Belated Birthday Message

Happy belated birthday, brother J.C. Here's the portrait I promised you, I know after 2000 years everyone could use a change. I call it, "Jesus Gets a Flat Top, after 2000 years he got tired of that long hair."
Thank you for bringing us your wisdom, your guidance and your light.

and I Feel Fine

"Where have I been?"
Hmmn pussycat, if I hear that one more time I'm gonna stop answering, that's what I'll do. I've returned to the snake bitten small town where I used to run Mane Street hair salon and barber; I ran it for 7 years. I needed a break, I sold the building and moved on to loftier pursuits. It was a mental hiatus;it lasted for four years. I had alot of mistakes to live down, I had to find the space to fall in love with Tate. I had to recover from the abuse I caused myself. I had to journey to the inter worlds and work with all of those amazing and beautiful children at the sensory institute.
"I missed you," that's what I say.
I missed the conversations, the drama, the laughter. I feared it, the return, it's true. The truth is there is something humbling about the return to the Brier patch as if I couldn't survive without it. There is a sense of service too. It's humbling like a Guru washing dishes for the Salvation Army dinners, or Morgan Freeman as God sweeping floors, the janitor in "Bruce Almighty". No, not for a second am I claiming some type of grandiose ego perception, as if I was anyone other than myself, it's just kind of nice to have a balance between working in the realm of the subconscious and spiritual with a more concrete and predictable or dare I say it, "normal" occupation.
The entire drama reminds me of the old Jewish folktale about the man who lived in a tiny little house with his six children, his in-laws, his parents and his four grandchildren. He went to the Rabbi complaining of the crowdedness and the noise and the mess and how his family was driving him nutz. To make an entertaining story short, the Rabbi suggests the man take the chickens, the sheep, the goats , the dogs, the cats, the ducks and the donkey into the house too on consecutive visits. Then, the man is truly about to snap, he goes back to the Rabbi in his near insane condition. The Rabbi then tells him to go home and kick all of the animals out of the house. He did. The house felt much better. He never complained again.
I smile at the thought of how many people whom I really love and missed "visiting" with as I did their hair have been in to see me in the past two weeks. On the down time(and there is quite a bit of that now)I sit in my beautiful turquoise antique styling chair. I take in the town through the window on main street. I take in the colors of the newly renovated building; its' walnut stained open beamed ceilings, the track lights which gracefully curve overhead. I am happy with my re-incarnation, my new shop, "Run-In with Sheer's". I would pay money just to sit in this pretty place, I teasingly say to myself.
It's the end of the year as we know it, and I feel fine.

Inevitable

It was bound to happen, that's what she said. I called my friend Georgeanne, she's an artist too. We have alot in common, we have alot of differences. The main difference between us is the fact that I have a fantastic relationship with my man and she is forever bored and frustrated, maybe even disappointed by her choice of mate. I am pacing across the kitchen floor, I can't stop fuming over the events of last night.
Tate brought a woman home, she was drop dead sexy. She has emerald green eyes and the body of an 18 year old female kickboxer. She's a vixen, a word I rarely use but it fit. Shoulder length blonde hair, sexy.
"She's coming to live with us" he said. "She's been with me all along, now get used to it."
"What?!!!!"
"I need two, that's just the way it is."
I begin to reel in my head like a great whale on the end of a harpoon. I am carrying laundry baskets across the floor of our city apartment. Okay I can do this,I think to myself;anything to make him happy.
"Wait, what about when you had your heart attack?"
"She was with me, it happened at her house."
"You said you were in a hotel."
"Yeah, I guess I did."
"That's it!" I stormed out into the crowded street below, I threw a tantrum, an all out fit. I ranted and shouted; a large crowd gathered. "I am not having this, I am absolutely not sharing you with her, I'm out of here!" I smashed a beer bottle into the sidewalk; it exploded like a hand grenade. I got his attention.
"Okay, I get it. I love you and only you, I understand." Tate said words of reconciliation. He chose me.
I was unappeased. I was panicked and still furious.
I opened my eyes.
I was covered in a cold sweat.
There he slept, warm and strong, his breath mingling with my cheek. I kissed his forehead.
"Hmmn?" he murmured.
"She was with you when you had the heart attack. She's me isn't she?"
"Yes baby."
He said yes.
AND THEN, THE NEXT DAY
It's six o clock in the evening. I arrive home after work, Tate is cooking something fantastic as usual.
"The girls are bringing their paintings over." he told me.
A few weeks ago Tate sent me to the beach for the weekend to bond with the wild women, it's an annual event. It was the first time I had been invited. While the cats away. . .No, it couldn't be that bad, but in a sense yes. He went to an art opening of two novice painters. They are granola girls, they are organic gardeners. He spent ALOT of money. It wasn't a good time to be spending that kind of money. Maybe it never is considering... what he bought! (I am NOT kidding)
They wanted to see where their masterpieces would hang, they wanted to deliver their paintings to the house, our house.
Liza, shoulder length blonde hair. The most beautiful emerald green eyes, young(24?), compact perfect body and a maudlin pout anchoring high cheekbones, self portrait in watercolor. He loves it, it is very pretty. I enjoy the painting really, it's the other 3 pieces he bought that made me furious.
He spent over one hundred dollars on a 2"x2" watercolor in a cheap frame of two ugly flowers. More than that on a sketch of a barn that looked like something an unartistic 4th grader might doodle, and Oh forgive me, he bought one disasterly looking thing for me, for my CHRISTMAS present!(I am a bad person now aren't I?)
I excused myself after the initial viewing. Actually it was after I saw a twinkle in the eye of my Tate as he invited the vixen to step up onto the sofa to get a closer look at an etching he had previously bought. The entire motion was so similar to the day he came to my house, when it was only mine. The day I stepped onto a ladder to examine the failings of the heat duct and he stood up and touched my waist to make sure I did not fall. The day he told me after six years of friendship that he had been in love with me since the first time he ever saw me.
It was that look on his face.
I went to the basement to retrieve an enormous basket of laundry.
"Where do you work now?" he asked Ms. America.
"I am a painter only."
Grrrrrrr!!!!!!
Yeah, me too, see my art. It's a preformance piece, it's titled "Laundry."
It was bound to happen sooner or later Georgeanne said. He was bound to make you mad eventually. "Sum it up" she said, "what exactly did he do to make you so furious?"
He bought bad art. That's what I tell myself. He bought bad art.

Wisdom on the Roof

I have myself on the slate roof of "The House That Changes",H.T.C. for short. It is night time and the moon is visible and luminous. An owl, equal in size to me, swoops over my head to get my attention. He has it. Yes, it's male. A second swoop and he lands next to me; his torso is level with mine, we are over fifty feet in the air. I notice his size, his presence. I am not afraid. He has come to divulge some tidbit of infinite wisdom to me. He tells me something. It is important. He tells me without speaking. The meaning of his message is that I CAN do this. I grab ahold of an electrical cable which goes all the way to the ground.I begin to slide down the cable like Spiderman, my favorite. The knot at the top lets go. I am free falling. . . "I am going to die" I hear my thoughts pound through my head. Falling, falling, FAST!
I land, ungracefully on my feet.

Wisdom visits in the darkness of the subconscious, on the rooftop, or crown chakra of the body(HTC). A message was delivered; I agreed to the commitment to the task. I leap on my own. The stronghold fails. I fall. I face my death (of an emotion, ego, and once again I land on my feet. Ahhh... that was close!

Phoenix

A Jewish wedding, oy vayesmere, what a blast. People of all ages from 3 to 70+ singing and dancing until they puke. Actually I think I was the only one who ended up puking the next day; didn't get out out of bed until 6 pm. Mom-Mom, my 86 year old grandmother wanted me to go to the emergency room. Ahh the Jewish wedding,the anecdote to anti-semitism. Invite anyone from any religious or ethnic background and they will be doing the Hava dance, with the bride and groom over their heads, seated in chairs and a hundred crazy people laughing and swirling around them. As my favorite cousin, Samantha the private jet pilot said that night, "We are wicked Jewish!"

Literal Friends

After my last post, Michelle ONeil commented: Michelle O'Neil said...
(From The Secret, Stacy)Visualize what you want."I am so happy and grateful now that....." fill in the blank.
I think she was responding to this line: My dreams have been fractured and melt like snowflakes on the wood stove as I try to reclaim them.
I was speaking literally; I haven't been able to remember my dreams when I woke up in the morning for nearly a week. I can remember dreams I had before the age of four. I remember being born and being six weeks old in my great grandmother's arms as she sang a Hebrew lullaby to me and rocked me in a rocking chair by the sunlit window. She was so warm and the room was golden and the sunlight danced across the polished Oak floor. Back and forth, back and forth. She sounded something like this,"Ahhl le loo, le loo, le loo leigh. I loved it.
I'm so happy and grateful now that I took a few minutes to remeber this feeling of unconditional love from my great grandmother. I'm so happy and grateful now that I have won the lottery (300.00;last night), I'm so happy and grateful that sometimes I don't remember my dreams because they can be disturbing and nightmarish. I'm so happy and grateful to be sitting in this South Pacific paradise sipping fine wine as the sun sets over the ocean and Tate is rubbing hot oil onto my back while all those people at home are stressed out and freezing rains fall on them and their houses are feeling a bit damp and musty as all the relatives and pets hide from the wind and the rain. Okay, all better now.

Mercury Major Retrograde

According to the NASA web site, of which I am a subscriber, Mercury made a solar transit on November ninth. This apparently occurs every 300 years. Every time Mercury transits the Earth, communications go completely haywire. When the great messenger crossed paths with the Sun 2 weeks ago, I lost the ability to think in one complete sentence. The puppy, now snuggled on my side was supposed top fly in on Thursday the ninth. Theresa in Ohio, his breeder, travelled an hour to the airport in the wee hours of the morning and sat for hours waiting for the cargo hold to open. They opened at 7:30 with less than the mandatory 2 hour check in time available. Kramer(the puppy) and Theresa were sent home. He flew in the following Sunday and he's great but that's another story. The court date for Wiley versus the Faust character landlord had been set for Wed. the 8th. After months of volleying with the plaintiffs, all paper files and evidence for such trial were accidentally locked in a file cabinet to which we had no key. Finals are about to begin. I am going to my little cousins wedding the day after Thanksgiving. It's a black tie affair and I have nothing to wear and it's in Florida and my bank accounts are nearly empty. My dreams have been fractured and melt like snowflakes on the wood stove as I try to reclaim them. I plant and separate bulbs in my garden, looking for one continuous thought to play from cover to cover.No blogging, no writing, the first twenty days of November.

Karma

Just a quick stop to check on the renovations of my new future barber shop. I pulled into a non-descript little driveway between two vacant buildings and parked my car. Who would notice?
"Here's the new barber pole, yes that's good... flooring.. " and then I saw Frankie. Ms. Southern Pretentiousness herself, in her shiny new PT Cruiser. She beeped the horn at my vacant car in front of her clandestine parking place. Immediately I went to my car, keys in hand. She said something to let me know that I was inconveniencing her. I said I didn't know she parked back there. I moved my car.
I drove north on the 2 lane. Not more than ten miles up the road I pulled into the gas station; or I attempted to. Several huge paving trucks pulled in before me. The workmen all jumped out of the vehicles and headed for the feed bar. One scruffy dude looked back and realized that they had me blocked in the entrance, I couldn't get around them. They had me blocked. I thought to myself, no, I said out loud, "Idiots".
Scruffy dude told the biggest blockader that he was blocking me. He pulled forward, his truck filled a quarter of the parking lot. I was inconvenienced for approximately as long as I had inconvenienced Ms. Southern Pretentious.
I appreciate quick paybacks.

Puppies

We're looking for a certain puppy on the Internet. Hoping to buy that special pup for Tate's birthday. Had lunch with Avi at a Chinese food restaurant the other day, the waitress was Mexican. "She's trying to trick us" I said.
"Hey, these aren't egg rolls, they're chimichangas" said Avi. That boy is so funny, belly laughs in the rain. No kidding. I told him about this adorable puppy I found in Ohio, only a few hundred miles away.
"I want a puppy" he said.
"You don't need a puppy, you have a girlfriend."
"I'd rather have a puppy"
Funny kid, I love him too much!

Three BT's

I stumbled upon Claire's blog site a few weeks ago, Three Beautiful Things. I have added her link to my page. Claire is a fabulous writer and diligently blogs everyday, if that's what you want to call it. Blog is not really a pretty enough word to describe her site. Everyday, no matter how tedious, boring, or even horrible it may have been she recalls 3 things that have given her pleasure. Often these things are stated in the most poetic manner. She has a readership of thousands and it is obvious why. Also, what is really cool about Claire and her idea is that she encourages other people to state 3Bts, kind of like plagiarizing her idea but not. She reminds us all to appreciate the miracles no matter how small we tend to overlook each day.After we write our 3BT's, we send them to her and she links our sites on her home page. Claire absolutely rocks!
Now, here goes:

1. While driving home from school today, the wind was blowing at a furious speed.I turned a corner where there had been a strong odor of skunk the day before. I forgot to hold my breath and smelled Iris blooms on the wind instead.
2. Thinking about the beautiful giraffe in my dream the other night and remembering how soft it was when it collapsed on top of me.
3.Seeing more than one comment on some of my recent blogs.

Present for Rick Prose

Acorns fall
tiny hand grenades, tin roof
while crows dance and laugh

beautiful fall day
room to breathe, time to ponder
leaves floating earthward

Both of these Haikus have been written by great poets. Both poets believe the other is a better writer. Both wrote their little poem to please the other,in reverence, beauty, and love.

night after night
from a great distance
two poets share images in their dreams

Secrets

I have friend, he is a psychiatrist. He has a screen saver that reads, "You are only as sick as your secrets." It's funny, but it is true. There is a shift in the focus of this blog site. I have had several psychic experiences today, messages from my dream last night and the nickle on the floor when I asked for a dime to appear from the universe, but this is almost a tangent. This blog seems to be focusing on my greatest theme these days and that is , "Empty Nest Syndrome". I meant to blog about the Eric Clapton concert Tate and I attended 2 weeks ago but it is mid term for us college students and I am in the midst of re arranging my life. I am set to open a new Barber/salon on the first of November. I won't do it that day though, it's All Saints day and the following day is Day of the Dead, also Tate's birthday.
Secrets. Clapton. There is a brand new Jeffersonian arena, tickets are sold out to see this show in Charlottesville VA. Tickets average $100.00 per ticket, thousands of people. The concerts these days we attend as forty-somethings are so different than those of our more youthful days. Gone is the feeling in the parking lot that you have arrived at your destination and you have sacrificed and journeyed for days to get here. People show up in their Lexus SUV's after their shift at the hospital. They have had their tickets for at least a month. There is "no smoking" inside the arena, cigarettes or pot, and there really isn't. There are people running around selling bottled WATER!!! Bizarre, AND they have cell phones permanently attached to their hands and ears. Who are these people in the crowd? I have worked hard today, I am getting a bit older, I watch the show from my seat. This is also a new experience for me. What is a concert without dancing other than a huge rip off, but...no dancing allowed.
I started to really pay attention to the 10 piece band on stage. Of course, awesome, but I was getting too sad. I guess that's why they call it the blues, eh? I could feel the saddness of Eric Clapton's life covering me like Linus's blanket.This man, this icon, this genius has pain within his heart which is unimaginable. His son, when he was only 2 or 3 years old, jumped on the bed in a high rise hotel room and bounced on out the window,the bed was on the 20th? floor of the hotel. His son died. His pain flows through me, I cry, I want to go home. I count the rows of seats in the audience,the avg ticket price. Holy Moly, this man is making so much money off of this show; and I am SO MUCH MORE WEALTY than he will ever be, in spirit. My baby, my Wiley, when he was 7 years old, on the Ides of March, fell three stories off of a roof. He lived. Only 2 broken bones. One in his foot and one in his tailbone. I am the luckiest woman in the entire Universe! Way, way, richer than Clapton. I want to hold him and tell him how it wasn't his fault, I want to take his pain away; but I already have, and it wouldn't help.
You are only as sick as your secrets. Neither I nor Eric Clapton spend too much time talking about how "If only we had done this instead of that." It doesan't take the guilt or pain away. It just doesn't.

The Last Word

Somehow the thoughts that branched from leaf to leaf and limb to limb while I was getting ready to leave the house yesterday, stumbled upon this. All of the times that I was late picking Avi up from school when he was younger. The times when I was working in my salon and would send absolute strangers (to him), to pick Avi up at the bus stop 2 miles out of town. "How will he know I'm not some kind of pedophile kidnapper?" my friend Jason asked. I sent him to the busstop with a note from me, telling him it was safe to get into the car. He never got angry, he'd make fun of my inability to be on time. He was superior to me, he was consistent. This is what I was thinking about yesterday morning while I was washing my hair. A few minutes later Avi called me on the phone; "Can you give me a ride to campus this afternoon?"
I had several hours, I said "sure".
I was late. I was stuck doing 20 in a forty five, the people at the bank held me up, I couldn't find his girlfriends' apartment. . . He was an hour late to class. He was SO MAD!!! I tried to make apologies, he stonewalled me. I hate when people are mad at me. I made a face that held all my self punishment in. He looked at me and said, "Take off that grandma face. You look just like her." he was referring to my mother, he knew those words would put me in my place. Touche' Avi

Pagan Holy Day

Friday: Viernes(Sp.)- the day of the week attributed and dedicated to the Goddess Venus- the Goddess of love and beauty.
13: The kabbalistic numeral representing the fool moon, or full moon, whatever you want to call it. 13 is also the tarot equivalent to Scorpio and Death, which is also rebirth. Death of the old ways brings birth to the new, whether through thought, action or physical death and renewal. The Day of the dead is in the realm of Scorpio, where the veils of the here and there come down.
Naughty sexy goddess, on the intensity of rebirth and intuition and the luna-see of the fool moon. What's so darned unlucky about this Friday the thirteenth? Nothing you prude, go out and have some fun. Please do not throw salt over your left shoulder. The left side is associated with the yin, intuitive and feminine aspects. To throw salt over the left shoulder is a practice derived from the Judeo-Christian fears of sensuality and the feminine aspects. One is literally throwing salt in the eyes of the Goddess when doing so; salt of the Earth(masculine)
Arrrghhh!

Boobs, Secrets, Clapton

Tate is finally asleep, I have too many things to write about; getting boobs, current culture, and secrets. I am going to attempt to tell these three stories in as few words as possible. My ITT professor says the average time a person spends viewing anyones website is about 30 secs so I anm trying to stick to the facts mam, just the facts.
1) Getting Boobs: nearly 20 years ago I made an exodus from my little rented hovel in my 1971 Chevy Impala from Northern Ca. to El Paso TX. Avi was only 2 years old, Wiley was nearly 4. I inheirited 5g"s from my grandfathers' estate. I had met him a few years prior to his death, I was not impressed. I took the money and packed the Chevy with everything that was going; we had no clue where we would end up except there were some other apprentices in the midwifery clinic on the Mexican border who were willing to host us temporarily. I was running away, again. I gave my antique sewing machine to a friend of a friend. Her name is Leslie I think. She said, and I remember as if it was yesterday,"Not your sewing machine, don't give it away. If you ever, ever, want it back, just ask, you can always have it back." It's a heavy machine, it weighs 49 lbs. It wasn't a necessity and if it didn't fit in the car, it wasn't going. I loved that turquois machine. I sewed heavy quilts on it for my babies using old jeans and my one maternity dress for each son. My ex-mother in law gave it to me, she didn't use it. I loved it's weight, it's rhythm, it's smell. Babies sleeping finally, I would stitch together any scraps I could find. It was art and the sound sooothed my soul. I gave it away,another sacrifice.
Sixteen years later, I have a fairly inexpensive Singer. I sell my commercial real eastate in the small Virginia town I operated my hair salon in to my ex"partner", what a looser. I built a salon in my new house, I spent alot of time doing the things I could never find the time to do. I sewed alot. Curtains, clothes, nothing from a pattern ever. I made phone calls, to California. I found Leslie, she still had my old machine. She said she would send it to me, but she didn't. Three more years. August past, Tate and I went to California and Oregon. We went for vacation, I wanted to show him a Redwood tree. We visited family and we had a blast. On the fourth day of our journey from SF to Central Oregon, we landed in Willits Ca. That was my first home with my 2 babies. It was a tiny bungalow, 3/4 mile outside of a rural hippie Ca. town. I miss it alot, or I used to. Anyway, we drove by our old house. I called my old best friend and landlord, Christopher Moore. He acted as if I had just seen him yesterday. I hadn't seen him in 20 years. I called him, "Hey Christopher, this is Stacy"
"Hey Stacy."
"I cant find your house."
"Why not?"
"Because it's been 20 years since I've been there"
Oh yeah.
wE TALKED ABOUT THE SEWING MACHINE. hE SAID HE WAS WILLING TO TRY AND HELP RECOVER IT. (Oops)
Tate and I had ground to cover, the Oregon coast, Redwoods, my brother in Oregon, my baby nephew I was finally getting to meet and my 10 year old neice I hadn't seen for 8 years. I left the sewing machine to fate, and to Christopher.
A few days after we returned hiome, I was getting back to the old routine and called Avi. His phone was disconnected. I decided to drive by his hi tech job as a parking lot attendant in Charlottesville to see if he was there and to let him know that I would do what I could to get his phone back on. Always a juggling act, the money thing. Avi wasn't working that morning. I caught sight of a dressmakers' mannekin in the parking lot adjacent to Avi lot. I drove back around through the crowded city streets.
"Hey, whats up with the mannekin?" I asked one of Av's esteemed colleagues.
"I don't know, it's been there for a few days"
I parked.
I walked over to the mannekin; she was in mint condition and was standing at the service entrance of a hipster student pub. Someone had written "BOOBS" on her chest with a ball point pen.. She was headless and armless for that manner, as all dressmakers' mannekins are.
I followed some young dude, who was obviously suffering with a severe hangover, "What's up with BOOBS?"
"I dunno, been there for a few days now."
"Mind if I take her?"
"Nope"
"Thanks"
I put Boobs in the trunk of my tiny car. I took her home. She guards my sewing machine, the old turquois one. I LOVE the way it humms. I LOVE the way it smells!!!
Secrets and Clapton, later. I'm tired.

Tate Sleeping

Tate talks in his sleep; sometimes when I am sketching him. Sometimes he talks to "the people" about zsa sza sza. Sometimes he speaks in German even though when he is awake he doesn't speak any German. One night he was ordering bullets to the line and talking to the men about their journals. "But first you must look to Denali" was an interesting comment I recall. There was the time he sat up in bed and seemed to catch something in the air above my head. He was still asleep and he said,"Did you see that? It almost hit you". "See what?" I asked. He described one of those middle ages weapons, the spiked lead ball on a chain? I don't know what he called it. I'm lucky he protects me while I am sleeping.

Self Portrait

Lately I have been beating myself up about my inferiority in this Blog world. There are so many fantastic writers out there. Two summers ago I took a creative writing class in our community college. I am learning to write fiction. My Blog is not yet revealing my dreams which are continuously proving to be quite intuitive and at times terrifying. I ran into my writing teacher on the downtown mall a few months ago; I was carrying a painting I had just finished of Wiley when he was a baby. I showed it to Mark, my teacher. He said, "I wish I could paint." I said, "I wish I could write." He did not suggest that I could, so. . . here is my most recent self portrait.

Too Tall Haiku

Shorter, less than 3o lines,
a one page short story,
my greatest challenge

I'm Addicted

To Hugs! and my Blog world. I can put things like this in here and I sent this link out to a bunch of people yesterday and I want to send it to the entire world. And I recently saw the movie The Green Mile, and when that big guy with the golden heart said he wanted his execution to go on and that he didn't want to be spared because he just couldn't stand to be here anymore, he couldn't stand to be "in a place where people is so mean to one another" and that he can't take the pain in his body anymore. I cried, alot. I hear on the radio that the 30 some year old man in Pennsylvania is angry with G-d for taking one of his babies from him. He lost a baby girl some time ago and he has a few kids who are alive here and now, and he was dreaming about molesting little girls, like he had done before. And he's going to get back at God by going into a one room Amish school house and rape and murder God's innocent children?!!! And I cried, alot. My friend Georgia P. sent me this email yeterday. Like I said, I tried to send it to everyone. I watched it, and I cried, alot.
SOMETIMES, A HUG IS ALL WHAT WE NEED! VIDEO!

http://www.freehugs.org/

Sometimes, a hug is all what we need. Free hugs is a real life
controversial story of Juan Mann, a man who's sole mission was to reach
out and hug a stranger to brighten up their lives. In this age of social
disconnectivity and lack of human contact, the effects of the Free Hugs
campaign became phenomenal.

As this symbol of human hope spread accross the city, police and
officials ordered the Free Hugs campaign banned. What we then witness is
the true spirit of humanity come together in what can only be described
as awe inspiring.

Wikipedia on Juan Mann:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Mann

These Dreams

I am holding her head in my hands, she is Hispanic, dark skinned and my friend. I am using a healing technique that i use in my waking life which is similar to the cranial sacral work which has become so popular. I shift my hands around the right side of her head and she says that is where the pain or problem is. I feel it shift under my hands and then I ask her if she would like to know what the right side of her head said to me. She said yes. I recited in a poetic manner words of beauty. Images of birds in sunlight, kites,balloons, things that elevate into the sky. There was a sense that this person was loosing sight of or had seemed to have forgotten about the magic and beauty in life. I then felt intense pain in the right side of my own head. It hurt so damnded bad that I woke up. After a while I managed to get back to sleep and slept the headache off. The next morning, as I was driving to work, I noticed that the top of my head hurt. Not a headache per say, but it felt like I had been hit on the head with a 2X4, or maybe a falling piano. There was a bump down the center of my head. At first I wondered whose pain I may have taken on in my dream, I don't always dream my own stuff. Hours later, I met Avi, my favorite son (relax, they are both my favorite, it's a joke)to work on some homework at the computer lab. "Hey Avi, do you have a headache?" I asked him.
"Last night I did" He said.
Me: "On the top of your head?"
Him: "No on the right side, but the top of my head is sore now."

With a Little Help From My Friends

The topic came up in coversation recently of the value of life experience versus the formal education route. I've travelled both routes, simultaneously at times. I would like to give credit to the big teachers out there in my life/dream, my friends and enemies.
To Jeremiah-Friend- who told me that he thought this lifetime was a dream. he was pretty sure he was making this entire reality up in his head. He said he figured out that this world was not his creation when he was in the fourth grade. "The teacher started doing these long division problems on the chalk board and I said to myselfThere is no way I making this thing up." Then he knew.

To George Edwin-ENEMY-who taught me that if you abuse a child long enough he can become absolutely EVIL, his soul can turn black.

To Tate Moyer- Friend- who taught me that if you are a child who survives poverty and abuse and you still thank God everyday for your life, you can become Saintlier than any Saint.

To Kelly Berger-Friend- For calling my attention to the fact that Nothing is Real, and kicking off that psychotic wave of confusion in my teenaged years. Yes, No thing, Now Here. Praise Bob. (thats some old stuff there).

This is fun, more later.
Oh yeah, My oldest son, Wiley flew off to Thailand this morning. He is going to visit his beautiful, smart, girlfriend for a month. I pray for his safety, he's such a baby in my mind. I dream about him being 5 years old alot. I also hope, if he really wants it, that he comes back engaged. Imagine that!

One more: To Wiley-Friend- for teaching me the meaning of PROUD!

Bed Bugs!

A lot of things have changed around here since Tate entered lives. Our little houses (2 small ones) on seven untenable acres have become a serene haven in a park like setting. He’s conquered the brambles. He’s conquered the weeds. He climbed every tree and pruned the dead wood from their canopies. He mulched, fertilized, planted and built sculptures out of enormous rocks. I remember one day in the early years, it was spring time; “Hey Stace, how come there’s no birds around here?”
“I don’t know. They just don’t live here.” I said.
He hung birdfeeders. Now our summertime skies are packed full of goldfinches and the constant song of “Sweet, Sweeet”. I love them.
He bitched and moaned every time he cut the grass. I seemed to think final grading was an unnecessary step in the house building process when I had the houses built six years ago. I was cutting costs. It was true, every step you took could cause an ankle to twist, a tendon to pop. It was red clay full of rocks and dips and weeds; a wild ride on a lawnmower.
Last weekend, I awoke to the sound of bulldozers and graders tearing up the front yard. Dump trucks had stockpiled 15 loads of river bottom topsoil and “bio-compost”. Bio compost, if you are not familiar with its high tech name, is . . . well, it’s treated human waste, yes- sewage. Supposedly it is safe to use on lawns but not certain edible plants. It smells like shit, to be honest. The week before, the yard guys stockpiled the “compost” in small mountains in the front yard. The flies began to multiply in the kitchen. They’re still there, but there’s more. Our 10 year old cat has been engaged in a battle of wills with the two of us since we returned from our 12 day vacation in August and left him with a house sitter. He let us know it wasn’t cool with him, this gross abandonment, by pooping on our Persian rugs, three days in a row. He’s been banished to the outside world; I am going to win this war! But that’s not all.
The graders tore up the grass; they spread the stinky compost and dragged the hill. They threw down grass seed and fertilizer as they normally do and tucked the seeds in to rest under a blanket of golden straw. It’s going to be beautiful some day, I know, but the air really stinks. Summer finally surrendered to Fall, my favorite season of the year. It’s my favorite season for lots of reasons, especially the way it smells. I can’t open the windows, the A.C. still runs, its 72 degrees outside. The flies are still proliferating, the air still stinks outside, the war is still raging between me and the cat and that’s Not All!
My dog recently got skunked so I refused to take him to his appointment with the Vet. He has an auto- immune disorder and some oozy secondary infection on his elbows which he licks CONSTANTLY! He licks, and licks, and licks; he is on daily Cortisone pills and has gained 20 pounds in a year. He weighs 1 pound more than me. Billy Bob, a.k.a. Bo-Bo, has taken to rolling in the shit out in the yard. “Oh MIGOD!” I have to let him into the house occasionally; he grooms himself on the kitchen floor.
I never enforce the “remove your shoes at the door policy” so Tate, the workaholic and Yard Meister tracked a bit of “dirt” into the house as well.
All this fun for an obsessive compulsive with heightened olfactory perceptions (not to mention other sensitivities) in one weekend.
Monday morning. I talk myself out of having a break down. “Remember Howard Hughes”, I tell myself. “Richest man in the world, so germ-a phobic he starved to death.”
Swat flies, sweep then wash floors, wash feet, take bath, study, wash dishes, make bed, run laundry, go to work. I made it out of the house; I managed to forget about the assaults on my senses as I drove the 45 miles to the office.

During my drive home I listened to NPR. Martha Woodruff reported on a health concern story in New York City. BED BUGS. Bed Bugs: bloodsucking black lentils with legs. Bed Bugs infesting hotels, soft fabrics and mattresses in even the cleanest of apartments in the city.
“It isn’t just a health concern, it’s a Mental Health concern” said a representative of the NYC Health Department.
A bed bug victim, a woman who sounded to be in her early twenties, told her story. She talked about the welts, the blood and the nightmares. She left, no, she Ran away from New York City. She moved to Pennsylvania. She set up a website, maybe it’s a Blog. It’s a Bed Bug site. Her site is a place for Bed Bug victims to commiserate, she has received thousands of site visitors; it’s a virtual support group.
I’m never going to New York City again! I’m never sleeping in another hotel room as long as I live! I’d rather just stay home. Yes, home is just fine.

Drop In the Bucket or Hemmorhage?

I heard about this website yesterday, www.costofwar.com
There is a running counter showing the billions of dollars appropriated by congress for the war in Iraq. I attempted to attach the counter to this site but the HTML tag was not accepted. If you have time, check those numbers out. If this hemorrhage doesn't stop, this country will certainly bleed to death.God Bless The Whole Universe

Empty Nest

I realized today that the most prolific and talented writer, Michelle O'Neil has been checking into this blog. She is the greatest writer I know, her blog address is: http://michelleoneilwrites.blogspot.com/
I like to check out her site because I love the way she writes and to learn about this new forum of blogging; her site is named Full Soul Ahead. When I read it today, she had posted about the hysterical (the word hysterectomy stems from this word- Hysterical. It's those female parts that make that gender so crazy) things her children say such as calling stuffed animals, stuffed up animals.
Both of my sons moved out of the house and into their independence a little more than 3 years ago. I knew it was going to be weird not having bus stops to race to every morning or their constant companionship. They were my life. I braced myself for this "Empty Nest" but it hit me on the head as if it were loaded with a ton of bricks. I realized the truth about this empty nest; it isn't about missing having those kids around or the daily routine, it's about regret. Yes, regret. Know this all you mothers of children still residing in your home (under the age of 20, I guess), empty nest is regretting the fact that you didn't appreciate those babies as much as you should have. They are only little for the shortest amount of time even though you can think of days that seemed to last forever. You will miss the way they felt in your arms, the sound of their breath as they nursed from your breast. You will miss their laughter and the funny things they said. "Momma, I wanna hold you" when they wanted to be carried. And how about the time Wiley greeted me when I picked him up from his day care provider's house and said, "Guess what, I planted a green gumball today, they're the good kind right? Do you think it will grow?" There was also the Christmas list for Santa that listed a "molk troll" car. Yep, a remote control car, that one still stands. Oh yeah, you can still love those kids, even when they move out and create their own families, but you can never have those precious little ones back. No matter how tedious and trying and downright UNGLAMOROUS life can be when you are the mother of young children; it is a priceless experience. Here is a little poem I submitted to the Washington Post column, I think it is called The Daily Haiku (?). They haven't published it, so I will, because I can! Disregard the poetic license, I see my sons often and talk to them on the phone almost every day.
EMPTY NEST HAIKU
My first son was born when I was 19, nearly a child myself. His brother arrived less than 2 years later. Soon after, I became a “single mom". Year after year, our home remained “broken" but our family bond grew strong. I used to spend my days wishing those boys would grow up quickly, and then I could get my life back. I spent hours thinking of all the places I could go and what I would do when I got there. It’s been three years since I’ve seen either one of those boys. One travels the world, the other goes to school far from here. They both send me e-mails, sometimes they call. I spend my days now, trying to remember what could have possibly seemed better than being with them. I miss my sons.

Oh Mexico

My dear friend Saundra came to my house today to get her haircut and to visit. She is very sweet. Saundra is a doctor from Peru? or somewhere in South America. I have known her for a few years. She lives in the US now, about a half an hour from my house. Her medical license is not recognised in this country, it is not reciprocal. As I cut her hair today she told me about what happened to her yesterday. She was walking her two dogs along a trail on the Blue Ridge Parkway, they were on leashes. It was a beautiful day. A small family approached her and they had 2 dogs with them, they were not on leashes. The family's dogs ran over to Saundra and got into a doggie rumble. Saundra's dogs got all wound up, trying to protect everyone and knocked Saundra to the ground. She has a big bruise on her hip, a cut on her shin and pulled muscles in her arm. The dogs knocked her over twice. She was embarrasssed. She hollered at her dogs. The other people, the small family, called their dogs and kept on walking; they didn't offer any aid or concern or apologies to Saundra as she attempted to pick her dignity up off the ground. It wasn't until the next day, which was this morning that Saundra began to wonder how any one could be so impolite and uncaring. In her country, well, let's just say noone would walk past a women who was knocked to the ground by unruly, frightened dogs and look the other way; it is unheard of. She told me this story and I was reminded of a certain nighttime bus trip I was on many years ago, somewhere in the heart of Mexico. In order to let Saundra know how deeply I felt her disgust with her new surrounding culture, I told her this story.
When I was in my early 20's, after my internship in Midwifery school in the Mexican border town of ElPaso, TX and Juarez MX., I gave my car away and bought train tickets for myself and two very young sons into the Central. My youngest son, Avi was only 2 AND1/2, my oldest was 4 years old. I usually bought 2 tickets for busses and trains as we travelled. I would put the little one on my lap and the bigger son in the seat next to me. One night we boarded a very crowded bus; many passengers were sleeping as we boarded. I couldn't find 2 empty seats next to each other anywhere. I moved towards the back of the bus and decided to slip the three of us into one seat next to a sleeping young man(maybe 27 years) in the window seat. An American to the core, full of angst about having young children and not the funds to own my own vehicle, about inconveniencing the public with my offspring and all the unacceptable behavior that goes along with that curse, I was afraid of how this man might react when he woke up to find some little kid crammed into the space between my and his seat. Sure enough the bus drove on. Sure enough, my 4 year old son Wiley, fell asleep. But he kept falling forward, a giant head nod movement affecting him to his waist. Oh-Oh I thought, he is going to wake that man next to him and he is going to be MAD! I was nodding off too; I was tired. The third time my little sleeping boy nearly fell out of the seat, it happened. The man next to us opened his eyes, jolted awake by the motion of my baby falling forward in his own sleepy state. The man noticed there was a baby wedged next to him, I braced myself for the assault. The man raised his arm, swung it around my son and tucked him under his arm. He patted my baby on his head. They both closed their eyes and went back to sleep. I sighed relief and prayed to become as much"from the heart" as the people all around me in this beautiful country.

Releasements are Exhausting

My sister called last night just as we were walking out the door. We were invited to our neighbor's house for dinner. It's always an impromptu party. My sister doesn't call very often. She has her life, I have mine and we live 4 hours away from each other; but our Mother's husband had been sent home from the hospital to die. There was nothing else they could do for Mike, now that they found the cancer in his brain. Now that it had spread, after the intensive surgery for the esophogeal cancer. I answered the phone, as I suspected, Mike had died that day. I told Tate. He said he was sorry for the loss, he was genuine. He also said he'd be over at the neighbors house , he knew I would be talking to my sister for a long time.
Mike was my mothers second husband, the one after my father. I never referred to him as my stepfather; always my mother's husband. She was married to him longer than she was married to my father which I think was 19 yrs. Mike was okay, I guess. He loved Jazz music, he was an audiophile. He had 2 racks of stereo equipment which had to be tweaked monthly by a professional. Every night after dinner he would retire to his sacred chair and drink his gin(at least 1/5th), smoke his cigarettes, and listen to his music until he would stagger to his bed or simply pass out in his chair. To oblivion baby.
Tate drinks beer in the evening. Pete, neighbor Neanderthal, likes to drink Whiskey and Tequila(yechh). Tate usually says he doesn't want any of the whiskey, but he ends up drinking a few after Pete pours them for him.
Last night when I got off the phone, I went across the road. Tate was double fisting the vodka. He was wobbly and off. He kept insisting on drinking more, and more, and more. He was falling down, he was stinking drunk.
Out of character. He kept saying stuff about Mike's passing; he did it out of context and he never even met the man. They live in France my Mom and Mike, they are also not wealthy enough to send tickets for visits. In fact, my mother is blind and they are poor, or she's poor now.
Tate staggered past me towards the back porch of Pete's house. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and I saw him. Mike was having one last booze fest. He just happened to be in Tate's body. I ran to the deck and grabbed his face in my hands and said, "Look at me. When is your birthday?"
"November 2nd"
"Day of the dead, right?" "Yes"
While looking into his eyes I had him repeat after me. I had him claim his own body and release Mike into the light. We told him he would be safe in God.
Tates body rocked backwards as if he had been pushed by strong arms on both shoulders.
He settled down. I drove him home. We prayed some more together while lying on the floor of our living room. I burned some dessert sage. We slept.
I have homework and housework and reading to do.
I am just too tired today.