1/5/16 Self Discovery

Today I wake with an “aha” though I don’t know why.

Self discovery is such an interesting process, don’t you think? To ask Who Am I? That question seems so complicated, and yet when you finally get to the bottom of it, the answer is so simple. You have to laugh.

It seems the more you try to define yourself, the more complicated you become. Each definition you come up with adds a layer and pretty soon you are buried in layers of adjectives, personas, monsters and saints and as the saying goes, ‘you can’t see the forest for the trees.’

To know yourself, is to know God. Sweep away all those layers and there is ‘God’. Anyone who has studied ACIM knows from the first of the lessons. As I recall it goes something like “I don’t know what this (any noun/object) is for.” Of course you don’t! You are God. God has no need of objects so they are alien to Him. They are constructs of yours, made from your head to make your life easier/harder. So when you do that lesson, you are speaking as who you really are, not as who you pretend to be.

I remember debating that first lesson with a friend of mine.  Of course I knew what this ‘fork’ was for.  It was an instrument I used to stab a piece of food so I could bring it from plate to mouth and feed myself.  That is the level the game is played at.  As God, you have no need to eat, so no need for a fork.  Forks are alien to God.  They appear only in YOUR game.  You REALLY exist on an entirely different level.  If you are vigilant, you will catch glimpses of HIS.

Life really IS a game. It is under your control. Your control is managed with ‘free will’ which is just another way of saying you can make whatever choice you want to make. Choices have consequences. Some can be fairly predictable. Others not so much. What kind of gambler are you? What kind of risk taker? Obviously, in any game, the more you risk, the more you stand to gain or lose. Just don’t lose sight of the fact that it IS still a game and you will still walk away with nothing in the material sense and which has no meaning in the end. You still have to stack your money, and gather all your accumulated “stuff” and pack them away in the box with your body or your gamepiece and put it back on some imaginary shelf.

I don’t even think it matters how you play the game. There is a place for both ruthless abandon and love and forgiveness. Sometimes it’s hard to choose. Neither choice is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Both choices have consequences here and as such deserve a little thought (or not). In the hereafter, I think things just ‘are’. I don’t think you can mix the two since one is very real and the other is just a projection of your imagination… in other words, unreal.

So there is a meander through my mind first thing this morning. I find it a wonderfully wacky place!  Completely entertaining.

 

I AM… Now What???

Change your mind. Such a simple phrase. So easy to say and very probably easy to do unless you think it’s not an easy thing to do. Talk about a Catch 22!

So people say if you don’t like how your life is going, change your mind. Instead of seeing yourself as sick, or separate, or unlovable, or poor, or ugly, or whatever other negative adjective you want to apply to your being, change your mind. See yourself healthy, happy, loved and loving, wealthy, blah, blah, blah. You know the drill. The game of opposites.

Now here is another aspect. Finally, finally, after years of self introspection, I can see where I am not my physical being at all. What is the “in” thing to say now? I am not a physical being, I am a spiritual being having a physical experience. But can you really dig that? Can you feel it? Do you know it… REALLY KNOW IT? Have you had the experience?

I can say that I have. I do really KNOW it. I know that I can drop anchor anytime but I must not be ready because I’ve not done it although heaven (literally heaven) knows that I’ve been tempted.

In connection with that, I must tell you that I have difficulty understanding why.

To rise above physicality, to overlook the whole humanity game, makes me feel stuck. I must be missing something but what is it? From this perspective, the question Why Am I Here? takes on new dimensions. There is more to learn. I have the sense it has to do with “love”. I think I must have to recognize myself as love. That is the underlying energy that I see from my point of overlook. Oh, there is a lot of gray bullshit covering it over. It is smoke though. It is not real. You cannot hold on to it. It escapes your grasp. I can see that no matter what form it takes in a life…. anger, depression, frustration, loneliness, ill temper, shall I go on?… it just dissipates. It is not concrete. It is the proverbial smoke screen.

Always underneath there is a light that shines it away. I see it in every instance. And I will admit here that there has been a time or two I didn’t want to see that light. I was very willing to blow that smoke right up someone’s ass permanently. Sorry… nope! No light for you! It doesn’t work though. That light is really only one big giant spotlight. One ongoing, neverending, eternal and infinite light. Those little screens of smoke that I notice, are just that. Screens trying to hide the light. Trying to block it out. Trying to not acknowledge, not to see, not to be part of the whole light. In a way I find it sad. Why would you not want to be part of the greatest light… why would you want to disguise that about yourself? I mean, what an honor to be able to say I AM THE LIGHT. It IS an honor to know yourself as such and readily admit it. When I think about it though, I am not consistent about that. Obviously if I think about blowing smoke up someone’s ass, I have a ways to go.

But once you see that light, you realize you really are the light. Every little thing that has been thrown in your way to prevent you from seeing it just dissolves. You recognize you are whole. You are one with all that you heretofore thought you were separate from. You see the smoke blow away and that there is no separation. There is no beginning and there is no end. There is no ‘us’. There is just I.    I AM. I AM. I AM.

Now that I AM… Now what????  What do I do with that?  Time to get real quiet and listen I guess.

 

Be the best…..

Sometimes we lose sight of hard won lessons. I did that yesterday. I don’t regret it. Well first of all regret is useless. It always refers to the past and usually to something you can’t fix so why the regret? Move on before the regret devours you, but then again…

This lesson that I am referring to I call “be the best _______.” Here’s how it works.

It’s very simple really. No matter what you are in the mood to be, be the best at it. I’m not talking about being the best spouse, mate, parent, coworker, employee, la la la (puke). I’m talking about everything.

Like if you feel like crying… cry the very best you know how to — intentionally. Throw your head back like your name is Lucy van Pelt. If you have ever read the Peanuts comic strip, you know that when Lucy cries she throws her head way back as if to see what’s in the sky, her mouth is open full throttle and there is a big “AAAGGGHHH” coming out of it and her eyes have become virtual lawn sprinklers with the tear drops shooting up out of them and flying in all directions. Now THAT is a good, good cry! Maybe the best!

And if you are going to be a bitch, or mean and miserable, or overly sensitive… do it the very best way you know how.

I once started a new job. I was asked to it. (That happened a lot to me throughout my life. It’s always “temporary” and I think the shortest temporary job I ever took by invitation lasted 3 years!) Anyways, there was a woman there with a bad rep for being a big Bitch. It was evidently her nature. Well, she WAS very good at it unintentionally… and CraNKy?? Wow.. and I mean WOW (picture that word in a big vibrating pointy conversation bubble)! I just pretty much left her to her own devices figuring it was short term. (haha)

One day I walked into the lunch room while she was in mid-Rant. She fixed me with a stare that I swear could have dropped a charging bull I suppose expecting me to be calming, or agreeable, or I don’t know what. I just looked right back at her and said with surprise “WoW Toni – (name changed to protect the innocent) – you are such a good bitch! I’ve always said, if you are gonna’ be a bitch, be the best bitch you know how to be!” and I smiled approvingly at her. She laughed. She quit bitching for a second just to laugh. (my remarks had added intention to her actions)  After that, it became a standing joke. Whenever she became irritated about something (every 5 minutes or so) she would come down to my desk and say I’m going to go be a bitch now, you want to watch? Usually I declined with what I hoped was a gracious thumbs up, but there were times when I snuck around so I could watch her in action. Let’s face it, some people just need a good bitching out and who better to do it than someone at their best!

Anyways, what I’m trying to get across here is intentionality.  When you act with intention you are being at your best.  Intention is another matter all together.  Maybe I’ll blog about it another day.  Just know that when you act with intention, it changes everything.  A major shift takes place all over the globe and beyond.  It’s the butterfly effect.

So please take my word of encouragement today to go forth and be the very best at whatever you are going to be. Have fun. Love yourself. Win a gold medal. That’s what life’s all about.

4/16/15 Can you adjust? Musing….

So does the ‘universe’ talk to us or not? Are we getting messages all the time from the great beyond, or is that just an old wives tale?

I have heard that when I notice the same thing happening, over and over again, there is a message there. Now I’m not talking mechanics here. I know through hard exprerience, that when you keep doing the same thing the same way time after time, the chances of getting a different outcome are close to nil. That is like when you are learning to unscrew a jar. The rule is righty tighty, lefty loosey. BUT, before you know the rule, how many times do you try to go right to open a jar before you’ve got that down?

Is there a repeating patten there when it comes to matters more esoteric? Matters that don’t seem to have a tried and true rule associated with them? Matters of the heart and the spirit?

It does seem plausible that after you have lived, oh say 60 years or so, walking around on this mortal coil, that during that time you would become associated with different groups of people. Family, school, work, recreation, and spiritual seeking are all ways we each become associated with different groups and make different friends.

And nearly everyday, particularly in today’s shrinking world, you very probably have contact or at least “hear” something about a person from one or more of these groups. And if you really want to maintain a relationship with that group, you include them in your life somehow, in some little way. You exchange a quick email, share a new picture, inquire after the health of someone you’ve heard is ailing. These are all little everyday gestures of friendship and love and ‘togetherness’ or ‘oneness’ if you will.

So suppose you wake up one day, and even though you are extending those same gestures you have made right along… gestures that say – Hey, you are not alone… I m thinking of you… How can I help? What if all you hear back is nothing… from everyone… not even an echo? What if you are forgotten? What if you are ignored? Do you cry? Does that help?

Now is the universe trying to tell you something? Like… Hey buddy, take a shower you’re beginning to smell….

Ever feel like someone is knocking and you just don’t know how to open the door? Someone is trying to tell you something…. huh?? what??? There is a repeating pattern in your life you just don’t like. You want to change it but you don’t see the way to do it. You are screaming for someone to explain it to you, give you a hint in your ear, a visual you can relate to, something that leads you to the solution to solving this unacceptable pattern.

Has it always been so? If you think not, what has changed? What has caused that change? Does it really matter??? Now THERE is a question! When something or someone tips your universe causing it to run out of kilter, does it really matter? What if the answer is as simple as ‘can you adjust?’ Different outcomes require different actions. If the world slants left today, learn to move through it in left angles.

It will probably always be righty, tighty; lefty, loosey. There is no cap that you cannot conquer in one way or another, with or without a little rubber grippy, or something to bang it and get it started in the right direction, or some friend with a stronger arm to lend a hand. Can you see all the adjustments you might have to make to attain your goal?

So here is what I think… right or wrong … The answer to everything is ‘can you adjust’? Things, and circumstances beyond your control just are. They cannot be changed. Can you adjust?

This does not make sense, does it? It’s okay! I can adjust!

Waking 10/30/14

I can’t sleep.  My mind wanders.  What is it that Lao Tzu or Confucious or one of those Oriental sages used to say…  if you are living in the past you are depressed and if you are living in the future you are anxious?   Something like that.   Except for some reason I’ve been thinking about days gone by….  I mean long gone… yet I’m not feeling depressed at all…

Not sure what took me there…  Just distant memories that rushed up to meet me for some reason.  Memories of being a small.  A very small.  My father owned a soda fountain and we lived in the space over top.  My bedroom was way in the back behind someone else’s bedroom.  I was so small, I can’t even remember who had the bedroom in front of me…  my parents or a sister.  I do remember my mother painted the bathroom floor charcoal gray and then put dabs of pastel green and pink on it.  I thought it was beeyouteefulllll…..

My oldest sister had a friend named Fred Ramsey from a town sort of far away who came to see her once.  He sat on the railing that went around the porch and it broke and he fell down to the ground…  meaning the side yard…  meaning from the second floor.  I peered over the edge and there he was laying on his back all spread out…  I wondered if he was dead but he wasn’t.

I remember I tried to ride my tricycle down that long outside flight of stairs and fell through the railing which had no spindle parts and hit my head on a sled being stored underneath.  I didn’t die either (obviously).  I did get knocked out once at a different house when the coffee man’s truck backed out of the driveway and caught the front wheel of my tricycle and knocked me over and off and I hit my head on the concrete.  I woke on the couch and there was my doctor (they made house calls then) sitting on the couch beside me saying I’d be fine.

I remember there were big bins of chocolate drops in the store and now and then dad would let me “steal” one.  At Christmas one year he gave me a birdcage shaped ornament that you put over a light on the tree and there was a bent piece of foil inside that would spin around.  I still have it.  I still love it.  I remember my mother holding me when he handed that to me as a special treat…  I think the glow in my eyes might have made it spin right there and then.

Then there was the time my oldest sister was learning to drive.  I was standing on the back seat.  Child seats and seatbelts were unheard of at the time.  She put the car in reverse and zoomed out of the driveway and smacked right into the telephone pole across the street.  I fell on the case of empty soda bottles that happened to share the back seat with me – glass of course – and cut my lip.  Her driving has scared me ever since!

Our telephone number had 4 digits – 5732.    My best friend’s number was 4695.  If I needed an ambulance or the police I just dialed “0” and the Operator got them for me.  In the small town of Cuba, where my Grandmother and various cousins lived, there was no dial on the phone at all and the phone numbers were only 3 digits and you didn’t even have to know them.  You could just pick up the handset and there would be the operator and you would say I would like 387 or “I want to talk to my Grandma, Bertie Butts” and you’d be put right through.  If you didn’t subscribe to a private line, you were put on a party line and you could hear lots of people talking all at once.  THAT was weird!  As the area progressed, the numbers got longer and all of a sudden my phone number became FR(ontier)2-5732,  Or 372-5732. We were Big City then man!

I think I was about 15 or 16 when I was talked into my first cigarette.  I could buy a pack from a vending machine in the bank lobby for 35 cents and they would come out with a pack of matches.  The other day I noticed they were somewhere around $10 a pack and you had to ask for matches and seemed lucky to get them.   That’s more than 35 cents a cigarette, isn’t it?  Wow!  And gas?  Same thing.  When I started driving it was 35 cents a gallon.  I would walk to my Mom’s work after school and my gaggle of giggles would scrape together our pennies and gather enough for a couple of gallons and we would cruise until dinnertime or longer for less than $1.  I don’t smoke anymore.  I do drive but not so much.  Obviously I’m not a math whiz and I’m certainly no economist.  I am just a simple old woman who does not get why everything has to be more expensive.  Not only that, nothing seems built to last.  Why should I pay more for something that is not going to last but is supposedly easier to build?  Simple question….

So I could go on and on and regurgitate a ton of more memories here…  about scaring the tomato soup out of my sister’s hands, about how one of them put lipstick all over the face of one of my dolls, blah, blah, blah…  I can’t say that I am depressed though.  It just was weird to wake in the middle of the night and have all those old memories flooding through my mind…  it was Fred Ramsey’s fault.  I just saw him laying there in the yard after falling from the porch and all that other stuff sort of leaked in after him…  Why?  I don’t know…  the mind is funny like that I think.  It’s not leak proof.  In this case, I’m glad it’s not.  I imagine if all I had were horrible terrible very bad days in my past I would want it to be, but a little nostalgia can’t hurt can it?  I’m not pining for the past…  well maybe for the prices!  Who in their right mind isn’t?

Anyways…  Back to this Oriental Sage. whichever one it was, who says we need to be present right NOW in the present.  It is now 2:18 a.m.  I am here, right now.  What came was the past.  I thoroughly enoyed it.  Whatever could it be that I am missing right NOW?  If you know, please share….

Waking on 10/24/14 – Musings

When I wake up my clock says it’s 2:22 a.m.  It really isn’t.  I don’t believe in time/time so my clock is set to an approximation of the time everyone else thinks it is.  I know….  I’m wierd.  But 2:22…  does that mean anything?  Who knows about numerology?  I read a book about it once.  It seems to me that the meaning of numbers are sort of progressive just like they themselves are.  For example the number one would indicate a new beginning, and the number 9 the end of a cycle, etc.   I have a friend who told me a story about a time when she looked at the clock and it read 11:11 and what she was doing at the time.  She was creating a new beginning.  I remember being so happy for her.  But 2’s……

Now when I woke up at 2:22, what I was thinking of was that Dr. Brantley who was the first known American to contract the dreaded ebola virus while working in Africa, was flown home to the U.S. in a specially outfitted airplane and then given two of only four known doses of an experimental drug and miraculously recovered from a disease that is wiping out a good portion of the human race on a continent on the other side of the Atlantic.  Now Dr. Brantley is a walking cure himself….  he has donated his blood to a few other unfortunate people who have contracted the disease and the antibodies he has cranked out have saved their lives.   Talk about a destiny…

Now I am thinking about that M.D. they just diagnosed as positive for ebola in NYC.  He went to Africa to treat ebola patients with the Doctors Without Borders organization.  Very noble I must say.  When his tour was up, he came home and stayed away from his job at the NYC hospital where he works treating patients in an ER.  Very smart move.  He did not isolate though.  In fact he took a subway (picture that), and a bus (got the visual?) to a bowling alley (a bowling alley!) in another burrough to have a  game or two.

Now I’m not talking a breezy walk in the park.  I’m talking a sweaty ride on a subway and another on a bus.  I’m picturing bowling balls with those little finger holes that get all slimy inside from the sweat pouring off your hands after you’ve expended a little effort to make that strike or two.  That sweat that you left behind despite holding your hand up in front of the dryer before you put it back in the ball.  Well…   maybe he had his own bowling ball.  Do you think he did?  And how about his shoes?  Does he have bowling shoes?  Did he haul all that stuff with him on a subway and a bus?

So maybe he wasn’t sweating when he was on his way there, but I’m thinking he wasn’t bone dry on the way home….  on that return subway/bus trip home when he later woke to find he had a temp of 103 degrees. How many people do you think he “brushed up against” and swapped a little sweat with?  How do you find them?  I’m being alarmist when “they” are saying there is no cause for such, aren’t I?  Actually, I’m thinking of Dr. Brantley and his antibodies and wondering how fast he can make them.  I’m thinking of Rachel Maddow who reported there are only like 6 hospitals and 12 isolation rooms in all of the USA that could handle an ebola patient.  I am exaggerating (I hope)…  but it did seem miniscule..  the number of beds available to treat ebola patients.  And only one Dr. Brantley.  And all those people on the subway, and in the bowling alley….

I find it all so interesting.  What is happening on this planet, in this time….  Hollywood could not have done it any better!  Well, they did try once….  remember Outbreak? (Dustin Hoffman/Rene Russo)  That seems so confining compared to the possibilities I’m talking about here.

I still want to know what the 2’s mean.  Do tell if you know….  Thanks.

Forgiveness – 9/29/14

Who is it, I wonder, that makes up the rules?  You know…  who is it that decides what “living on the straight and narrow” means?  Is is Webster or Collier… oh wait…  I’m showing my age aren’t I?   I should be asking is it Google or Wiki-something?

So I’m out to dinner with a gaggle of my giggles the other night.  We are sitting on 50+ years of continuous friendship.  There are 8 of us and we’ve all traveled this dream we call life  extensively and in all directions and lived to tell about it.  And we all wear our  years and our travels in different ways and our bond  remains strong even though our differences seem to define us more than our similarities these days.  Such an interesting study…  to wander those individual paths that keep crisscrossing and bring us to this time of our lives.

We all live in a cell … a prison of our own design.  In other words, MY name is Webster, Collier, Google and WikiWhoosey…..  I define straight and narrow and good and bad and ugly and loving and kind and forgiving and curly and fun and mean.  And that makes my cell.

And you do too!  And your definitions make your cell.  And we are both right.  And we are both wrong.  And you get to choose.  It just all depends on where you want to stand.  What you want to look at.  What you want to believe.  And when you want to stand next to me and look at the same things, we are in sync… in agreement and all is right with the world.  And if I turn around and see something entirely different and you don’t, well… that is a different story.  We won’t see the same thing at all and maybe even get in an argument about it, even though we still may be standing side by side.

(This reminds me of a great analogy I read about time once.  Imagine you are standing in a cornfield grown taller than you.  All the corn that is growing out ahead of you represents the future.  All the corn growing behind you represents the past.  All the corn growing to the sides is the stuff that is happening simultaneously in other parts of the world…  Now float up and look down at ALL the corn… it is ALL growing at once.  It is all happening at the same time.)

Okay…  I got off track.  I want to get back to the ties that bind.  There is this wonderful space….  my favorite space…  where there is none of this disagreement nonsense.  It’s the space of true forgiveness.  True forgiveness is just letting go…   A lot of people think of forgiveness as letting go of a wrong…  True whole forgiveness is letting go of EVERYTHING no matter how you might define it!

It’s not easy but it is fun to try to let go of everything….  just to experience one moment of peace if nothing more…  just as you are waking up, or dozing off, or just relaxing….  just take some deep breaths and let go of everything…  whatever comes to mind…  let it go…  set it down…  you can pick it up later if you really need it…  let go of your job…  your mean boss, your big raise, your flirty coworker…  let go of everything you feel responsible for…  it will all be there when you come back believe me… it’s just for a moment… let go of your housecleaning, your children…  let go of your parents…  let go of your body…  yes your body…your cell… that thing that gives you headaches and backaches and craves alcohol or cigarettes or exercise or food or more money or whatever and makes you lose sleep by subjecting you to fears that are nonexistent in this very instant…  pretend you don’t have it for a few minutes… just let it ALL go…  all the bad AND all the good.  THIS is totally whole and true forgiveness….

This is the edge…  the place of total awareness…  There is no prison cell, there are no rules…  There is just nothing and everything all at once and all of a sudden you just know exactly what you’ve been wanting to know… (This is like floating above the corn where you can see that time is just another dimension of your prison cell.)

There is nothing that is really right in this dream we call life except LOVE of course.  DO NOT LET GO OF LOVE!!!   DO NOT DEFINE LOVE!  LET LOVE NATURALLY DEFINE YOU!  THAT IS YOUR TRUE ESSENCE ANYWAYS.

You will not want to come back.  But then you do come back and you land in your cell and somehow it’s different…  and so is everyone else’s!   And that one itty bitty second of true whole forgiveness has changed your point of view forever.  So joyful you will not stop laughing…

It really is easy to get there…   the trick is to stay ever mindful of it.  My husband is fond of quoting Sean Connery in The Last Crusade.  When he sees me starting to “lose it” he just looks at me and says “let it go, Indiana”.  And it works!  I do!  I love my husband!  We’ve been married 30 years today!

One more another not a dream – 9/15/14

I will be so glad when my dream notebooks resurface.

My daughter recently moved back home and when she did she made no bones about letting me know that I’m a shitty housekeeper.  I can’t deny it.  My motto has always been “a clean house is the sign of a wasted life”.  The thing is there was order in my mess.  I knew where everything was.

She proceeded to “fix it” and in no small way.  She changed everything up including rooms.  She changed bedrooms and offices around which means furniture moved not only from room to room but from function to function.

Here is the thing.  She is a shitty housekeeper too.  Just a different kind.  Now I can’t fnd a thing.  She is left handed.  I am right.  Our brains do not work in the same way when it comes to order.  We both get there…  We just take different paths.  I am a turtle.  She is a hare.

Finally she seems to be done “rearranging.”  In any event, I will be glad when my dream notebooks rise to the top of the heap as I sort through my new mess and I can get back to regular business.

My point?   Well during this whole process, I’m thinking about “chaos theory” which is something I read about years ago that went like this…  “things fall apart so that they can fall back together again in better ways”…  Now this is a little gem I have always found a little light in at times like this so I decided since I was going to blog it I should probably google it and find out who to give the ownership credit to …  and what do you know???  Here I’m expecting Michiko Kaku or Stephen Hawking or some other well known physicist and here it was Marilyn Monroe!  Who would have thought???

Go Marilyn!!!!

Yet another not a dream – 9/12/14

Show of hands please….

Who looks forward to seeing the abused animal commercials on TV?

And the starving chldren commercials?

And how about the wounded warrior commercials?

Every one of these represents the result of some unloving human action.

Now who looks forward to seeing more because surely the airwaves are about to be filled with way more and possibly worse…

Now who remembers Edwin Starr? He was a kind of obscure 60’s musician with one song that has stuck in my head all these years….

“War! Good God! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!” He, of course, was singing about Viet Nam… an unwinnable wasteful endeavor on which the U.S. spent so much of its resources – human and otherwise – trying when those same resources could have done so much good right here at home. (Don’t get me started!)

Not one person should care what I think, but I’m going tell you anyways! I think we’ve been -duped… baited! I think the bully on the corner stuck out his tongue and yelled na-na-na-na and now we are going to give him chase with the intention of giving him a good solid thrashing just to show him who’s boss! Hmmmm…..

I don’t have the answers by any means… but it just seems to me it’s better to sit on the front porch with a gun and wait for the assholes to show up and give us a clear target – deal with it then – rather than running willy nilly all over an unknown country side turning over rocks and looking for hiding places we don’t even know exist….

Deja Vu…. Here we go again!

Not a Dream – 9/9/14

I have an old friend who lives half way across the country that I see maybe once or twice a year if I’m lucky. She is a “true” person and by that I mean a person you can trust to be exactly who she is and who expresses exactly how she feels at any given moment. I think there might have been a time when we were teens, growing up, when she had a closet full of masks as we all did, but they were long ago frozen in pictures and put into albums as reminders of who we are not.

She came to town recently and a group of us met for lunch. She’s always been short and round and beautiful. She has dyed her gray hair a medium purple and painted the tips of her nails to match. She wore bright yellow with a white loosely crocheted over-top. Big round hammered metal bright yellow earrings, at least as big as her ears, hung from her lobes. Needless to say, in this small town she gathered quite a number of side glances.
I gushed. I loved it. I told her she looked marvelous, I loved her new Bohemian look be it temporary or permanent, I loved the balls she found to make and exhibit such a drastic change particularly at age 65 when most find themselves pretty much stuck in their standard stripes or plaids or flowers or pleats. The others looked slightly embarrassed by my gushing… so much so that I found myself using my napkin to wipe my face wondering if by some miracle my asshole had moved and there was shit dribbling down my chin.

I questioned myself in hindsight… wondering if perhaps there really was shit on my face and I had somehow offended her. So I emailed her and asked. Like I said, she is a “true” person. She e’d me right back and her first words were “you crazy cracker!”. Right away I knew I was fine! Maybe a little crumby but not a bit shitty!