groups

two plus three, originally uploaded by McBeth.

There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members.

-- Eric Hoffer

good men

the love of a good man, originally uploaded by McBeth.

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.

-- Buddha

be still

lake fog, originally uploaded by McBeth.

There is a point where in the mystery of existence contradictions meet; where movement is not all movement and stillness is not all stillness; where the idea and the form, the within and the without, are united; where infinite becomes finite, yet not.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

image

past midday, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Every thing possible to be believed is an image of truth.

-- William Blake

coming home

sun visor, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

-- John le Carre

sizing up the new sister

theo meets lulu, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

-- Elizabeth Stone

birthday

A birthday seems like a good marking point kind of time to reflect. Thing is, I don't like the intense focus or scrutiny involved with having to come up with my own super happy and overly chipper things to say. So instead, I've pilfered a birthday quiz from Club Mom or Mom's Club or Mom's Little Flask club or whatever the proper name is for the group. Apologies to all moms everywhere who are so into momhood that their jaws have gone slack because, in essence, I just bastardized all your blessings by making fun of the name which I cannot remember. Please. Wrap your patience up in a little package and tie it with a shiny ribbon. THAT'S a gift I could totally use.

How many birthdays have you celebrated so far?
41

When is your next one coming up?
Precisely one year from today.

If you could get anything, realistically speaking, what would you ask for?
Can courage and strength be considered a realistic gift?

If you could ask for something like magical superpowers, which kind?
Teletransport. Or thought transferrence. Or being able to disappear.

Who do you want to be with during your birthdays?
Those I love. This year I spent a weekend full of pre-birthday time with KD. Today I'll be driving to IA to herd nephews while their new sister is born.

How do you plan to celebrate your upcoming birthday?
Not celebrating so much as simply getting through gracefully.

What was the worst present you ever got on a birthday?
I don't really remember. If it was bad enough I will have shoved it out permanently. Which, the more I think about it, works pretty swell.

What was the worst birthday fiasco you ever had?
Nobody called or sent a card or appeared to remember.

Did you ever purposely give someone a crappy gift?
I never give purposefully crappy gifts. If I have, they've found their way into crapdom by sheer accident.

edit to add: That's not actually true. I do save the purposefully crappy gifts for the annual Christmas Bingo game with local friends who don't read my blog so unless you're the one to spill the beans (in which case I WILL hunt you down later) they probably won't remember the weird little "paint your ceramics" kit I got last year because it will be in fresh shiny unrecognizable paper this year.

Who would you never ever ever want to attend your birthday?
I don't mind anyone attending my birthday - but what an awful thought to consider - being that selfish that I'd turn all princess-y about who I want or who I don't want to be there.

What was the best birthday present you've ever recieved?
My maternal grandmother's ruby ring. It came at a time when it was the least practical thing I could actually use (oh lord was I broke and making do, ai ai ai). But my mother had been holding onto it and gave it to me with all the love she had (both for her mother and for me).

What was the best birthday you've ever had?
I'm not big on birthdays; I don't have an answer for this one.

Why was it so great?
I get through them. See??! Isn't that great?

What is your fave birthday activity, even if you havent done it (yet)?
I went bowling last year, when I turned 40. I like the idea of doing something I'd probably never do otherwise -- minigolf, batting cages, posing nude, an illegal driving manuever, etc.

Who would you love to come to your birthday to celebrate with you?
I'm not comfortable with spectacle, so maybe a quiet happy visit with those who appreciate me.

What did your family do to celebrate your birth?
Kicked my older sister out of the crib to make room for me.

What did, will happen for your sweet 16th birthday?
Oh dear, well, that's a fairly awful story. My parents gave me the dog I'd been begging since early childhood for, but Jericho was very new, very little and as it turned out, riddled with worms. He didn't make it through the night.

What happened for your 21st birthday?
Hmm, I wonder if I was present for my 21st birthday.

Would you be okay with dying on your birthday?
Absolutely.

Pick someone you really really love:
Okay.

What would you get them for their birthday if you could give them anything?
It might be considered illegal in my home state. Let's just call it "niiiiiiice".

kindergarten

mrs tompson's kindergarten class, originally uploaded by McBeth.

When you love people and have the desire to make a profound, positive impact upon the world, then will you have accomplished the meaning to live.

-- Sasha Azevedo

angle

skylight, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I don't care much for facts, am not much interested in them; you can't stand a fact up, you've got to prop it up, and when you move to one side a little and look at it from that angle, it's not thick enough to cast a shadow in that direction.

-- William Faulkner

decisions, decisions

gentlewomen, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

-- Henry Ford

keeping pace

keeping pace, originally uploaded by McBeth.

In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all.

-- Iris Murdoch

strangers in the night

punkincluster, originally uploaded by McBeth.

H A P P Y H A L L O W E E N

twilight

carmelized maple, originally uploaded by McBeth.

My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

-- Robert Frost

left in a right world

I'm nothing if not adaptable, but here is a short list of things that, as a left-hander, I find short-sighted and terribly frustrating...



The door of the microwave oven hinges on the left. The control buttons are on the right side. This is not the most accessible design for lefties.

Dish soap comes in a right-hand form-fitting plastic container that has to be poured using the right hand (else, big whoop for the meticulously designed form-fitting hand grip). The flip top also works easiest if you flip with the right hand. To dispense using my left hand means the front of the bottle faces away from me so I get to stare at the directions, with which I am now infinitely familiar.

Shampoo and other personal care products also come in flip-top containers that look sleek and cleanly designed from the front. But for a left hander to use the product, the container has to be turned around backwards. And again, companies are manufacturing so-called ergonomic containers, but they're catering to the righty market. Those bastahds.

Good luck taking an 8th grade music class if you're a lefty. All the school guitars were strung for right handers. Lefties have to just make it work or, as my cousin Patrick did, purchase a lefty guitar.

Some knives are sharpened on both sides of the blade, yes. But most of the kitchen knives in the drawer have a blade edge that is quite specifically fantastic for a right hander, while they pose a safety hazard for lefty me.

Oh good lord, the stories I could tell about scissors.
Starting from the earliest years, all those dumb safety scissors were made for right handed students, leaving the left handers to bend their construction paper more often than successfully cutting it. One of my favorite gifts from my mother that I still use so much that it lies at the front of the drawer full of dangerous kitchen implements is a left-hander's kitchen scissor. Big, fat red handles and heavy bone cutting blades on that sucker. Which, incidentally, never goes missing because it is one of the few things that nobody else in the house can use.


I would like to add a few more un-left items that popped to mind as I was listing the previous.

- Sewing classes. Try learning to knit or crochet when being instructed by a righty who refuses to adapt the lessons to my dominant - their non-dominant - hand.

- Ink pens. A lefty can generally forget about using gel pens unless she doesn't mind carrying the smudgy remnants on the edge of her left hand. Most other ink pens pose the same trouble, unless the lefty learns to hold their hand below the writing line so as to keep a clean paw. Fortunately, I saw that one coming early-on and it's less of a problem.

- Holy crap, can I just add that my favorite item of all - MY CAMERA - is a right-dominant tool. I cry foul.

yet another good band name possibility

...The Backdoor Babes.









They play facing opposite the audience but nobody seems to mind much.

rearing up

hiking surprise, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Here's the place where I will tell you about my idiotic tendencies.
Once I've listed them properly, I mean.

How do I fail thee? Let me count the ways.

We like to think we’re cooperative caring beings. We are. I mean, we do have good in us, we do good things for others and we strive to be the best at whatever and whoever we are. I don’t fault us for this tendency to overbrighten by omission, but I think this rosy painting can make it very difficult to belly up to the confessional bar with a contrite and accurate picture painting heart.

Therefore, I’m taking this opportunity to lay prostrate some of my embarrassing and otherwise bad habits out - right here; right now.

- I had to stop taking my child fishing because I’d get so sucked into my own mesmerizing fishing challenge place that I’d get snippy with him if he had 6 year old audacity to say something as untoward as, “I need your help, Mom. My lure got caught in weeds”. How dare he expect me to put down my own pole to help his little frustrated self!

- I don’t ever corner well. Give me the opportunity to escape out a back hatch during times of conflict or I promise you it will turn ugly, quickly.

- I regularly, unintentionally, leave things behind. Everywhere. Meds, phone chargers, books, clothing, just about any personal item that can be picked up, transported, and set down elsewhere. I live between my own home and KD’s apartment but the materials I bring along with me to her place are things I am actively using and want to have nearby, so there is a regular assortment of personal items I schlep back and forth in my car that stands a very good chance of never finding their ways home with me. As a matter of fact, if you visit Tutto Pasta et Trattoria’s lost and found box, you’re welcome to the lovely double-sized umbrella with pie slices of the brightest primary colors and a solid good-feeling grippable wood handle because – for as many times as I’ve forgotten or have left behind my favorite (fill in the blank) – I could not be bothered to go back to collect my beloved umbrella after I’d been there shooting stills for my brother’s friends' short film. I also like thinking that it’s really okay that I leave things behind and lose what I mean to hold onto because, as I’ve rationalized it, someone else who really really needs them will be thrilled to re-use all I leave behind. I hope some person is relieved to have found those fantastically cozy form-fitting winter gloves I invested in then promptly misplaced last year.

- At my old meat factory office job there was a handsome man who came weekly to tend to the rented plants all over the building. I had a crush on him and, because he so closely resembled the More Little Visits with God caucasian storybook version of the white hairy muscular savior with the kind eyes, I renamed the plant guy Jesus. But to be clear, I didn’t want him to get too big a head (‘hey everyboddddyyyy, lookit me I’m all walkin’ on water and everything!’) so I called him Hay-zeus. I called Raphael, or whatever his real name was, Hayzeus. To his face. Anyway, Hayzeus and I flirted shamelessly with one another every Thursday when he was tending our office rental plants and one day, while he was leaning over my desk to reach a peace lily, I asked him what kind of plants he kept at his home. I imagined a garden of Eden sorta setup – an atrium dense with lush tropical varieties and colorful birds flitting back and forth between the highest branches. Hayzeus paused from what he was doing to look at me and he responded with a guffaw. Then he said, “Are you kidding? I take care of plants all day long, every day of the week. The last thing I want to look at when I go home from my job taking care of plants is more plants that need tending to. I have no plants at home. None. And I like it that way.” I thought Hayzeus’ response was hilarious, and it wasn’t until this year that I realized I have started down that same road. I help a friend tend her large gardens every week and while I do adore pulling weeds, I’d be completely weeded out by the time I’d get home and my garden started to look like the exterior ‘before’ image of an Extreme Home Makeover yard. I expect that there are Wild Thing creatures living below the thistle flowers and the puffy dandelion heads; even below the creeping Charlie which, near as I can tell, has established dominance over all other green leafy things I’d purposefully planted over the years. I can talk the gardening talk but I fall short of being a capable representative of walking the gardening walk. What the hell, I figure, most of the weeds are green and mostly blend in; the slugs need somewhere to establish residency if they’re ever to receive mail so they can get a library card, and I take care of others’ gardens so I expect a full pardon on my lack of attention to my own. More than anything, this all makes me misty and examinate about my Thursdays with Hayzeus because I really think we could’ve gone somewhere with my newfound sympathetic understanding of the difficulties inherent in his career.

- I exercise so I can rationalize eating more. I cannot claim this as my own personal discovery, by the way; my friend Claudia started me along this particular road to self-discovery the night she said she was feeling stuck and couldn’t decide whether to shake the ennui by going to the gym or by crawling under the blankets. We agreed that she could maybe go to the gym for an abbreviated workout routine (‘forget about the free weights, just do the treadmill’) and she could then reward her righteousness with a bottle of wine coupled with tasty undelicate servings of mostly off-limits food. I’ve come to realize that I dangle reward carrots in front of my own nose for just about everything I do that I don’t want to do. C’mon McB., just make the bed as soon as you get out of it and as reward for your fantastic bed-making you can then go downstairs to the kitchen where the coffee grinder and electric kettle will be waiting for you. Or, clean off the surface of the computer desk, then you can play 22 continuous games of Bejeweled 2. Or, collect the mail from the mailbox and if you actually open any of the envelopes you can then watch two hours of mindless television. If you don’t open the envelopes, mmm, you can still watch two hours of mindless television, because you’ll be upset with yourself for not having opened the mail and two hours of mindless television will help soothe your agitation.

- I tried having a bitch-free week, yet I complained the entire time about how a full week is too long to have to go without complaining. I’d appreciate partial credit for not having shared my complaint-free week of complaints with others.
- Any laundry in the washer or dryer that is in the way of my own laundry will be dealt with as I see fit. That's just too bad if you want your clean shirts hung on hangers, if you weren’t there to immediately hang them the way you prefer, you’ll get your shirts I’ve had to deal with in a folded stack. I will be courteous enough to at least turn them outside-out so you can differentiate between the dirty clothes on your floor and the clean clothes I’ll stack on your bed that you will inevitably toss onto the floor.

- I constantly chew the inside of my mouth. My dentist would be appalled.

- I have generous definitions of the things that can be Febreezed to include dirty laundry that I want to wear but can’t be bothered to wash.

I’m not sure I can continue this accumulated list of my bad habits further than a toe dip into this brief list. I can always come back to it, right? Like, right after I watch two more hours of mindless television.

So what are yours?

the quiet life

campsite visitors, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

-- Albert Einstein

vespers

originally uploaded by McBeth.

Let my prayer rise before you like incense; the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

-- Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 145

vision

gimme the beat, boys, originally uploaded by McBeth.

We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.

-- Mao Tse-Tung

self-confidence

sassy swinger, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

-- e.e. cummings

I-94

twist in the road, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I am driving into the sun
Up I-94.
You know how I love
Open roads and cruise control,
Squinting into the reflected glare.

That girl is going places
Does backtracking to an outlet mall count?
Briskly, the wind swats at my hair
Pushing violet brown
Into my eyes,
thousands of cylindrical slaps
admonishing me to snap to.

I fancy myself a fast lane driver
Yet, as ever,
I roll along a mere five miles per hour
over the limit,
puttering stalwartly with the elderly and the unconcerned
in this slow lane

Light blasts a path through flashing pines.

My brother, my sisters
we all
each
strive to create beauty,
nurtured by our profound understanding of
what it is not

Tossed onto the passenger seat lies
a tawny colored garment
The brassiere I have not worn
For two years since its purchase
Though still fresh, it has become dusty.
Strands of cat hair from a more youthful time
flitter up and off the smooth cotton
into the wind stream.
A soft layer of history
Waves goodbye.

To prevent the potentially unrecoverable risk of
grabby-fisted patrons
An ink-filled security tag had been affixed to
my travel companion, to
my indulgent purchase.
The tag remains intact
as twinkling pirouettes of light leap
off a passing lake
with watchful winks.

My child is now an adult with bewildering
broad and quiet shoulders.
This baby-man I have assisted
into his current changeling glory

Will he, like me,
struggle for twenty five years before he knows
to delight in the
colorful zaniness of a moss rose?

I contemplate whether he,
using adept powers of recall and observation
as his trustworthy guides,
will allow himself the
luxurious blanketing reward in
being loved by another?

My prayers propel off the wand and
out the open window,
iridescent bubbles of hope
aimed upward
for him;
Catch the wind, beloved.
Ride it! Exult in it!
Count on that which you believe in
Question that which you don’t.

Corn and soy fields flaunt the
simplicity of growing where planted.
Aisle after tantalizing aisle
swaying confidence
and their beguiling proposition
which, I decide, cannot possibly
interpolate the subtle combinations
of sun,
of soil,
of nutrients and seasons.
I volley a string of expletives to
the stalky streams
flying by at warp speed.
It isn’t typically so easy,
Nor is it always as simple
as standing still
and waiting.

A billboard shrieks by,
Jesus Loves You!
Its easiness careening haphazardly
into the already-distant past.

Did the responsibility of double-checking
an inattentive clerk’s work
rest on my soft shoulders two years ago?
Maybe yes.
Maybe no.

Either way,
I am now driving into the sun
five miles below the limit
and great distances from
where I am,
squinting into the reflected glare.

stuck

between the lines, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Today I am feeling worse and worse as the day progresses.

It's like when I was a kid and I got whacked around or banged up or if I fell on the sidewalk or snapped my neck while unsuccessfully trying to perform a backwards roll (I thought you were very mean to make me do that, Mister Selby. Just sayin') -- I stand up and forbid the tears to come. I tell myself that I'm tough. I tell myself I can take it. I rub the sore spot and keep telling myself, "I'm okay! I'm okay! I'm okay!". It's not that the self-talk was or is false; I believed it could help, believed it was worth the practice of uttering, but rare are the moment it felt true in the moment.

I JUST REFARKINGMOVED THREE LAYERS OF SKIN, DO I SEEM OKAY? I'M NOT OKAY! I'M ANTI-OKAY! I'M DIS-OKAY! I AM VERY UN-OKAY!!

I'm stuck between dosage levels of this latest antidepressant I've been trying. Despite the faulty start and the red welts that appeared out of nowhere when I first took the starter baby dose of Lamictal, I agreed to give it one more try. The good news is that I haven't had that potentially life-threatening rashy thing. The less-good news is that after 3 weeks of the first try, the two week break to let the rash go away, then my current 7+ weeks of this second attempt, I'm not taking enough yet for it to be considered a "therapeutically effective" dose. But I've been taking it for a long enough stretch of time that I'm catching myself having ridiculously hopeful thoughts that it might work while, simultaneously, wondering how I can possibly keep up this dumb optimism long enough to figure out if I will stay committed long enough to reach that invisible state of what mayyyyybe could be my therapeutically effective level, and when the hell I can get there, or if I'll ever get there because none of the scores of meds have helped shake this much over the past two decades of treatment. That's if we're not counting the Seroquel I loathe like no other for its side effects, but yeah I have to admit it helps.

There are a few precipitating factors to my foul state of mind but surely not enough to make me feel as though I should crawl back in bed until the feelings -and the days- pass, which is my current inclination.

Creative blocks.
Relationship issues.
Social engagements.
Cleanliness.
Merely opening the mail and figuring out what to do with it is too hard.

I haven't altogether given up my attention to personal hygiene, but with fewer showers and teeth-brushing episodes I fear that nasty stink looming on the horizon.

I crave my very own Calgon commercial moment.
I'd like very much to be taken away by bubbles and contentment, and I wouldn't argue (well, not much and certainly not with vehemence) if a magical fix-it person was to saunter in armed with a magic wand and Very Big Plans.

Yup.
I'm stuck.

evidence of a prowler

evidence of a prowler, originally uploaded by McBeth.

The cat's motto may well be:

No matter what you've done wrong, always try to make it look like the dog did it

but if you're a cat named Puppy, and if you live in a house without dogs, it makes your case significantly harder to buy when you try to argue that the mystery tongue marks that showed up in the pan holding solidifying bacon grease are due to a hungry mutt.

singularity

egomaniac, originally uploaded by McBeth.

To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanly the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.

-- Roland Barth

happiness

orbs of happiness, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Probably, oh, two weeks have elapsed since the last time I meandered out to the back garden to check on the plants. It wasn't even as though I kept trying to remember to look in on them; I just completely lost track of that area of the universe while attending to others. Until this afternoon, when a bird outside the kitchen window began causing a commotion. The commotion caught my eye, I quietly stepped out the back door to see what that was about, then I gasped as I looked over to the cherry tomato plant.

In two week's time that plant has turned into some creepy wonderful Little Shop of Horrors FEED ME, Seymouristic monster lush with pom pons of 6 to 8 tomatoes, deep red clusters that sag over both themselves and the tomato cage as though the plant is too too pregnant, as though her center of gravity has been so altered that she is unable to stand anywhere near upright these days.

"Birth me, already!", it groaned.

I ducked back into the house to grab a bowl, then obliged my neglected fruit-bearing friend. The three quart sized bowl was not really large enough to hold all the cherries I picked, but as long as I walked slowly and balanced each new addition carefully on the top, it worked well enough.

Each time I pass by the bowl I nibble. Two. Three. Two. Three more. I can't stop thinking about how lucky I am to have grown and harvested such a treat.

i don't remember

shed your assumptions, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I don't remember
how to say your name
anymore.

I stretch the edges of my mouth
Wide,
to accommodate the broad aah
of your vowels
but my throat emits a moan,
a coarse static,
as though I have tuned you in
between channels.

You died
disengaged
then I died
and died
and died
until I realized I could no longer die,
until I realized I had to begin breathing again.

And now,
I don't remember
how to say your name.

origami

two cups of wealth, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I'm learning how to make origami to remember my Grandfather, who died in January of 2002.

These two cups were created by using one of my grandfather's canceled checks - this one written on May 1, 1995 to Oneota Housing in the amount of $170.00.


.

oh, how I dislike this

Dear Reader,

Those ugly little waste of time people who create and spread spam have found their way into my blog. That nice confirmation code feature seemed to work for quite a long time and I've appreciated it, but their bored little bots have started ramping it up and I don't much appreciate their activity.

No big deal really (other than the question that buzzes persistently like a flood plain mosquito, "Why?"), but for now I have switched the commenting options over to *moderate*, which means that if you choose to leave a comment - and I do hope you will continue to do so - you'll probably get some sort of message that reads "your post will not immediately appear, blah blah blah".

I'm not doing this whole ridiculous moderating thing for the ego trip or for the hassle of being hassled, but I do hope you'll understand that that spam garbage really can start to put a kink into one's happiness and contentment and I, for one, am not willing to coexist with either trolls or spam unless it is imperative. I'm not thrilled about changing the commenting options to *moderate*, and I apologize if this seems like an extra step for you, but I'm willing to take sensible precautions to prevent further infestation. Dig?

time

I cannot promise very much.
I give you the images I know.
Lie still with me and watch.
We laugh and we touch.
I promise you love. Time will not take that away.

-- Anne Sexton

pretty -- ugly

God help you if you are an ugly girl, 'course too pretty is also your doom, 'cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room.

-- Ani Difranco

You scored as Albert Camus, You are Albert Camus, so you are one sweet absurdist. He built largely upon the framework of existentialists before him, but introduced the concept that life is absurd, but that we should continue living anyway. You have strong liberal leanings, although you annoy the Communists. You are susceptible to driving fast, and possibly crashing into a tree. Which Existentialist Philosopher Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

menstruation

dirty old moonlight, originally uploaded by McBeth.

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

-- Gloria Steinem

unfilled wishes

JC, table for two?, originally uploaded by McBeth.

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.

-- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

the dreaming days

Is the proper term 'unconsolable' or 'inconsolable'?

Whatever. Whichever. I am that. It doesn't make sense that I'd have anything to feel in particular need of consolation, but that fact hasn't seem to dawn on those chemicals and situations that cause mood upheaval lately. Whatever. I am that.

I should have found something to do when I woke early again this morning, this time at 4a.m.

I've been having bad dreams again, or maybe I've had a constant marathon of bad dreams that I haven't remembered a blessed thing about. If so, I am grateful not to have to feel like someone has peeled my skin off with a rusty potato peeler while I've slept, and I wish those I'm having now would go away.

This morning's dream began innocently enough. I was living in what apparently was my regular city but it had become one of those 'wave of the future in the industrialized world' kind of metropolis. Getting anywhere was a time- and labor-intensive venture. New corporate development everywhere. What used to be fields had been bulldozed to beyond a centimeter of its life into magnificently steep hills and valleys.

My dream mother had called me, not sure why an alimony check from my father had not arrived from the state agency responsible for issuance. She had waited months for the funds though it hadn't occurred to her to place a phone call before this moment in time: she believed she had to physically show up, in person, to get a meaningful response. But she was afraid to drive the admittedly complex maze of roads, as if they themselves had become a governmentally constructed way of keeping regular people from getting where they really needed to go.

As I would do in a non-dream state, I agreed to take her where she needed to go so she could get the answers she needed. She was babysitting my niece and I'd already agreed to run my son on a car part errand (the story of his early driving years: always another part) so, to make the best use of our collective time I drove my son and myself to my mother's house. In my dream I was driving a micro-mini car that hadn't the space for three passengers, so we switched over into my mother's car - a huge monster of a Suburban or a Tahoe or something equally reprehensibly too much.

I acted as though I was a capable behemoth driver, winnowing through tiny passes, narrowly avoiding side-view mirror clip-offs in tight construction zones, guiding us op and down and around steep grades and implausibly tight curves. Mom held on, screeching 'watch out!' when I was navigating particularly tight places. I held my tongue, chose not to further complicate the situation by asking if she'd ever considered a less bulky and imposing and fuel-inefficient vehicle. I'd guess that the answer would not come as a surprise, nor would it be anything I was remotely interested in hearing.

The building we arrived at was the government's solution for one-stop shopping. Gleaming and too tall to see the top floor when standing outside at the bottom floor. From the main entrance one was required to travel through a maze of elevators, escalators and too-bright corridors, all of which provided travelers a way to get to airline terminals that also were located within the building but on the far side.

My dream niece had an understood penchant, as many children do, for public restrooms. Whether she had an actual physical need to relieve her bladder pressure or whether she just wanted some automatic paper towel dispenser play time was unclear, but she had to go, she insisted. Harrowing traffic had also left my mother feeling inclined to make a "quick stop, just to be sure". I figured, "oh well, why not?" then spoke briefly with my son and we agreed to meet up at a specific location further along. He'd have a few minutes to hang out to do whatever he wanted to do while he waited for us.

Bathrooming done, my mother, my niece and I continued along to our agreed-upon meeting place. It was an industrially noisy and chaotic intersection, so we took a long relaxed pause to locate my son. We didn't see him. Longer wait. More looking: still no kid.

My mother was becoming agitated, worrying that we wouldn't get to the office before it closed for the day and my wiggly niece was, despite her deep admiration for her older cousin, growing impatient. I pulled out my cell phone, pushed '9' for my son's preprogrammed cell phone number, and listened to it ring until, unanswered, it switched over to his voice mail message. I spoke apologetically to the machine, saying how I'd appreciated his patience when he had only wanted to pick up a car part. I said we've been waiting here at our agreed-upon meeting place for quite some time and that Gramma was starting to become vocal and nervous and about how she worried that we wouldn't get to the offices on time.

I hesitated, then said I was going to continue along to that office with Grandma and his cousin. I asked him either to call me back or to send me a text message so I could figure out where he was in relation to where were were headed so we could reconnoiter. I told his voice mail that I loved it, then pressed 'end' to complete my call.

We stayed close together, my mother, my niece and myself. Periodically my niece would ask why her cousin wasn't with us, where was he anyway? Each time she asked I'd glance down to my cell phone in my right hand; each time I'd swallow a little more concern while trying to calmly respond, 'I dunno. He hasn't called back yet, honey'.

My mother, my niece and I stepped into yet another elevator compartment after we'd waited for the passengers to flow out like a small carful of clowns. The panel of buttons was unclear, unmarked, seemingly planned purposefully to discourage passengers from going where they meant to go. My niece was eager to be the official elevator button-pusher, so after weighing out the probability of pushing the button that seemed most likely to get us to the office my mother required, I directed the official button pusher to press the circle labeled '21'. The elevator made whirring and cooshing noises, and eventually the doors opened. One look around and I knew I had guessed incorrectly: the walls and floors were decorated in an aerospace travel motif of reds and silvers.

We had not yet located the alimony office; we had arrived at the TWA terminal. Busy -seeming people sped past us on all sides. Try as we did, nobody would stop to help us figure out how to get where we wanted to go. My niece asked again, 'Where is cousin?' 'He'd know what to do', she assured me. I checked my cell phone again. No messages, so I sent off another brief text message: 'call me please?'. My mother's agitation grew. That office, she insisted, will be closing soon. I cannot - WILL not - come back here again.

What to do? What to do?

I moved my niece and mother to a small recessed area against a wall, telling them in jerky words DO NOT MOVE FROM THIS PLACE. I'll try to find someone who can help us, but you must stay together and you must not leave this spot until I come back for you. My mother was spiritedly displeased at the situation but my niece seemed to understand the stress of the situation so she asked my mother to tell her a Bible story. My mother's ire was short-lived and vaporized instantly as my niece redirected her into sharing one of her greatest passions with her progeny, and I felt a spark of renewed hope that I might have a few moments to get information that would help us to proceed.

I chose one potentially useful looking woman from the next batch of clowns to exit the elevator. She was wearing a red polyester knee-length skirt with a matching vest over a shiny block-patterned long-sleeved polyester dress shirt buttoned with small white buttons up to her neck. Her shiny orangeish-blond hair was cut into a sensible grown lady style, straightened with an iron then curled under at the ends, just below her jawline. I noted with some surprise that the crisp TWA woman was coming directly toward me, as though she knew we needed some help.

Ah! Finally!

The woman's smile and calm demeanor came as a welcomed change after the scores of people whose apathetic indifference to our questions had made me wonder about the inner workings of their animatronic robot parts and pieces behind their garments. The woman stopped immediately in front of me, then she leaned in to utter some inaudible thing.

I said, "I'm sorry, but I couldn't hear you. Could you please repeat what you just said?" She whispered something again but, again, I could make neither heads nor tails of what I couldn't hear. I repeated, "It's so loud in this corridor! I'm terribly sorry, but I just can't hear you. Can we go to a quieter place?" She didn't seem to hear me, either. We continued in this way for several minutes longer and it was apparent that we both were becoming frustrated.

Finally, reaching for my arm, she leaned into my and in a fake cheerful voice she hissed, "We need to have a word with you, ma'am".

"We who?", I asked, "who is we? See, my mother, my niece and I seem to have gotten ourselves lost and we - the three of us, I mean - would appreciate your help to get to our destination". Still holding one of my arms, she reached for the other. "It's about your son".

My dream self felt a wave of relief tingle down my arms into my fingers.

"Oh good! I've been waiting for him to call me back since we got separated near the public restrooms on ground floor. I was beginning to worry because he hadn't returned my call and several text messages", I replied.

She looked at me as she held my arms in her hands, really looked into my eyes, trying to say something unspeakable with the blue surrounding her shrunken pupils.

"It's about your son", she emphatically repeated. Dread replaced the short-lived tingly relief.

"What about my son? Where is he?"

As if on cue, several brawny men appeared in the corridor, clustered in a semicircle around something, blocking my view of whatever it was. The two men leading the pack stepped to either side. Behind them was a person who very much resembled my child in stature and appearance. The man's hands were bound with plastic handcuffs.

"What are you people doing here? Where is my son?". My dream self had already begun to disengage from my shrilly shrieking voice.

"There was a problem", red polyester lady reiterated. A problem with your son. A problem with your son. A problem with your son.

I quickly glanced over to the recessed area of corridor where my mother animatedly reenacted the story of baby Moses in the rushes to my niece.

What problem? What happened? Where the hell is my son?

I looked again at the young man standing with assistance between the pack of men I'd determined were guards. He was tipping back and forth, staggering, lurching, balanced into an upright position due singularly to the band of guards surrounding him, holding him in place. His eyes were rolling around vacantly in their sockets, in different directions one from the other. Dried blood crusted the inside corners of the man's mouth, and crusted over spit mixed with who knows what else, maybe vomit, it looked like, splattered across the lower half of his face, as though he'd gotten sick on a Tilt-A-Whirl with no way of stopping either the ride or the barf fest.

The man was my son. That lurching staggering plastic-cuffed apparition of a person was my child.

I tried to loosen red polyester woman's grip from my arms, howling obscenities, demanding to know right goddamned now what the FUCK they did to my child. I wailed my kid's name repeatedly, right at him even, but nothing was registering; he looked soulless and confused and gone.

Just as three of the guards moved from their positions as bracing agents for my son, the woman emotionlessly whispered, "There was a problem. According to our information he took too long."

Motherfucking cocksucking sons of bitches have done something to suck the life out of my kid and she's still stuck in her goddamned "There's a problem" loop?? She's fucking right about a problem existing, I screamed in spit-laden chunks of grieving horror.


Still in that calm telephone attendant voice, she spoke in barely-audible tones, describing something about how during a routine surveillance process it had been noted that he was taking too long to use the restroom.

"Are you fucking KIDDING ME?", I laughed hysterically, "You electrocuted or tasered or drugged or whatever it is that these fucking lunatics did to a perfectly pleasant reasonable kind and gentle person because he couldn't fucking PISS fast enough for you? Is that what you're actually trying to tell me?"

My vacantly gazing son lost his balance and, with two less guards to help him balance, began to list forward. I escaped the grabbing hands of red polyester lady and her two thugs, shaking them scratching them kicking them with all my might to be able to catch my falling child.

I've no idea what might have happened after that because I woke in a sobbing panic, unable to catch my breath. I raced to my son's bedroom, stifling my sobs into my forearm, watching to see if he was there and then, reassured as to his whereabouts, I stared at him to determine that he was still alive. He was laying on his right side, arm wrapped tenderly around his girlfriend's waist. He was still and obviously sleeping, but I had to stand there to watch watch watch the rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders.

He is fine.
He is fine.
I am fine.
He is fine.
He is fine.
I am fine.
He is fine.
He is fine.
I will be fine.

The only thing I could think to do after having reassured myself that my kid was alive and only sleeping was to make my bed. I made my bed well, tightly, smoothly, evenly. The pillows were just so. I needed order; I needed badly for something to be immediately right, to be okay, to not be messed up, to be fixed.

Neat and pretty bed.
Fixed bed.
Tidy bed.
Better bed.

Breathe.
Breathe.

Too much rain

sugar river flood, originally uploaded by McBeth.

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

-- Buddha

awakening

awakening, originally uploaded by McBeth.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

-- Woody Allen

excuse me, sir.

So what's new, we needed to fill the gas tank.

KD pulled into what once was a service station, now a convenience store. If you want service you'll need to step out prepared to supply your own because the lone clerk is busy inside tearing off lottery tickets and restocking the Camel Ultralights.

Though I do tend to make myself useful when I am driving solo, I have assigned myself a gas station slash convenience store job when she is driving us in her vehicle. I can't stand just sitting there in the passenger seat waiting waiting waiting. It's like one of my childhood nightmares of old ladies wearing a virulent dose of Roses!Roses! come to life when, from my third eye, I see myself sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle, my seatbelt clicked firmly into its slot even after the engine has been turned off. That, my third eye tells me, is the luxury of someone else will do it-ism. Someone else will pump the gasoline. Someone else will check the oil. Someone else will educate my child. Someone else will pay. Someone else will work the sour painful issues out.

So I gave myself a job, a task, a way of contributing to the health and wellbeing and general maintenance of her vehicle and of our non-legal marital happiness. The job I picked -window washing - is easy and fairly quick and frankly, thrilling because aside from building and sustaining relationships, and despite my efforts to thwart worries re: the potential eternal ramifications of my earthly sloth, I really really love clean windows. That helps.

When I set to a task I must have the proper essentials. Must have. Must. I believe that Efficiency begs from all thinking beings simply that we try our best to come prepared or get prepared or at the very least have some inkling of the dots between A and K and what tools will get us from one point to the next to the last with least amount of resistance. When I wash car windows at gas stations slash convenience stores I have to feel assured that I am using an adequate squeegee. I have to have a good feel about the squeegee, that we'll work well together.
I examine the netted sponge side to estimate how long that thing has been sitting in the hanging bin of watered down mosquito souped windshield cleaner, and exactly how nasty brown the sponge surface has been permitted to get by the Two Bics for a Buck clerk who sits inside, unable to feel obligation or to suggest that anyone should have a nice day. I do an eyeball (and occasionally a sniff) check on the sponge side but the rubber strip has to be manually tested for its firmness and squee-ibility. A fully scrubbed and dribbly windshield will simply have to cross its legs if the squeegee blade leaves even one sloppy track, while I walk from island to island swapping out one bent wand for another one that looks very much like mice snacked on the rubber blade between lap swims up in the fluid bucket. I'll trade them like B-Leaguers until I'm convinced that I have the best one for the job.

It was in the midst of my island hopping that I accidentally eavesdropped. I was exactly between islands #2 with the young angry punk who had already serviced his fuel needs and who was headed for the liquor locker inside, and #3, where a Chevy Surburban bearing Oklahoma plates was parked. In the back seat of the monster 'burban I could see the silhouettes of two stubby child car seats, with small bobbing heads flinging themselves back and forth within the spaces between the padded head braces. In the front passenger seat sat a young petite woman with smooth long brown hair. A swarthy 30-something GI Joe-looking military guy wearing the trademark and nearly fashionable brown/tan blend fatigues had just paid for his purchases inside and was returned to the Suburban to rearrange the kids and repack a cooler he accessed from the back door.

I also noticed a man approaching island #3 from - well, I don't know from where. He just appeared. One moment he didn't exist; the next he was walking toward me with his eyes squinting to a place just beyond me. I wondered for a moment if we were about to engage in a race to the squeegee bin hanging there on island #3 and, if so, which method might I use to take him down. Maybe I could temporarily incapacitate him, just long enough for me to get a head start to the squeegee bucket. Dangerous, I can be. But quick? Not so much; any small edge I could find would be a good thing if it came down to a running contest that I was unlikely to win.

Mystery Man came neither at me nor for the squeegee bucket, but instead toward GI Joe and the cooler into which he was distributing a fresh bag of cube ice. I had a disturbing microsecond flash vision of two complete strangers beating one another senseless after Mystery Man makes disparaging comments about GI Joe's ice cubes or something equally stupid. I'm aware it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have such a thought (about complete strangers, no less) but that's the danger of microsecond flashes because they lead a person to leap to a conclusion which may or may not be accurate and there's no real way of prechecking one's assumptions as the action is unfolding itself in real time.

Mystery Man thrust his hand outward. It wasn't a fist he had formed, though. His hand was extended palm open and up. Friend. Peace. Calm. He cleared his throat then called out, "Excuse me, sir?". I was now standing next to a nearby gas pump able to hear them like anyone who might be standing around outside next to fuel pumps, but I suppose with slightly more interest than the young punk, for instance, who appeared to ignore them in favor of attending to the six pack of glass bottles clinking against one another on the seat next to him.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Suddenly aware of the fact that he was the sir being addressed, GI Joe turned around. His hand tentatively raised to meet Mystery Man's hand. As they shook right hands they each automatically reached with their left hands to embrace forearms . I love that gesture. It reminds me of the smell of Aqua Velva; of my paternal grandfather gussying up in that uncomfortable sweat-inducing dark blue polyester suit for Sunday church services. It reminds me of gentlemanly integrity, a quality of being I fear might be slipping away in younger generations when the method of greeting consists far more regularly of elbow toasts and shoulder bumps and mumbled 'aight's. The forearm grip and the firm handshake combination might be one of the reasons I'm unashamedly drawn to men's forearms, to the muscles and shape and density of them, to the difference between theirs and mine. When men shake hands like this I feel confident and safe, like no bad will happen after the handshake; like they've both sealed some invisible contract, an agreement that they're both watching, that both will take care to do what is right, to have one another's backs. Like maybe they'll look out for me, too.

Their hands remained clenched while Mystery Man continued,
"Thank you. I just wanted to tell you thank you. I don't know where you've been or what you've had to do but I want to tell you that I'm grateful for your service and well, just thanks man."

I don't think GI Joe from Oklahoma had been expecting this sudden and somewhat surprising outpouring from a stranger at a gas station slash convenience store in Wisconsin. He nodded his head and replied in an equally Aqua Velva-y way, "No problem. Glad to help".

It's no surprise to any who know me that I do not support war. I do not value bullying. I don't believe in killing or oppressing others to be the best, whatever that means, and I don't support my government's seeming inability to get a grip on the facts and figures of the messes we've inextricably involved ourselves in, and in places we have no business policing. I do, however, support the individuals making the effort toward peace. Our soldiers. Their soldiers. I don't want harm to come to any of them, not one, not on either side. I want their mothers to step in with arm jerks and hissed insistent cautions that they each apologize to the other right this minute for not sharing the swingset like the good friends she knows they can be.

There were myriads of moments to learn from after the Viet Nam war ended, but one of the biggies for me was about accepting the person despite the action. I was a small child during that conflict and have only vague memories of evening news reports on my parents clunky television in Davenport, Iowa, but I remember seeing jostled bumpy footage of hippie protesters and the old Brillcremed men with their stern matter-of-fact tones and their wide ugly ties, who refused to listen. In social terms, we erroneously placed our faith in the Brill boys while keeping one nervous collective eye on the hippie protesters because well, you just never know what those free-thinking dope smokers might do. When our GIs returned from Viet Nam we didn't exactly roll out the welcome mat for them. We treated them poorly, we ignored them, we abandoned them when they most needed our support -every one of us, whether we agreed with the war or felt duped or hated every bloody moment of it. They needed us and we responded by abandoning them.

Reaching a destination sometimes consists of a hundred tiny steps in the right direction. The perfect solution for peaceful coexistence might not be self-evident in every situation, but the ethical and moral sensibilities that can lead us toward that place are. In teasing out the one or two Very Important Lessons to learn from wars gone by, I would suggest that respect will never be too high a price to pay someone else for their service on behalf of me and my country. Do I like to think about how he may have ended someone's life? No, not so much. But if he did actually take someone else's life I don't imagine it was a thrilling event for him either.

Like garbage collectors, our soldiers get the smelly hot difficult shit work that nobody else wants to do. Sure, the army television ads make military service look like a scene out of an adventure movie but even Indiana Jones got to sleep in a real bed away from the sandstorms and snakes; our military personnel don't have that made-for-TV luxury. I needed that reminder. I needed that check. McBeth, you don't need to agree with the action but you do need to respect the person.

My heart squeezed achingly while I watched the exchange between these two men at gas station slash convenience store island #3, as each revealed the real and powerful good in himself and in one another.

I heard a chuckle. It was the universe laughing at me, along with me, as I breathed a quiet sigh of relief for not having to cap that nice Mystery Man's knees in a race to the squeegee bucket, after all.

character

pride07 ttt, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose.

-- Evan Esar

joy

jo, swinger, originally uploaded by McBeth.

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.

-- Jim Valvano, NCU basketball coach

the thrill of night driving

puh-leeze ... put that thing away

Now I'm not one to point and giggle at any particular subgroup of society but ... oh, wait - what am I saying? Sorry, lost my head there for a moment; I do too snicker at all sorts of subgroups, including those to whom I belong.

But c'mon, is THIS what senior adult male bonding is supposed to be about?





Fellas, take a note: If you want your penile health to be taken seriously, do not under any circumstances - ever never ever ever never - show your beloved what you and your buddies do in the privacy of your guy's weekend away if THAT is what it looks like.

Thank you.

is this motivating?

i on u, originally uploaded by McBeth.

holiday

3 kayak trailer, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I would like you to relate with people, to love, to move in millions of relationships -- because they enrich -- and yet remain capable of closing your doors and sometimes having a holiday from all relationship... so that you can relate with your own being also.

-- Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

refresh

after the rain, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Affliction comes to all not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but wise; not to make us despondent, but its darkness to refresh us, as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plow enriches the field...”

-- Henry Ward Beecher

pocket lint check

Hey there.

Please pardon this non-commercial commercial break, but I'd like you to do something.
Call it a favor, if you want.

There this smart sexy (obstreperous, even) chick who, by way of modern day internet genealogy, would be related to me as a friend of a friend -- let's call her Bunni.

She had to deal with a lot of ugly and complicated health issues as a result of having a disease called neuroblastoma, which she was diagnosed with while still a wee one. Frankly, I think she has totally kicked that stupid disease's ass; she has not permitted either herself or others to treat her like a crip. She keeps that brisk sharp mind busy putting words to her life and goodness, but she does it well. And (stronger woman than myself) she's going to drag herself through this year's upcoming 24 hour Blogathon 2007 to raise money for the folks at the Neuroblastoma Children's Cancer Society.

She's getting sooo close to reaching her goal of $1000 but she's not there yet.

~~here's the where you come in favor part~~

Think about one thing you indulge in each week. Bottled water? A good 70% dark chocolate bar (or five)? Coffee at the drive-thru place so you don't have to get out to get java on the way to work? A mani/pedi? A gossip rag (oh, I do so enjoy a good snipefest)? Leaving too many lights on? Daily newspapers? Whatever that thing is, how much will you spend for your 'It' thing each week?

Now I'm not one to stand in your way here; if you want to buy 13 different daily newspapers then go for it. Simply follow that by sponsoring Bunni.

Or, if you've finally hopped on the good ship Sensibility and want to go an extra bold step I'd respectfully suggest sponsoring Bunni and also giving up your It thing for 24 hours. See? See that?? Don't you feel all impressed by your own great self just considering the possibilities? My my my, that does look good on you!

Sign up to sponsor Bunni HERE

I mean it.
Go do that.
Now.
I'll wait here for you while you do.

obstreperous

women together, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

-- Anna Quindlen

the details

eye to the sun, originally uploaded by McBeth.

To create something exceptional, your mindset must be relentlessly focused on the smallest detail.

-- Giorgio Armani