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That Special Thing

February 17, 2010 by Cynthia

Exactly how odd it is that I seem to be emotionally attached to a freebie black plastic ink pen given out by my bank?

It is just a pen, it is just a bank, albeit staffed by unusually friendly people. People I really needed to be friendly last summer when I was sorting through my life, and the lives of my children, after my husband left.

I imagine most folks have some sort of trove – maybe old jewelry, bits of paper, a stone, even a stale piece of hard candy. That special thing.

A stash of economically valueless items that have become priceless not for what they are, but because they hold what cannot be captured in a word, or an expression – it is held in the thing – yes, the special thing.

Relationships and the people that populate them are sometimes such things. Stand-in’s, sometimes stunt doubles, for energy passing by that wanted to be. The stuff that drops into our world as process or form, for us to be able to see or reflect on it. Memento’s of habit and flesh, or the occasional pen.

And we keep ’em. At least, from time to time, I do. To remember the good, or the not-so-good energy that once passed through. And because the special thing has the power to stop, to dissuade relentless time, for just the length of a black plastic pen.

It lies with two other, less remarkable pens, at the bottom of my worn leather purse. Reminds me of these times when so little means so much.

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Weather on Demand

February 16, 2010 by Cynthia

The arrogance of mankind.

“Weather on demand,” the radio DJ said, online, on the radio, in the air.

Forecast the pattern coming to a sky near you. Tune in, listen, count on it – it is coming in the air.

Human word nets cast over natural events, be comfortable, it’s handled – feel control you can never have.

Cloudy words, rainy days, frozen atmosphere. Take a guess, use your radar, no one ever knows what’s coming.

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To the World

February 14, 2010 by Cynthia

I am an unabashed fan of Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is one of those clever holidays that actually arises from the spring festivals of yore. While cynics eschew the paper hearts, candy and roses, the nature of the holiday is, well, nature.

About this time of year, things start to stir – seeds, thoughts, hearts. It is telling that we are a culture that requires a designated day to express love.

I just googled “love” – “a strong positive emotion of regard and affection.” Ah, but that author missed those that love to hate. The definition of love, I think, should reside more in the realm of “passion.”

Passion, such a beautiful word, one with a heartbeat. Even for those with darker passions, the word lives.

But love, at its hopeful best, is a quixotic, shapeshifting feeling unserved by a four-letter word.

Love is the highest product of humanity, a gift of our nature – whether for partner, friend, animal, endeavor – it is what connects those of us walking the planet at this time. Love is seed, fruit and harvest for the world.

If you are reading this, you and I have most likely crossed paths at some point in life, and for that I feel lucky. And if I haven’t met you, well, I hope to someday. This blog is my love letter to the world. Live love into the world when you have it, take some when you need it.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

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This just in…

February 10, 2010 by Cynthia

Just heard on the street…The Neighbor is taking the stage name “Psycho-Bubbles.” Coming soon to a playbill near you.

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Change in the Air

February 9, 2010 by Cynthia

Scuffling dust brown sparrows in the pea gravel strewn island of an empty parking lot. Their songs caught my attention. Bare branches stretch for warmth, insular winter breaks. Spring is coming.

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The Written Word…

February 5, 2010 by Cynthia

“Collaborative divorce” is an oxymoron.

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Seen around town

February 4, 2010 by Cynthia

“What would your walls say?”

– Slogan advertising interior decorating services

Everyone has seen them. Catchy phrases and advertising slogans. They are everywhere. This one was on the back of a green van sorely in need of a romp through a car wash.

It had the desired effect. An image of my relatively recently painted walls warmed my mind. I am fond of desert hues.

The Greek philosopher Plato thought of the mind as a cage, and birds as thoughts that flew across the vault of that inner sky. Some birds roost for a long time, some don’t. Birds, like most critters, including humans, depend on some place, maybe a couple of walls, to call home.

Walls contain, they stand, and they fall. When they aren’t obstructing things, the secret thing walls do is listen. Listen to winged things like laughter, sighs, silence or lies. What the walls say depends upon what the walls hear.

Walls, what roosts within them, gives some character, leaves others haunted.

Desert colors offer me wide open spaces in a world that sometimes feels too small. That’s what my walls say.

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A Penny for your Thoughts

February 3, 2010 by Cynthia

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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When You Wish Upon a Star…

February 2, 2010 by Cynthia

…”makes no difference who you are…”

Magnanimous fella, that Jiminy Cricket. Seemed to like astronomy too, probably spent a fair bit of time stargazing, being a cricket and all.

Old Jiminy saw fate up there, blowing around in the stars. A single wish, a single star can do the trick. I wonder what a group of stars could do.

Like say, a constellation – remember those? Pegasus, Orion, Andromeda? Groups of stars that altogether point to a bigger picture when we look at them from a distance, from earth.

Alone, each star has its own history and depth, much like a single event, or a single person in our lives. We don’t usually get too much distance from events in our lives, so the bigger picture? Hard to see.

But sometimes, events in our day, or over a lifetime, “constellate,” become vibrant, or active enough for us to see that bigger picture in our lives, our own personal constellation – if we can stand by long enough to see it.

…”Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you through…”

Jiminy seemed to see a bigger reason up there in the stars, some invisible something flashing out of nowhere that puts it all together for a reason, saving our skin and our heart’s desire in the process. In just that moment, it all makes sense.

“Bolt out of the blue?” Sounds like Jiminy appreciated meteorology too. Renaissance man.

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Cloudy with a chance of…

January 29, 2010 by Cynthia

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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