Daughter

Need everything,

set up your house behind no balustrades
and always play the organ overloudly.

Look in mirrors, you really are
quite different with the sun beneath your
brows.

Make use of night and struggle not to
share it badly.

Shout at us if we should hurt you,
bring us grasses smelling of your hands and
make us singing.

Plant your soul out in the open, blown
and buried it will free itself.

Forgive, and still again forgive,
and even if the only voices, never heard by
those who need them, have seceded,

Yet once more forgive.

Deep Thought: People think it would be fun to be a bird because you could fly. But they forget the negative side, which is the preening.
Today I am grateful for: Yin and Yang

Blessing
Passing along this thought from The Angel Lady for whatever it means to you:
Today I wish for you a light load,a breakthrough to another realm,and a crystal vase with 3 Birds of Paradise in full bloom.
Deep Thought: One day one of my little nephews came up to me and asked me if the equator was a real line that went around the Earth, or just an imaginary one. I had to laugh. And laugh and laugh. Because I didn’t know, and I thought that maybe by laughing he would forget what he asked me.
Today I am grateful for: Breakthroughs

I rather enjoy being stepped in now and then,
all the water kicked out of my fairly
fragile puddle–
me left drying sway-backed
in the sun.
It hurts like hell doesn’t,
it says something still inflicts a rise in this
one life
which knows about running down,
which knows about the dead insides of
tasty-looking dreams and failure heroes.
It says
someone with two hands and jesus
only knows how many faces
cares enough to run a few miles off
his deadly route
to smash me.
Thanks to him I put my broken face
together thinking
there is something smelling good about these
ugly flowers
after all.
Deep Thought: You know how to paint a room real fast? Just put paint rollers on your feet and somehow figure out how to skate up the walls and across the ceiling.
Today I am grateful for: Big feet

THINGS THAT REFRESH MY SOUL

Outsiders

From the time I was the age of this photo I’ve been trying to form families and groups and clubs of one sort or another and to this day I still feel like an Outsider pretty much wherever I am. I’ve given up trying to figure out why. It probably didn’t help to be an only child growing up on a farm where I had huge amounts of alone time, having parents who were politically radical to the point of being in danger, being skipped over second grade, being taller and smarter than most till my 20′s, leaving my one marriage at 23 and never finding another, having two children by men who wouldn’t marry me, and becoming an addict who didn’t get to Recovery till age 45 (some 20 years ago). Today, besides my Recovery groups, I belong to three different women’s groups, a gym, a job where I’ve been for 19 years, a neighborhood where I’ ve lived for 10 years, an online forum I created for women my age, my blood family consisting of two grown children and two grandchildren, and of course Xanga. And I still feel like an Outsider. So I’m thinking maybe the main group I belong inside of is the group of Outsiders. And don’t think I’m not glad they’re out there. When I see or hear of them, I cheer them on. I don’t even have to agree with them. Go Michael Moore! Right on Ralph Nader! Rest in peace Aileen Wuornos! Try again next year Smarty Jones and Tiger Woods! Bravo Ellen DeGeneres, Roseanne, and Whoopi! And the thing is, the true Outsiders are the ones you never hear of. Look around you any day out there and you’ll see us. We’re the ones not quite fitting in.
Deep Thought: One of the worst things you can do as an actor, I think, is to forget your lines, and then get so flustered you start stabbing the other actors.
Today I am grateful for: Sharp knives

Monster

I was interested to see this Academy Award performance, since I’ve seen footage of the real Aileen Wuornos. Theron beefed up, had some dental work done, and mussed up her hair, but the most uncanny part was her imitation of Wuornos’ body movements, a kind of blustering jerkiness. A very distressing film about the consequences of violence and the tragic life from start to finish of one victim. The kind of story that makes me want to never speak to people again who go on about how everything is God’s will. It reminded me of Jamie. Jamie was 16 when she came to live in my home for a year as part of a proctor family program with a local treatment center which takes kids who have reached the jail system and tries to turn them around. Jamie had been introduced to heroin by her own father. She had been a victim of other abuses and she already had Hepatitis C. She was anxious to please and she also broke rules during her stay – smoking, stealing, flirting with boys, etc. When she graduated from the program she didn’t have much to return to but poverty and a broken family. Jamie had that same stance – a kind of pathetic swagger. It just broke my heart. I didn’t keep in touch, partly because the year almost burned me out. I learned that I don’t personally at my age anyway have the courage it takes to work with damaged teenagers. Thank god for anybody out there who does. Aileen Wuornos didn’t get to meet any of you.
Deep Thought: In all the time I was growing up, I only saw Dad cry two times. After the first time, I didn’t say anything. But after the second time I left a note on his dresser that said “See a psychiatrist.” I don’t know if he ever did, but at least I didn’t see him cry again.
Today I am grateful for: The helping professions

Turning Points

I forget when I found the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, but it was some time in my early youth. It was the first very different take on life from my political western upbringing that I had encountered and I took to it immediately. It’s a short book, 122 pages, and is the simple story of one seeker and what he found. The Buddha was only one stop on his journey. Here is a quote:
The Buddha went quietly on his way, lost in thought. His peaceful countenance was neither happy nor sad. He seemed to be smiling gently inwardly. With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child, he walked along, peacefully, quietly. He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downard-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace.
Deep Thought: I guess the hard thing for a lot of people to accept is why God would allow me to go running through their yards, yelling and spinning around.
Today I am grateful for: Other options

Graduation

Congratulations to all who are graduating from anything, anywhere and those who love them. (Can you guess who the subject of the photo is?) Nobody in my tiny family is formally graduating in a school sense, but my daughter has completed a successful fourth year at her job in Head Start, my son is completing a successful creation of his daughter’s first baseball season, my grandson is finishing out 7th grade with excellent grades, and my granddaughter is completing 2nd grade with lots of friends and much improved reading skills. And I – this is really good – am matriculating into semi-retirement after 16 years of schooling and 19 years at my current job and plenty of life experience in between. In March I went to four days a week and as of this week it’s 2.5 days a week. You cannot believe how luxurious this feels. Yesterday I breezed back into my gym for a session (after being blindsided by the demolishment of a bridge that stood between me and a 5-minute drive from my house to the gym). The bridge is still down but I’m determined to find a way to surmount this annoyance. Boy, that felt good. I looked around and saw that I was now part of the Not Working in the Middle of the Day Crowd. Today the sun is shining already, it’s going to be good and warm in Portland, Oregon, and I’m going to go pick up my new shoes at the shoe store, get a new dishwasher installed to replace the one the mice ate up the back of, and attend my granddaughter’s almost last baseball game. I don’t wear hats, but if I did I would throw it in the air. Yippee!!!!
Deep Thought: Someday I would like to make a movie that makes people laugh and makes people cry, and then makes them leave the theater in a quick and orderly manner so that others may come in.
Today I am grateful for:New beginnings

Deep Thought:  I used to think Mom’s biscuits were special, because she said she put a secret ingredient in them. Years later I asked her what the secret ingredient was, and she said it was “love.” Right then I felt like the biggest sucker in the world.

Today I am grateful for:  Escape hatches

Weather Underground

I checked this out at the video store because I was curious to see some footage from the 60′s and learn a bit more about this activist organization of that time.  Interestingly, though I lived in San Francisco then this was one aspect of what was going on that I didn’t hone in on.  I found it to be a mesmerizing film and extremely applicable to the events of today.  Between interviews with the principal players today and film from then, it becomes clear that these were white, middle/upper middle class, educated kids who were caught up in the intense emotional atmosphere of the Vietnam War, civil rights, drugs, the Black Panthers, and protest in general.  Feeling that peaceful demonstration would not make a dent in the advance of the hideous war in Vietnam, they decided to use violence to stop violence, something most of them later regretted.  In a string of bombings of various key buildings across America, they protested many aspects of the repressive government they despised.  They were very careful not to kill or injure humans, but eventually a few of them were killed when a bomb they were building exploded.  At around this time, they went “underground”, living for many years in isolation before they surfaced and turned themselves in.  For the most part, they escaped prosecution because the FBI had used illegal means to track them down.  Today, most of them are living purposeful lives quietly contributing to their communities.  Watch this and know it could happen again.

Deep Thought:  Mom always told me I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up, “within reason.” When I asked her what she meant by “within reason,” she said, “You ask a lot of questions for a garbage man.”
Today I am grateful for:  Anonymity