Two Truths and At Least One Lie

No one has ever asked me what it's like to be white.  Or a woman.  Like anyone would expect me to speak for someone else.

True, several people have asked me how it is I can be 54 and yet have never carried a purse. But I think their curiosity rests more in where I put things rather than in what I am.

Believe me when I say that, in the past couple of weeks, I've had to practically sit on my hands to resist the urge to ask a black person to guide or inform me, even though I know the absurdity of asking someone to somehow be a larger group.  Thank God I've got a place for those fidgety hands of mine.

These are choppy waters we find ourselves in these days.  But I am encouraged that so many of us are still wading in them.  There are, I think, all kinds of people right now who really want to know how to do things differently.  Sure, many of us, like first-time surfers, will lose our footing, fall into the waves and make fools of ourselves, over and over and over again.  This learning process--or un-learning process, as it may be--is a messy business.  But we need to keep getting back on the boards, because the waves are not going away.

Maybe I should have been carrying a purse all these years.  Now, when I really need to open up and see what it is I have been lugging along with me,  I don't have the convenience of rifling through my Kate Spade to get to the truth of things.  Instead, I have to hunt down scraps of paper, tarnished mementos and handfuls of loose change, each tucked away in various pockets or atop my desk or in the console of my car, and lay them out like pieces of a treasure map, and try to make sense of it all.

I know I've used too many metaphors in this post, moving from purses to surfboards with seemingly no regard for good taste or readability.  It's probably just another delay tactic, offering up a few more distractions to keep me from starting to do the hard work of learning and unlearning.  Or maybe they represent something more substantive,  like clunky signs of my dis-ease.

For today, at least, they'll have to do.  And I'll have to trust that by putting them down here, by writing them out for others to see, I will be held accountable.  I will be asked to share what I know and what I've learned about what it means to be a human living on this earth right now.

As the World Turns

1,040 miles per hour.  That's how fast the earth is spinning right now.  And you wondered why you're feeling a little dizzy these days.  I think it's worth reminding ourselves that the earth has always been spinning at an astounding clip, yet, thanks to gravity, we've seldom taken notice.    

So why is it that we feel like our feet have left the ground these days?  Certainly, there's no shortage of gravitas.  And maybe--ironically--that's part of the reason we feel imbalanced.  Shootings. Politics.  Oppressive heat.  So much heavy stuff to take in. No wonder we are disoriented.

On Christmas Eve in 1968, I was poking at gifts under the tree, unable to contain my seven-year-old enthusiasm for the what ifs that lay under wraps.  At that same time, the Apollo 8 astronauts were getting their first look (actually, anyone's first look) at Earth from the surface of the Moon.   Pilot Jim Lovell, upon taking it all in, said this about the sight: "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth."

Neil Degrasse Tyson talks about the transmission of that first image of earth as being the very moment when the environmental movement was born.  Taken aback by the beauty of their planet, humans were overwhelmed by a deep desire to tend to that lovely home.

And so, I stare at the image above.  Look at it long and hard.  And my heart softens again, its pace slowing down.  I stare at that image and let my head fill with wonder, amazed that so many beautiful things--people and plants and animals and micro-organisms and, yes, I realize I'm starting to sound like a song by that cheesy 70s band, America--are held together upon its surface by equal and equally invisible forces of gravity and love and hope and desire.

The more I stare at this image, the more ground I feel below my feet.  I notice a sloughing of both fear and its unwelcomed cousin, hopelessness. Hidden in this image, I start to realize, is a powerful antidote to a summer filled with so many hard and furious things.  I stare at my home, this single thing holding a trillion other things in its wide and capable arms, whispering to us that our feet are, in fact, on the ground, and we are, in fact, still together, holding fast against the odds.

And I realize, once again, "just what I have back here on Earth."And that it's most certainly worth fighting for.

A Societal Case of Teen Angst

For large swaths of my life, the camera has not been kind to me.  Then again, it could have something to do with my fashion "sense."  Consider the photo on the left.  I'm the boyish one in the middle, all denim and swag.  Really, my only saving grace was that I was a teen and didn't know any better.

. . . kind of like our country right now.

Countries, like dogs, age differently than humans.  If I double the typical dog-to-human equation, then it takes 15 years of being a country to equal one year of human life.  That means the United States is knee deep in adolescence.  Heck, using that equation, we've only been able to drive for a little over a year and we still can't vote.

Hyped up on testosterone, its brain not fully formed, the United States is the wild-eyed teen driving too fast, staying up too late,  eating too poorly, blindly fighting itself and others for reasons both real and imagined.  Acned and ill-proportioned, our country's youth looks strange on us.

Like many teens, the United States is angsty and adrift, hungry to find its identity and certain that it's older than it really is.  Our elders--China, Japan, Ethiopia and Egypt, as well as much of Europe--have every right to roll their eyes at us.  They, who have known foreign wars on their own soil, they who have lurched and belched and stretched and grieved through millennia, must think us fools at times.

Not all is lost in this adolescence, though.  It is there, in those youthful days, after all, where wild, hope-filled dreams take root and our eyes and minds begin to imagine a tomorrow that is somehow different.  Something that is not. . . this.  

Fortunately, we are all experts at this, having survived our own adolescence.  Surely, then, we can figure out a way to work together and nudge our country through these rough years, remembering always that what we feed is what will grow.

Below the too-loud music is a deep river, a thrum that suggests real change. We would do well to heed its call.

The Breakup Letter

Dear Fourth,
We're done.

Yeah, I know.  It's lame of me to write you a letter, but, frankly, after the way you behaved last night, I just didn't have it in me to do this over coffee.  That and the fact that I don't drink coffee.

Oh, it's true--I loved you for a long time.  It's true you used to make my eyes light up and my heart go pitter patter.  Not to mention what you could do to my old Barbies and army men.  But those halcyon days of dancing butterflies and silver fountains are faint memories now.  Just like my neighbor's plastic garbage can.

As for last night?  My God, you were so full of yourself.  All red, white and BOOM!  And the more the girls screamed, the more you went off.  It was like I was reading a Viagra warning, and all I could think was "eight more hours of this?!"

So, this is it.  You are no longer da bomb. My love for you has fizzled.  Now that I have seen you for what you really are--a crazy cracker--I will no longer be your lady finger.

Sincerely,
Jane

Loving the List

People who know me well know that I don't like to be too busy. And by "too busy" I mean "having more than two things to do in the foreseeable future."  (I never said that my definition was a reasonable one . . . )

Enter the list.

I love a good list. Preferably one written with a decent pen--actually, two pens, each a different color, for emphasis.  My lists vary, depending upon season and need.  Knee deep in summer, I still find the need to put things down on paper, even if I don't feel the need to change my clothes or brush my hair.  The list to the left is one I put together earlier this week.  It's not my finest work.  You'll notice my penmanship is a bit sloppy and the space between lines is not ideal.  But it'll do, pig.  It'll do.

Not all of my lists end up on paper.  In fact, some of the most important listings I compile happen strictly in my head.  And it is there, amidst the ever-greying matter, where the list's true powers become most evident.  Be warned, though.  Lists, like just about everything else in life, can be used for good or evil.  We've all fallen into the monkey-mind trap of reviewing only the crap, the darkness, the bad stuff, even though it does not one whit of good for us or for the world.

So I've been trying like heck these days to compile only those mental lists that Glenda the Good Witch would approve of.

Here's a portion of this morning's life-saving list that I uttered to myself, mid-walk:

•Awesome family

•Cicadas (song and empty shells)

•Bird song

•Porch parties

•Bare feet

•Hammocks

•Upcoming vacations

•Scrabble, maybe Snatch It

•Funny friends 

•Moran's Tap Room

Nice list, but life-saving? Really?

Yeah, pretty much.  

Creating and rehearsing a mental list of good things provides a powerful antidote to all that hard stuff out there.  A list of good things can admirably duke it out with just about every ugly above-the-fold headline out there.   In the midst of everything that feels so hard and hopeless in life these days, there are these shining little gewgaws--moments and mementos--that can fill us with fresh air.

So, go make yourself a good list and start feeling better.  And don't be too judgy.  Just compile it, in true "brainstorm" fashion.  Then, rinse and repeat.  And, for a few minutes, be that crazy person who's talking to herself, letting the happy things tumble quietly out of your mouth, all the little moments, the names of awesome people, the perfect tomato you ate yesterday, the way the morning light paints the treetops.  

Frankly, the world could use your joyful exhalations,  your little life-giving lists tickling the leaves and alighting upon the wings of a passing cardinal.   We could all benefit from something good going viral.

Summer Lovin'

Unkempt but happy.

As much as summer is a season of watermelon and corn, cicadas and swimming pools, for me, it also seems to be a time of accumulated wounds--scabbed-over cuts,  achy muscles and purpled bruises that, if viewed from a certain perspective, aren't so much a sign of clumsiness as they are evidence of a life lived right there in the midst of things.

. . . at least that's what I'm telling myself.

As I type this, I count at least 11 scratches from a midweek encounter with a pesky buckthorn.  If you aren't familiar with buckthorn, imagine Christ's crown of thorns and go from there.  This invasive species (which Brexited from Europe in the 1800s)  has 3-inch-long, needle-like thorns and is a popular choice for hedges between neighboring properties, which might explain why Jeremy and Jody have pretty much quit stopping over to borrow a cup of sugar, which is too bad because we really like Jeremy and Jody.

I've also got a nice bruise--now waning--that stretches across my left shin, and a strange scrape across my nostril, neither of which I can tie to a particular incident.  Like I said, I've been living in the midst of things. . . .

I have tried to take steps towards a better me, though.  For instance, I've been on a two-bath-a-day schedule lately, something for which I'm pretty sure others are grateful.  As a 54-year-old pudgy woman in the midst of a pretty significant heat wave, both inside and out, it just isn't possible to get by with one bath a day.   That said, other areas of hygiene have gone a bit neglected.

Many mornings before heading out for my walk, I don't bother to change out of the ratty t-shirt I'd slept in (the one with a faded message and a handful of moth holes near the waist).  And my unbrushed hair--think "matted dog"--pretty much finishes the look.  That might explain why people I encounter on these walks often hold out a handful of change and a granola bar as I pass.

Thing is, I don't really care.  I don't care about the scratches or the moth-eaten tees, the rumpled 'do or the slow drip of sweat wending its way downward.  Well, maybe the sweat.  For me, one of summer's most endearing qualities is its ability to impose itself upon me.  Like some months-long sweat-lodge ceremony, summer inundates me with its heat and its promise, its fever dreams and strange views.

And, at least through July, I'm game for it.  Because, soon enough, I'll be expected to be an adult again, a respectably-groomed, reasonably professional person who rushes from one air-conditioned environment into another, eschewing Mother Nature's views while I earn a decent paycheck, one that--eventually--will buy me another two-month pass, come next June.

Of Shwarma and Fireflies

Cattails and sunset at Sheridan Lutheran Church.

Last night, I swam in a field of fireflies.  Twice, actually.  Once, behind Sheridan Lutheran Church, in a lovely swath of land that this church has set aside to. . . let it be.  How is that for an act of faith? Trusting that the land and all of its creatures have something to offer, something that is deep and moving, and maybe even holy?  For a moment, I thought about transferring my church membership, so that I could just keep walking along the path, running my fingers across the cattails and counting fireflies in the woods.

I was there with my friend Mary Anne and a couple dozen strangers of all ages, firefly-counting volunteers.  Don't tell Mary Anne,  but as I was driving home, I wasn't always quite sure of where I was.  Things looked different, unrecognizable, kind of disorienting, but not in a disturbing way.  At one point, I couldn't believe I was on Normal Boulevard, certain it was A Street or somewhere else altogether.  It could have been because I was actually awake after 9, and driving at night.  Or maybe it was the bioluminescent, lingering effects of the hours before, the residue of an evening spent in loveliness.

Later, in my sleep, I again was surrounded by the flickering, gentle glow of fireflies.  In my dream,  I felt light and swift, like a satellite humming through tiny, twinkling galaxies.

My fullness had started earlier in the day, though, when Allison came home and joined Mark and me on our bed, where we'd been eating up our books between catnaps.  Like my dream self, Allison seemed light and happy.  She stretched out between us, recounting her day at work and then slipping into a bit of a comedy routine, exchanging word play with Mark, her favorite sidekick in these situations.  I lay there, a happy audience of one.

She'd come home to have dinner with the family--a feast at Sultan's Kite that was, as always, delicious and fun.  Amid platefuls of shwarma and tziki, rice and hummus, this family I love so deeply chatted and laughed and smiled its way through our meal together.

I think I was up past 10:30 last night not to prove a point (that I CAN stay up past the sun!) but because my heart needed that much time to find space for all of the good things that filled it up. Atop my cool sheets, I'm pretty sure I was glowing a bit, like my firefly brethren, sending out happy signals to this universe that I was here and happy to be counted.