Monthly Archives: November 2017

NO MORE HEROES AND HEROINES

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It’s Tuesday but it feels like a Sunday morning coming down. My brain must be lagging behind. Too much stuff to process. What’s happening to me, to us, to the universe?

These are the 2 recent world events that I’m trying to grapple with. Less than 2 months before there was the shooting in Las Vegas where 58 people were killed. On Oct. 31 the truck attack in New York killed 8 people. Is it any wonder that my brain is stalled? It is a good mechanism. I don’t/can’t understand such atrocities of the killers. As to the greed and duplicity of the mega rich, I don’t want to understand. And how can the government say one thing and do another? Even the Queen is not exempt from greed and tax evasion. Then there’s Bono, Madonna….I don’t want to hear any more names. Are there no heroes or heroines anymore? And where is love?

My brain is putt putting this morning. It’s not depressed. It’s just a tad stalled. The sun is glorious, the air cool and crisp. We are happy and snug. I still feel hopeful despite everything out there. I will focus more locally – just within my vision. I cast about too much, distressing my self, losing precious energy.  I guess I will have to get into my phone booth and do a costume change. I will be my own heroine and do the right things.

BUT IT ISN’T MY FAULT

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I can’t believe I’m in the same place. But it isn’t my fault. How often have I felt and said that? The other day cleaning out stuff, I found some scribbling dated 1988.

  1. I have trouble cleaning my house. I accumulate too many things
  2. I have trouble trusting other people with my feelings
  3. Right now I have a negative image with my head nurse which stems from the past
  4. I find it hard to take care of my car properly
  5. I can’t cook
  6. I need more time to pursue my goals

The list was from a course called Adventures in Attitude. From where I am sitting now, I can’t really say that I was successful or adventurous. I am mostly talk. I am very good at taking courses and reading self-help books. As for applying the principles, I’m not so sure.  I’m still talking the same lingo. I still have that same problem of keeping my place tidy. I still have piles of clutter. I can’t seem get pass GO.

I am not a total failure. I have rid a few items on the list. I can cook now. I don’t worry about the car anymore. I take it in for servicing. I no longer worry about head nurses. I’m free of working and answering to authority figures. I have time and yet still not enough. As for trusting others with my feelings, I’m here talking, aren’t I?

Where to go from here? Seems like I need to work on #1. So simple and yet so hard.  29 years later, I’m still crying and whining about the same damn things.  I better read Portia Nelson’s poem again. Better yet, if only I could DO the clearing and cleaning.

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in. It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

 

 

 

MEANWHILE THE WORLD GOES ON

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Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.

Mary Oliver sure can wrangle them words. Wish that they were mine! Meanwhile the wild geese fly. Meanwhile I’m tapping out my words, my distress. Yes, I have been listening to someone’s despair again. Not that they would have call it such. But what would you call it – the losing of one’s identity, job, home, life partner?

I have no need of telling mine. I tap it out here on the page. It does me more good here than recounting out aloud to someone. Then I would be just begging. Oh, please, feel sorry for me. I have suffer so!  I need no such sympathy or pity. It would only make me wallow deeper in my misery. I am listening to the tapping of my keyboard. The cadence is soothing on my frayed nerves. I’m comforting myself. I wonder if cutting or flagellating oneself have the same mechanism of relief.  It’s good that I don’t have to physically hurt myself to do so.

There! I’m almost myself again – soothed and smoothed.  I’ve listened to too much despair and sadness. I’m not willing to do so anymore. I will offer them Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese instead.

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.