Do You See Me?

Do you see me?

Behind the veils

Layer upon layer

Of multiple masks

Built upon expectations

And caricatured roles…

Do you see me?

Really see me?

Still the Mind, Still the Day...

Sometimes writing like living, is a struggle and for now, I am really struggling. It has been so difficult to find something coherent to say. My mind has become a desert, a vast unforgiving wilderness. Thoughts often scurry like lizards toward the nearest shelter, hoping to escape detection. So brief and fleeting are my thoughts that my words often fail to capture them and so they disappear back into hiding unexamined and unresolved leaving me to wander aimlessly, lost. I sometimes catch glimpses of them like oasis's on the horizon, inviting and hopeful, only to disappear into the reality of the sands leaving me alone with my thirst. Thus I struggle on, not knowing what direction to take, which way to go, what to say. In the blinding glare and heat of the noon day sun, my thoughts un-nurtured, struggle to thrive. As darkness descends, I must keep moving. It is all I know how to do, all the while hoping somewhere in the process, I will find my words.

And yet….

If I am still, very still and empty my mind of all the chaos and noise of the day, I begin to breath. With breath, there is life. In the moonlit coolness of night, I am reborn. Bathed in the soothing milky glow of the full moon, my thoughts, like the desert, come alive. Carried on night time breezes they swirl and dance with what was hidden from the heat and the light of day. As the desert comes to life, I begin to find my words. They are everywhere. They call to me, immersing me in their wonder well into the approaching dawn. At peace, I no longer struggle with my writing. For now, I know its truth. It, like the desert, speaks to me in stillness.



Then again, maybe I should just turn off the TV J

Heirlooms…

I had started going to see Berenice, mostly out of respect for my mother and grandmother. She was important to them. I knew they would want me to and I would do my best to honor them. At first, we just sat and talked about this and that. On one of our many visits I was telling her about the stuff I had that belonged to members of the family, bits and pieces of history belonging to people I would never know. I proudly listed the things I had that had even belonged to her hoping to flatter and impress.
Her eyes locked with mine and she asked pointedly, "Why?"
She caught me a little off guard I asked "What do you mean?"
Never shifting her gaze, she asked again "Why do you hold onto all that stuff?"
"Because they were gifts, pieces of people's lives, it's holding what they held, it's a connection to the past," I tried to explain.
"Hmph!" she replied. "It's just junk!"
I was mortified and confused. "But it's history!" I protested. "They are heirlooms, family heirlooms, treasures!"
Much of what I had accumulated I had acquired from my mother. I have a piece of linen woven my great great-grandmother, a crystal necklace and table belonging to my great-grandmother. There are dishes made in 'occupied' Japan, linen table cloths and fancy tableware. There are the crystal dishes that we used for every holiday get together, a lamp my grandmother carried home in the snow when she was pregnant with my uncle, the area rug from the house on Winchester and a trunk full of photos. Some of the most precious of my mother's artifacts belonged to Berenice and her parents. With each artifact, my mother reverently told stories about the times and the people they belonged to.
"It's just stuff," she repeated, this time more emphatically. "You need to get rid of it. You need to let it go." Her gaze never waived. She was making her point.
Our conversation drifted to other things but her words weighed heavily. As we chatted my mind drifted. Berenice's family saved my mother from an extremely abusive situation. They provided sanctuary, much as they had done for my grandmother and my great-grandmother before her. They showed her there was another way that life could be different. She learned how to prepare a gourmet meal, set an elegant table of china, linen, and crystal, to appreciate opera and the theater, and create a beautiful living space (all on a shoe string budget, of course!) They gave her a place to live so she could work and attend the local junior college. Most importantly, they gave her permission to dream. They saved her sanity, saved her soul.
It suddenly dawned on me why my brother is named for Berenice's father and I for her. Ginger was actually her nickname. As the last of my elders she was something for me to cling to, a connection to my mother, my grandmother. Her stories about them helped me understand myself, my situation, my life better. She in many ways was saving me in much the same way she and her family saved my mother so many years before.
Later as I left, it hit me. I finally understood. True heirlooms are not 'things'. They are the intangibles. They are the gifts of self that are passed, that make the life of another better, that give meaning, give direction and more importantly, hope.

The Universe Within …

(Inspired by the Bodies Exhibition)

Muscles
Tendons
Stripped away
Revealing
A universe within…
Fibers and strings
Loofaed blood flows
surge
In a delicate dance
Of time…
Big Bang
Universes within Universes
Galaxies conceived
in fetal form
Star systems
Struggling to be born…

Lifetimes lived
Like all things
Decay and die
In disease twisted
Blackened death
Only to be born again
Re-birth
Part of the process
Of greater design
The greatness of mind
Consciousness
In the presence
Of God
Made even greater
By the sum
of its parts.

Lifetales

I believed in fairytales. After all, I was raised on them in Disney technicolor. Cinderella and Snow White, were my favorites. I loved the idea that love conquered all, goodness and truth always won in the end. I loved in unicorns and magic, believed in crystals and psychic connections that transcend time and space, transcended eternity. I believed in the goodness of people and that that belief would always bring out the best in them. I believed my own life was a fairytale. Grant you there were difficult times, but my outlook was always governed by the fact that I had found my true love, my soul mate, the one and that together, everything would be alright. I believed!!
Funny what belief can do. If you believe, it is real, at least, in your own mind. Unfortunately, there is the rest of the world, or at least other people, and sometimes they don't always see it way you do. As it turned out, I was Sleeping Beauty. But instead of a prince's gentle kiss, I was awakened by my fairytale crashing in on me. I woke alone to a devastated landscape of lies and deception, impaled by my hopes and dreams. My world wasn't what I had believed it to be. It was an illusion.
I no longer believe in fairytales. They are simply fantasy, a superficial matrix of illusions keeping us from facing our own Truth; hiding our way forward. As a child, I often sought refuge in such stories, at first as a way to deal with my loneliness and isolation, then as a way of dealing with the painful reality of my parent's breakup. They gave me something to believe in, to hope for, a possibility more hopeful than the one in which I actually lived. If I believed, truly believed, things would be different, all would be well. But in the end, after all, we are only human. There are no knights in shining armor.
I mourn the loss of innocence, and yet, although I often find myself guarded and jaded, deep inside a kernel of what was still exists longing to believe. As I struggle to pick up the pieces, I am learning to live again, this time for real. It is a time for Lifetales in all their richness and depth, substance, and uncertainty. In the end, the world is what it is and perhaps therein lies the magic; the magic in actually living, enjoying the company of friends who are actually there, people who love and accept you, enjoying the cool sweetness of a beautiful garden at sunrise, the goofy laughter of a bunch of kids, seeing your son become a man. It's the magic, not in unicorns and love ever-after, but the simple joys of life. It may not be perfect, but it is real.

For Kellee

Life is so fleeting and at the same time complicated and chaotic, distracting and hurried; all about drama and the big picture. But sometimes, it is those lives, so unassuming, who pass through gracing us with a warmth and gentleness reminding us of something greater. Gentle souls impact so many, ever so briefly, touching something deep inside, our better selves. A touch as slight as a butterfly's wings, taken for granted until no longer there. And yet once gone, the impact remains, lives touched forever changed, as a baby's breath upon our cheek.

A Mother’s Heart

Once upon a time a king in a faraway kingdom was sponsoring a competition of the hand of the princess. One young man, not content to be a peasant and a farmer for the rest of his life saw this as an opportunity to escape his station. He went deep into the forest to seek the aide of a local witch. He explained how badly he wanted to marry the princess and wanted to know if she could help him. She listened patiently. When he was finished, she began to speak.

"I can make this happen for you," she said. "You will, indeed gain the Princess' hand in marriage, but I need something from you first."

The young man was visibly excited by his good fortune and eagerly agreed to do whatever the crone asked him to do.

"You must bring me your mother's heart. Place it in this box and bring it back to me."

The young man barely gave it a second thought. He was going to marry the Princess!! He ran all the way home where his mother was waiting for him by the fire. She listened carefully to what he had to say. She quietly asked him if this is really what he wanted, what would make him happy.

"More than anything," he said

She sighed and handed him a knife. Without hesitation, he cut out her heart and placed it in the box. Without looking back, he was racing back through the forest to the waiting witch. As he ran, a raised root sent him and the box sprawling, spilling the still beating heart onto the path. The young man was frantic. As he collected himself, the mother's heart asked "are you alright, my son?"

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My mother told me this story growing up. She said it was a Lithuanian folk tale told to her by her grandmother. It was one of her favorites. As a daughter, I could not relate to this story at all! Not even in the least!! All I could think about was the betrayal and the selfishness of the son. How could he do that???? My mother calmly said I was missed the point.

"How?" I asked. "The guy is a jerk!!"

"It's not about him!" she insisted. "It's about a mother's love and what she is willing to go through and sacrifice for her child."

I was still not impressed. The guy was still a jerk!!

It was many years later, years after my own mother's passing and a mother in my own right, that I finally began to understand what she meant and what she was trying to tell me. I was going through my divorce agonizing over what to do, how much to fight, especially when my own child made it clear he did not wish to live with me. As my heart ached, and yes, felt as if it was being cut out, all I could think about was what would be best for him and make him happy and still 'protect' him. I was willing to sacrifice any and everything to make that happen. As I was trying to figure out what to do, it hit me!!

"UHHGGG!"

My mom was right!!!

Regardless, I still think that guy was a jerk!!!

God, I hate that story!!!!