I am not a wreck

Although if you read my posts you probably think, "Damn! She cries a lot." I do. But not that much. Life is intense if you're touching it, living it in a direct way. I try to do that as much as possible.

Some people express that directness through laughter. Like Laura Love, whom I saw last Wednesday night perform for Sing Out the Vote. She has a firm grasp of the holy cosmic joke and she just rides it. It bursts forth pure and infectious from her. Then she sings, and she's got you tapping into another level of life. Then she wonks on the bass and a whole nother piece of you jumps on the ride. I highly recommend the experience of her.

On the other hand there is this crying thing. A generation affliction. A family of criers. Not Paul Revere criers but just run-of-the-mill cry at cheesy Christmas M*cD0nald's commercial criers. Which is a nuisance to self and others at times. But it's what it is. My son has already picked up on my crying-ness. Those kid books do it to me a lot. One little sniffle on my part and the boy is looking at me then asking, "Are you crying?" Sometimes I am. Sometimes I just have a runny nose. If I am, then it's about explaining *why* I'm crying. And then, it's like "Well, the old man, and the pumpkins, and the kids and the change of heart and the hill and the joy and...ugh. I don't know."

So, yeah, I'm not a wreck. I'm confused and hopeful and joyful and doing my best to believe that everything is as it should be.

All I am saying

This country has been at it with Iraq for most of my adult life. This war we've waged since the year my son was born--that's right, my son's entire life his country has been at war--has ripped holes in our souls. My soul. I wonder what my secret sadness is and then suddenly I am sobbing uncontrollably because of this simple sentence:

His obituary in The Star-Ledger of Newark said that he had sent his family back pictures of himself playing soccer with Iraqi children and hugging a smiling young Iraqi boy.

Off course and out of control. Angry & belligerent. Oh how we need healing. If only we could learn to talk nicely to each other. And perhaps it begins with people firmly stating that it's just NOT ok to talk the way they are.

Brezsny speaks for me as well

There's another factor that makes me cautious about getting embroiled in
partisan politics and the narrow-minded hostility that fuels it. One of my
main goals in life is to love everyone with passionate intensity -- no
exceptions. Not just the people I find beautiful and helpful and interesting and attractive. But also the people I don't like and the people who don't like me and the people I disagree with and the people who can't or won't do anything for me.

In order to become the gorgeous genius I aspire to be, in order to fulfill
the unique destiny I came to Earth to embody, I have to hold EVERYONE
in my heart with compassion and empathy. As I contemplate how every
single part of creation is interconnected, I've got to be aware that the
creatures I'm allergic to and inclined to feel alienated from are also part of the great web of life.

That's my spiritual goal; it's essential to awakening my best self and
cultivating an  intimate connection to Spirit. It's also my selfish goal; it's critical to my physical and mental health. Hatred always sickens me. Love always invigorates me. --Rob Brezsny

A few links

Nancy Griffith's version of "Hard Times" keeps popping in my head. I have almost no time to tend to this blog or even the list of blogs that I might read. Which I'm ok with. This morning was full of some catching up in that regard and here are three places I visited that are related if only by having flowed by me and touched me this morning:

• Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town

• Yoga Mama's Guide to Compassionate Citizenry

• Scott Russell Sanders
  

Elicit: [transitive verb]

1. provoke a reaction: to cause or produce something as a reaction or response to a stimulus of some kind

I believe, when I have to put words to it, that my days are like swimming on a tide of thought. Unfortunately, my thoughts are not recording events, only the passing of what could have been, what was, where I'm going, brief flashes of confusion over the dangerous habits of humans behind the wheels of metal death machines.

I think this because of the total blank that forms as answer to, "What have you been up to?" As I search for something easy for others to comprehend, like a list of events, places, happenings, doings, mostly I'm dancing around a giant black hole.

The things I am remembering are these eruptions of emotion brought on by such different places, people, and sights. These eruptions are usually barely contained sobs.

Today tears and joy greeted me when a friend of mine IRL finally made it/succumbed to
Facebook and sent me a friend request. I miss her even though we haven't even lived in the same city for close to eight years. But a recent move has made it easier for us to connect and when I visit her it's like I can let go of my breath and settle into myself.

As an aside, I've been staring in wonder at my Facebook group of friends, thinking, "Wow, if I ever got all these people in the same room, wouldn't *that* make for a weird party!" It's like all my lives have collided and exploded, right there on that work of the devil called Facebook.

Sunday night I stayed up too late and watched "I'm Not There." There's a scene where Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Robbie and Claire meet for the first time and then tear into each other, all mouth and hair, and stripping off each other's clothes, and who knows what that's about kind of mind-and-reason-eating passion that sets them up for a heartrending and drawn-out split. And, I just flowed with the memory of that kind of passion and knew too that it was something past. Not that sexual passion is gone, but really, there's nothing like the first time you rip off your new lover's clothes, now is there? Everything is edible and touchable and time is neglible. And you forget to eat and next thing you know you are tearing at each other again.

And the last thing that has happened to me, happened last week as I read the chapter, "Dark Adventure: On Cormac McCarthy's The Road" in Michael Chabon's non-fiction book Maps and Legends, a book I am finding strangely alluring. I haven't read much lately, haven't even wanted to and yet, this book is holding as Chabon moves through the literature that has influenced him or attracted him in some way. The following words probably give pause to anyone as a parent, but as I sat on my deck in the fading fall light, I once again gasped and then sobbed:

"The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child's own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing...that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed than the one you inherited."

Dear peace and life, why anyone would read a Cormac McCarthy book after this review, I don't know. Except, apparently, he writes staggeringly well--about things we'd rather not discuss.

And that's what I've been up to lately. Moving through days punctuated by swellings of emotion elicited by friends, art, and the discussion of art.

The end of the season

Fall was ushered in with a great cleansing restart. Ike powered through and turned us all off our normal routines and put us into alert, crisis, and acceptance.

I turned to friends to save my food. My sanity. I enjoyed the long hours of not even having the luxury of posting to a single blog. I have phone access to email & twitters & such. My media phone bill will be huge! But still, I could focus on what was around me. My house. My son. My breathing.

But all the while, with the dark dark nights of neighbors drinking, burning fires, and lighting candles in the house to wash the dishes, I just kept thinking "reboot reBOOT!"

The full moon shown down into our alley with no city lights to dim her gaze. We finished up a fire and stood at the alley staring at the glowing gravel as the fullness rose through the pine trees.

My dreams have been full of precious meetings. Full of import. Yet their meaning escapes me upon waking. Except when it doesn't.

Life is gorgeous. I'm learning to breathe with it. Amazing.

And now a word from Ray & some other stuff

Whether it's Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahrenheit 451, or Dandelion Wine, or his seemingly endless supply of short stories, his words walk through a part of my heart that is familiar and enduring.

Stuff your eyes with wonder . . . live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.

Anyway, I have been forcefully booted from my computer for days on end due to the rare event of warm hurricane winds bumping up into a cold front that decided to keep on moving. The two did a terrible tango across my state, leaving 1.9 million people without electricity for hours, days, and some for maybe a week.

I was settling in to the uneasy sense that we would be without this seemingly essential modern convenience until Sunday.

But I was so dearly and wonderfully surprised to first see our stop lights working. Giving me hope. I walked into a house with a hall light on and the fridge humming.

I cried.

The edge is gone. Although I still feel the need for some chocolate consolation.

The quote from Bradbury echoes the feelings I sat with at the local park. It was perfect outside. In the parking lot someone practiced bagpipes. Well. Teenage girls danced to it. My little boy and his friend hopped and jumped to it. The sun. The breeze. Teens racing about gossiping. Moms knitting, watching, resting. I just felt that every day should be this graced with perfect weather, energy, and music.