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Archive for the ‘Reflections on the everyday’ Category

A Penny for your Thoughts

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on February 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Ah, month’s end. Month’s beginning. Since becoming a single head-of-household, I have struggled to find the right budgeting method to best manage our limited finances.

As seen in the crises of our times, managing money is no small feat. In the same light, lucky are those who have money to “manage” at all. So I’m not complaining.

Now money might be considered a medium of energy exchange in our culture. You got a lot? You can do a lot of things. Not much? You can still do a fair bit, but what energy you do have, has to get creative. Too much for what you need? It can get all bound up – maybe bloat, groundlessness, waste. Too little and the wind dries out whatever tries to grow, burns off too fast.

There’s a balance in there somewhere, like caloric intake, unique to each person and the life they are trying to live.

I balanced out January with exactly $0.02 to spare. I was jubilant.

On Sunday, I related this fact to a lightly-known clerk with whom I occasionally commiserate at my local big-box grocery store. Striding by, a sort of rough looking gentleman overheard my comment and remarked, “better it had been $2.00.” I smiled broadly and replied, “yes, but $0.02 was enough.”

Paucity does not impress me, I am not hoping for long-term residency at the bottom line. But the next time you hear someone say, “that’s just my $0.02,” remember that sometimes that $0.02 makes all the difference.

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Cloudy with a chance of…

Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on January 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s cold today, the snow is dry and humorless. 16 F, without calculating windchill.

Bitter temperature, wind that bites through any coat? Must be time for a walk.

A vast field of stratocumulous is broken here and there by the solar disk. I cannot help but wander along those edges.

One side of those clouds faces toward the sun – too brilliant to look for long. The other side surveys the passing of life below, a dichotomy familiar to any airplane passenger.

There is sometimes vast space between those two places, up and down. The air traveler can be mesmerized, or terrified, by descent through clouds.

The half-light provided by cloud cover is distinctly different from that of twilight. Cloudy half-light, by reducing brilliant glare, enhances visibility of what is already present. Twilight reduces visibility of what is present, by giving thought to what is coming.

Around the corner and down the street. The wind has frozen my upper extremities while the powdery snow has made quick work of whatever heat my footgear was advertised as holding in. I can only laugh.

Through the air comes the high tinkling sound of a wind chime, like the song of a kachina, arresting, disconnecting, an ornament perfectly forgotten.

The solar disk is on the move and I keep going. Another chime further away, rich, sonorous, infrequent. The rustle of leaves still gripping bare branches keeps time with the wind. This language is one I only half understand. So much talk, so piercing – painful – not for its discord, but for its beauty. The depth of it is killing.

Of stratocumulous, my Field Guide to North American Weather reads, “[s]tratocumulous represent saturation and instability in a shallow layer near the surface of the earth.” That sounds about right.

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All Choked up…

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged on January 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Let’s talk about hairballs. Not the benign, partly-digested food sausages that choke up kitties, but rather, the real thing – the smelly, stringy gelatinous critter that is lurking in the u-joint of your bathroom sink.

Leave one of those beasties in the craw of your drain too long and you’re doomed to personal confrontation. It was, however, my good fortune last night to do just that.

I say “good fortune” because said beastie was discovered while replacing a leaky faucet, a feat made possible only with the guidance and assistance of my good friend, The Neighbor.

To quote The Neighbor, upon viewing the sludge-ridden material lodged in my drain, … “that is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.”

Now this, by itself, is an accomplishment. The Neighbor is an undaunted woman who, some time ago, uttered the memorable words “I’m going in!” as we both cowered outside my basement door one very early morning overhearing what sounded like a pitched battle between my cat and a rabid tapir. Just two months ago, she talked me off my roof, after I flew up with a hammer (and a cell phone) – to beat into oblivion any shingle or vent skirt unwise enough to admit mice to my attic – belatedly remembering my dislike of heights. And a couple of years ago, it was The Neighbor who waited with me as a surgeon cut out my child’s ruptured appendix, and who never blinked when the surgeon produced a photograph of that rotten, exploded organ.

So, you can imagine my delight.

Although unacquainted before I relocated here years ago, I am convinced, on reflection, that one of the reasons I landed in this small burg was to meet the likes of The Neighbor.

The Neighbor is one of many friends of mine who “can do.” With their hands, their hearts and their minds, they cook, write, build, live and love their lives.

Strange is the unseen library on whose shelves the books of these lives reside, connected sometimes by proximity, sometimes by commonality, some by seeming chance. Catalog is impossible. Physical hyperlinks of connection too fantastic to be believed, but nonetheless real.

It is neither destiny nor divinity that designs these transits, but an as-yet unarticulated quality still slumbering in the twilight thought of human consciousness.

That connective quality, sometimes quietly, sometimes viciously, tracks through the everyday, usually only guessed at after it has moved on, leaving us, among friends, to wonder.

And to work. For without The Neighbor, the leaky faucet would still be stealing my energy and my water, the drain would have seeped back to me all I sought to let go. Too much going in, too little going out. Although embroidered in the countenance of a friend, the corrective threads of the energy are unmistakable.

Sometimes it takes a friend to help you find the stuff that chokes, the lurking, nasty stuff you didn’t even know was there.

Thanks Neighbor.

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Cracking the Code

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on January 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I like to break the ice.

All sorts of ice out there, especially this time of year. Like the frozen stacked ice that holds out against even a spring breeze or insidious “black ice” – so-called for its invisible nature – dangerous unfriendly stuff. Then there is my favorite kind of ice, the type that exposes itself to the elements, freezes and thaws daily,  and basically calls out for my attention.

It probably says something about me that I like to crunch ice sheets, but I’d rather not know what it is. My neighbors take pity on me, believing I have a navigational disability that causes me to walk on the left side of the road, bumping into snowdrifts (quick tip: regardless of your direction, the ice is always better on the left side of the road). Worse yet, the neighbors take even more pity on my children, believing they have inherited a congenital navigational disability, which I guess, in a way, they have.

There’s air in the friendly stuff, sometimes making pockets with beautifully crystalline surfaces that crack and break to reveal the water underneath. Sometimes when you put pressure on one side of sheet ice, water bubbles up a foot or so away – connections are always so interesting. Overhanging ice curbs one day, sheet ice the next, always something new to see. Change is good.

But the ice with no breath? That’s the stuff to avoid. Hidden among the rest, it can trip you up, its lack of depth leaves it shallow, dark and slippery.

Take a look next time you venture out, no telling what you might meet.  There’s fun in the sun, but also on the ground, sometimes in front of your feet.

Nothing like breaking the ice.

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On Relationships

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday on January 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s in the jaw. The angle of the chin, the tension of the skin. His suit was expensive, hair perfect grey, tight beltline, shoes without a scuff, newspaper in hand. Clearly here for their appointment, between appointments. He nodded to me when he came in the door.

Expensive jewelry, tailored clothes, no beltline, a weary face behind tasteful cosmetics, shoes without a scuff, expensive purse clutched in hand. About my age, she smiled to me as she settled in next to him, surveying the waiting room of this counseling center, refuge of the walking wounded.

The warmth of the Tuscan-style decor belied the chill in the space between them, a marriage of indifference and desperation. Their quest? For lost unity.

Like the shiny white hearse I passed on my drive in that morning, I dared look no closer. For whatever was there is dead, boxed inside their guts, clothed in rich but empty gesture.

You can only smell these things once you’ve really lived them – been eaten alive. The odor here is thick.

Some people hate advice, sometimes I don’t understand that. I want to tell this woman “run!” I want to tell him “go, go,” but I don’t, it isn’t my affair.

I am there that day in the aftermath of the scene I see before me, on my own quest, for amicable division.

Each person makes their own deal, what can be lived with, what cannot. I am one of the lucky ones, I made it out of the box. My hair is floppy, shoes and backpack scuffed, my cosmetics by what’s-on-sale at the grocery store. But that hearse isn’t circling my block anymore, I’m free.

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The King is Dead, Long live the King

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on January 19, 2010| 2 Comments »

Sometime late last night, that pumpkin fulfilled its potential.  Death by retread.

So far gone that its flattened remains left only a smear, the pumpkin’s perfectly preserved seeds pitched in every direction.   At last look, some seeds have already tracked up the street, while others commiserate with the torn plastic pop bottle headed for the storm drain.

That pumpkin probably saw more than most, it certainly lasted longer.  It was here, it is gone, it left a few thoughts.  We should all be so lucky.

Still it sucks to get squished.

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Out of Time

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on January 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

There is a pumpkin sitting in the street. Just about muskmelon size. Its longevity undoubtedly owing to the toothless smile that was rendered upon its face by a permanent ink marker, rather than a knife.

Stemless and bleached a somewhat pale flesh color by the elements, it is facing east, perhaps awaiting the next dawn. It wasn’t there yesterday.

The sudden appearance of the pumpkin is strange, it has the dimply look of a melon whose stringy insides are held together only by its uninterrupted skin, its internal fortitude gone. It sits flat on the asphalt, gravity no longer a friend.

That pumpkin is out of its time. In this area, such a cucurbit is a trapping of October, not a dull January day when white sky matches dirty white snow.

Pumpkins don’t care about Halloween, or even about pies, they just look like they do. Nature made that squishy, bleached pumpkin to spread its seeds around, a few more toothless smiles. The fact that it is still whole defies its potential. Sometimes a little bust-up is needed to spread out new ideas for the future.

I could go out and scoop up that fella, move him safely to a snowbank. But that is a pumpkin with destiny, it has lasted this long, I have to see how the story ends. I’ll keep you posted.

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In Search of…

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged on January 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Dysphonia has me today, and yesterday, and maybe tomorrow.

Slightly less interesting to say, “oh, my voice sounds weird because I have laryngitis.”

Like every other loss, whether it is your voice or the pink lucky rabbit’s foot on a keychain you got at the Fair when you were ten, you don’t really feel for it until it is gone.

The human voice is actually pretty amazing, like teeth and fingerprints, it is one of those things that is uniquely you. No one else will ever sound like you because no one else, whether they are related or not, will ever be you – with your nose, spine, vocal organs or bones.

So when your voice is absent from the world, regardless of your vocal ability, it is a pretty big deal. It means the singular expression that is you, the entirety of the grand experience nature invested in you…is missing.

Once lost, voices are notoriously hard to find. No class, no three-day workshop, not even a GPS will help you then. Lives are scattered, lives are lost, along the path to “hell and back,” the “Hero’s (or Heroine’s) Journey” and “the road less traveled.” All can be considered quests for embodied voice. Success, at any level, is never guaranteed. Funny thing too, once you’ve lost your voice, by the time you do find it again, it always sounds different than it did before, which is usually not a bad thing.

And odder still is where your voice might turn up. Unconfined by vocal cords, voice can show up in a good (or bad) relationship, artwork, a favorite pursuit, your child’s eyes, sometimes even when you are all alone, with just some high clouds and a starry night for company.

Bogs…I mean..blogs, are an excellent place to look for voice, to consider other people’s voices and to find resonance with your own. Now, if I could just find that rabbit’s foot…

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Long Time Gone

Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged on January 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Dogs barking somewhere in Rustic Canyon. Terraces rising against the hill. In the dark, someone probably walking their purebred Afghan dog has annoyed someone else’s pug. Up there in in the dark. 1972, Santa Monica, California.

The dogs have stopped now, as have the far-off construction noises that called them to mind.

Getting older has its privileges. Like this ability, opportunity really, to tend to a long-forgotten memory summoned by present day stimuli.

A gift of older age – time travel afforded to those with a memory still to visit – the slipping back to a decades-old place at just the hint of a sound, a scent or a song. It pulls, doesn’t it?

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Yes, “Bog, not “Blog”

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on January 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

You might notice the tagline of this page reads “a bog from life’s dusty crossroads.” It is no mistake, but the result of a fortuitous slip of a finger made while describing this space via email to a list of lovely women that I have the pleasure to know.

My first encounter with a bog was when Dixie Rose beckoned to me to see an interesting plant. Forever seeking the most direct route, I accidentally plunged neck-deep into a spongy, stinking mess. I recall rather vociferously proclaiming my displeasure.

Okay, so it may only have been knee-deep. I was four, Dixie, an avid naturalist, birder, photographer and writer, was about 104, with thick glasses and the kind of dusty, stacked library that would cause a bibliophile to swoon. Her husband, Ed, seemed about 110 to me, a tall man whose battle with cancer had left him with an electronic voice box. Ed was straight-out and as gracious as the petals of his last name.

Since then, I have had a predilection for mire. My last encounter spanned almost twenty years, and is currently working itself out in the form of  divorce. If there is muck in my general vicinity, I will most likely, sooner or later, find myself face down in it.

But let’s not be hasty. Bogs can be interesting places. Pretty rugged things live in bogs, things that don’t need a lot of nutrients, things that can live in acidic environments. No chaff here.

Bogs also fix, or hold, about one-quarter of the carbon outputs harbored on land – another one of those “sinks.” So that crummy stuff we don’t want to breathe, that we don’t want in our environment, is happy to find a home in a bog.

And better still, as a wetland, a bog is a process. In the proper inhospitable conditions it takes in the strange, the stinky and the scorched and, over a great deal of time, can eventually produce good stuff – nutrient rich stuff – that feeds the things we grow and makes a pretty nice fire.

Plus, you never know what you might find in a bog. Those acidic, nasty conditions can preserve things quite well. Dating from 3,000 BC, the Ceide Fields in North Mayo, Ireland, were preserved under a peat bog, a Neolithic treasure for modern man. I think bogs preserve a lot of that old stuff, maybe not always Neolithic – maybe just thirty-or-so odd years back – slowly being turned into energy, and worth uncovering from time to time – especially if you happen to find yourself face down in it.

So you see, a bog can be a special place, hence my tagline. Dixie Rose is long gone, Ed passed on before she did. Dixie could stand the muck, she found the most beautiful things in it. I do my best. Here’s to you Dixie.

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