Tag: writing

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Post Politics: April Fools…Still? (Ten For Today)


August 3, 2016
 
You–

Where do I begin? Are you for real? You know the clear sign of adulthood is recognizing your own strengths and weaknesses, limitations and possibilities. Children believe they can do anything, fly to the moon with just their will and hands flapping, grow a cape and avenge their slights against school yard bullies. But adults know the difference between fantasy and reality. Not you.
 
Some say you know exactly what you’re doing. Others say you yourself have no idea what will come out of your mouth until you say it. My dear mother in law is like that–no editing filter from brain to mouth. It comes from a hyperactive attention deficit disorder, lack of impulse control and other causes. I’m no doctor. I’m just an observer. But she, at least, understands where she belongs, what makes her most effective as mother, friend, cook, caretaker and citizen. She knows her shortcomings and does not decide to become a surgeon or insist she can be one just because she believes her surgeons are not doing enough for her cancer and heart condition.
 
But you, ‘man’, own everything you do, say and believe, and expect others to do the same. You’re not a citizen of the world, just yours. The rest of us are all visitors to your world. They used to diagnose people like you as insane monomaniacal threats, curable only by electroshock therapy.
 
But that’s you. Somehow you have inserted yourself into every corner of the planet. The causes of your rise are plenty, but the time for analysis and disbelief are long past. Now the question is what will be done with you by the half of the nation that thinks, cares and clings to a worn, battered, torn and flaking democracy, but a democracy at last.
 
I am confident thoughtful people with conscience will do the right thing. Those lost in hope, dreams and fantasies, those longing for brutal fathers as a result of their own overriding fears, indomitable past or cultural patriarchal indoctrination will see themselves in you or not see you at all for the sake of something, something to help them bear the weight of the malaise and downright horror of their existence.
 
Whatever happens, madman (not to defame the ill) or pretender, I have hope that reason and goodness will prevail by the forceful intentions and actions of people who care, love and hope in humanity.   

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There’s a Woman (Ten for Today)


August 2, 2016
 
I used to have so much fight in me, so much conviction, indignation, righteousness and determination. I was ambition. I was striving.
 
Now I’m heart-fatigued, deadened by weather, watches and people, so I can’t be bothered with so much of what bothered me. My ambitions are quieter, steadier now. And while before everything turned to anger–contradiction, injustice, oppression–now those conditions are met with a profound sadness that shatters my steady, moves my once immovable tears from the dammed up reservoir of hurt, pain, disappointment, fear, shock and panic to come, future furies and frustrations.
 
For example, I know someone who takes advantage of my inability to say no, sometimes. She plays me, and I know it and accept it. I allow her to do that–use me for her own gains and pleasures. I can only surmise I permit her to take advantage; otherwise, I would simply make her stop.
 
That slight, that injustice, that unfairness, how she treats me, would have enraged me in younger days. I would have ached to avenge my pride, my dignity, scraping my imagination with retorts, come-backs, equalizing actions and humiliating reconciliation.
 
But today, I observe her making me uncomfortable, forcing me to vocalize the dirty rotten truth between us. And I watch myself watching her watching me. Awaiting the courage and the words, I witness her machinations, manipulations and movements, and mull the situation over, slightly anxious, confident the solution will find me.

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Ten–and 21–for today.


Working my way through the day 15 and 10 minutes at a time, I set the timer. It’s one of those days when sleep filled me, made me hopeful upon awakening, even after a pee trip and return to sleep, rare in itself (the going back to sleep part). An excited brain with a deadline is like a toad on crack. Reigning it in hard today.
 
I also drank a bit last night–a Stone on draft at happy hour. P and I went to dinner before the concert. His Christmas 2015 present finally arrived in a college stadium 80 miles from home–Twenty One Pilots, his favorite band these days. Or one of them. Having tapped into his on again off again creative piano playing and composing mojo lately, he was particularly ready to enjoy the show. And he did, dancing the night away.
 
I, on the other hand (not as familiar with the band), was glad to have had the beer and mushroom flatbread before the show, washed down with a cool glass of water out on that breezy terrace to the immaculate, tinged-with-class-and-hipness restaurant. A compromised restaurant between haute cuisine and bistro fare, I was satiated. The cool beer and water helped when the stadium filled with hopping, singing, dancing, screaming and hugging mostly-younger-than-I fans turned stifling.
 
Two young women standing/swaying in front of me in the row ahead turned to me like they would to an older adult, like their mom’s or grandma’s friend, and mouthed the question with slightly furrowed brows, “Do you have water?” My slow shaking head side to side, the response, they sadly looked away. I was holding up well for two reasons: beer and water chaser before the show, and sitting down while the crowd stood. It’s called conservation, like the camel-hood I procured decades ago.
 
That’s right security dude checking us for contraband at the stadium entrance, who asked me sarcastically, which song was my favorite of this 20-something band, I’m old–and savvy. And, while you were busy busting my chops, I was smiling and smuggling by.
 

Image: Twenty one Pilots/mtv

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At the Corner: Ten for Today

I don’t know why I bite. I practice keeping my distance, detaching from all the crap around me, only to self-sabotage in weaker moments. Quixotic behavior, fighting windmills, I collapse, fall into the delusion that cyberspace is real, people on Facebook are real. They are not. They are as solitary as I am, poking at keys to create effect. There are no people in cyberspace, just ones and zeros. I know this, and yet…
 
Going out to dinner with my housemates, dad and partner, that is real. Though the restaurant was too noisy to facilitate conversation, we know what we want to say–and the food is always good there at our corner joint called, “The Corner.” Upon seating, the waiter, who knows us by name, delivered a cellophane wrapped wine glass we left there a month before. They knew it was ours, and the bartender brought it to our table upon seeing us. Even though we have never sat at the bar, the guy recognized us for our frequent patronage.
 
That’s real life–in the flesh.
 
To feel the pulse of America and predict the outcome of this upcoming election, I need to get out of cyberspace, off my computer, and walk among real breathing human beings, who can look me in the eye and tell me who they are and what they want. Only posers–personas–hide on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and all the other social media sites created for production, the creation of false spaces, rooms, and people who perform pieces of their lives, oh so convincingly.

 

Image: around the corner

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A Mauve and Amber Place–Ten Minutes

July 21, 2016

 

The fan blares suffocating sound and empties the room’s edges. A constant hum drowns out noise that wedges its way into my ears by its decibel variability, vying for my attention–a shrill bark here, a chair across floor scrape there muffled by a closed door and small child shrieks outside. Sunk in the river of a whirring fan, these bumpy sounds don’t bother me, no more than a buoy on a staid sea sways for the rippling wavelets. Not much.

 

Wouldn’t the world taste better, more palatable, if I could carry the whirring fan with me wherever I went? If not the fan itself, its hum inside my head? And then add some cool shades that mediate bright and low light into that roseate dusk sky, so that every one walked, ran, drove or sat showered in a mauve and amber mood. I’d like that.

 

No, I have no conclusion, no point to make here–just ongoing sense, words, a keyboard and ten minutes.    

 

Image: 1967 Cooley’s Gardens (wikimedia)

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I got the last order of halibut tacos: ten for today

July 19, 2016
 
I’m having trouble. I stayed up too late and ruined my sleep. Those sleep-deprived days hit hardest, most difficult to bear. The world seems scary, like one giant acid trip gone wrong that I cannot come down from, no matter how much I talk myself through it. My feet feel as if I am walking in the bounce house.
 
Morning came too quickly, the doors opening and closing to my bedroom. Communal showers suck. I worked late into the night fixing my article for the new French client, only to awaken to stern reprimand from someone half my age, probably. I did not follow directions, too worried about meeting deadline and not the specifics. Certainly my fault but can we just treat each other kindly? Even editors?
 
Hard pressed to inhabit the Zen of it all, I fought all morning with myself. “This is the life of a writer. This is life. Don’t be afraid of rejection, judgment and criticism.” I had to keep myself from diving over the cliff of “I fucked up.” Forgiveness.
 
My nerves still sore, I taught class, guilty that I wasn’t fresh, alert and sharp, but that turned out to be a lie I told myself. The class discussion meandered through colonialism, prejudice, Black Lives Matter, censorship, profanity, the sub-prime mortgage debacle, the abc’s of finance, medicine, medico-legal ethics, euthanasia, and stories, lots of anecdotes, for a breezy four and a half hours. At least it seemed that way. Summer school. Beautiful students.
 
Rounding out nicely with a particularly grapefruit citrus-tinged IPA and halibut tacos ordered at my local hangout–family members all working (except for dad glued to the t.v.)–this day wanes okay, citing my own research on French proverbs (my maybe rejected assignment)–apres la pluie, le beau temps (Every cloud has a silver lining). I’m about to chomp down on my halibut tacos silver lining. Cheers and Bon appetit! 

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Ten Today: Buddha and the French

July 18, 2016
I doubt I have ten minutes uninterrupted, but I’ll give it a shot. I’m at my other other other job tonight. This one teaches me to love. I practice my little Buddha steps here, learning to appreciate every mundane, automatic movement with mindfulness, paying attention. In fact, if I don’t pay attention, let my mind wander as it is wont to do when nothing in particular stimulates it, I make money or cleaning mistakes, ones that make me feel like an incapable incompetent. After all, I’ve been at the job for years now (Obviously my self-judgment needs some work).
 
So this one teaches me patience and presence. The other one, writing, teaches me a different kind of little Buddha practice–patience and detaching from struggle. That one challenges me too much. I wrote all day on a subject that didn’t particularly interest me–under deadline. Tonight, after the store closes at 10, and I get home just before 11, I will return to the work. It isn’t quite right and it’s due no later than Monday. That’s today. I figure before midnight is still Monday.
 
A new client testing my skills to evaluate hiring me, I do indeed want to impress. Right now, my draft is not impressive. To my credit, I have faked my way into the door–partially. The job description called for fluency in French. Though I have been around French speakers for the last 35 years, coming and going, and I took a couple years in college, even wrote and orally presented a fairly competent 20 minute lesson on Montaigne in grad school, I’m not sure fluent and French should both be used in the same sentence to describe me.
 
However, with the help of my somewhat strong reading skills, a tip here and there from the Frenchman in the house and Google, I patched together a rather inexpert but passable draft of an article discussing the meaning and origin of 5 French sayings or proverbs or adages or aphorisms. I used all those words and more to keep it less mind-numbing.
 
What I will come home to is a stuffy draft that I needed to leave anyhow, though the impulse to go home and finish it is way stronger than my need to practice Buddhist patience and presence here at yogurt zombie Monday. I need to make it personable, friendly and fun. Oy, that should pull on every iota of craft I can muster.
 
Well, only one customer intruded on my ten. Good sign. Maybe the piece will magically gel tonight before my eyes turn to lidded gravel.

 

Image: Architectureofbuddhism.com

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July 16th Ten Minutes: Battle of the Bulge or Gravity’s Toll

I yoga’d hard today, long and deep. And I don’t feel as beaten as I thought I would. I had been meaning to up my exercise regime a little, something more cardio than hatha yoga, to which I am semi-devoted daily, meaning only half way committed to hatha. The other half is vinyasa, quicker paced movement.
 
Recently, my body has gone off to do its own thing, grow where and how it wants despite my steady diet of exercise and mostly conscientious, nearly vegan eating (kind of slightly pescatarian-whatever). My practice hasn’t changed, just the distribution of my body fat. So, I toyed with the idea of a weight loss/exercise program offered at a local gym. A friend follows the program and has lost considerable poundage as well as toned up nicely. His results and the losing battle with gravity inspired me to investigate.
 
The program relies on classic Jack La Lanne principles of cardio and circuit training with isometrics, you know, old fashioned jumping jacks and sit-ups. Reminds me of the cross-fit fifteen minute videos I tried but never stuck with, not because they’re hard but because they’re boring. While yoga packages the same exercises–push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks (sort of)–or parts of them re-combined, the breath-timed, mind-balanced aspects to the “exercise” draws me. Besides, yoga came way before Jack La Lane, cross-fit or any other 20th or 21st century fitness program.
 
As a former runner, I had to adjust to the non-cardio temperament of yoga when I first began practicing in earnest 7 years ago. However, now I understand many kinds of yoga, some of which pump the heart as cranked up as any running I’ve done. I guess that’s why I haven’t really pursued any videos or gyms. I have what I need–except for the diet. And willpower to push myself.
 
I know I need to change my eating habits. I’m getting that swollen middle despite all my yoga-ing. I’m told diet should change every 7 years anyhow. Mine’s over due. But diets too confine me. I hate regimes that remind me I’m weak or suffering. I prefer sensible eating, mindful eating, meaning a keen awareness of every morsel that touches my lips. It starts there, anyhow. Then, it’s up to energetic resistance to kick in–to not swallow that morsel, to refuse the I-know-this-isn’t-good-for-me bite.
 
Right, I’ll start on Monday.

 
Jack La Lanne via modernhealthmonk.com

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Ten Minute Write for July 13th: the divinity of detail


July 13, 2016
Writing to, from and down the bones sounds simple enough–the detail, the divine detail–but the word fount must be vast and strong. Specificity takes knowing the names of things, everything. I can hardly remember my own. Names.

I lack an honest pen. I am just learning to live with things as they are, not according to my vision and story, but as they are. I’ve embellished on life, added color, flexed the edges of pathways and tables to make them fit a certain slant in my sight. It sounds like fabricating–lying–but I think it’s appropriate to call it crafting. Yes, there is a line, a circle too. But crafting is legitimate, carving stories from wood and steel. I do it. We all do. Ultimately we are the stories we write ourselves into from everything we deem real, lived and experienced.

There is a rolled up tube, wide and tall as my thigh, slightly taller, that stays tubed by a rubber band, awaiting a frame as it sits vertically atop my desk, white, serene, divided in half by that serpentine rubber band. Inside, I have seen the cow skull atop the man, sitting in the foreground with powerful arms and lean body, brown man in the heat, in the background a rustic desert cafe one sees in dusty towns off long, leaning highways into the horizon. He wears a skull as ritual, in his town, an African town, somewhere outside Johannesburg. 

The line sketch print, presented to me as a birthday present, one I asked for after spying this piece at a friend’s house art gallery opening, pleased me softly and widely. Perhaps the cow bones spoke the truth in human animality, like the Native American mask that hangs above the fire place: antlers, fox skins and painted man. They came to be as someone’s vision. My husband bought both pieces for me, witnessing the missives sent without reading them. Perception. Vision. 

That is my story, my detail of notice and narration, memory and matters. 

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Travel Notes Sitting on a Bench at the Farmer’s Market

Woke up to sleeping bodies in the dark, slurping in sleep’s sweet succor. I was ready. Yoga at the hotel fitness center cured the morning blank canvas of what will it be today? It will be all right, says yoga on the mat in a small hotel fitness room with one other exerciser on the treadmill making miles go statically by.

Before long, the world intruded. Breakfast with Pascal and talk of more violence, Facebook posts on how to understand Black Lives Matter and white resistance to the reality that no white person has ever awakened black in America. How can anyone not black know for sure? Listen. What can we do? Keep compassion in our hearts; let it soften fear at the lack of control we all surely have over what happens despite our illusions. And no more than ten minutes pass and my voice raises in anger at the lack of care, people, fear, ignorance, helplessness. People die, no stopping it. But people got to live too, be allowed to live.

For now, however, the warm breeze in a characteristically cold place soothes the upsurge in remembering the world out there spreads chaos inside. But oh, there is a bass fiddle and tuba piping out deep sonorous puffs of scales, notes and contrapuntal tunes, while the appreciative fold claps. Two low lying dogs yap at one another in the passing. There are dogs and people and stores with reggae music drifting in the rests of the two live musicians on this wood and concrete terrace along the store fronts, sidling the quaint corner farmer’s market.

The booth in front of me advertises Capay organic cherry tomatoes 2 baskets for $8. And now the bass fiddle takes up the bow, and there is a sweet, lilting classical tune that tells the story of parlors past with hooped skirts and tight ankled pants, wide buckled shoes. 

The air passes in muted bustle, not quite loud and frenetic as Saturday morning’s cruising in this Sacramento side street tucked between a bank building and artisanal strip mall, boutiques and coffee shops, and Peets coffee, the largest one I’ve entered.

Pregnant young mom, ahead of trailing chapeau’d dad and stroller. They are on their second. He wears mustard colored shorts with his felt feathered bowler and sky blue shirt. She wears running shoes, baggy grey shorts and beige shirt. They scuttle between tomatoes offered here, mini watermelons there and cantaloupes.

Straw stetson’d tattoo young man with a full bust of some man tattooed on his left calf and a mythical looking,  hair-flowing, witchy woman on the right. He and his son pull up on mountain bikes. The son plops the mini melon on the scale.

Colors of the market cheer up the asphalt upon which merchant stands rest under canopies like a parade of white circus tops. One stand sports a red umbrella for shade: Certified California Grown. And the bodies saunter and browse, dogs or kids in tow, some singles and childless, dog less couples. Mostly white folks selling and buying. Very few people of color. And there it is, the crying toddler that incriminates the moment’s peace.

Sipping a one pump vanilla soy long pull latte from Peets, Bob Marley says, “Everything gonna be all right…don’t worry ’bout a thing…” And it’s true. Buy the shirt or shoes if it pleases you. Small pleasures. Dogs bark to each other, communicate or ignore one another, just like we do. Hey, see me, I exist. See me. No, huh? Maybe the next one. And so it goes. 

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