Reflection on Seasons

Stevie Nicks and then the Dixie Chicks sing this song about life and love and growing older that I absolutely love.  It's called "LANDSLIDE" and it's definitely slow and sappy - of course I always cry when I hear it.  I thought this was an interesting title for this song, but when you think about life in general isn't that the biggest 'landslide' of them all?  Gravity pulls everything down, and your life tempo - that goes from high roll to slow as you get older too!  Sometimes I think of how old I've gotten and I have this weird out of body experience because in my MIND I am still young, I'm that girl that was flashy and fun.  When I see how old the children (my child, my friends kids) have gotten then it really hits home...I am really OLD as HECK!   every now and then I catch myself saying "when I was your age..."  Have I really grown up to be THAT old lady? 

Sometimes I feel as though I’ve lived several lives…maybe this is because I’ve survived so many storms.  I look back on my life and think what happened to HER?  my friends have changed, where I hang out has changed, who I LOVED has changed, where I work has changed, even where I lived....all changed. 

I was thinking of my father today, I always compare where I am to where he was at my age and I'm seeing a lot of similarities in the life I live.  My father worked so hard that when he was dying he would wake up every morning in the hospital bed saying "I wish I had one more year" or "I just need one more year".  He was 81 and had brain cancer.  He had projects that weren't finished and relationships that had never been resolved, people he wanted to see but hadn't called and he just needed ONE MORE YEAR.  What I've realized now is that sometimes one more minute here or with someone you love and care about wouldn't be enough.  Is it time sliding away from you that is the Landslide in the song? 

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

I think of how quickly summer passed, how quickly winter comes and I think about how much the 'seasons' of my life mean to me, how every minute mattered.  Unlike my father, I find ways to take breaks every now and then but mayber there should be more of them.  Scary thought - maybe we stay busy so we don't have to deal with the change at all...

http://animoto.com/play/3m2ecSSZsnYQoLU0Qe7KEQ

The above link is some pics of me at different times of the year.  Seasons change, people change - it should be fun not scary!! 

I'm Gonna

Clean Your Room!

I'm not sure when it happened but at some point in my life "I'm Gonna" became the two words to mean "I'm not going to do" whatever it prefaces.  I don't think I'm special this way, I think that "I'm Gonna" happens to everyone.  When we are young, "I'm Gonna" always means exactly "I am going to do that!",  A child who yells to Mom "I'm gonna go down the block" is gone in a second out the door and down the block.  Those two words to a child are a promise that action is about to occur.  "I'm gonna' ride that bike" and just as surely the bike is ridden, in the beginning - those words mean exactly what they are supposed to.
 A child who says "one day I'm gonna" believes exactly that and is motivated into action to achieve something great.

I think the meaning of the words start to change somewhere around our teenage years. When I yelled to my daughter "CLEAN YOUR ROOM" her response would come floating down the stairs "I'm gonna" ...and somehow I just knew in my heart that the room would remain uncleaned.  This is true for walking the dog, doing the homework and every other thing that was scheduled to be done.  I realize that the words "I'm gonna" from my teen means that I'm GOING to HAVE to double check that action occurred, in fact, this also applys to the husband as well.  Now as an adult I realize I hear it all around me but from other adults who really have no intention of doing anything at all.  I also realize that when I ask "Did you?" and get the angry response "I'm gonna" what is really meant is "I was going to but didn't and will get to it when I can".

Get your work out on Girl!

Think about it..how many times have you heard the words (or even said them)..."I'm gonna lose 30 pounds this year...I'm gonna quit smoking...I'm gonna join a gym, make more time for me, so on and so on..." The 'I'm Gonna' list grows and grows with very little getting accomplished.  I believe that only those who actually set real goals without prefacing them with I'M GONNA are the ones who will actually make things happen.  Sadly those adults are few and far between, the majority of us are just 'gonna'.  "I'm gonna" is the easy excuse to get out of committing to action.  Once the words are said you and those around you believe that a future action may take place, although YOU and I secretly know deep down inside nothing is going to happen.

The most curious thing about life is not the way we play with words and say things we don't mean but that we let things pile up.  Not just chores, but phone calls to friends or people we love, visits and vacations we've 'been meaning to take', thank you's and kindness we intend to extend, promises and goals all just pile up around us.  One day we find we have run out of the opportunity to make good on the promise of "I'm Gonna".

At a funeral I recently attended the priest made a point of saying it's not the year you were born or the day that you died that matters...the most important part of someones life is THE DASH.  He was referring to the time in between those two dates, which on a headstone or a memorial become only a single line, a dash.  Curiously, I want my 'dash' to be filled with things I've accomplished not wasted on empty "I'm Gonna's".  Sounds good in theory but in practice, well - I've an awful habit of saying "I'm gonna" with my too full plate of life and very little free time set aside for me - it may almost be hopeless.  However, every bad habit can be broken but it has to start with me, taking the first step forward to a more active approach to life and hanging up my easy answer of "I'm Gonna".

Go On with your Bad Self!

Horse with No Name

Almost at the end of the course and I am "The Lonely Blogger"...what started as a wonderful creative journey has become the slow dredge up a dry desert sand hill.  I am the Lonely Blogger!  Five posts in and not one comment...I wonder if my words are out there swirling around in digital story land just words which in itself is a pretty SAD story.  I wonder what it takes to be a crazy blogger, or maybe a colorful blogger, or even that blogger who is "in the mix" stirring things up with political hearsay or just making some stranger they've never met from Japan laugh out loud (LOL!).

It isn't much fun sliding into home base without the cheering crowd.  One of the things that struck me about this digital storytelling class I'm taking is how many people are really out there trying to be heard.  The internet is crammed with pictures and links and stories - happy and sad, wonderful and boring.  Words and emotions SWIRLING around in digital story land. My voice becomes one of many and my words are lost like tiny grains of sand - swirling in that sand storm of creativity!  There is so much creativity out there it's hard to 'keep up', let alone stand out or do anything more than blend in!

They say that a good story is the perfect combination of words and pictures.  I think I'm learning on this journey that finding that combination is truly a challenge and that loving words alone isn't enough to make someone a writer, or a good "blogger"!   I think if I'm going to be a successful blogger I'm going to have to find my niche and work getting this horse a "name" and out of the dessert.

LOVE TRAP

LOVE TRAP

Just You and Love

Your love was not enough

To stray my course

Though you begged for me to stay

I have left you lone – just you and Love

A cold and wintry day

Your love was not enough

To slow my pace

In fact, Love hastened me to go

I have left you lone- just you and Love

Lonely heart and soul

This is a sample of one of the poems I entered into a local poetry contest. I wrote this poem for a guy I was dating for about six months, and of course it didn't work out.  Mostly because he was a habitual liar and I could catch him every time.  No, I'm not exaggerating this and it isn't because I'm someone's mom. He was lying like this:  "Let me just borrow your phone for a minute, I just need to talk to my Mom about this weekend" so I hand over my phone and there he is dialing and then chatting wildly to "Mom" and I hear the recorded operator in the background saying "please hang up and dial again" - DUDE let me see my phone!  Technology tells me that this guy just dialed 123456789 and MOM is not on the line.  Lies can be complicated and lies can be simple, this guy was just a simple kind of liar.

BUT this post isn't about what's his name, it's about THE FIRST POETRY CONTEST I've ever entered!! This is my first ever poetry contest and I have to admit, my stomach is flopping and my fingers are crossed.  First place is $100 prize - imagine if I won that?  not to shabby to catch a hundred bucks with a sappy love poem or two.  I think today is my lucky day anyway - because - I started the morning by winning $25 on a scratch off! I've never been very good at winning, in fact - I'm really really good at LOSING!  Although, I try to believe I am a glass half full kind of girl.  I like to walk around thinking "someone has it worse", so in that vein - I've already WON just because I took the time out to enter the contest right?   Here's another entry:  

The Knot of Love

I love you

                Tangled chain of emotions

                                Keeps us apart

                                                Slowly unravel

                                                                Detangle the knot

                                                                                To get back to

                                                                                                I love you 

This one was written for my angry sixteen year old daughter, who is now an angry 27 year old.  I remember thinking it's just like this isn't it - when you really love someone, you sit down with a whole mess of emotions and try to figure out how to unravel it - the same way we do with jewelry chains.   Keep your fingers crossed for me!  This is going to be my lucky month!

Australia

On June 28 I picked up my cousin from Australia, it was his first visit to the United States and his plan was to stay for ten days and have an "American Experience"!  He planned his trip around America's fourth of July so he could see what this was about.  This was also the first time I was going to meet him (and we are both 46) this is my mothers sisters son.  He tells me there are other cousins there - Australia - that are around my age as well, but I wonder if I will ever be together enough to get over there to visit them all.  The trip from Australia to New York takes almost a full 24 hours with one stop in Los Angeles, California and costs about $2500!  I imagine the year I decide to do this I will have to give up a small trip to someplace in the States (this years trip is Memphis, Tennessee, last year was Vegas) along with the tattoo I always get! 

My cousins visit was the most fun I've had in years, he turned out to be a really nice guy (and helpful around the house!).  There were many days I would come in from working and find him downstairs doing laundry or out in my garden helping out while he waited for me to come back.  He was also adventurous and would take off to explore, talking to strangers along the way.  People in my neighborhood were immediately charmed by his accent and took him into their homes for dinner and drinks!  Cheers!  My friends and I joked that I'd acquired my own Crocodile Dundee, he was just as affable and not afraid of anything!  although he kindly told us that Paul Hogan had ruined the image of Australians forever, and Nicole Kidman was a "fake"! But he was always in favor of saying "shrimp on the Barbie" for us just the same!

I know...there isn't much creativity in sharing this visit...except that I am sure that his visit has altered who I will be forever.  Strange that when he left I found myself crying for two days over the absence of his presence.  Having never known my mother (she died when I was five) or any of her family, I never missed them...all of that has changed with that visit. 

GOLDEN

Heavier than silver, gold still shines and sparkles.
It gleams and winks so you know it's there, it's still coveted and stolen, bought and traded.

I inserted the song by Jill Scott "Living My Life Like It's Golden" because that's where I am right now.  I'm 46 but somehow I feel okay with that (sometimes a little nervous about 'almost' 50)~!  I worked really hard to get right here - GOLDEN.   I left home at 15, had my daughter when I was 19 and was married twice by the time I was 25.  I had been to college, dropped out, went back and graduated...had jobs, moved all over the place and then bought a home by the time I was 26.   No time to come up for air, no time to breathe - a kid to raise, a divorce, a layoff, a new place to live, gain weight, lose weight - now what?!!

I remember when I was turning forty, a guy that I worked with said don't worry about 40 because that's when you really start to "LIVE YOUR LIFE"...not that I didn't live the hell out of my twenties, but he was right.  In my thirties things just 'happened' to me but somehow at forty I found myself closer to knowing myself, closer to having an answer and things don't seem to weigh on me the same way.  That's not to say I don't worry about money -  but when recently laid off - I took it as an opportunity to reinvent, try something new and start over.  GOLDEN.

Jill sings about "Taking My Freedom" and then what she plans to do with it...I know what I'm doing with mine and I'm GOLDEN.  Okay, maybe I'm broke, but I'm happy.  Maybe I'm turning 50 soon but I EARNED that - every minute of every hour in every day.  Mine and made by ME.  I'm not going to be one of those that sweats and crawls or runs away from "going over the hill".   When people jokingly ask how old I am I let them know.  Not 26 - I'm 46!  

Maybe it isn't the lyrics so much as the way she belts out her happiness...yes I'm free and I'm loving me and I'm letting life be whatever God has planned.  I'm not that religious but I can feel the joy and hope in that song.  Maybe I'll live until I'm 81 - like my father.  That puts me on the clock right?  But maybe, I'll live until I'm 99 - either way life is Golden when you just LIVE IT!   

By definition Golden as a slang term means "good" or "prepared"..."Did you pack everything we need in the cooler for this trip?" - "yeah, we are GOLDEN".  GOLDEN

American

If this blog is my creative journey and this class - digital storytelling is my "Brigadoon" then I expect that part of this "mich mash" will include poetry along with snippets of life unfolding:  I came up with the poem below when I began thinking of myself in color and I thought it would give you a better idea of who I've become so you can follow where I'm going! 

I AM

Green.  My mother’s clan hails from the Emerald Isle; land of leprechauns, deep in the valley of Kings and castles, my great grandparents had potatoes in the field and in their cup at days end. Their children – Catholics - stuck in a Protestant neighborhood, ran to Scotland to pray.

Age 42, she died on St.Patrick’s day in the stone cold city of New York; this is where she came to dream, to live -like an American, driving on the right, making dreams come true….they say it rained all day for a wee lass born in Glasgow, Scotland.

I am - St Andrews cross laid out in Green and White and Orange.  A lost Scott, whose Irish grandfather played the bagpipes at his oldest daughter’s funeral 

I AM
Red.  My father’s people Red Square, The Red Corner and all things krasni (beautiful), Pushkin and Tolstoy, but NEVER Communist.   My great grandfather travelled through Ellis Island with his wife on his arm and $6 in his pocket - a wealthy man. 

It was his youngest son who found himself a strong “German” woman.   Worse than being Communist – falling in love with a Catholic!  My grandfather lost his Russian history the day he married my grandmother, but paved the road for his youngest son to be a New Yorker first and German second 

I am - spatzle, dumpling, lager and borsch.  The only child born to a New Yorker and a woman from Scotland who died too young. 

I AM

White.   Lilly and cream, almost as white as a ghost, forever “Caucasian”;  this is the color you see when you look at me, the color of my vessel during this lifetime. 

My white skin wraps around my husband’s dark chestnut brown body glowing in the moonlight.  My history passed to my olive skinned daughter, who I raise without color but with an understanding that she is the rainbows perfect symmetry

I am – American.  The perfect combination of Russian, German, Irish, Scott, Catholic and New York; a kaleidoscope filled with bright colored chips of history slowly turned, brings together something new, singular and different.  I proudly stand in multicolor disarray.