "You mean, like practice?" I nodded, hoping like hell I wasn't offending her, and reasoned that sometimes it takes several tries for us to ease our grip on something we fear even after we have been assured that the thing we fear will definitely happen. She waited, so I continued:
Every time she gets close to dying, what do you do? You hold on tight and pray hard and keep all your fear and dread and anxiety held closely to your heart trying to make it not happen. Maybe you're being given extra chances to learn to set her free and love her just as much as she leaves.
She began weeping. "So she can have peace?"
I answered:
So that you can have peace.
Her margin released.
The bracelet arrived later that night. In an interesting twist of irony it came with an unusual handmade clasp that I cannot operate with one hand. If I want to put wear this bracelet someone else has to help me. No one heals alone, remember? Apparently we don't release our margins alone either. My friend and I are polar opposites when it comes to religion yet we each helped the other release via one of life's most religious experiences--death. I helped her release her fear of release and she helped me release my thinking that I had nothing to offer someone who believes what she believes. The fact that the bracelet requires a second set of hands to be wearable makes it a poignant double metaphor.
I am fondling it.
(c) 2012, ACG
Whizzy Motion of Terror
When I was a kid I was terrified of all fans. I hated them. I couldn't sleep in any room that had a working fan because I was convinced that the fan blades would come loose from the crank as they spun and then slice me to ribbons like a giant food processor. It didn't matter how large or small the fan was; they were all weapons in disguise as far as I was concerned. I think it all started because I saw my brother stick his finger into a working fan and the finger was nearly severed. Fan blades were metal back then. Everything was metal back then. The world had not yet turned plastic. Even our toys were metal. What wasn't metal was wooden or glass. I call the plastic evolution of everything The Cheapening of America and I think mine must be the last generation that remembers what life was like before it all became cheap and plastic and disposable.
I've written before that we were very poor when I was a kid but the difference between being poor then and being poor now was that there wasn't an inexhaustible supply of plastic junk then. Back then being poor meant you either had very little or had nothing. These days being poor means you have a bunch of junk. Poor families back then owned just a few furnishings and household items. These items might be shabby and worn and very old but they were usually nice things when they were new--quality items that had just gotten old or been acquired secondhand. You didn't throw things out just because they got old and shabby because there wasn't a cheap alternative. You tried to make things last as long as possible. All purchases were investments.
Poor homes used to be just as tidy as other homes even if they were sparse and in disrepair. Then everything became plastic and readily available at a big box discount store so poor homes became filled with heaps of cheap plastic junk. There is no need to make anything last anymore because it is so easily and cheaply replaced. Homes can be filled to the brim with lots of the stuff we never had because now it is all completely accessible to the poor in plastic form. Break something? No big deal, just run out to the giant store of plastic everything and get another one for next to nothing. Tired of something? It comes in another color of plastic or a different style for very little expense at your nearest All Mart or squalor-dollar store. Poor folks can now spend what little money they have on a bunch of crap that won't mean anything to them. Is it any wonder that it all ends up littered across the front lawn? Of course not; it was trash before they bought it.
It also used to be that poor people only bought what they needed; they didn't waste money on stuff they didn't need. Now poor people can afford acres of stuff they don't need because that stuff is so cheap and disposable. John Q. Underprivileged can go shopping and be enticed into buying scads of affordable stuff he doesn't need so that he can sit around his poor home and still feel prosperous. Well-made secondhand items now cost more in antique stores than the cheap plastic versions cost at discount stores where poor people also buy their food so there is no incentive not to buy the new American way. No one has to go without anything anymore because we can all now afford everything. I find it economically tragic because Americans used to take pride in what we crafted. We built things to last and built them to be inherited by our children. We bought things with the future in mind. Now we build things to be thrown away when they go out of style and buy things not worth passing on to charity.
We didn't have air conditioning so we survived with fans during the summer. Houses weren't built with ceiling fans back then--especially not the rental houses we could afford so window fans and floor or table fans were standard issue. The fan that cut my brother was a sea green box fan that was moved from room to room; living room during the day, bedroom while we slept. Every part of it was metal except for the on/off switch and the cord. Because it was old and falling apart like everything else we owned the metal grate that covered the fan blades had rusted off a long time ago and was never replaced. The fan blades were fully exposed but this was the most powerful fan we had so we kept using it. When we were very hot we took turns sitting directly in front of it to cool off. My brother was just a tyke and curious about such things so he tried to touch the whirring fan as it cooled the air near him. Slice. Scream. Blood. Scramble for rescue. My phobia was born.
After that I never wanted to sleep in a room with a fan. Even as a rational adult I avoided it even when it meant being uncomfortable. I had awful visions of the fan apparatus tearing apart and the spinning fan blade flying around the room to scissor anything (me) in its path like a wheel of death. In hindsight this was not an irrational fear in theory because we routinely used everything until it fell apart. It was common enough for this or that to finally break because we used it until it died so it was only a logical assumption that all fans would break too. I didn't want to be around when they did.
Ceiling fans were even more terrifying than standing fans because they had no cover and hung directly over your sleeping body, meaning instant death and dismemberment when they attacked from above. You would get bludgeoned AND sliced! I was always happy when my various rental apartments in adulthood featured central air conditioning so I didn't have to contend with the ceiling fan issue. But the first time I dated someone who absolutely refused to sleep in a bedroom without a fan blowing on him I came to a crossroads. Since I didn't own a fan he wouldn't sleep over. Sorry, but that's the way it is! Then he showed up with a fan--bought me one special so that he could sleep over. Damn. What now? We broke up. After than I was to discover that there are lots of Hims out there that prefer a fan while sleeping and I was not inclined to break up with them all over a childhood phobia so I had to learn to get over it.
These days the use of ceiling fans at The Jesus Crack House is not a concession I make for marital harmony. We use them to keep energy costs down. It uses less energy to operate the ceiling fans and keep the thermostat set a bit higher than it does to let the air conditioner blast away from May to October in the Arkansas heat. I admit I still don't like it and I admit it is still due to my old childish fear but sweating through my sheets in August is not a better alternative.
The image above is the ceiling fan I sleep under every night. I hate it less because of my phobia and more because I don't like the fan's traditional style. It is white and brass and delicately ornate (this is more visible when the fan is still). It came with the house. It's not Sassy. The problem is that it is old and well-made and built to last. It is not a cheap plastic disposable ceiling fan; it's an investment that some older woman with different taste made for her master boudoir and even though I don't like it I can't call it junk. Every bedroom has an expensive ceiling fan in it but they all have distinctly different styles (none of them are Sassy.) This means that the former lady of the house gave deliberate consideration to each investment. As the child of a generation that understands this I appreciate these hallmarks of her consideration. I don't like any of them but none of them have come down. I have considered taking at least this one down and faux finishing it to suit me better--maybe change the globes, etc.--but I really don't think about it until I lay down to sleep at night so it keeps dropping in household priority.
Last night as I contemplated Bella's request to see an image of motion I took advantage of the low light and the fun silvery camera lens app I recently acquired and captured my old worst fear up there cranking away in the ceiling. That's my old phobia whizzing by up there in the shadow and blur. That's a whirring blurring old piece of quality craftsmanship too--not the kind you can easily replace at All Mart. Every single night I think exactly the same two thoughts I thought the night before: Look at me now leaving the fan on! and It's a classic and it still works great; maybe I'll learn to like it. Up there in the mechanical breeze my irrational fear and my rational practicality hold hands and fly in formation above my dreaming mind like the oddest of bedfellows not actually in the bed. I smile a conflicted smile each night before I turn off the light because that vintage fan and my vintage phobia are keeping such interesting company and as yet I can't throw either one of them away.
(c) 2012, ACG
Swordfish Tea
The Magic Teacup has sent me a swordfish today. I had to do some research since what little I know of swordfish is visual recognition and that they taste superb. Turns out they are tragically gifted creatures. Swordfish don't school; they swim alone. As if being born with built-in swords wasn't cool enough they have a rare organ next to their eyes that keeps their eyes and brains warm. Helps 'em see better and think better in cold seas. Only 22 out of the over 25,000 species of fish have heater organs. They only live to be 9 years old before something else eats them (including humans), so even though they have special warm brains they all die young.
Following up from the weekend, my race in honor of childless women was pretty much a laugh out loud failure. The race went fine but I heard so many "Happy Mother's Day!" wishes from the general population than it wasn't even worth my time to correct anyone. Apparently if you are female, alive, and of a certain age it is automatically assumed that you have procreated. No one else visually identifiable as female would be alive or allowed out in public, right? You may be alive without a uterus but you may not be alive with a wasted uterus. Baffles me. Boobs equal babies in our brains, I guess. I only bothered with one conversation about it this morning:
Poor Random Questioner: Did you have a great Mother's Day with your kids?
Sassy: I don't have kids. (I've told her this before.)
PRQ: Oh, then did you have a great Mother's Day with your mom?
Sassy: She's dead. (I've told her this before too.)
PRQ: Husband's mom? (Common knowledge she died 8 months ago.)
Sassy: Also dead. We went to the cemetery. Hey, did you know today is World Naked Gardening Day? (That's true.) It is also Robert Zemeckis's birthday. He directed Forrest Gump. Ironically, it is also the birthday of a Canadian hockey player named Gump Worsley. (Also true.) So how are you celebrating today? Planting or pucking?
PRQ: I'll talk to you later; I'm not feeling very well this morning.
She was probably feeling my sarcasm burn holes in the ozone layer. I really wasn't trying to be a bitch (not completely); I was trying to illustrate a point. If a middle-aged woman must be assumed a mother on Mother's Day then why isn't an average clothed human being assumed a naked gardener on World Naked Gardening Day? The Gump reference was where it all went to hell; that thought just circled around in the weeds three times and then clumsily laid down somewhere else.
Anyway, all of that is over for another year; moving on. Do all men get the same treatment on Father's Day? Haha, no I mean it this time; moving on.
Swordfish became so quickly overfished during the '90s that they were at one point a threatened species. Too many of them (specifically female) were being harvested before they were big enough to reproduce. Thanks to rigorous conservation efforts, including chefs' and restaurants' refusals to serve it for several years, this is no longer the case and swordfish are considered to have successfully rebounded in numbers in the North Atlantic. Swordfish are not kosher. Swordfish will cannabalize their young under dire conditions though they are not aggressive to humans unless they are being harpooned by humans.
What a swordfish could have been doing in my tea is anyone's guess.
(c) 2012, ACG
Racing For The Unproductive
Well here it is, my 19th half marathon. I realized yesterday that when I hit 20 sometime in the next few months I will have completed 20 half marathons in less than 20 years. Kinda cool when you say it like that. Hell, it's kinda cool anyway! This is my favorite distance. Long enough to demand that you take it seriously but short enough that you aren't hobbled for a month afterward. No--in case you are wondering--running a half marathon does not mean that running a full marathon is easy even if this distance comes easily to you. The difference between 13 miles and 26 miles is not simply 13 miles. The last six of the full marathon is a world apart from the first 20 and not even the best training prepares you for that world. But that will come this fall; right now I can just enjoy the 13 and the awesomeness of my friend Jesse.
I like it that it takes place on Mother's Day because I appreciate having something else to think about on Mother's Day. If you are motherless on Mother's Day the world cries with you. If you are childless by biological circumstance on Mother's Day the world cries with you. If you are temporarily childless on Mother's Day the world eagerly waits with you. If marriage has given you legal stepchildren on Mother's Day the world tolerantly grants you a pass. If you are childless by choice on Mother's Day the world has no use for you.
In my 20s the response to being childless was Oh there is still plenty of time.
In my 30s the response was You'll change your mind; you'll see. Just don't wait too long.
Now that I'm 40 the response is Oh what happened? You couldn't have any?
At no time in my life has my choice not to have children ever been acceptable. As you can see it was always dismissed; first as immature, then as amusingly hesitant, and finally as the assumed result of dysfunction. At no time was it ever just okay for that to be my choice. There is always a comeback that elevates the choice to be a mother as superior and correct and the choice not to be one as inferior and defective. You know that heifer over on the Discovery Channel that has given birth to 22 children? Even she's more acceptable than me from the mommy perspective of what is healthy and natural. Having too many babies is still better than having no babies at all.
After 20 years of defending my choice to mothers I have to say that the women who were dismissive or even openly critical and disapproving were preferable to the women who tried to change my mind by layering on the knowledge of all that I was missing and throwing away. The bitchy mommies said their pieces, slapped me with some labels and/or diagnoses and left me alone to gossip among themselves. The pitying mommies were much worse--from them I got baby evangelism campaigns that resulted in the shameful acknowledgement that if I didn't want all these precious joyful maternal things then there was something wrong with me. The sucker punch of pity was of course that a baby would fix what was wrong with me if I would just ante up an ovary and do it--but alas, now I'll just never know (sob!). Ugh. Yeah, yeah I know I'll never know what it feels like and now it's likely too late yada yada yada. Making peace with a choice means not obsessing over the consequences, you know.
So as Mother's Day passes its shadow over my unproductive uterus for the 40th time I dedicate this half marathon to all the other Childless By Choice sisters out there also carrying the burden of not being a mother in a mother's world. Here's to you, ladies--to us--and to the one minority group that will never, ever achieve social equality. It's harder to swim against the current, so tomorrow I run for those of us who made the choice no one else can understand. Hip! Hip!
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling Flawlessness
Here's a new doodle for the middle of your week. I did two versions this time so that I could share them in a variety of mediums--one with the television in the background and one without a television but a tad more texture.
Yep, we can add flawless to list of my social scandals. So should you. There is nothing wrong with your body either. When you hide your realities you teach your body shame according to a standard that someone else established. Aren't you too smart to keep paying money for a standard that airbrushes kneecaps? Kneecaps--I saw this with my own eyes; we are now supposed to hate our joints too? Enough already. The defense of this kneecap alteration was that it was in keeping with industry standards. Holy shit; we are funding an entire industry that can't tolerate kneecaps? We willingly adopt this standard of "beauty" and then hate ourselves for never living up to it and even pay money to keep this standard a thriving constant oppression. This is emotionally insane. An industry like that is not designed to make you beautiful; it's designed to brainwash you into continuing to pay. Keep your money and let your body live within its own truth.
That's right, bucko. I ain't hiding diddly anymore and I refuse to call them flaws anymore. These are my realities. You will face them. I will not be ashamed.
(c) 2012, ACG
Big World in May
The self-portrait project continues into May with a new theme--Big World, Tiny You. The idea this month is to get ourselves into a bigger frame from a distance.
Week One: Climbing the hill to the one lane lane with canopied trees.
Week Two: Making myself small in a very big room.
Week Three: Running down the one lane lane with the canopied trees.
Week Four: Pale and small by the big yellow wall.
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling Where We Meet
Bella's request for an image of a meeting place was especially tough for me this week.
I don't have any standing appointments with friends or family. We don't really have a regular meeting place. Me and AppleJack out on on the back deck? The sofa? Just the two of us at the kitchen table? Although we do have a weekly routine it doesn't include the typical family unit and my friends and I mostly meet to sweat together. I was fairly stumped on this one. The dirty floor in the gym where we roll out our yoga mats just isn't an inspiring image.
The family doesn't do reunions or Sunday dinners or birthday parties or any of that. We just aren't normal in that respect. We make plans on the fly or week to week at best. If I meet my friends for something it is usually a spontaneous event or a randomly planned activity--nothing usually twice in the same place. Our races are spread out all across the state so even when we do meet with regularity we are always meeting in a different city each time. So what to do?
I had to interpret Bella's last line a little more loosely. The one place we always meet whenever we get together is the start line. Sometimes we take road trips out of state to meet there and sometimes we come together from all corners of the state to meet there but wherever the starting line may be drawn, that's the one place we all show up together at the same time. We may cross the finish line individually but we all start together no matter the locale.
So here is the place we meet. On this particular day it happened to be in Hot Springs. Next weekend it will be in Little Rock. The next time it might be Batesville or Dallas or New Orleans but wherever that line is drawn we all stand on it together. You might think that this isn't a place for quiet celebrations or gathering with kindreds and loved ones as Bella suggested but after you've been doing it with the same group of people as long as I have it absolutely is. They are my kindreds and many of them are loved ones. As we log all those miles together we share much more than just the distance; we share our lives the same as others do in coffee shops and book clubs and family picnics. I don't stand with them anymore to compete against them; I gather together to compete with them. Christopher McDougall, author of Born To Run, said it this way:
“The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other,... but to be with each other.”
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling The Catholic Method
Another sassy week draws to a quiet close. Nothing particularly adventurous is planned for this weekend; a ten mile run, some bamboo maintenance, a trip to the library, things like that. That doesn't mean that there won't be adventure, of course. There may be plenty of merriment with the supermoon cresting and the Run For The Cheese family tradition taking place tomorrow. There will be fish tacos and margaritas at The Jesus Crack House as well. At the moment there seems to be a curious influx of door-to-door evangelists canvassing my neighborhood. Church vans drive up to the central stop sign and at least fourteen couples disembark and spread out on foot with Bibles and pamphlets. Then later the van comes back to collect them. Every sect but the Catholics comes calling. The Catholics just ring their big-ass bell three times a day every day. I love those Catholics.
When we first moved to the neighborhood the bell was silent. Then one day the bell just started ringing with no explanation and hasn't stopped since. Let me point out that this bell is really close; as in right across the street--a single lane street! Let me also point out that this bell is really loud; as in makes the dog sproing a foot into the air. At first we cursed it because it startled us or woke us, especially on the weekends. We couldn't understand why the bell rang; it didn't seem to be a call to chapel because it never rang immediately before or after services. Every day it rang even when there were no services! What the hell? Why was it necessary to wake us up early on Saturday morning? Was that supposed to make us want to attend mass 12 hours later? It rang when there was no school. It rang on holidays. A few times it even malfunctioned (we assumed) and started ringing nonstop at 11 pm and 4 am. Then it would ring for ten minutes straight at random. We still don't understand what was going on. Maybe they were calibrating it or whatever you do with big-ass bells.
But our irritation was short-lived. We got used to the bell just like we got used to the noise from the interstate, the neighbors' new puppy, and half the county's birds roosting in our bamboo. It doesn't bother us at all now, not even when we are sitting beneath its shadow relaxing by the fountain and get blasted by surprise. DOooooNG! DOoooooNG! DOoooooNG! Then it speeds up--DONGDONGDONGDONGDONGDONGDONG, etc! Now when we hear it three times a day it marks the events of our day and marks time: 7 am, noon, 6 pm. When daylight savings time changes, 6 am, 11 am, 5 pm. We've gotten so used to it that sometimes we nearly sleep through it. The dog just turns his head and looks, then goes back to sleep.
I rather like the bell now. It has become one of the sounds of home. I miss it when we are away. The blessed Catholics can ring away. They don't come knocking on my door or approach me on the street or stop to yell at me through the fence when I'm in the backyard. No personal questions, no confrontations, and no unwanted propaganda about where I will spend eternity forced upon me. The last one actually read "Are you good enough to go to Heaven?" No joke. What a shitty opener! Victory Baptists. Not the Catholics though; they just ring their bell. We know they are there. We know they are open. We know where to go if/when we are interested. By comparison the Catholic method is downright classy. I admire their use of the very unsubtle bell which very subtly insinuated itself into my daily awareness without calling into question my heavenly worthiness. Nice job. Not pushy. I respect that.
Think about it. I'm not a follower of Christ yet I named my home (in part) after the Catholic folks' aerial Jesus next door and I cheerfully rise and retire at the strike of their bell. While it may not be a soul saved those are results the Victory Baptists are never going get with their invasive visits and shame tactics. For all the crap they take from Protestants at least the Catholics managed to penetrate my forcefield of auto-rejection and earn an honorable mention. That ain't bad. Don't go mistaking this for an endorsement, mind you, but I must admit they worked some magic with that big-ass bell and I do enjoy a good magic trick.
(c) 2012, ACG
Poetry Friday--By Tilth and Grange
Well then there was that anniversary weekend in the Alfred Lord Tennyson Suite at the little cottage in the mountains. Remember? All those Victorian roses? The outdoor shower built into the side of the cliff? The green toilet that got stopped up? You remember. I picked up a book of Tennyson's poems while I was waiting for breakfast that morning and felt my hair grow a full inch in delight over the ballet of his language. I tell you, I fairly swooned. It didn't make me run out and embrace the whole of classical poetry but it did bowl me over just enough to download some more Tennyson to my phone's Kindle app. Months later I finally got around to reading some of that massive download and immediately had to go trim all my fingernails and toenails after the second shock of delight to my system.
Let me show you why this Language Art lights me up so much. I'll set the stage for you and then share with you just a few lines that made me break out into a sweat last Saturday morning while I waited for the coffee to brew. Ask AppleJack--I squealed. I copied some of it down longhand. I typed some of it out and sent it via Facebook to my cousin in another state. I can't keep silent about it; it's just too beautiful and well...sassy!
Okay, there's a prince. He is betrothed to a princess in another country through an arranged marriage. The fathers (kings of these respective countries) made a contract for the marriage while the kiddos were still children (8 years old). The prince knows he is betrothed to this princess and wears a locket with her picture and a lock of her hair within it. Other than that he has had no contact with her. When they each reach the age of marriage and it is time for the princess to leave her kingdom the prince and his father send ambassadors to fetch her with a buttload of gifts--furs, jewels, etc. The ambassadors came back without her. They brought back an elaborate tapestry that the princess had woven as sort of a consolation gift and a letter from the king. He was very sorry. The princess would not marry.
The prince's father flies into a rage and calls an emergency meeting of his war council. He destroys the tapestry sent by the princess and throws a huge temper tantrum, vowing to send armies (100,000 men!) to avenge this broken contract and insult. As the king is gathering his captains the prince speaks up and asks his father to let him journey to the kingdom and speak to his bride face to face before they do anything rash like start a war. The prince's buddies are there and agree to accompany the prince. One guy has a sister in the other king's court who can probably provide some insight into the situation if he can go visit and press her for information. So the three of them--the prince and his two buddies--ask the king let them go on an intelligence gathering mission.
The king agrees to let the prince's buddies go but forbids the prince to accompany them. He flat refuses. So the prince goes for a walk in the woods to contemplate the situation. He takes out his locket and looks at his bride's picture and wonders why she has broken their agreement. He studies her face. Then this:
A wind arose and rushed upon the South,
And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
Of the wild woods together; and a Voice
Went with it, 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win."
Oh! OH! Oooohhhh...yeah. This is why I love poetry. That tingle of delight feels like fresh lemon juice on a soul weary of banal modern language and overworked slang. I can't listen anymore to every single thing described as amazing, awesome, or unbelievable. Even worse is describing them as like amazing, like awesome, or like unbelievable. All of my favorite bloggers are turning trendy and using the word Fuck in every paragraph these days while there is language like this going unnoticed and unappreciated! Read it out loud. Read it out loud again! It's almost painfully beautiful to me. But wait! There's more!
So the prince listens to the voice of the wild woods and decides he is going to disobey his father and travel with his buddies to the neighboring kingdom. They will sneak out of the castle late that night. But how does Tennyson have them sneaking? Oh! OH! This is how they sneak out:
...I stole from the court
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived,
Cat-footed through the town and half in dread
To hear my father's clamour at our backs
With Ho! from some bay-window shake the night;
But all was quiet from the bastioned walls
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropt,
And flying reached the frontier, then we crost
To a livelier land; and so by tilth and grange,
And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness,
We gained the mother city thick with towers,
And in the imperial palace found the king.
Oh my readers! I snuck out of my father's house at night many, many times as a teenager. Oh yes I know the dread of hoping you won't hear Ho! behind you as you clear the edge of the neighborhood. I have no idea what tilth and grange might be but I can truly imagine the blowing bosks of wilderness. This language reaches me deep inside where classical poetry just doesn't go--or didn't until now. This is brilliant to me; gorgeous and sexy. I quivered and wiggled on the sofa next to AppleJack as I read these lines on my phone's illuminated screen and then had to read them aloud to savor them and fill the air with their music.
So the prince and his buddies find the king, who wines them and dines them for three days. He's a withered old man but Tennyson doesn't just say withered, he says:
His name was Gama; cracked and small his voice,
But bland the smile that like a a wrinkling wind
On glassy water drove his cheek in lines;
A little dry old man, without a star,
Not like a king...
So on the fourth day of the king's hospitality the prince finally asks him why his daughter won't marry. The old king is regretful and tells the prince that he wishes with all his heart that the recent turn of events were not spoiling all their plans. He wants the prince to have his bride but tells a tale of woe. Some widows (Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche) had recently visited the palace during a festival and filled the head of the princess with ideas of equality and higher thinking. They sermonized on knowledge versus antiquated traditions. For days and days the widows counseled the princess until she was thoroughly depressed. She took to writing as an outlet and wrote awful odes of losing her childhood to become a woman and as such a woman becomes a slave.
The princess becomes so depressed that she begs her father to let her take a little vacation to a cottage at the edge of their kingdom. Her father allows her to go out of compassion for his suffering daughter not knowing that once she is away she will create a sort of college for unmarried women and banish men from the premises. These women form a sort of commune for themselves to study and live and no men are allowed, not even the princess's brothers who adore her. The princess remains there when the call to marry comes and of course, politely refuses. The king delivers this information to the prince in hopelessness, telling the prince that his chances of reclaiming his bride at this point are very remote. The king offers to write to her and plead the prince's case but as Tennyson puts it:
And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance
Almost at naked nothing.
This new challenge only spurs on the prince, who takes the king's letters (along with his blessing to travel with protection in this foreign kingdom) and his buddies with him to find his bride. It gets very exciting after this and oh so poetic but if you want to find out what happens you will need more than the space of this blog to read it! The title is The Princess and I was able to download it for free, which is like unbelievable but completely true. (That was a joke.) Obviously this discovery opened my eyes to beauty I did not know was hiding in the annals of classical poetry. I hope you'll give it a try. This is my contribution to Poetry Friday this week; a highlight feature. Please join in with your own poetry or highlight feature of your own. Here are the particulars for joining in. Meet me back here for more poetry next week!
Everything except Tennyson's lines are (c) 2012, ACG
Fondling The Field Trip
My karma walk last Saturday was steeped in vintage delight. The little shop I told you about has restored and installed an old-fashioned ice cream and soda fountain that serves local and organic ice cream. This is in addition to being an eco-lifestyle boutique featuring local artisans and natural products. I went in to buy some hair barrettes made from recycled upholstery (mini crowns, if you're Sassy). I found the fountain attracting half the neighborhood and had to see what all the fuss was about! Notice the vintage green glass bottles storing flavors instead of the typical hideous plastic pump bottles. Also notice the chalkboard signs made from old serving trays and picture frames.
The Green Corner Store, 15th & Main, Little Rock.
Super high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows flood the store with natural light to keep energy costs low. Another chalkboard sign made from an old mirror. Original transom windows that still work to release heat in the summer.
I took a seat at the old marble counter to order a treat. When I bellied up to give the soda jerk my order I encountered this proud pretty plate anchoring a seam in the antique stone. What a treasure made in the City of Brotherly Love now bringing the neighborhood together in The Natural State.
I chose fresh mint chip in a waffle cone made right on site. The ice cream was made just down the street and flavored with organic mint grown right outside the front door in the garden. No preservatives necessary when it only travels a few blocks! When you order it "For Here" you get the glass and spoon presentation. Loblolly Creamery, Little Rock.
Across the river in North Little Rock sits the classic corner drug store still in operation as the oldest continuously open pharmacy west of the Mississippi. The trolley still stops here--notice the cables attached to the top of the building. Also notice the original lampposts and the sign that has not been replaced with one of those garish LED upgrades. Argenta Drug Co., 3rd & Main, North Little Rock.
The 4-1-1. The trolley traverses the Arkansas River to serve the cities of Little Rock and North Little Rock, officially called the River Rail System. Yes, you really can ride a trolley across the river! Wooden benches inside the streetcars. Operators still narrate the points of interest like tour guides. Children and seniors ride for fifty cents. Lines are open until 10 pm during the week and midnight Thurs - Sat for your pub-going pleasure or baseball convenience.
The Farm Girl is a regular fixture at the Argenta Farmer's Market. She sells nothing that isn't sustainably grown and completely natural. No frills and no overhead. A freezer to the right, a pick up truck behind her, a checkered tablecloth and a money box. She was already out of fresh eggs and chicken when we arrived but she still had plenty of homemade bratwurst. Vendors at the market are strictly limited to independent Arkansas farmers--no retailers, no mega-corporations, and no imitators. If you don't grow it or make it yourself, you can't sell it here. I loved her farm girl look; the real deal making me smile with all her fresh-faced concentration, freckles, and 100% cotton.
Among our regular field trips this has become one of my favorites--now you can see why.
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling The Seep
Bella seeks an image of light seeping into the dark this week. I have seen such an image in a magic spell. I went across the river and skated on trolley tracks along Main Street. My husband kept pausing to let me catch up. A woman in a white dress played a harp in the street. In just a few moments I would be weeping inside a tent filled with screened doors and paintings of tiny black children wanting to come inside. But before that I would turn to see the building behind me that anchored the trolley lines. Its windows beguiled me. I thought of French playwrights drinking wine on painted wooden floors. A yellow dog brushed by my legs. I smelled wet clay from a potter's wheel I had just passed while trying to catch up. I heard only the last four words of a conversation spoken with an old movie star's accent. The color of the shadows brought to mind impractical underwear coming untucked from overnight train cases. Then, the sun.
(c) 2012, ACG
A Writer's Doodle
A doodle to get the week started. This one has actually been kicking around in my blonde noodle for awhile now but it took me some time to get it sculpted to my liking. It was inspired by a conversation I once had with a lawyer who didn't want to be a lawyer. He wanted to be a writer and own a little boutique-style bookstore so he could spend his days writing and reading and sharing his passion for both with the public. He wouldn't do it though. He felt trapped as a lawyer by the marriage that forced him into law and then subsequently trapped by the divorce that left him dependent upon his law practice for immediate survival.
We would sometimes talk about writing during the first part of my tenure in his office, before things got really bad for him. Because of his legal training (I assumed) he was obsessed with getting his writing scholastically correct and couldn't tolerate writing that didn't conform to the strict rules of style, form and grammar. He dismissed some very popular and successful authors because he found errors in their technique. He found the deliberate misuse of language and rule for artistic effect to be lazy and irresponsible. It must right at all costs. It must be perfect. This stance is also what kept him from publishing or sharing his own work. He couldn't/wouldn't produce it for consideration until he was satisfied that it was completely perfect. His work couldn't even go to an editor because he was simply never finished revising it. If he couldn't submit it in confidence that it was truly ready then he couldn't submit it at all.
It baffled him that I could write something in a day and then hit "Send" and put it out into the universe imperfect and sometimes intentionally not conforming to guidelines of good writing as dictated by literary scholars. It was something he claimed he could never do. I often tried to explain to him that my desire was to write like an artist and not like a writer but he felt that compromising the rules of writing was abusive to the craft. I argued that I wrote for the joy and fulfillment of writing and not to hone a craft but he couldn't fathom how I could be fulfilled with work that wasn't precise. There was a method! I wasn't following the method! He denied that this point of view was due to being a lawyer. He felt it was because he was something of a frustrated college professor. I think it was a little of both.
I made a critical professional error when I allowed him to read one of my stories as an example of how imperfect work could still make me deliriously happy. Although he didn't say unkind things I think it was impossible for him to regard me as anything other than a hack after that; not because I wasn't talented but because he felt I didn't care enough about being literally good and correct. This made me derelict in a general sense. I argued that it wasn't that I didn't care; it was simply that I wrote as an outlet and not a professional endeavor. I should have known better than to expose work that I knew he couldn't respect. At the time I trusted that our conversations about writing were not a reflection upon my legal work for him. I see now that it was a mistake. I am not sure he could help it--his standards were so high that anyone who worked with him was automatically demoted in esteem if their standards were not so high.
Of course he lost confidence in my legal work after that and I grew so bored with nothing to do that I eventually resigned. In hindsight I wonder if I subconsciously ruined my working relationship with him because I wanted out of the legal world so badly. (This was not because I hated law but because I needed a more flexible environment in which to grow creatively.) Why else would I risk showing admittedly substandard writing to someone who criticized award-winning novelists? At the time I thought I was making an important distinction--trying to enlighten him and show him another point of view. Now I wonder if I was subconsciously setting up the first turn in my journey toward a venue in which I could function within that alternative perspective I felt was so important. His chief complaint about me past that point was that I didn't seem to care; I was detached and indifferent. I probably sabotaged myself by showing him writing guaranteed to prompt that opinion. I didn't care about what he thought was important and he couldn't separate my overall ethics from my maverick writing. I probably also proved him right by resigning rather than conforming.
I don't regret it. In the end it was best that we couldn't agree. I don't feel trapped professionally, nor to do I feel crippled as an artist. He got to be right and I got to be free. I write almost every day now and more importantly I feel joy almost every day now and that helped me make a better professional choice for myself too. Doing it "wrong" worked out brilliantly for me. So no, I doubt I'll ever try to write like a writer. I doubt I'll ever care.
(c) 2012, ACG
(c) 2012, ACG
The Blessing Of Fallen Plans
This is my art for today--Stained Glass Candle. In reality, the candle is off-white and the glass jar in which it resides is clear. It is one of those vanilla smell-um candles I light when the potpourri stink of cafeteria food, bleach, and rubber gloves gets to be too much on a productive Friday afternoon. I used the digital magic skills I've been acquiring lo these many months to color the glass by staining the light given off by the candle, turning the utilitarian clear jar into a an ethereal emerald/sapphire sconce!
Can you believe I'm not racing again this weekend? I know, I know. Two in a row! I deliberately didn't plan a race this weekend because AppleJack and I were supposed to be teaching a cooking class at my favorite little green organic hippie store. The Chef was going to present a lecture on cast iron cooking and I was going to wrap it up with cast iron care and cleaning and how to make it last for generations. Unfortunately only one person signed up for the course so our host very wisely suggested moving it to the fall or winter. So we get a free weekend after all! We are still going to visit the shop though; that's one of my favorite field trips. We will hit the farmer's market and do the unstructured time thing again. Sometimes it's nice when plans fall through!
This cooking class idea started last fall when we competed in the Cornbread Festival. After we got our cornbread all set up we noticed that all the other contestants brought decorations for their booths. Being newbies we didn't bring anything! Before the judging began I ran a block over to the store and made a deal with the owner to borrow her cast iron collection for the table and in exchange give her some free advertising at our booth. She agreed and thankfully we didn't look so much like rookies by the time we got the table adorned with all her old-fashioned crockery and some of my Starter Stones. When the festival was over we walked back to the store to return the cast iron. I gave the owner one of my Starter Stones as a thank you gift. As we talked she learned that AppleJack was a chef and presented the idea for a cast iron cooking class. We will revive the plan again in the fall.
In the meantime we are so enjoying the friendship and partnership that was born of my panicked request to decorate our dowdy little cornbread booth. The store will host a Meet and Greet for AppleJack's personal chef service next month--the perfect venue! We both care so much about sustainable community living and naturally grown vs. engineered food that it's like a dream come true having this place as a resource! I deliberately gave up going to an art fair last weekend because I knew I would be in her store this weekend and this is one of the places I am most proud to patronize. I hope my readers will consider investing in their own communities this way--with independent local businesses that value homegrown resources. It is so rewarding, I promise you.
So I'm off to get the weekend started. I hope yours is terrific. Thank you again for spending your time here!
(c) 2012, ACG
Poetry Friday--Victims of Imagination
Welcome back to Poetry Friday! My poem this week is another one of my artistic protests against the mindset that it is dangerous to go for a run downtown. I ran in the heart of downtown at least three times a week during my five year tenure in the high rise and never felt that I was in danger. I even got lost once and wondered into a homeless tent community under a bridge. I even ran where everyone warned me not to run. I always ran alone--no phone, no weapon, no fear. No one mugged me. No one even tried. No one followed me or threatened me. No one even approached or spoke me rudely. I decided that the dangers I'd been warned against were imagined or urban legend.
The most exciting things that ever happened were a businessman quoting me some British poetry and a fat man in a green sweatshirt singing me a song as we passed over a bridge. Other than the time a man turned his head to spit on the sidewalk just as I ran passed him (which was an accident), I never had a single incident of note in this "dangerous" place. Most everyone just silently watched me run by the same way they watch in the suburbs, in the country, along the interstate, and out of town. Half of it may be that I don't look like a victim as I chug resolutely along; the other half is probably that occupying a place doesn't necessarily make strangers on the street dangerous.
Victims of Imagination
The only reason that being downtown
Feels so frightening
Is that you keep bringing your fear along
Into downtown.
The biggest reason I never got mugged here
While I was running
Was that I keep bringing my courage along
Into downtown.
Fill a city with fear and it can’t be anything
Other than scary.
Fill a city with courage and it can be anything
Even at peace.
© 2012, ACG
Join in Poetry Friday! Post a link to your poem--here's how it works: http://blog.sassyangelac.com/2012/04/05/poetry-friday-is-a-go.aspx
Interviews Are My Kryptonite
This took me the whole damn day, I swear. I think the last time this happened I also spent a entire day on it too. Why is that? What's easier than talking about ourselves?
One of my readers read an interview on another blog and decided to copy a portion of the interview questions and email them to me. The blog (and interviewer) was Brene Brown’s. The interviewee was Jenny Lawson. How cool is it that Brene Brown and I share a reader!? (Gulping the awesomeness of that!) She's got a PhD and friends like Jenny Lawson. I've got a PhNada and friends like Jo The Nudist.
Will full respect and deference to Dr. Brown and Goddess Blogess, I answered the questions (like I always do) but after spending a full day on the answers I couldn’t just dismiss the ridiculous amount of effort I put into it by emailing them back. I suspect (just like last time) it was also a passive-aggressive dare on the part of my reader to see if I would post them. It worked again. It always does. I can never resist. You could email me and ask damn near anything I would probably post the answer. Perhaps I should start an Ask Sassy series. Anyway, the credits for the questions were also copied as follows:
From James Lipton, host of Inside the Actor’s Studio:
What is your favorite word? Whichever word tells the truth.
What is your least favorite word? Can’t
What sound or noise do you love? When the women at work page me over the intercom as Sassy instead of Angela.
What sound or noise do you hate? Cat throwing up in the dark.
What is your favorite curse word? Godammit. Even back in the days when I thought I was taking the Lord’s name in vain I considered it a suggestion; as in “God, you know you need to go ahead and damn that!”
From JL’s Uncle Jessie Meme:
A song/band/type of music you'd risk wreck & injury to turn off when it comes on the radio? Any one of those Proud To Be A Redneck Wahmun country anthems.
Favorite show on television? I don’t watch network television so it’s mostly sports and old movies. I do watch cooking shows with AppleJack though.
Favorite movie? Stranger Than Fiction
Best concert? My running buddy Maurice stood at the halfway point of a 5k race in the dead of summer and played his banjo with great gusto.
If you could have anything put on a t-shirt what would it be? “All you get is your body and a choice.” It’s a quote by Rachel Maddox that I just read this morning.
Favorite meal? Oat-meal.
A talent you wish you had? I’m relatively satisfied with my talents. However, it would be nice if I could open packages. This is a full-blown disability.
Dream vacation? All of my dreams are vacations.
What’s on your nightstand? Dust, chipped paint, and a dead mosquito I keep ignoring.
What’s something about you that would surprise us? I once wrote Martha Stewart a fan letter and asked her how low income homemakers could make their homes beautiful too. Never got an answer.
From Smith Magazine’s Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs from Writers Famous and Obscure (http://www.smithmag.net/sixwords/):
Your six-word memoir: Only she believed cellulite was sexy.
Only the answers are (c) 2012, ACG.
A New Hump Day Doodle
I am displeased that today's children are being taught reactionary respect as opposed to absolute respect. I am displeased that adults are practicing reactionary respect. I think we got it fundamentally wrong when we crafted the notion that respect is something to be earned. No. Everyone deserves respect. Let people earn our admiration and esteem. Let them earn salaries, awards, and diplomas. When all else is lost we ought to be able to rest in the assurance that the minimum regard we will have for each other by virture of simply being born human beings is respect. Respect was never designed to be a reaction to behavior. It was designed to be an origin for behavior.
(c) 2012, ACG
Baby Moose Tea
I get tired of documenting the magic tea images all centered bullseye-style in the middle of the frame so I deliberately shot him off center. I think he looks as if he is floating in one of those Wizard of Oz bubbles by which the good witch traveled around the land. Instead of a glamour puss in a ballgown we've got a baby moose taking a siesta on his way through my tea.
Moose make me think of my backpacking trip through the Tetons. They also make me think of a volatile dude who used to work with my dad. He pulled a gun on another man in the middle of parking lot after a basketball game. I was standing nearby with my brothers and sisters watching the two of them argue. My dad was the coach. He tried to mediate and keep the argument from escalating. As the name calling and insults were lobbed like bombs between the combatants, my dad's friend opened the trunk of his car and pulled a rifle from a leather case. My dad turned to me with hard yes of unquestionable authority and said Run!
I grabbed the jackets of my brother and sisters and pushed them ahead of me, commanding them to run around the corner of the gymnasium. Hurry! Go! I ran behind them, herding them until they were hidden behind the building. I wasn't sure how far we were supposed to run. We were in a bad neighborhood. I didn't know the area. We would get lost. I pushed my three siblings into a brick alcove between a stairwell and a dumpster and tried to calm them. My little brother was crying. My sisters were worried about Dad. Ang, what about Dad? What's going to happen to Dad? I whispered that they should be quiet and I would check.
I crept back to the side of the building and peeked around the corner. My dad was still standing near the argument. His friend was still holding the rifle and threatening the third man. They were yelling now and attracting attention. My dad kept trying to convince his friend to put the gun away. He lowered his voice. This was a high school. There were children present. Someone was surely calling the police. Witnesses. A record. This was not worth it. His friend finally lowered the gun. The third man ran away. My dad continued to talk to his friend until the rifle was returned to the trunk. I remember that he didn't put it back into the case. I went back to my siblings. It's okay. He put the gun away. Dad is okay.
We waited there. It was getting dark now. The streetlights were coming on. I knew we would get in trouble for returning before Dad came for us or called us. My sister asked if we could go wait in the car. I said no. We had to stay here until Dad came. He came around the corner of the building looking for us soon after. He didn't see us where we were hidden. As soon as I spied him I led the others out of the alcove and we all followed him back to the parking lot. The men were gone. Their cars were gone. It was time to go home. Dad wanted us to be quiet on the drive back. We sat in silence in the dark. My little brother fell asleep. I picked off my nail polish and looked out the window.
Why do moose make me think of this rifleman? Before it happened we had cookouts with the basketball team. We ate barbecue on paper plates from lawn chairs and listened to music. We spoke of random things. There was laughing and teasing. He thought the plural of moose was "meese." He also thought baby ducks were "ducklets." I was twelve years old and thought it was hilarious. He was a good sport as I giggled at him.
After the rifle incident the man didn't play basketball on my dad's team anymore. He stopped being my dad's friend and eventually began bullying him at work. There were threats and suspected sabotage. My dad was afraid he would lose his job. There was a court date. My dad asked me if I could tell a judge what I saw that night in the parking lot. I said I would. I got to stay home from school and go downtown with my dad in my white dress with blue ruffles. We walked down the sidewalk side by side. I was solemn under the weight of the knowledge that someone who owned a gun wanted to hurt my dad. I walked beside him considering the seriousness of this very grown-up predicament. I held testimony that could serve to protect my dad from a bad guy. In my mind that made me an important person in our communal survival. All of life at that time was survival.
I did not end up giving my testimony. I sat in the court room and watched my dad's former friend from a distance. He spoke to the judge. Another man spoke. The judge spoke. I didn't understand any of it. I looked at my dad. He said it was over. When we got up to leave my dad coached me on what to do (and not do) if we ran into the man outside on the street. We passed him on the sidewalk on our way back to the car. Nothing happened. I was tense and blinded by the glare of sunlight reflected off the parked cars. Dad held my hand as we crossed street. I wasn't an important person anymore. I was a little girl again and he was going to buy me a cherry coke.
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling Robin
I can hardly stay awake tonight. I've fallen asleep sitting straight up at least three times in the last hour so I won't try to be eloquent. I obviously need sleep and I intend to get it quickly and quietly but I just wanted to make a little art before I do to send off the day. I can hardly bear to let a day pass anymore without putting something creative into the world. On Saturday I was out in the garden taking pictures of the glider in the previous post and I paused to admire the debut of what I call my watermelon lilies.
The second act was what I call my cantaloupe lilies.
And then the daylilies I inherited from my mother-in-law took the stage. I just call them Mom's lilies.
The overture was the rose bush that AppleJack bought me last summer. I don't have a name for it yet but this is where the garden snake lives.
But the show stopper was not the dazzling flowers that distract you from the cracks in The Jesus Crack House. It was the baby robin that fell from its nest and hopped about the yard squawking for its mother. Boing, boing, boing. Squawk! Boing, boing, boing. Squawk! An awkward crank of wings not ready to fly yet. Legs like pogo sticks. Boing, boing, boing. When he got tired or confused and rested in the grass I stalked him. AppleJack watched from the deck.
I got close enough to put fresh bounce in his legs and he boinged over the rock border into Mom's iris garden. I didn't shoot the ruffly heirloom purple iris because I couldn't take my eyes off this drab brown baby bird. His dun stunted feathers. His fugly little head. His tinker toy legs. I looked later at the series of big bawdy blooms seducing the eye with such glamour and completely loved how the gawky squawky bird blending into the mulch, watching me over its shoulder, became the only shot that really mattered. An itty bitty frame of significant importance.
I retreated to the deck to let him rest and keep from arousing the dog's attention. The baby boinged back across the yard to Boomer's Bench and after a few stumbles scaled a boulder, then a flower pot, then the bench itself and finally hid in my potted lemon tree until its mother came. Squawk! Squawk! Mommy! The mother flew in low and slow. She coaxed the baby out of the pot with an ungraceful plop and then guided it through the side yard around to the front of the house, across the street, and down the hill. She flitted like a fairy. The baby boinged. Boing. Boing. Boing. I stood among my glamorous flowers and watched them go. AppleJack stood with me.
When a neighbor began backing out of his driveway while the baby was still working his way across the street I considered rushing into the street to stop the car until the baby had safely passed. The mother called encouragement and fussed to and fro. AppleJack coached him merrily from the porch, Go little fella, go! Keep going! We were both captivated by his progress, urging him on, willing him to make it to the other side. I have never spoken to this neighbor yet imagined streaking into the street in front of his SUV with my hands up to make our first enounter an avian intervention. It didn't come to that. The neighbor hesitated in his turnabout and the baby made it across. Crisis averted. Mother and baby disappeared down the hill.
I have all summer to take pictures of flowers. The garden will bloom over and over again. That one hurried tentative chance to capture the displaced baby bird was the only one of those I was likely to ever get. One frame and then it was gone--the light, the moment, the infancy. We had already found two dead babies in the yard after storms earlier in the week. This one was going to make it; at least make it out of the yard. A magical little encounter for me even if it was all in a day's work for Mother Nature. That one backward glance distilling the memory of our interlude long after the flowers fade to hibernation.
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling Restoration
This gorgeous vintage glider came to rest at The Jesus Crack House just a few weeks ago. It belonged to AppleJack's grandparents but we suspect that it may be older than that. AppleJack can remember gliding in it as a small boy when his grandparents were still alive. After they passed it went to live in his mother's garden where it stayed until she died last September. We agreed to adopt it and keep it in the family; it just took awhile to get it moved from her garden to ours.
AppleJack and all five of his brothers grew up with this glider as a fixture in the backyard so it is one of those home elements that automatically trigger nostalgia. We were offered hundreds of dollars for it during the estate sale but no amount of money was accepted. We kept politely answering "not for sale" as the offers came in until I joked within earshot of the shoppers "Wow, we could have sold that thing a dozen times over today." A grumpy lady overheard me and rudely snapped "Well if you would put a sign on it you wouldn't have to keep telling people it's not for sale!" True, but then I loved telling people it was not for sale. Saying it out loud was an affirmation that this old hunk of metal was a memorial. Putting a sign on it would have felt dismissive by comparison, as if we couldn't be bothered to honor this relic of five childhoods and the lifetimes of the departed.
Red was the original color. AppleJack and his brothers painted it blue around 25 years ago. The weather and its continued use have given it the faded patchy glory it wears today. I absolutely love the way it looks right now. It still glides like a dream; smooth and silent. It is so comfortable and cool in the shade and I find the blue on red charming against all the deep greens. I would keep this look forever if I could. We can't though. There is rust. If we want to preserve it we are going to have to restore it. I can't bear the thought of this lovely classic becoming just another piece of rusted junk. The last photo I took of AppleJack's mother with her grandchildren gathered around her in the garden was posed right in front of this glider. Our new project is to save it for her great-grandchildren. Strip, sand, prime, paint--you know the drill. This is the beginning.
(c) 2012, ACG
Shake It Out In April
The theme for Urban Muser's self-portrait challenge this month is Shake It Out. We have to move this month and show the movement in our selfies. Hard one! No tidy little headshots this time! Okay then...
Week One--I'm moving water and air.
Week Two--I'm moving focus and perspective.
Week Three--I'm moving the wind; slicing through it and forcing it around me.
Week Four--I'm trying to adjust the force of nature. There is a very crooked tree that grows in the rear of The Jesus Crack House. I'm trying to straighten it with super yogic energy. I really liked the angles and implied pushing force of the first shot but the second shot showed the crookedy tree a bit more and therefore made more sense.
But then I kept working with it and got this one and fell in love. Reminds me of one of those classic muses and since it all happened on Earth Day, we will call this some kind of Gaia impersonation. That's it for April. I feel shook out! Shaken out? Sheeky. Shassy.
(c) ACG, 2012
Two Tree Tea
The Magic Teacup gave me an image of two trees today. I had to darken it a bit so you could see their elegant little silhouettes but there they are growing in the bottom of my cup.
Looks like I'm in for a rainy Friday night and that suits me fine. After all the racing and traveling I'm looking forward to a sedate evening and a leisurely Saturday. I've been gradually working out a marathon schedule for this fall and as long as no relatives die between now and then I think I'm going to try again for Maniac status. This means I either have to complete 2 marathons in 16 days or 3 marathons in 90 days. I'm gonna try for the 2 in 16 days--gulp! After watching so many of my friends qualify with the 90 days it just seems too long to drag it out.
The Marathon Maniacs are a national running club made up of folks that are basically obsessed with the sport of marathoning. They have different levels of insanity in which you earn rank based upon increasingly difficult criteria (running a buttload of marathons). I am not obsessed. I hope I am never obsessed but I do like the idea of doing something very hard simply for the achievement. I want to do it just to see if I can. The only tangible award you really get for doing it is a yellow shirt and lifetime membership in the club. The classic yellow Maniac jerseys identify the crazy folks in just about every race I run and they carry a unique form of status because you can't buy them; you have to earn them. So all that for a shirt? Yep, all that just for a shirt. I'd like to see if I can earn one.
Here is a link to the Maniac site so that you can see all the multiple stars and levels possible. I'm not really interested in earning the additional stars (or suffering that much) but it is mind-blowing to see the number of folks who have gotten to the really crazy ranks. When I meet them at races I am always inspired by how old some of them are--these are not kids; these are regular people! They have clearly redefined what most of us have settled for as possible past a certain age. Hell, they have redefined what some of us consider possible at any age! So I'd like to see if this is possbile for me. Age doesn't matter and finish time doesn't matter--all you have to do is finish. I'll be ruminating on this over the weekend and really for the next six months. Yellow shirts aside, I am always game for a sassy new nickname. Maniac will fit in fine with all the others.
(c) 2012, ACG
Poetry Friday--A Day At The Lake
Wlecome back to Poetry Friday! Today's poem was written during people-watching while I was swimming at a lake. An aquatically mismatched couple shared the lakeshore with me and obviously forgot I was there during a spontaneous squabble.
A Day at the Lake
He scowled as she swam in circles
Pretending to be a mermaid in the sun
Closing her eyes to the image of him
Picking at his sandy toes on the shore.
I’m bored, is what he said.
The water is making your lips look funny.
I’m not, she should have said
My happiness makes your brain look smaller.
She should have told him to go
And waved as he pouted away a perfect day.
Instead she’d spend the rest of her life
Getting out of the water just to shut him up.
Join in the fun! Post a link to your poem in the comments below and I'll come visit you. This is how it works:
Each Friday I will post a poem here on the blog. If you would like to participate you may share a poem of your own by posting a link to it as a comment here. Write your poem on your own blog or whatever form of social media you use and then just leave me a link in the comments below. Easy peasey! I'll come by your blog and visit your poem and so may anyone else who wants to join in. You may include a link back to here on your blog if you like but it is not a requirement. Just keep in mind that your poem must be visible to the public or it won't work. Also keep in mind that if your poem goes to spam or porn I will delete the link and ban you.
You don't have to share an original work if aren't yet a poet. You may a share a poem written by someone else as long as you credit the author. This is how I got started writing poetry years ago so it might work for you too--who knows? If you are a poet feel free to resurrect some old poems that you may have shared before.
There are no rules as to form or content, no right or wrong way to do it, and good or bad poetry. This is just a forum for sharing and expression, not a professional critique. Don't worry about being good--I don't! Almost all of my poetry is free verse. Jump in anytime. Join in as seldom or as often as you like. If you don't get a poem up on Friday--that's perfectly okay too--just link up when you can. We will keep it casual at first so no deadlines for now.
Be respectful of other participants. Do not abuse or confront each other even if you are offended by something. This is art; not a debate. There will be zero tolerance for cat-fighting over dissenting/conflicting opinions. There are plenty of other blogs out there for that--this is not one of them. Have fun! Make positive connections! Go away if you don't like it!
(c) 2012, ACG
Embracing Peaceful Protest
My cousin gave me a gift for bringing peace to our fundraiser 5k race this year and I am using it as a form of peaceful protest against the minority attitude in our workplace that peace signs are "un-American." These were mirrored stick-on decals meant for a wall. I turned them into a mirrored mobile and hung them in my office window. My boss shares my rebellious spirit and has mounted a huge artisan-crafted peace sign above his desk as well. The office we share is now a bastion of solidarity.
The minority opinion is that peace signs and our tie-dyed race t-shirts represent an association with the 1960s' (and 70s') counterculture and is therefore un-American. All things associated with that era are denigrated as "hippie crap." We obviously disagree. Peace is American. Protest is American. Hippies are/were Americans too. The call for peace does not belong to any social group or its counter-groups. Upon explaining this in defense of using the peace symbol, my cousin was tersely dismissed as being "too young to know what she was talking about." Wrong. She's obviously old enough to know better.
Being a Vietnam-era baby myself it is obvious to me that the generations maturing to adulthood today have embraced the peace symbol for its universal meaning and not the anti-war movement during which it was made popular. For that matter, even today's kids get it. Yesterday an elementary school student walked into the office carrying a backpack covered with peace signs. It is laughable to me that a 4th grader gets it yet the distinction remains out of the grasp of someone four times her age. Middle-schoolers were wearing peace sign t-shirts on the playground when I went home for lunch. I saw a 20-something runner wearing peace sign hair ribbons in her ponytail at Saturday's marathon. These young American are not promoting a hippie culture; they are simply promoting peace.
Maybe these kids are too young to identify with hippie culture but that's exactly why their use of the peace symbol is not indicative of hippie culture. How old do you have to be to understand that? Attitudes toward peace and the symbols that represent peace have evolved within the generations born since the 1960s. Why can't the narrow-minded attitudes of those who invented the concept of un-American behavior in the 1960s evolve too? Easy answer--fear. They were afraid then and they are still afraid now. It has become distinctly American to condemn what we fear and what we don't understand, even among our own population. We separate ourselves into groups and then war with each other for decades after physical armistice and somehow this is construed as more American than preferring peace?
Because of this enduring clash of attitudes, inclusion of the peace symbol has become a silent crusade here at the end of the hall, with crusaders who are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Peace belongs to all generations--or at least, it should.
(c) 2012, ACG
The Golden Hour
Bella asked for a photo from the golden hour. I had to pull from the archives on this one; I've had something occupying me every night this week during the golden hour and tomorrow I'll be at yoga modeling. So here's a golden shot from my week in the Yucatan. Historians speculate that this was an open-air hotel for travelers. Hammocks were strung between the columns for sleeping. The columns were most likely covered with a thatched roof but there were no walls. Pretty swanky for the Mayan jungle, no? Imagine the dreams. Imagine the mornings!
Speaking of mornings, I am up past my bedtime trying to squeeze this in but I gotta hit the hammock. 'Night all.
(c) 2012, ACG
Meditations On The Snapdragon
Take a gander at the surprise I got when I arrived at work this morning. My cousin brought me me a giant snapdragon. She said "It just said Sassy to me." I love it that nature whispers my name to my loved ones when I'm not around. I also love it that my Chill Monster seems to be aghast at the sight of all that towering flowering sass. It just makes a girl smile on so many levels. Funny. Floral. Familial.
Snapdragons make me think of my youngest sister. We've been out of touch for a long time now. I have accepted that this is because she needs it to be this way right now. I am respecting her methods and her rhythms and her path by not pushing for inclusion. I'm patiently waiting and trusting that she is the only person who can best judge what is good for her. Maybe I'm not good for her right now and maybe that is perfectly okay. Sisters usually suck at that. For all the benefits of having sisters (and there are many), one of the biggest burdens of having sisters is that we forget that our sisters deserve to be treated as all the other things they are and not just as a sister. If you are the older sister, you probably suck at this too. We tend to treat sisters as only our sisters, especially our little sisters. Our motivations and interactions with our sisters are almost always rooted in our sisterhood to this woman to whom we are related. We forget that these women have other facets that are not canceled out by their sister-ness. Sometimes this woman who is your sister (and all that she encompasses as a woman) needs to be treated as something other than a little sister. We actually demote her when we don't view the woman independently of her relationship to us because then we fail to include those other aspects of her that deserve our respect and esteem.
My readers who have been around for awhile have heard me repeat many times that before you lament your current state of affairs you should consider that you are probably exactly where you need to be at the moment, you just haven't figured out why yet. She must need this distance from me or the distance wouldn't exist. I must need to learn to respect a woman who makes a choice for herself that might exclude me or the lesson wouldn't exist. I have to think of her as a brilliant, resilient woman whether she is my sister or not and therefore respect her choices without judgment the same way I would respect any brilliant, resilient woman. The extraordinary things about her and the life she is creating are not dependent upon her being my sister--they exist because she exists. Our relationship as sisters does not preclude her deserving space and time (especially time alone) to craft her life and it forge its journey. Our relationship as sisters simply guarantees that when her needs and choices do include me that I will be there.
I think most sisters never learn this. Neither do parents of adult children or adult children of aging parents who are losing their independence. It's hard. We use our love and our emotional bonds as the reason we can't separate our perspective but it should be our bonded love that upholds the emotional and intellectual rights of our loved ones to be regarded as more than just their birth rank. She is not my sister first; she is a woman first. She's an intelligent, sentient, captain of her own soul first. She's a mother and a teacher and a healer and a lover and a warrior all before she is my sister. The miracle of her life rests in her creation and sustenance of her life on her own terms with her own identity. Being born my sister guarantees her a lifelong bond to a woman who shares her blood but being born at all guarantees her a gifted existence that would earn my respect and love even without the bond. I don't treasure her because she is my sister. I treasure her because she was born.
(c) 2012, ACG
Ugly Doll Tea
I came back from my weekend away to find an Ugly Doll in the Magic Teacup! Probably because I adopted out three of them Saturday night. I hardly have a running buddy without one anymore.
Yes, in case you missed it I really did run my marathon relay in a thunderstorm--lightning, driving rain, heavy winds, the whole bit. They even threw in a tornado warning for extra excitement. Roughest weather I've ever run. The tornado stayed in the air though and the lightning missed me. Wind and rain drenched me and stung me but at least it took my mind off the hills. Believe it or not it was actually kind of fun. After the stress of watching the severe weather approach it was a relief just to get the hand-off and get running. I knew the rain would get me eventually so once I was sopping wet there was nothing to do but just run on and finish for my team. Once you're wet, you're wet; quitting doesn't make you any drier when you are still eight miles from the finish line. After all the build-up of tension and hours of conjecture over whether or not the race would get shut down I was just happy that all we got was all we got. The worse of it didn't start until four hours into the marathon so most folks made it in dry. I would have been so disappointed if my three team members had finished and then we got shut down before I could finish the distance--without all four segments of the race finished none of the other three would have counted.
As I ran along most of the aid stations were abandoned. Volunteers gave up and sought shelter once the heaviest part of the storm hit. They did leave provisions on the tables but I noticed that no one felt like stopping with thunder crashing over our heads. A lot of the course marshals were gone too, making some of the turns a bit stressful when I wasn't sure I was still on course. I had to cross one intersection on my own but luckily the traffic stopped for me without a problem. The few folks who did stay at their posts were very supportive but the majority of the course was deserted. It was a strange sensation in the moments when the rain and wind would subside enough to notice the course. It was so desolate that it didn't feel like a race anymore. There were long stretches when I was completely alone. Occasionally I would pass another runner and we all wondered the same thing--are they going to come take us off the course any minute now? Toward the end I started to catch up to people I knew and then in the last mile the storm eased to just a steady rain. AppleJack and my team stood in the storm and waited for me to come puddling in, all in good spirits. To my surprise the finish line was still operational and time was still being kept when I got there. Our combined time was well over 5 hours but everyone who finished was proud that day.
In spite of it all I had a great time and I don't reget a single step. I even had one running buddy still out there with a camera to capture the soggy end. Here I am crossing into the finish line chute. See the wind in the flags. See the rain on the pavement. See the workers in hurricane gear in the distance. See the grin starting to form on my hill-reddened face as I caught sight of everyone waiting for me without so much as an umbrella for protection. Running is not all about the miles, my friends.
Photo by Nick Norfolk
(c) 2012, ACG
Poetry Friday--My First Limerick
Welcome back to Poetry Friday! I've resurrected a poem I wrote a couple of years ago this week, just to remind you that this is all for fun. No need to be intimidated by poetry, my friends. It can be silly just as easily as it can be anything else!
My First Limerick
The feather for my cap was stolen
From one so bitter and swollen
Yes I should have asked
But dear, I gave it back
And found some other hay to roll in.
Author's note: This poem is the result of a challenge to write a story or a poem about a stolen feather. The poetry options were haiku, limerick, or a longer rhythmic rhyming. (I suck at those.) Since it crimps my hair to write under such strict parameters, I chose to make the feather symbolic. Also since limericks are historically bawdy it was a natural fit for me.
Join in the fun! Post a link to your poem in the comments below and I'll come visit you. This is how it works:
Each Friday I will post a poem here on the blog. If you would like to participate you may share a poem of your own by posting a link to it as a comment here. Write your poem on your own blog or whatever form of social media you use and then just leave me a link in the comments below. Easy peasey! I'll come by your blog and visit your poem and so may anyone else who wants to join in. You may include a link back to here on your blog if you like but it is not a requirement. Just keep in mind that your poem must be visible to the public or it won't work. Also keep in mind that if your poem goes to spam or porn I will delete the link and ban you.
You don't have to share an original work if aren't yet a poet. You may a share a poem written by someone else as long as you credit the author. This is how I got started writing poetry years ago so it might work for you too--who knows? If you are a poet feel free to resurrect some old poems that you may have shared before.
There are no rules as to form or content, no right or wrong way to do it, and good or bad poetry. This is just a forum for sharing and expression, not a professional critique. Don't worry about being good--I don't! Almost all of my poetry is free verse. Jump in anytime. Join in as seldom or as often as you like. If you don't get a poem up on Friday--that's perfectly okay too--just link up when you can. We will keep it casual at first so no deadlines for now.
Be respectful of other participants. Do not abuse or confront each other even if you are offended by something. This is art; not a debate. There will be zero tolerance for cat-fighting over dissenting/conflicting opinions. There are plenty of other blogs out there for that--this is not one of them. Have fun! Make positive connections! Go away if you don't like it!
(c) 2012, ACG
Cardiac Tea
It has been awhile since the Magic Teacup gave me a heart but there was one waiting for me this morning! Love in my tea is not a bad way to start the day. Yesterday in my office I held a little impromptu tea party with my boss and my cousin. I introduced her to Lady Grey and my boss to Irish Breakfast tea when they needed a little pick-me-up in the middle of a project. This must be the love I shared coming back to me.
It's race weekend again! Yes, yes I know this makes three in a row. 'Tis the season folks. This time I'm heading back to the hills of the Hogeye Marathon for a third time. Must be my Scottish blood; I obviously can't get enough hill running--not even after Eureka Springs. This will also be a baseball adventure and an Ugly Doll family reunion, so it's not all about running. The running part comes with a twist though--it will be my first attempt at a marathon relay. I'm on a team with three other women who will split the marathon course into four legs. I will be running the last leg; 8 miles on the hilliest part of the course but I've been over those eight miles before. This time I plan to do it without the benefits of heat exhaustion.
My team name: The Sassy Butts of SCS. I couldn't resist. Our team captain has a hyphenated last name that starts with Butts. All we had to do was add some sass to that and we got ourselves a dandy name to compete with the likes of the Bast Fasterds and other colorful monikers. If that's not enough sass to scratch your itch then be advised that I am running a race next month named The Jessie Is Awesome Half Marathon. Jessie is awesome (most friends of mine are awesome) but even if he wasn't a race with a name like that would still have be run by Sassy. It's on Mother's Day too, which I find deliciously rebellious. Don't take your mom out for a steak--run a marathon with her!
So I don't know how much I'll be online over the weekend. If you want to keep up with the frolic as it happens your best bets are to follow the action on Facebook (Sassyangelac), Instagram (Sassyangelac) or Twitter (@sassyangelac). I hope to get Peaco completely saturated with festive foto fun on the fly. I've also been given a yoga modeling assignment to get some shots practicing in new locations so I'm on the hunt for inspiring venues as I move and groove. I hope your weekend is groovy too.
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling Preparedness
I've got pretty spring blooms out the wazoo right now and inspiration bubbling right up out of my dandy new fountain in the rock garden too but I've also got fresh travel plans greening up on the horizon. Spring time is the start of adventure time at the Jesus Crack House and that calls for new head gear. This is no Easter bonnet. It's an adventure crown; handmade and embellished by recycled bits with plenty of magic still left in them. Sun, wind, rain; we are fondling preparedness with a floppy brim. Sassy gazes fondly at spring possibilities and whispers Bring it.
(c) 2012, ACG
Letter H Tea
The Magic Teacup sent me the Letter H today. Ha! Don't know why; maybe it was laughing at me for lying awake half the night and then dreaming of the Dalai Lama for the other half (his official title is typically abbreviated HH). Maybe it was laughing hardy-har-hars because yet another friend of Sassy's has asked for an Ugly Doll. Maybe it was because I am running the Hogeye Marathon relay this weekend. Maybe it was telling me to get a haircut. Maybe it was celebrating the three day holiday weekend. Who knows?
Oh wait...now I get it. It must have been an advance Hurrah. In a Monday morning brainstorming meeting to map future goals my boss's boss's boss submitted the following to the plan:
It was written on a purple sticky note and placed on the boss's boss's wall after the meeting. After it was pointed out to me I went back and added the gold stars and then framed it. I couldn't resist; it was just too terrific a compliment to let pass without at least a little celebration. The Magic Teacup must have felt it coming.
I'm closing in on one year here and I still love it and still think it was the best pay cut I ever took. You can't put a price on fulfillment, you know. I remember thinking that I would just have to get comfortable living with less but it hasn't required an adjustment in comfort at all. If anything I had to adjust to being happier. I've gotten very comfortable living with less stress, less expense, and less commuting--way, way comfortable. Loving the work was a bonus surprise; I didn't even know it was possible to love work!
This job has been as much a service to me in terms of emotional health as it is to the clients it serves with its mission. Now I understand abundance has nothing to do with income. I remember when I was going through physical therapy and talking to my doctor about being afraid to strike out in scary, unpredictable direction, he answered "The correct direction is always toward the scary thing. Move toward the fear." He was right; it was the correct direction. If I hadn't moved toward the fear I would never have discovered what was on the other side of it. Lesson gratefully learned.
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling The Hot Damnation
Photo by Jonathan Young
It was race weekend again. I was cruising along in the morning sunshine at a 10k in Little Rock when I spied one of my readers and dear friend standing on the sidelines with a camera. As I approached he quoted me--as in screamed out "Hot damn!"--and snapped a photo. I tried to turn my head to blow him a kiss but the camera only caught the turn and not the full pucker. The girl next to me is laughing because she thinks I'm just being heckled by a bystander. She doesn't know that within the last 24 hours I had commented "Hot damn!" to this reader's father, an ordained minister. My heckling friend was among the very first of my real life readers (as opposed to online readers I haven't actually met). He was quoting me back to me when he heckled; a superb double entendre.
I didn't bother to fill in the details for the girl laughing on my left though. It was too complicated a joke: sassy girl says "Hot damn!" to a preacher, preacher's son reads quote, next day preacher's son sees sassy girl on the race course and yells it back at her, sassy girl blows kisses to adoring fan and reader, random race participant thinks sassy girl is just getting some attention for being so hot, and sassy girl lets her think so because it very easily could be so. The preacher is one of my biggest fans and readers too. The original Hot damn comment was generated by a report of his most recent hot-ass training run. The preacher and I have been in love since we first met (on the race course, of course). Last year he and I finished this very same race holding hands. I'm also a big fan of his son. I once finished a marathon holding hands with him too. Wife and daughter as well; I'm just a big damn fan of the whole damn family so it was all one big circle of sass and heat and mutual admiration.
I would end this race with a sunburn, some wicked chafing, and three mad dashes for three bathrooms but the discomfort was sweetened by more of that love I keep sending out coming back to me. I didn't find a heart on the pavement or in my tea cup this time but I did see it as plain as day on the face of that girl next to me. See the delight in her face? We (the Young family and I) made that happen by investing in each other's lives to the point that two words passed between us changed her experience on a random Saturday. She has no idea of the years of love that went into those two tiny words that made her laugh out loud in a stranger's company but we know. In the four to six seconds it took me to run by my friend the intimacy and friendship of those five years passed between us in a single sentence. The courtship of our families thrived and throbbed as the April wind carried an observer's laughter across the miles we've run back and forth to each other. This is why I will never willingly stop running--over and over it leads me to people I might otherwise have missed knowing and loving. I met the Young family just two months before I met AppleJack. Now look at us all; distilling joy every time we meet.
Hot damn, it's good to be Young and full of Sass!
(c) 2012, ACG
Poetry Friday--Sea Lion Wishing Well
Sea Lion Wishing Well
I remember standing in the rain at the edge of the world
Leaning over the rail to watch the rogue sea lion
Try to sneak onto the pier below.
I remember feeling your hand slide to the edge of my pants
Gripping my waistband tight to keep me safe
From a tumble onto the pier below.
I remember pausing longer than needed at the edge of falling
Feeling my wishes to remain held so closely
Drop like pennies to the pier below.
(c) 2012, ACG
Welcome to Poetry Friday! You are invited to join in at any time. This is how it works:
Each Friday I will post a poem here on the blog. If you would like to participate you may share a poem of your own by posting a link to it as a comment here. Write your poem on your own blog or whatever form of social media you use and then just leave me a link in the comments below. Easy peasey! I'll come by your blog and visit your poem and so may anyone else who wants to join in. You may include a link back to here on your blog if you like but it is not a requirement. Just keep in mind that your poem must be visible to the public or it won't work. Also keep in mind that if your poem goes to spam or porn I will delete the link and ban you.
You don't have to share an original work if aren't yet a poet. You may a share a poem written by someone else as long as you credit the author. This is how I got started writing poetry years ago so it might work for you too--who knows? If you are a poet feel free to resurrect some old poems that you may have shared before.
There are no rules as to form or content, no right or wrong way to do it, and good or bad poetry. This is just a forum for sharing and expression, not a professional critique. Don't worry about being good--I don't! Almost all of my poetry is free verse. Jump in anytime. Join in as seldom or as often as you like. If you don't get a poem up on Friday--that's perfectly okay too--just link up when you can. We will keep it casual at first so no deadlines for now.
Be respectful of other participants. Do not abuse or confront each other even if you are offended by something. This is art; not a debate. There will be zero tolerance for cat-fighting over dissenting/conflicting opinions. There are plenty of other blogs out there for that--this is not one of them. Have fun! Make positive connections! Go away if you don't like it!
Poetry Friday Is A Go
Each Friday I will post a poem here on the blog. If you would like to participate you may share a poem of your own by posting a link to it as a comment here. Write your poem on your own blog or whatever form of social media you use and then just leave me a link in the comments below. Easy peasey! I'll come by your blog and visit your poem and so may anyone else who wants to join in. You may include a link back to here on your blog if you like but it is not a requirement. Just keep in mind that your poem must be visible to the public or it won't work. Also keep in mind that if your poem goes to spam or porn I will delete the link and ban you.
You don't have to share an original work if aren't yet a poet. You may a share a poem written by someone else as long as you credit the author. This is how I got started writing poetry years ago so it might work for you too--who knows? If you are a poet feel free to resurrect some old poems that you may have shared before.
My Old Pal Tim (one of the original members of Poetry Wednesday) is going to spread the word among the old Poetry Wednesday crowd. Lots of great talent in the pool! I will tweet our intentions and see if can attract some fresh fish too. Expect a slow start. Hopefully it will grow in time and we will inspire each other.
There are no rules as to form or content, no right or wrong way to do it, and good or bad poetry. This is just a forum for sharing and expression, not a professional critique. Don't worry about being good--I don't! Almost all of my poetry is free verse. Jump in anytime. Join in as seldom or as often as you like. If you don't get a poem up on Friday--that's perfectly okay too--just link up when you can. We will keep it casual at first so no deadlines for now.
Be respectful of other participants. Do not abuse or confront each other even if you are offended by something. This is art; not a debate. There will be zero tolerance for cat-fighting over dissenting/conflicting opinions. There are plenty of other blogs out there for that--this is not one of them. Have fun! Make positive connections! Go away if you don't like it!
So here we go--see you back here tomorrow for our first Poetry Friday link-up! Whoo hoo!
(c) 2012, ACG
A Different Kind of Light Bulb Moment
I am working on my novel today. Dedicating one day a week to the effort is working even if the going is slow. At least there is progress. We move forward a tiny step at a time as long as we stick to Wednesday's obligation. If we wait until we think we have time for something we will never get it done, right? As I plug along I realize how much I miss Poetry Wednesdays. I am working all the poetry I wrote while participating in that group into the novel. Dedicating one day a week to poetry writing worked really well back then and now I find that without the group I hardly ever write poetry anymore. I'd like to start again. I hesitate to start (or restart) anything new until this novel editing is finished though. I feel like spare writing time should be spent on the novel. Perhaps I'm being too narrow-minded about it though. A great work ethic is one thing but stifling creativity just for sake of keeping a schedule is another. Perhaps I could start Poetry Fridays? Why not? I never work on the novel on Fridays anyway!
I'm fondling the idea under the blaze of my vintage jeweler's lamp. It was a yummy little Ebay find. It has a telescoping light that operates just like the old-fashioned TV antennae. The radio antennae on our cars used to telescope in and out (up and down) too, remember? I think my first cell phone had one as well! This lamp has a magnification mirror in the base for the jeweler's view underneath whatever he/she was working on, so when I lean in close to turn it on or off I get to see so far up my own nose I swear I see brain functions. The color is that awesome awful '70s burnt orange that only Sassy would love. The fact that it's a jeweler's lamp makes me feel as if everything I work on under its light is rare and valuable--like jewels. So of course I had to take a break and let this lady dance. She was stretching out her curvy body along my hip when the jeweler's lamp cast its glow upon her and made her seem to dance to the hidden music in that hip. My art for today and then right back to working on the novel, I promise :
Fondle the shimmy.
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling The Wicked Glee
The Magic Tea Cup has been giving me nothing but blobs since I returned from Spring Break. I figure at least one of you has been wondering why there have been no rodents or crying men in my tea these days. I don't really know why; it's just one of the mysteries of tea cup magic. Some weeks you get a different picture every day and then some weeks you get nothing but brown smudges that don't look like anything. I think half of the fun is just in the anticipatory pause to look each morning anyway. Even if I find nothing there is always the possibility that something will be there, even if it is Winston Churchill.
I was reminded again this week that one of the joys of knowing someone for a long time is that even after a significant amount of time has passed there is still always more to learn about each other. I shocked AppleJack down to his socks this week when I confessed that I have never dyed an Easter egg in my life. We were shopping for something--I can't remember what--when he jokingly pointed to the nearby pastel seasonal display and asked me if I had already stocked up on my Easter egg dye. I casually answered "Nope, wouldn't even know how if I wanted to." He was genuinely stunned that I had never dyed an egg for Easter until I reminded him that little girls who were not allowed to believe in Santa Claus were also not allowed to believe in the Easter Bunny. No baskets. No eggs. No hunts in the green, green grass. We didn't even get new dresses. He hadn't exactly forgotten about North Korea (my nickname for my childhood); he just hadn't considered that it included Easter too.
He reminisced about doing it a gajillion times when his kids were little and then offered to buy me some eggs and dye just so I could experience the mess and stink of the ritual I had missed out on as a child. The artist in me was tempted. I envisioned embossing Easter eggs with images from Tibetan prayer flags and sanskrit and East Indian folklore and then getting a juicy grand heretical photo/art opportunity out of it. In the end I opted out of the project for matters of practicality rather than matters of conscience. He found snakes in the flower beds last week. I got to thinking it might not be a brilliant plan to hide things in the mulch and flora that we would later search out with our hands. Oh but wouldn't it be deliciously poetic though? I mean, decorating an Easter egg with something pagan and then getting bitten by a serpent when you reached for it? Oooooooooh! Makes my toes curl with wicked glee!
You have to admit it would be a dandy story to retell, especially considering it would all hypothetically take place under the placid alabaster gaze of the giant aerial Jesus next door at the Catholic church that stares right down on my backyard! I can see the tabloid headlines now. In fact, I used to joke all the time that the Virgin Mary appeared to me over and over again in the wee hours of the morning at the top of a hill shrouded in mist. I would say this to people and they would take for granted that there wasn't a practical explanation for it. There was, of course, but with more wicked glee I usually waited until they were fully incredulous before I added that I get up and run before the sun comes up. The first structure I pass is the church. The streetlights shine through the morning fog and illuminate the face of Mary's statue in the darkness at the top of the hill ...every day...every mile...over and over...a glowing apparition to bless (or curse) my run. Since it always gets a laugh from even the most devout, I assume I'm at least a fingerhold away from slipping into the proverbial lake of fire for my jocularity. Then again, this may be why I have snakes in my yard.
Be of good cheer. If I'm going to Hell for a joke then you've got all of eternity to feel righteously justified in judging me. We might as well have a little fun while we wait though.
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling The End Of The Story
You know how people like to use the metaphor that they closed the chapter on a life event? This is the same metaphor amplified. Instead of just finishing off and closing out a chapter of my life once and for all, I finished the book of an experience. I wrote "The End." I made my acknowledgements and thanked all the folks who made it possible (that's another metaphor for admitting that I'm the one who made the damn book so long). Then I closed the cover, looked at the dust jacket one last time, and gave it away.
The end of a chapter is just the beginning of another chapter in the same book, isn't it? The end of the book is the end of the story. I finished the story. It was a very long book--15--no 16 years long. Wow, almost as long as I have been running I have been reading/living that story. It's actually a good thing that I finished it off when I did or I wouldn't be able to keep bragging that I haven't been any thing as long as I've been a runner. A bonus perk! I wish I could also claim some kind of symbolic connection to finishing it on April Fool's Day but I can't. That part is just a coincidence.
So what was this story? Well that's the thing; I'm not reliving it anymore. The point of being done is to be finished. I'm not retelling it anymore. You've heard parts of it over the years anyway if you've been a reader here for a long time. You'll read parts of it again adapted for my novel whenever I get it finished and published. I fictionalized it for the novel and thereby donated the story to charity. It was actually probably finished long before this but I just kept rereading it over and over and over. Last night I finally realized I was finished rereading it. There was nothing else to add and nothing else to take away from it. The story had been exhausted as a resource. It's done with me and I'm done with it.
A 16 year effort finally coming to completion is remarkable enough but the part that qualifies it as amazing is that as soon as I let go of that story it made so much more room in my life for the current story. I felt an immediate enrichment of my appreciation for the story I'm living now. It was like editing a photo and dialing up the color saturation--everything I'm living now seemed immediately brighter and bolder and clarified. It prompted me to go on a digital cleaning spree too. I deleted a crapload of old contacts that aren't relevant or active anymore. In some cases I couldn't even remember some of them or why I had saved their email addresses! I moved on to Facebook and unfriended a bunch of dormant or unaffiliated users. It snowballed into a full-on purge of all the old stuff in all my accounts still taking up space but growing nothing or contributing nothing. Old stories were cleared so that the new stories could flourish. Why in the world did I wait so long?
It takes as long as it takes, my friends, and there is no right or wrong amount of time. We all operate with different rhythms and with different motivations. If a long and complicated story takes 16 years to complete then so be it. What is important is that closure comes and is recognized when it arrives. It's not important how long it takes. I feel like I just cleaned out a huge internal closet and I'm standing back and looking at all the empty space in wonder. Who knew that we didn't have to carry around our old stories? Aren't we taught that the things that happen to us are part of us forever? Not exactly. Things, people, and experiences do not necessarily have to be part of us forever if we evolve beyond them. They become obsolete to whomever we may grow to be. Once we commit to living a present/future that is non-dependent on the past, all that old stuff that seemed "part of us" just collects dust. It doesn't mean those things didn't matter; it just means that those things are finished. They remain part of who we were, not who we are. This is what amazes me--a simple but crucial detail.
I was misled into thinking I had to "live with" so many things for the rest of my life. Don't we say that all the time? I'll just have to learn to live with it. I thought that all of the stories would be part of the universal story forever. I didn't realize that the universal story is a living thing that renews itself any time I let it. There is a point at which keeping old clutter cripples living and we need to have a yard sale. If we stop living with the dead weight at that point we get the chance to learn what it feels like to live without it. I've only been living without it for a few hours but it already feels better. I feel amazing. I feel like I am amazing. That empty closet feels like the phone booth that Clark Kent used to change into Superman. I cleaned it out and now I have a chance to use it for amaz-ing. Hell yeah.
(c) 2012, ACG
The Anesthesia of Sisterhood
Yesterday I got up at 5 am and was out the door by 5:15. I ran to work (about 2 miles) to serve as volunteer coordinator for the race. There were actually two races; a 5k run and a 1 mile family fun run. While my cousin directed the races I helped to dispatch the volunteers to their assignments and fill in the holes when people didn't show up. There are always a few! Luckily we had helpers in reserve and got everything covered before the races started. Then I lined up and ran the 5k along with the 549 runners we recruited and attracted over the last few weeks. This number far surpassed our expectations or our planning! AppleJack worked the finish line and we had a small army of family, friends, and coworkers pitching in to cover the other supporting roles. With the exception of the bloody armadillo carcass curdling right in the middle of the race course the entire production went off without a hitch. After we gave out all the awards and cleaned up I ran home (another 2 miles). I was so exhausted and achy by the time I got home all I could manage was a meal and a nap. I woke up sometime in the afternoon so sore and depleted I hobbled around the house like a crippled old woman.
You'd think at this point I would have put my feet up and rested for awhile but oh no; sweating in the near 90 degree afternoon sun sounded like a better idea. There was still some planting to be done while there was still weekend left so I sucked it up and went outside to work in the the yard with AppleJack and El Doggo. The long awaited water feature in the rock garden gets its final installation on Wednesday, so achy body or not there was prep work to be done. I felt like a beaten down field hand by the time we called it quits. It hurt to move. I couldn't even find a comfortable position sitting completely still. Legs, feet, back, arms, shoulders, head--it all hurt. After a hot bath and a cool drink the only thing keeping me teetering on the awake side of consciousness was the pain. You know that pain, don't you? It's the bittersweet consequence of overdoing it. I had way overdone it. Even after I fell asleep I dreamed that I was in pain! But before I fell asleep something else happened.
I got a text message from a sister-from-another-mister asking me to meet her for a 5 mile run in the morning. Without hesitation I said yes. Of course. I didn't even think about it. I would do anything for Her even if it involved pain. She is one of those people that could call me five minutes before I was hanged for treason and I'd find a way to help her. Ditto for her husband; the answer is always yes--I will be there. I will get up early and meet you for a run even though I feel like I've been shoved through a wood chipper and can't remember my name and address. No problem. Do you have friends like this? It's something spiritual, isn't it? You cheerfully say yes--not just willingly but with genuine desire to be there for anything and never begrudging it as a sacrifice of your time or energy. It humbles me. It is a privilege to have friends who can evoke this kind of response in me. I'm known for being extremely selective with my free time but there are certain souls who supersede all other interests and make me want to be by their sides in any circumstance. I will have to think of a name to call it when I want to reference it more succinctly. Primal friendship maybe? Anyway, she asked and I said yes with excitement. I decided I would negotiate with my body in the morning. We invited another sister and went to bed.
It turns out that our sister needed us for more than just a run. A family death and another relative having lifesaving surgery had brought a week's worth of angst into her house and she needed to step out and get her balance back. The entire family was in town. All week. In her house. GrandDad was going to make it but there was still the recent passing of another relative and the other "stuff" that goes along with a family crisis. It was a therapy run. As we ran along she shared everything she had been going through all week and I was humbled again that I got to be part of her release. I was so happy I had said yes to this run; especially now that I knew how much she needed it! Once her mind was clearer we moved on to other topics: pets, races, mutual friends, relatives with Alzheimers, sex, food, chafing, etc. On a quick walk break she smiled and breathed deeply and mentioned that she felt enormously better already though we were not even halfway finished with our run. As she said it I did a quick body scan of my own and realized I had no pain in my body anywhere! Holy cow! How did that happen? I was bouncing along as fresh as a daisy (minus the sweat). Legs, feet, back, the whole enchilada didn't hurt anymore. We coined a phrase for this phenomenon--The Anesthesia of Sisterhood.
So what did I do after our group hug and farewells? I went home to AppleJack and we hauled another load of rock out of the river. Oh yes, more manual labor. But after that I put my foot down. I was putting them UP for the rest of the day. Sassy was done. It was going to be yoga magazines and sofa cushions until dinner time. I didn't even make it through one article before I fell asleep, waking to afternoon sunshine and windchimes. AppleJack now has chicken and dumplings gurgling in the kitchen. I've been pinned beneath a purring cat since I woke up so I put on my glasses (the ones that make me look smart, not old) and let my fingers find their way back to the keyboard. Tonight I have candles and old movies planned. Maybe the coming week will be more conducive to writing. This week was all about karma and landscaping. Let there now be peace and a brief period of inactivity at The Jesus Crack House.
(c) 2012, ACG
Fondling Danielle's Bombs
If you had your own fan club, who would be President and what AMAZING and encouraging things would they say about you?
Well here's the thing--I already have a fan club. My readers are my fan club. I already know what kinds of things they say about me because they post them here and/or email me. So on the surface of the question this was an easy answer. I hear/read the words brilliant, gifted and amazing all the time. I get thanked for my writing almost weekly. Just last month another blogger called me "wise and wondrous." This morning a coworker called me incredibly talented. So there ya go. I've got a thriving, effusive fan club and my encouragement is foregoing. With the exception of the Presidential nomination the question is answered. Or is it? When I consider that there are a few folks who read here regularly who would not consider themselves "fans" even if I do, the answer isn't so easy.
I absolutely do consider these folks fans. If you come here with any regularity at all then you are a fan regardless of your reasons for being here or the nature of your intentions once you leave. My terms are not really that far left of convention. Consider that we may be fans of others without agreeing with every single thing they say or thinking they are perfect in every way. We may even dislike specific things about our heroes but still remain big fans of them or their work. Maybe you don't leave comments and maybe you've never professed adoration but your continued presence is the qualifier that matters. One or two visits might excuse you but if you come back again and again you are a follower, ergo you are a fan. (If you don't like being called a fan you might consider how you would feel if I went all out and called you a disciple. It can always get worse.)
Another writer I follow is Pema Chodron, who says that "Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know."
For those fans who obviously don't like me but read regularly anyway (I know there are at least three), I figure our connection remains because it has not yet taught us what we need to know. Why else would we remain interested in people we find distasteful? Why be a fan of someone you hate? In one case a certain reader went as far as calling me Human Garbage yet comes back week after week to sniff the cans and pick through the trash. Why would someone who feels that way about me continue to read a blog written by me? These people think about me. They write about me. They feel compelled by me. I used to think it was only to validate their dislikes and to criticize. Now I think the reason is Pema's reason.
In the case of the Garbage Collector, this is a fan who isn't hanging around for art appreciation, entertainment value, friendship, or positive interest but this is a fan nonetheless. When he/she finally learns whatever is it that needs to be known, he/she will go away. I will stop being a compelling force in the lives of these folks once they learn the lesson that our connection represents. I suppose at that point there is also a chance that they might then become fans for one of those other reasons like appreciation, entertainment, etc. Either way I can't truthfully say that all of my fans say amazing and encouraging things, can I? Some of them don't. Some of them call me Human Garbage and these are also my fans. How's that for a Truthbomb?
How about another Truthbomb? I now see the necessity of being Human Garbage to someone. We all come to our truths via different methods. Some of us are compelled by morbidity until we learn otherwise. If hating me and thereby fostering a morbid attraction to my work helps someone eventually realize their truths then being Human Garbage is the same as being any other kind of teacher or facilitator. It's an honor. If these folks learn their truths and go away, I know it worked. If these folks learn their truths and remain fans with new appreciation, I know it worked. Either way I held the space and energy for them whether I did so as garbage or goddess. That's not an insult; it's an honor.
For years I have quietly whispered to myself that I am not Human Garbage. I am not Human Garbage. I am not Human Garbage. I couldn't let it go even as I refuted it over and over and built my shrines and counted my fans. It just wouldn't go away. Why? Because it had not yet taught me what I needed to know. I needed to see that I am a source of truth for some and a facilitator of truth for others. I needed to take responsibility for that calling and work up the courage to say it out loud, in public, without apology. Someone calling me Human Garbage helped bring me to that calling. I cannot think of a higher calling this or a more ironic journey than this but it is irrefutably the truth I am finally grateful to know.
Had I not known the Garbage Collector's insult all those years ago I might not have ever known what I have learned here today. In that respect I must admit to being a fan of my fans--even the fans who insult me. As you can see, I am as much a student of the truths discovered here as any of my fans may be so I am loathe to elect us a President. I don't want anyone trying to convince my fans that being called Human Garbage is necessarily a bad thing. It turned out to be a dazzling spark that ignited a cataclysmic Truthbomb. So flame on, my fans. Do what it takes to bomb your way out of your falsehoods even if it that means only hanging around here to comment on the stink. I burn right along with you; only after today it will be with cleaner fuel.
(c) 2012, ACG
