continuing the what-if saga

What if I'm not tired, just lazy?

antidote what-if

What if everything is unfolding exactly on its course?

violence and its seeds

I've been thinking about war, use of force, and any form of coercion or manipulation I might exert on another.

I wonder, is it ever reasonable, useful, or long-term profitable to influence another person?

I wonder, is it ever justifiable to retaliate?

I wonder, is it possible to just let things go (where does the anger go? where do we put it?) and move on?

Where do we move on to?

There is a higher view here somewhere, I just can't see it yet.

What if tomorrow never comes?

Here are some stupid what-if's I have caught myself thinking either in the past or lately:

• what if, now that I can walk again, I can't walk again?
  
• what if we can't afford the water for the lawn?
• what if I can't finish the novel that I'm writing for my own entertainment?
  

being, becoming, and done been

David and I talked last night about the Power of Now. I apologized to him for how hard things are right now for us, and he answered, "Things aren't hard right now." Since we were walking to the movies, knowing we'd head home to rest after that, I had to agree. My "right now" was including pretty much the last year. But right now, this moment, is manageable.

What was a year ago is gone. I'm still trying to think of the seventies as a long time ago, and the eighties were yesterday. Time isn't linear, it's a chunk. Either I look at the big chunk of My Life, which overall is about one of the grandest adventures ever, or the little chunk of right now which is downright lovely, or the middle chunk of these days.

The chunk of These Days is the tricky one. Just a few years from now, these will be the good ole days. Right now these are the hard years. Maybe the change in perspective is the result of the nature of the process of life.

Maybe, like any masterpiece trapped in marble, we are slowly released from more and more of not-us and become more ourselves. But we are also growing, not cold stone things. So maybe we're more like wood, green wood... like a bonsai. We are shaped and sculpted by the winds and moisture (or lack thereof), the location of our living and direction of our life whizzing past us.

Just an idea.

I know that I am feeling a greater capacity in me. I can hold opposite ideas without them chasing each other around in my head. I can do tasks that were very difficult for me a few years ago. (In a former marriage, changing the bed linens was a psychological Mount Everest; now it's a breeze.) I can be loved and hated by my children without needing to help them decide to love me. I can learn to spin yarn and let go of activities that no longer give me a charge.

Used to, I thought I had to do everything and do it well (perfectly.) Now I think I want to do what I want to do to the best of my ability and everything will fall into place.

I sure hope it all falls into place. And I'm sure that it all already has.

money

I opened our accounting program "Quickbooks Premier Accountant Edition" and read the word accountant as abundant! I like that... I'm ready to hear the whoosh of flowing abundance through our business, and the resulting upkeep of things we've had to put on hold in our personal lives. I'm ready for the recession and rumors of recession to ease up. I think that if our economy weren't choking, our business would be growing. As it is, it's holding steady on. So, I really can't complain.

I'll get to work on our abundant edition and keep doing my best. I can't help but think these are the times people tell about when they have "made it" and others think it came easy. I like to think that because it makes me think we'll make it.

And either way, with or without a future in Tioli's, we'll make it. We already have. There is a constant stream of joy in doing our business that pays far more than monetary gains. I just looked over to the wall of colored pencils, and someone has set up our wooden lizard manikin to do a back flip hand stand. Our shop gives us reasons to smile, to be happy, to work on maintaining relationships in our community and to go ahead with our dreams.

Tioli's put me on so many learning curves, I realize now that I'm always going to be a beginner. And I'm okay with that.

mother's day

... and yet more grieving. I have a mother, but she didn't raise me. My oldest sister by 10 years raised me, so when she went off to college, I lost my mother. The other woman who gave birth to me has always been a little demented and disconnected, so I lost her a long time ago, probably years before I was born. No matter that I lived with her and she fed me and all that; she was not a mother to me.

I have raised or am raising a total of six kids. I didn't raise two kids. Out of the eight, I have no relationship with my kids; the first three because their dad would threaten my life if I had contact with them, and the second three because they are undecided about their love/hate for me. We're in the hate or near-hate phase right now, being the teen years.

These are not easy times for me. I wish that I had an extended family and people who understood without needing explanation. Instead, I am surrounded by a family of christians.

All of my siblings seem to indicate that my grief and sorrows are a result of not living a christian life. Nevermind that it was life-threatening when I lived for Christ (I could have been a fantastic martyr but I fucked up that opportunity to demonstrate WWJD.)

I wish that I could grieve all of this with honesty in the relationships themselves. But instead, I'm trying to figure it out with the help of David and my sorrow-sodden brain. There is no repair I can make with the kids. They'll have to decide whether to have relationship with me or not. There is no repair to be made with my parents, especially my mother, because the lights are on, but no one's home. Never has been.

So, mother's day for me smacks of homelessness, isolation, not belonging.

I am so thankful for David's love for me. Otherwise I would despair.

Burgled

We went to Maui and got burgled twice. Here is a link to the narrative of events:

http://realhawaii.blogspot.com/ under this date

and here are some poems about how I feel with all of this:


Pursesnatcher

You forgot
that you also took
a boomerang
of grief with my cash
so watch out
it will return

meantime
may the Mother of All Regrets
suckle you
at her bitter teets
and instill the losses in you
which you'd hoped
to pass on to me

and I accepted for a day

Now you can have it back
and I'd like
a return of my
sense of peace
decency
clean actions

I wish you no ill
but the hobbling
of your haste
to self destruct
which caused you
to try to take me
with you

Thanks
but I'll stay here
at center.



I Did Not Invite The Fool

Never, you say, do that
I should know
better
and my fault
that others prey
but I say
I did not invite the fool
to take mine from me
any more than you
will invite death

It happens
whether we are wise
or not
and lock our doors
or not

losses will amass
as do possessions
and both come to nothing
soon enough.

The other way, I've learned,
is to choose
the flow
where it will go
just before
it would have been taken

...a little trick
to outwit the fools
and send my kind
of invitations.



Sentimental Value

Hey You,
with my wallet
from a friend from Japan made in Italy
with a small card full of Engrish
(which still makes me smile
though you stole it
from my reading)

I cannot share with you
more than cash
the friendship
of such value
because you cannot grasp
cannot grasp
the unbreakable treasure
and thus
must settle for shards
of your broken life
a violent void
empty of the emotions required by
friendship
humor
generosity
compassion

All obliterated
by your ethic of addiction
My invisible wealth
remains untouchable
to your clenched
sticky
blind
fingers

Oppressors and the oppressed

It seems like there will always be people who take advantage of other people. I see oppression and abuse and simple mis-use of power in various levels throughout the world. It makes me feel hopeless.

Yelling at oppressors usually gets more oppression. So does fighting back. There is escape. But once uprooted, there are new oppressors to be found. How do people live free of oppression?

So many people I know think that I'm talking about issues in the past, in war zones, in other countries; that no one gets treated poorly any more. It simply isn't so. The statistics on child sexual abuse are staggering. Spousal abuse, the same. And that's just in America, and just the reported cases.

What will it take for us to stop bullying, excluding, abusing, deriding, and retaliating?

well-being

Today was my day off... and I had a swath of open time that I set aside to try and do as little as possible. I did a fine job of it, for the most part. Sure, I slipped in a little creative putzing and random knitting. But I did not tackle any large projects or chores, or even start something useful other than supper. (I started knitting some socks for David, but they don't count as I'm not getting any hopes about their usefulness.)

At about 11 a.m., I was totally frustrated by my lack of internal creative freedom. I want to write a book, but I can't seem to find a character that I care about. I started to think that maybe I need a highball to let loose. And that's when I realized that what I was thinking is how writers get the rep. It was shocking to realize that by a small course adjustment in my steering, I could possibly set up a downward spiral that would take much more effort to correct than a slight nudge.

While not every decision in life has such steering potential (brand of toothpaste, wearing blue or brown...), most do have a trail-blazing effect. I was duly convicted by myself and sat down to knit to think about all this.

I haven't exercised intensely since my back surgery last autumn, having tried shortly after the surgery and ending up making things bad again. I wondered, is it time to steer in that direction? If I don't want to go down Heming Way, which way do I want to go?

So, I popped in a yoga workout video, found a portion called "fully modified" and found that I was able to do all that they asked of me. Tomorrow will tell me if I overdid it, since my back has a long latency period before it expresses itself. But my mind likes my choice, and the rest of my body feels the better for it.

I still haven't found my character, however. I may take the intoxicating idea of spirited disinhibition to heart and pretend for a while that I've had a toddy and so I can write anything. Because, with or without the drink, I can in fact write anything.