sustenance

pork and salsa, originally uploaded by McBeth.

The cliché that women, more consistently than men, turn inward for sustenance seems to mean, in practice, that women have richly defined the ways in which imagination creates possibility; possibility that society denies.

-- Patricia Meyer Spacks

teach him what he is

presently his horse is being watered, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.

-- Pablo Picasso

soupy politics

chicken pole, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.

-- John W. Gardner

keep trying

nueva cancion's mini musicians, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

-- Samuel Beckett

dying wish

fallen, originally uploaded by McBeth.

If you can't go around it, over it, or through it, you had better negotiate with it.

-- Ashleigh Brilliant

finished business

UMD, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming with a goal in front and not behind.

-- George Bernard Shaw

signing up

hyacinthththths, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Some people plant in the spring and leave in the summer. If you're signed up for a season, see it through. You don't have to stay forever, but at least stay until you see it through.

-- Jim Rohn

awol

If you happen to find a wayward keychain wallet-y looking thing that looks sad and lost, will you please give it directions back to my house? It somehow managed to meander away while I was at work tonight and I am already missing it terribly.

You can check all the stuff inside. If my drivers license, social security card, medicare card, foodstamps card and debit card don't provide you enough clues to who I am or where I live, you can try the car and house keys to see if they'll work in my locks.

Feel free to help yourself to whatever is in the fridge. I only ask that you clean up after yourself.

Thank you.

move on

go ahead with your own life, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Seven pounds and eleven ounces of holy cow,
Bald for the first year or so,
Blond ringlets the following few

A meteorological worrier those first five years,
keeping a close eye on dew points and scary lightning,
Managing his world by understanding it

The year or two of getting dragged to Saturday morning rec activities
Because its good for you, that's why.

The odds have regularly been stacked against this one.
Well-behaved. Quiet. Slightly introverted.
Single child in single parent household.
One hundred seventy five percent of fed. poverty level.
Occasionally unstable parent. The other one too.

But loved? Oh my. Yes.
Unto embarrassment, probably, but
what is the point of loving if it cannot be demonstrated?

And now.
Now.
He's moving on, as each kid should do.
First apartment.
This is what provides stomach acids their due process:
the eager sense of no more rules,
churning along with a nervous realization of no more rules.
It's part of the Constitution, the Liturgy,
the ecumenical sense of rightness and order.
The child shall leave the home and cleave to something or another,
but neither mom nor dad nor any others of the loudmouth huggers
can adequately fill this next thing, it has to be the uniquely personal real deal.

On my early morning trek to the bathroom
I paused at his bedroom door this morning.
I don't know what I expected to have happen in that emptying room.
Tap dancing frogs in top hats? A banner reading 'You did everything perfectly, Mom'.
Maybe I didn't expect anything;
maybe I'm trying to make connections the same way he used to with hail and tornadoes.

Outside the window, the sky lumbered under weighty rain clouds.
Cry cry cry, sky.
Go ahead. you know you want to.
Here, let me help you get things started.

My responsibility is officially becoming less a responsibility than an equal.
This is not what I expected.
My empty nest will be far from empty, it is true.

Even so,
This quiet dull morning makes me feel, acutely,
the rending of space and time,
a near-miss narrowly avoided accident that doesn't happen at
the intersection of memory lane and futurama boulevard.
How the fuck did that happen? Was I really that unaware?

Please world, I ask only a few things of you.
In return for this child's full entrance into your Big Club
I ask only that you watch over him.
Treat him gently.
Encourage his curiosity. Engage him.
Keep him thinking.

Show him challenges and give him the tools to accomplish them.
Show him bitterness in doses just small enough to taste on the back of his tongue.
Teach him how to earn others' faith and trust. And their respect.
Demonstrate to others how he has earned theirs.
Show him hard times, but no so hard that he can't get back up.
And give him as much love as you can possibly gather up.
I raised him up to this point.
Now he's yours.

clues

left behind, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good". All available evidence, however, points to the contrary.

-- Matt Groening

return to the soil

progressive recession, originally uploaded by McBeth.

You will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with you. It will return to the soil, and there a plant may take it up again in time, sending it once more on a cycle of plant and animal life.

-- Jacob Bronowski

clear

glassy eyed, originally uploaded by McBeth.

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars...But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable...It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.

-- Kay Jamieson

what to do, what to do

have fun, will travel, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I’ve been unemployed for, well, a while. A major upheaval in health-related issues caused me to leave the job where I’d been employed in various capacities the previous fourteen years. It was imperative to my health and wellness to leave the work world for a while, and during the absence I took some comfort in the practice of thinking, ‘Oh this? This is temporary; I’ll get through it and get back to doing something that brings me satisfaction. I’ll feel useful again. I might even shake off this stinking stagnating missing sense of purpose. I can be happy again’.

This back-to-work experience has been a real trip. I haven’t generally discussed either my away-from-work time or the challenges of attempting to return to the workforce with many people. I had (and have) devoted friends and family who’ve listened and supported and who have continually encouraged me, but there comes a point when even I get sick of hearing myself talk so for now I’m content with having spilled a portion of my guts safely with them and leaving the rest to drift on. I hope you’ll believe me when I say with no hesitancy that if I was to ramble about the acronyms and seemingly arbitrary rules and the lack of __ (fill in the blank), your eyes would instantaneously glaze and, simultaneously, your brain combust. I’m all for full disclosure but really, there’s no need for bloody messes like exploded brains. Aside from anything else, your eyeballs will have gone AWOL after the brain combustion so you wouldn’t be able to see to clean up the splatter. And thus endeth both revelation and also the gross-out section of this post.

The Department of Vocational Rehabilitation’s contribution to this effort has thus far been minimal, but they do exist, they have tried to help if/when I’ve nudged them to follow through, and I’ve learned that the “Business Relations Specialist” (read: job coach) is my best go-to person for information and suggestions on how to navigate agencies, income guidelines, “not too much” income guidelines, and ways to navigate within the system without breaking rules. I do believe that there are fine, fine employees working for local and national agencies. I believe that every single governmental employee I’ve encountered – especially those in the social services sector – is underpaid and entirely overworked, juggling a ridiculously high number of caseloads than any single person in any sensible universe should ever be expected to accomplish. I’m not particularly satisfied with a host of services and conflicting information I’ve received, but it’s only fair that I temper my discouragement with all the stuff they’re required to do 1) well, 2) the first time, and 3) with all the other individuals they are supposed to be serving. I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it and I appreciate them for at least trying. In the same way I imagine I’d cling tightly to my airline seat that doubles as a flotation device if the plane crashed over water, I’ve learned to swing my lasso over the polite non-crabby informational-rich kind agency people and hold them tight. I like them.

So I’m feeling a little better, better enough to try working again. In December 2007 I took the first baby steps by meeting with agency people to rough out my skills and aptitudes and job goals. I began the hunt in December by just dipping a toe in, sending out one resume here or there to one potential employer, then another … It’s now early April and, after applications and resume-sending and first interviews and second interviews, I’ve been struggling against a strong despondent current and I remain unemployed. It’s probably an individual thing how much a person can take, but after so many rejections –even for positions I might not actually want- I’ve really had to focus on ignoring the compilation of silence and rejection so I can bring my best and most capable self to each new interview. Here’s a simple but elegant way of describing how that goes: It’s hard.

Within the past two weeks I interviewed for what I think might be the best job fit yet: a part-time position at a photography business (some behind-the-counter retail type work, some lab developing). It’s a job that would dovetail so nicely into the thing that I feel passionate about. While the wage is slightly low, the hours would be great and the products and services would be right up my alley. The interview went well, despite my lame-ass answer to the question “Say you want to shoot a picture with a shallow depth of focus. How would you do that?”

For the record, if you’re ever asked this question respond confidently, “Oh I most certainly would adjust the aperture, wouldn’t everyone?” rather than saying, “Um, well, I’d use a strong lens and I’d extend that sucker as far out as possible to make the subject clear and the background not”. Okay, I didn’t actually use the word ‘sucker’. My embarrassment was tempered greatly by the pleasant way he rolled with my strange sounding answer and worked it into an educational moment. I imagine I probably sounded like someone who doesn’t have all the cool kid photo skills, but you can use my dumbassedness to your benefit since now you’ll know how to accurately answer the question should you be asked.

You’re welcome.

At any rate, the interviewer told me he’d contact me either way, hired or not, within a week or two. It’s been a week and I have yet to be contacted and I’m obsessively concerned about why he hasn’t called. Migod, I’m a regular 15 year old waiting for my dreamboat to call and ask me to prom.

I had to talk talk talk myself up into dressing and showing up today for another interview for a different job. The second employer of the two provides telephone captioning services to people with hearing disabilities. That someone put voice recognition software together with telephone service is astounding to me. I thought my typing skills might be of some value to them. So, deep sigh, I did dress. I did show up and announce myself to the receptionist. I did also discover I was at the wrong office. At which point I did get directions to the correct building and the receptionist kindly called the receptionist at the second office to let them know I was on my way. My interview went well (don’t we always say that about nearly all interviews regardless of reality? ‘How did your interview go?’ ‘Oh that thing? Yeah, I aced it.’). But really, I took and passed four tests –two of which required a specific kind of attention I can’t recall ever having used in my previous jobs. It was nerve-wracking. My stomach acids churned, but I was excited to discover I really could do what he was asking of me and that I surpassed my own expectations.
Rah. Go me.

We discussed details of the position, scheduling, wages, and client confidentiality issues then holy miracle of miracles, he extended me a job offer.

Because the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ lists for each job have too many small details probably unimportant to anyone but me, I won’t belabor the details here. Both positions would work well with a class schedule when I return to college classes this coming fall. Both are part-time jobs with possibility of switching over to full-time employment. Both are located on bus lines (yay for less driving!). I believe both employers could be considered small businesses (yay no big corporate work!).

Rattling around up there between neurons and receptors I have this contantly-running voice squeaking and worrying oh crap, what if the guy calls from the passion-related job with a job offer? I find it challenging to purposefully think less in worst-case scenario terms, though given the past few years’ experiences in which worst cases blew up with some regularity, it made sense to lower my expectations in order to cope with the continual disappointment. I am challenging myself to hold in my heart only that which rolls along the lines of hopeful possibility.

So each time the annoying worry starts up I’ve taken to telling the rattles that I cannot presently accommodate them, but if they’d like to take a number and have a seat over on one of the ripped plastic waiting room chairs someone will get to them as soon as possible. As it turns, out I actually did pick up a few handy tricks from social services.

on hold

floeing, originally uploaded by McBeth.

To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

foolish heart

holding life still for a moment, originally uploaded by McBeth.

With each word, your tenderness grows, tearing my fears apart.
And that laugh that wrinkles your nose touches my foolish heart.
You're lovely, with your smile so warm and your cheek so soft,
there is nothing for me but to love you.

-- Frank Sinatra

two hundred twelve miles later

two hundred twelve miles later, originally uploaded by McBeth.

When you look into my eyes
And you see the crazy gypsy in my soul
It always comes as a surprise
When I feel my withered roots begin to grow
Well I never had a place that I could call my very own
That's all right, my love, 'cause you're my home.

-- Billy Joel

come back

maybe, originally uploaded by McBeth.

It quite often happens that the old man is subject to the delusion of a great moral renewal and rebirth, and from this experience he passes judgments on the work and course of his life, as if he had only now become clear-sighted; and yet the inspiration behind this feeling of well-being and these confident judgments is not wisdom, but weariness.

-- Frederich Nietzsche

fashionable

in solidarity, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I have a full, rich respect for fashion. I love its whimsy, its humor, its charm and its rewards. I love its vagaries and its demands. I love what it does for women. But I know, with all my heart, that no woman should follow it blindly.

-- Loretta Young

I am beautiful.

no matter what they say, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Every day is so wonderful
And suddenly its hard to breathe
Now and then I get insecure
From all the pain
I'm so ashamed

I am beautiful
No matter what they say
Words can't bring me down
I am beautiful
In every single way
Yes, words can't bring me down

So, don't you bring me down today

To all your friends you're delirious
So consumed in all your doom
Trying hard to fill the emptiness
The pieces gone
Left the puzzles undone
That's the way it is

You are beautiful
No matter what they say
Words can't bring you down
You are beautiful
In every single way
Yes, words can't bring you down

So, don't you bring me down today

No matter what we do
No matter what we say
We're the song inside the tune,
Full of beautiful mistakes
And everywhere we go,
The sun will always shine
And tomorrow we might wake on the other side

Cause we are beautiful
No matter what they say
Yes, words won't bring us down, no
We are beautiful
In every single way

Yes, words can't bring us down today

-- Christina Aguielara
*lyrics

i'm finding...

I'm a finder. I find a lot of things. A lot of things.

Frequently, I find items that look like pieces of fallen-off bits from appliances which I then use to play the game 'what do you suppose THIS is?', in which I am my own Monty Hall game host as well as the shrieking excitable contestant dressed up like a pickle. And I often go for Door #3 because c'mon, who doesn't dream of owning a donkey with saddlebags filled with fabulous Rice-A-Roni?! It's the San Franciscan treat, you know. And if I was to take my new donkey TO San Francisco, I'm pretty sure I'd get around those tall hills a lot quicker.

I try to walk with my head up and my eyes toward the horizon; I have the best intentions of being aware of the world around me, but in truth I forget about my take it all in intentions, inevitably reverting back to my more usual ground scan.

Last Sunday morning I skipped out the door of KD's apartment with seven shiny quarters in my coat pocket to buy a newspaper from one of the three nearby newspaper boxes. I've come to appreciate the intimacy and quiet of my brief Sunday morning forays; the peaceful quiet of empty streets is magical, with only the occasional dog walker or jogger passing by. Everyone else is either busy making potato pancakes or sleeping off their Saturday night whiskey soaking or at a house of worship getting another weekly dose of brotherly love. Each time I head out to retrieve the Sunday newspaper I'm newly appreciative of the reduced activity and the barely there noise. I can hear the birds chirping on empty streeted Sunday mornings.

Finding a newpaper in KD's neighborhood is like a slot machine designed for the chronically cheap casinophobe. Of the three nearby newspaper stands there is never more than one that has been stocked, and it makes guessing which one will be the big jackpot all the more entertaining. I stepped out to cross an intersection to reach box #1* when I noticed something colorful laying in the road. There were three little metal dog tags -one silver, one blue, one red - laying together in the shape of a very small fan. I picked them up to look them over for clues about who the tagless dog might be or where its owner might live. The silver tag was the proof from a Janesville veterinary clinic of mystery pooch's 2006 rabies vaccination. The red tag was for a 2007 Madison dog license. The blue bone-shaped tag provided a name, address and phone number: while the telephone number listed a local area code, the address pointed to a Minnesota address. I considered leaving the tags where I'd found them. Maybe the tags were freshly-lost? Maybe someone will retrace their walking path to find them? Might I possibly be messing with some sort of balance by inserting myself into a situation that wasn't even mine?

After a few minutes' thinking I decided on a plan of attack: I'd pick up the metal tags, carry them back to KD's house where I'd try calling the local telephone number listed under the Minnesota address. If the owner's phone number was current, I figured, I'd be able to reunite dog with tags and, if not, I'd put the tags back exactly where I'd found them knowing at the very least that I'd tried to help. Little metal dog tags tucked into deep pockets of a thick winter coat can get a little lost down there in the bottom, and they did. Until yesterday that is, when in the process of emptying all 400 pockets for an end-of-season coat laundering I re-found them. I didn't want to lose track of them again so I immediately called the telephone number. Nobody answered, but a man's voice greeted my call with the usual 'I can't come to the phone, leave a message' greeting. The message I left included my first name, my telephone number, and the story of how I'd found his dog's tags and an offer to meet somewhere public to reunite them. I hung up my telephone wondering if I'd ever hear back from Mister Dog Tags.

I'd just finished my breakfast oatmeal this morning and was headed back downstairs to the kitchen for a coffee refill when my telephone rang. I didn't recognize the name displayed on the phone's caller ID and nearly let the call go to my voice mailbox but, because I have a number of job applications hanging out there in the ether, I thought it best to answer the call on that off chance it was an employer calling to say 'hey, we'd love for you to work for us!'. It was not a potential employer; it was Dog Tag Guy (also known as Joe), thrilled that the mystery of the dropped dog tags now had a conclusive and happy ending. We've set up a plan to get his tags back to him tomorrow. I am relieved; both for not having had to return unclaimed tags to the street where I'd originally found them and that I didn't mess anything up by my attempts to help.

While I've been working through the dog tag reunion (Peaches & Herb would say it feels so good. Even though I cringe at disco era tunage, I cannot disagree with them.) I've been doing my regular thaang. Exercising, making meals, cleaning, making plans to visit family in IA City for the newest niece's baptism, stuff like that. On Tuesday, or maybe it was Wednesday, I popped on my girlie pink Crocs and loped across the parking lot, then the street, toward the cluster mailboxes on the other side. Something shiny caught my eye (the story of my life) so I bent down to get a better look. Stuck in the mucky brown of melting curb ice I saw what looked like a fragment of glass perfectly positioned to reflect the sun up from the street grit. I collected my mail and took another look at the glass which then seemed less a fragment than a whole real thing. It was, in fact, a 2" triangle shaped glass vase. Now how in the world does something like that find its way to someplace like there? And what in the world do you put in such a tiny thing? I can think of no possible way to reconnect a 2" glass vase with its owner, so I've placed the sweet little vase in a prominent place on my computer desk in hopes that eventually - like, when winter finally gets the hint we've been dropping for weeks that she's worn out her welcome and now needs to go the heck away - I might be able to find a dandelion or a violet to stick into the teeny-tiny vase neck for a wee floral pick-me-up.

These finding jags seem to happen in clusters then cease for a while, until they happen again. I supposed that this current jag was finished after the dog tags and the glass vase and that I would now be able to get back to other navel-gazing issues.

Until last night, when KD and I visited the gym for a non-exercise night of whirlpool soaking and eucalyptus steam room (read: someone(s) may have pushed just a liiiittle too optimistically on last night's leg muscle portion of our circuit training routine). After an hour or so, we'd steamed and soaked ourselves into 90% noodle-y-ness and agreed that if we didn't leave soon we wouldn't be leaving at all. We returned to the women's locker room to shower and dress. I popped the lock on my locker, grabbed my shower products, headed into the shower room and arbitrarily picked an unoccupied shower stall. As I sat down shampoo and body wash containers on the small corner shelf I noticed something already sitting there. It was a pendant. No chain, no owner, no explanation ... I left it where it was, expecting that the owner would come flying back into the shower room to pick up what she'd accidentally left on the shelf. But nobody came back, not during the entirety of my hair washing and skin de-chlorination. Shower completed, I tiptoed on wet feet back into the locker room, asking the other women in there if they'd misplaced any jewelry ... nope. no. uh-uuh. thanks for asking, but I didn't.

I've had spotty luck (read: sucktastic luck. no luck at all) retrieving personal items accidentally left at the gym, and I've also had my personal items stolen from right under my nose (e.g., my big huge wonderful sage green bath sheet -- while I was there, IN the sauna, several mere feet away from the towel rack. I secretly hope whoever took it self-combusted on their way home because dude, that was totally rude), and because of this I elected not to entrust the gym employees with the return of the pendant to its owner. This time I stopped at the main desk, explained to an employee that I'd found a pendant in the women's locker room and that I'd like to get it back to whoever lost it. She handed me a notebook the staff uses every day to communicate new news or important notes in which I wrote a brief note explaining the situation, my first name, my telephone number, and the caveat that whoever calls must provide a description of their missing item. I'm really hoping that whoever lost her jewelry will track her way back to the reception desk so we can reconnect owner with lost thing.

I continue to wonder a.) if things really do happen in threes and w.) if this last item will be the conclusion of my latest finding jag. It's been a delight but I really do have to get back to figuring out the random bits off appliances I come across when I walk with my eyes down.

* No newspapers in box #2, nor in box #2. Turned out, box #3 held the jackpot. Which is, y'know cool and all, but it also meant that I lost the bet I made with myself: I was sure I'd find the Sunday newspaper before I reached #3.



{the second image may or may not be an image of the pendant I found, but if you happen to be a local gym rat looking for some new bling, I suggest you not make conclusive assumptions. I'm kindhearted but I'm not stupid.}