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

lorazepam

I wrote this many years ago, to be sung to the tune of The Little Drummer Boy.

Come, they told me
Lorazepam-pam
A newfound drug we bring
Lorazepam-pam
To keep your mood from swings
Lorazepam-pam
Avoid those bumps and dings-
Lorazepam-pam
-razepam-pam
-razepam-pam

Baby, take this pill
Lorazepam-pam
Shapes valleys into hills-
Lorazepam-pam
Come off the window sill
Lorazepam-pam
Then I'll send you my bill
Lorazepam-pam
-razepam-pam
-razepam-pam


Cataclysm -
Lorazepam-pam
You're having visions -
Lorazepam-pam
This cures derision
Lorazepam-pam
It's better'n nuclear fission
Lorazepam-pam
-razepam-pam
-razepam-pam

Before you lose your grip,
Lorazepam-pam
Go and refill your script
Lorazepam-pam
Make sure no dose is skipped,
Lorazepam-pam
We dont' want you to flip.
Lorazepam-pam
-razepam-pam
-razepam-pam

i'm not terribly sure

Periodically, I collect the stray notebooks from around my home into one centrally-located pile. I flip through the pages of each notebook. I get into a comfortable position and read through each page of each book, ripping out the 'to do' lists that have long since been done. Sometimes those lists of ideas were tasks I had no intention of ever doing at the time I wrote them down but in the writing of the list I had the opportunity to set it onto paper, to feel accomplished, to feel on top of.

I've also found during these paper housekeeping times that I will discover important things that were worth noting, things I have neglected to properly complete. I find passwords, telephone numbers, changes of addresses, quotes I hear and want to remember, bank balances, dreamy getaway ideas, the instructions and requirements given me by the lady at the Medicaid office.

I also find the occasional piece of writing I've started and have abandoned unfinished. They're usually skeleton-like in form, a few words connected together by swoops and swings of a ballpoint pen, with miscellaneous jottings and doodles obliterating the margins.

Below is one such old entry. I wish now that I would have noted the date, or what in the world I was trying to sort out, or at least some kind of indication that I hadn't temporarily lost my mind (or simply, that I felt I had). I'm making a concentrated effort when I write now to jot those kinds of notes that might serve later as a road map to where I was when I lost myself.

I don't expect anyone who isn't me to have fun picking through the vault, so please know I'll completely understand if these snippets seem dumb or disconnected or weird (frankly, I think they are too, just a little bit). I'll understand if you want to get out while you can. I really do get it. On the other hand, I am also finding myself existentially stuck at the moment and I think I might help myself get un-stuck by hanging out with myself in this way. Maybe I'll find the missing pieces. Maybe I'll reconnect what has come undone. Maybe I'll confirm what I already know.

~~~~~~~~~~

I wish to speak. Music exists to say things that words cannot say, which is why it is not entirely human. You've found out that music is not for kings?

I've found out it is for God.

You're wrong. God can speak.

For the ear?

Things I cannot speak of are not for the ear.

For gold? For glory? For silence?

Silence is just the opposite of language.

For the rival musicians? For love?

No.

For love's sorrows?

No.

For abandonment?

No, no.

For a wafer offered to the invisible?

Not even. What is a wafer? You can see it, you can taste it, you can eat it. It's nothing.

I don't know any more, sir. I don't know any more. I think one has to leave a glass for the dead.

You're getting closer.

A refreshment for those who've run out of words. For lost childhood, to muffle the hammering of shoemakers, for the time before we were born, before we breathed, or saw light.

make me an angel

black and white, originally uploaded by McBeth.

There's flies in the kitchen I can hear 'em there buzzing
And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today.
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say?

Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

'Angel from Montgomery' (John Prine)

eureka!

Yesterday afternoon I put up two tents I own in my friends' yard. Not only had I looked forward to airing the tents out after several years' disuse, but my friend who uses an electric wheelchair and who wants to go camping expressed interest in trying one or both of them out, testing for their accessibility factor.

The smaller tent has room for 2-3 people to stretch out comfortably. The larger one, oh, I guess more like 5-6 people. My friends had been teasing me, suggesting that I was so eager to get them erected that I'd probably forget to do something important - like put the tarp down or pound stakes in or the like. So I purposefully took plenty of time to make sure I assembled everything properly. I staked both tents firmly into the ground and went so far as to arrange the tents so the larger one would take the brunt of any strong cross-plains winds that might blow through.

While KD and I were at our friends' home playing cards last night the weather reared up. It stoooormed. It rained and rained and poured, then stopped and started up again, several times. Just as it was approaching too-dark-to-see dark I took a peek out the back window to see how the tents were holding up.

There was only one tent standing in the yard.

No, I thought, I must be seeing things. Or maybe I'm at a bad angle so I can only see the larger one? I popped up and clenched a teeny borrowed pocket-sized umbrella and set out to investigate. KD made the frowny face that signified her disapproval of me going outside during a thundery rainstorm. She seemed sure that the single bolt of stray lightning would find me, that I'd be fried to a 10,000 volt crisp. I kissed her on her head on my way out the door to reassure her. I said she didn't have to approve of my choice, but her disapproval wouldn't sway my need to understand why I couldn't see both tents.

Outside, I squee-squawed through the soggy grass of the large side yard. Once I got out to where I'd staked the tents I determined that no, in fact, I was not seeing things. One tent had vanished. I squinted through raindrops, scanning the fence line on the far side of their roughly 2 acre property for some sign of the missing tent - nothing. I looked beyond, to the soybean field past their fence - nothing. It had EVAPORATED!

I borrowed our friends' mightiest MagLite and when we departed we did a slow drive-by crawl down their country road on the off chance the tent blew away. Nothing turned up during our late night Maglite inspection, so I decided I'd try again today after daylight returned. Having the rough plans for a continued search was good but I couldn't seem to let go of my confusion about what had happened. C'mon, where does a whole freaking tent GO?!

I couldn't figure it out. I'd hammered the stakes in at the proper angles to keep the tents tethered, I'd shaken them, I'd tried to move the tents around once they were assembled and I'd felt confident that both were secure. I didn't get it, I couldn't for the life of me figure out where my tent went. As I was back in my own bed last night, relaxing into sleep, my brain busily wandered through a vast field of possibilities, sifting for plausible explanations.

Scenario One: The wind carried the tent away.
I had securely staked the tent and I'd positioned it in such a way that strong winds should have hit the larger of the two tents before they reached the smaller one, but it is possible that a stormy gust could have worked around the larger tent, pulling the stakes of the smaller out of the earth in a mighty display of strength.

Scenario Two: Someone is playing a practical joke.
Given my friends' slight aversion to storms this would be unlikely but most certainly possible. If it was a practical joke I'll commend my friends for their implementation. It was a good one that I'll surely laugh later with them over. Furthermore, I reflected, I am lucky to have friends who enjoy playing, who value good-hearted fun, who know me well enough to trust my response to a harmless entertaining prank. In the drowsiness of pre-sleep I imagined myself playing the make-believe practical joke. I made a mental note that if I do ever pull a prank on a friend who owns two tents I could try tucking the smaller tent inside the larger one. I made a note to give that a try someday.

Scenario Three: A stranger took it.
Seems unlikely that someone drove through the rural Wisconsin countryside during severe weather, unlikely that the person saw two tents standing in a family's yard and unlikelier yet that he'd have thought to himself, boy oh boy, I'd sure like me one'a them. It's nearly unimaginable to me that the person would then have taken the time and energy to sneak up into the yard, disassemble the smaller of the two structures and sneak away into the stormy night with it.

Scenario Three: A stranger took it, part II.
There could have been some poor, wet, lost and confused shelterless moggy traveling through on his journey toward personal enlightenment who was caught completely by surprise by the storm.

It wasn't until I really began considering the karmic implications of Scenaro Three, part II when I uncovered my attachment to that tent. It wasn't the tent itself - at any given time I could walk into a small handful of local businesses and walk out with 273 new, and likely more watertight, tents. No, what I realized was my deep emotional attachment to that laughably plain little thing.

I thought about how, years ago, I'd had to save a little money for a long time from my insufficient single mother head of household paychecks to afford its purchase. When I had purchased that tent I felt successful -- triumphant, even. The handful of times I'd schlepped my child out to nowhere to experience nature we took shelter in that tent: our parent-child relationship deepened, in part because of that tent.

A shift occurred when I recognized my own strong emotional bond. Not only did I feel an instant release of some anger I wasn't even aware of carrying over a possible theft; not only did I feel compassion for a person who might honestly have needed that shelter more than I but more importantly to me, it opened my understanding of why I keep so much - too much - of the unnecessary: things that cause me a variety of headaches (i.e. the schlep factor: arrangement, display, moving, storage).

This connecting of the dots in the past 24 hours feels radical. I'm now excitedly anticipating the ways in which I will have the opportunity to transfer this updated understanding of my emotionally ponderous connections to other parts of my life.

As for the prodigal tent, I plan to offer it to my son. If he's uninterested in keeping it I'll give it away. That I don't require two tents is clear. One will be fine. One is sufficient. One is good. One tent is all my current need requires. As for the enlightenment, I think I'll begin testing it out in our too-packed basement.

Love Note

My shoulders and laughter
are sexy to you
Your eyes and your sprawled abandon
turn me on

Though imprecise with recipe card directions,
I measure my words
Skim superfluous off the top
Using the flat side of my blade.

I choose, arrange,
smith honesty with mouth feel

You don't even know
you are as natural to me as breath.

I ask how was your day dear,
you say okay.

I know from the way you lean into
Oh
and I know from the way you resist
Kay

That this expression wasn't what you had hoped for yourself
as the alarm chewed through the dense violet blue dawn.
I know this, and you, without the burden of awareness.

I am neither this nor that.
I am and.
You are however.
And yet you are as natural to me as breath.

You cannot see the profound lunacy
in the contrast of white upon black,
of linear straining against
this fluid dance we perform
with its precise footsteps falling
exactly, imprecisely, as they do.

My tongue threads remaining liquid through bitter grounds
as I languidly examine the particles
of the unspoken
of us
of breath.

I wish to ask,
Why do we clench?
Why the catch,
the grip,
the pause?


You aren't aware
you count on me.
Less for timeliness
less for keeping track of the important bill -
wholly for recognizing the subtle shift
within your choked happy throat
when you reply
Okay.

chaos

I have no idea. Pretty though, isn't it?, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.

-- Chuck Palahniuk

Teaching

scarlett: 1.5 years, 24 lbs., originally uploaded by McBeth.

While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about.

-- Angela Schwindt

fear and action

thank you, thank you., originally uploaded by McBeth.

Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.

-- W. Clement Stone

earlybird

teacups

teacups, originally uploaded by McBeth.

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?

-from Alice in Wonderland

flamingo feathers

flamingo feathers, originally uploaded by McBeth.

You cannot fly like an eagle with wings of a wren.

-- William James