Too much of anything is no good for you baby – I noticed that Facebook usage spikes during events and then now dies down to a couple of regular posters, while Twitter got so noisy, there was nothing to gain from it, and then Google+ (meh).
I sat outside with my friends yesterday on the bayou. I called a friend last night. Old fashioned social media rocks.
I took Mom’s day out today – had a babysitter come from 11 to 3 and of course, wouldn’t you know that Tin has been just adorable and cuddly and cute ever since …
But I went to see Jeff, Who Lives At Home and frankly I was surprised by the movie. I laughed out loud, I cried, and I genuinely left feeling as if I had taken a walk into the quiet desperation that most of us call our real life. I highly recommend the movie – Susan Sarandon is priceless – her lines alone slayed me.
I came home, and Tin decided not to nap and so we went bike riding, then we went and played hide and seek with Ruby and other kids, and then when we got back around the bayou, my neighbors were eating crawfish on the bayou and I made him and the little girl pasta pesto, sliced up some Louisiana strawberries, and some manchego cheese and went out to sit on the patch of ground that I call home.
Home.
We’ve opted to just stay in the back instead of moving back and forth in and out of the house as guests come and go. And now there is an emptiness to the house that lacks the spirit that we imbue it with. It’s sterile feeling, Tatjana had said last time we moved back in. This too shall pass. We’ll figure out what to do in the long term – there is something that works now about the whole thing but it does make everything so tenuous as if none of it mattered – the way you can remove the home from a house just like that.
We sat on the bayou until the gloaming set in and Tin and the kids ran up and down playing wheelbarrow, chase, freeze tag, and throwing bread to the adolescent ducks that have populated the water with our early spring.
I love movies – I used to be a movie whore, seeing anything I could on the big screen. It’s been so long, too long since I’ve been in a movie theater and when I arrived and sat down, I felt the magic start from the get go. The story had me in its grip, the willing suspension of disbelief, even though I had just seen the main character in a preview that had rolled minutes before, he was Jeff for now, and for always, and in my heart. I’m a sucker.
I fall in love with characters, I read to expand my horizon not with new ideas or new facts, but with new friends and foes. I’m a character for goodness sakes – appearing in everyone else’s book but my own. I have ideas I thought as I was coming out of the theater today – ideas I want to explore and why can’t I just sit in a booth and spit them out like a gum ball machine – 25 cents for an idea.
Yeah, thoughts by Rachel, who lives in her own world.
Tao te Ching
15
The ancient Masters were profound and subtle.
Their wisdom was unfathomable.
There is no way to describe it;
all we can describe is their appearance.
They were careful
as someone crossing an iced-over stream.
Alert as a warrior in enemy territory.
Courteous as a guest.
Fluid as melting ice.
Shapable as a block of wood.
Receptive as a valley.
Clear as a glass of water.
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.
From a city where African Americans dress like Indians to celebrate an Irish and Italian catholic holiday – oh my New Orleans Saints, we don’t bow down:
Might cooty fiyo, hey la hey, hey la hey
I’ve got a Big Chief, Big Chief
Big Chief of the national
Wild, wild creation
He won’t bow down
Down on the ground
Oh, how I love to hear
Him call Indian Red
When I throw my net in the river
I will take only what I need
Just enough for me and my lover
I will take only what I need, sing
Mighty cooty fiyo, hey la hey, hey la hey
Mighty cooty fiyo, hey la hey, hey la hey
Mighty cooty fiyo, hey la hey, hey la hey
To Trayvon Martin’s family, I send my heartfelt condolences and share your outrage. Lynn Varner in the Seattle Times read my thoughts when she wrote her editorial, as I was coming home the other day thinking at some point Tin and I would sit down and have the Talk.
Rest in peace Trayvon and I feel your family’s pain. Such a beautiful young man, killed in cold blood.
Many moons ago when I was going through a behavior modification program because I was prone to panic attacks and then subsequent phobias (bridges, freeways), I learned how important it is to recognize your victories – no matter how minor. So we kept a victory book and when I got on the freeway and was able to overcome my phobia, I took my victory lap.
The important thing about victory laps are that as you get older no one is really standing around saying how proud they are of you. Really. I mean the other day Tatjana said she recognized that she might be considered ambitious compared to others she knew – this came from the fact that she has completed her fourth book and is now thinking of her next project. Despite the fact that she seems to be lounging 75% of the time, she does jam. But who is sitting around saying, hey Tatjana – four books, wow!, hey Tatjana, you are about to become a full professor, cool (she’s a tenured associate now), or hey Tatjana you have been director of undergraduate study for four years and done a marvelous job. No one is standing there to say this – so here’s a shout out to my partner who maintains a steady pace despite appearances to the contrary.
Similarly, not many are standing ready to hand out the accolades to my accomplishments either. Okay, I successfully carved up the LaLa to make it a place that can support us instead of drain us, I started my own business with two clients under my belt and a third in motion and two big ideas ahead, I am able to carry on my financial research with friends, and I’m a mother and know how to do my boy’s hair! Woo hoo. Not bad, yay!
I was speaking to a friend about life and how fear cripples most people from getting out of or getting into situations, but everything that guides us is behavioral and can be addressed, modified, changed.
I’m taking my victory lap because everything that is in play right now is cards on the table and they could and will be reshuffled as needed.
Keeping it real is all.
The sun is out, the bayou is beautiful, Tin is napping, all things are possible in this one moment – imagine if moments lasted lifetimes and we just are so set on experiencing time as linear and in the coordinates given to us – but just think if that were different.
TGIF everyone and may the sun be with you.
To think that alopecia is caused by stress and yet alopecia gives stress. I’ve not wanted to wash my hair for fear that I would come out of it entirely bald. I can’t tell you the feeling of washing your hair and having clumps come out in your hand, or shaking your head and seeing hair fly everywhere. Unnerving to say the least.
But this is a stress related disease and it’s too bad that more people don’t talk about it. At the girl’s gathering the other night, one woman had it during a divorce, another friend had it when she started college, another had it when she HATED her job (oh, I can relate) – but it’s amazing what your body does to you when you are not listening to it – read the patient statement in the rectangular box on this site.
I woke this morning and made some decisions about my life that I needed to make to curb the madness. Now I need to implement these decisions. In the meantime, the sun came out – hard to believe after last night’s storm kept me and the dogs up yet again because it was pounding thunder and bright flashes of lightning shining through these 11 foot windows – insanity.
I woke weary but determined.
My horoscope:
March 23, 2012
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
In a business or school project, you will notice a big problem early in the day … the good news is, you will have plenty of time to tackle it before the big deadline. Organize your approach and don’t just pull apart everything and start over again. There are small adjustments you can make that will solve the problem, so take your time and don’t rush things. In your private life, conflicts are starting to settle down today and it looks like everyone is back to loving each other again!
So I had an hour long conversation with a friend about what he is doing and reading and what I am doing and reading and also how I might be able to help his daughter with her career choice as she has similar passions. At the end of the conversation, I was convinced that I have gotten off track in the last weeks as I’ve let too many competing interests grab me by the throat and yank one way and then the next. I’m the only filter, the only censor, I’m the divine so I need to take my responsibilities with more gravitas. My friend recommended a book from the 60s, how appropriate, called Psycho-Cybernetics.
Meanwhile, did I mention the sun came out today? Hence the mood change too, as the rain was driving us all INSANE around here with cabin fever. So out we all went to the playground when I picked up Tin and the three Musketeers all removed their shirts and peacocked around.
And as I watched my little boy strut around, I noticed that he can be rather goofy, and so my agenda and his goofiness are what usually clash. But yesterday when he was making me nuts, Brick House by the Commodores came on the iPod and so I shook my booty down to the floor and he looked at me as if I had lost my mind but it did break the tension.
A Spaniard made the comment the other day, “We lost more with Cuba” and so it brought to mind the ever loving need for perspective. Let’s now discuss perspective.
Back in mid summer of 2011, I was pulling my hair out. Now it falls on its own.
However, people came to me with guidance – one handed me a book, The Power of Now, another suggested Ram Dass, and Be Here Now, and so I began my journey forward. Dass warned, as you embark on this journey you will naturally leave others behind, expect this. Also I learned how change is difficult and there is resistance at every turn. But change you must.
So I had months of not finding an exercise and stumbled upon a Zumba class that is taught by Danielle Burrell – fabulous. And now she has me hooked. Only tonight we didn’t go because Tin overslept – he’s screeching like a barn own right now in his bed when moments ago I was convinced he was asleep. But I digress, I was trying to say I asked the universe to provide me with the joy of moving my body again and it shouted back ZUMBA. Enough said.
My hair is falling out from stress and I’m forever lost in this quagmire of it. I asked to find a way to meditate, given my schedule that doesn’t allow for peeing, and I found my Yemaya statue but still can only give it a 2 minute candle lighting and a few chants. Then, walking down the street I see a flyer, I pull it, turns out there is a Zen studio down the street with hourly meditations and instruction – Wala! I wanted just that – meditation and instruction.
I go through these drills, it’s like you know how the football players run in place as fast as possible, that’s how my life gets, I get wound up like a top and then someone goes and yanks the string and I spin out of control while the yanker is yelling WEEEEEEEEE and I’m responding WHOAAAAAA. But then the spinning stops, and I shake myself off, and move forward. It’s like this every time, I’ve seen this movie before and I know how it ends.
You hope that there is not too much lost in the rotation – but then again, like my friend, I lost more with Cuba, so really, what of it? I suffer most from abundance and is that really worth the real estate I give it?