The Conversation

                                           You can observe a lot by just watchin'.
                                                      - Yogi Berra
    

Yesterday my friend Paula and I were rueing the loss of this and that - - and then we began to rue the type of personality (I am one of these) who perpetually mourns the loss of (whatever it may be) - - telephones affixed to walls; real letters having been written in real time; progress, as in my case, of the sad type as that which what has happened to the farm land of Silverdale; Kindles  and Nooks in place of books; people getting together to sing whether they can sing well or not - - you get the drift.  That kind of loss.
 
     And then Paula said, "Yes, I was in the restroom the other day with a woman who was complaining about how much  the country of Italy has changed and how it will keep on changing and how our grandchildren will never know the wonder of 'the real Italy', when actually, none of us will ever know that particular wonder - - and I turned to her and I said, 'You know, many things narrow down and others go on to become extinct, and all we can really do is teach our grandchildren how to notice or appreciate."

And I thought: wow. 

How true is that?

I suppose it doesn't really matter whether one reads Anna Karenina in book form or Nook form as long as all the words are there.  It certainly doesn't matter what type of telephone there is.  We can, all of us can, still write letters.  No matter what anyone says, time really does remain the same.  It's just our point of view about it, it's just the choices we make inside it, that edge us into thinking there no such thing as time enough anymore.  I still sing, no matter where I am and there's nothing much I can do about what other people do except to cheer them on when they open their mouths and make melodious sounds, and the farm lands of Silverdale? Well, that's another story that has, at least in my case, become a story in at least one or more of my own published stories.

There is a Greaves (I am a Greaves) road, small though it may be; there is still a Clear Creek; there is even a small (quite) group of people dedicated to helping newcomers pronounce the Silverdale area's names correctly. Myhre Road is pronounced MIRE road.  For instance.  Yes, we are that particular.

But enough of that, that's not what Paula was talking about, nor is it what I want to write about.  I want to write about the "real deal" of teaching children how to notice, how to appreciate, how to have zest and endurance and enthusiasms.

I would guess that the future will be very, very different than the past.  Technology says so and technology has a very big mouth. It eats things up.  And it has very big hands.  It makes things up.  And what we deem wonderful now may not even be around in forty or fifty years. Or less.  Or more.  But grieving that is like grieving the Motel T.  Or the blimp.  Or real telephone operators or elevator men or making real mincemeat pies or  being served meals on most airplane flights.

Gone, gone, gone. Dear Allan Ginsberg once wrote a poem out of only that one word. Gone.

But there is still plenty to notice, still plenty to appreciate, still plenty to write about and sing about and be enthused about.

When, as a little girl, I became bored (which wasn't often) I would go to my father, say "Daddy, I'm bored," and he would say, "Then go out into the driveway, pick up twenty white rocks and bring them back to me at once."

He would always say that. I knew he would. I knew what came next, too.  Here's what:

Having picked up twenty white rocks I would run back to him and show him the twenty white rocks, usually bundled up in a scarf or carried in a paper bag.  "Now," he would say, acknowledging the rocks," take these rocks and put each rock exactly where you found it."
 
Of course, I couldn't. But I tried.

If he never did anything else for me, that was plenty.  Talk about teaching a kid how to notice. Talk about teaching a kid how to do something with practically nothing. Because lots of times that's what you start with - -  practically nothing. And lots of times that's what you end with. You just need to claim the event, the activity, the moment - - as your's.  It doesn't matter how other people see it, it's how you  see it.

Marcel Proust wrote, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." 

Well, this is nothing new, but it's been gnawing at my brain.  It isn't flying children to foreign countries that educates them, at least not necessarily.   It is examining the goings-on of a leaf, held in your palm, season after season. You must hold it, bring it to your nose, put it to your tongue, read about it in a book, look it up on the computer if you must (I know, I know, I'm a fogey) - - you must claim it, to know it. You must have, as Henry James said, "The zest to see what there is to be seen."

It needn't cost a penny.

All it takes is you.  And your's.  

     

                                                      The Unexamined Life


It's hard, I think, to be happy with reality when you are an American watching the Olympics.  Because, sometimes, the Americans don't win; and that can make for a sullen, dispiriting,
nearly unbelievably bad time.  Say you are watching those muscularly immaculate young men ski and there's a guy from the Netherlands, a guy from Germany, a guy from The U.S., a Dutch guy and a guy from Japan.  And, of course, they're all great.  And you're an American.

Who ya gonna root for?

Well, okay, why not?  Root for your country, right?  Right.  Now, though, say the American doesn't have the speed or the stamina this time and - oops - not a chance. He's out.  Now, watch what your brain does. It starts bashing it's way through its neural library shelves, deciding with alarming speed, who's next.  Who do you root for next?

At this point, do I think you are a free thinker, capable of making an entirely free choice?

Uh-uh.  No, I don't.

I think whatever it is your going to think, whoever it is you're going to decide you want to win, is utterly dependent upon your age, your history, and a number of other variables I can't even come up with now.  You're  hog-tied to your next-best choice and your next next best choice and on down the line.

If you're my age, let's be honest. There was that war. It's always there. That war. That huge human stain. My age group has to slide into a massive death before that particular prejudice ends, because we're wired, friends. So that's Germany and, oddly, to a lesser degree, Japan. My age group just isn't going to cozy up to those boys as our first next choice.

So it's the Dutch guy and the guy from the Netherlands.  They're it.  That's who. You can just feel it in your blood, can't you? Or am I the only one around here who's still prejudiced, even if it's on a normally unconscious level"

The Olympics are good for this kind of noticing.

The thing about the Olympics that I really love, because it is SO unAmerican - - are all those little countries, I mean those really little ones, with five or nine people, marching in with heads held high and astonishing uniforms and proudly held flags - - and these countries show up, year after year after year, and some of them have maybe never even won a medal.  And yet there they are.
Countries like, I don't know, Slovenia, although I think they have won a medal,  but you know what I mean. 

How do you think they feel?  Take a look at them, marching into the stadium. What's in it for them? Well, something IS in it for them, obviously. And I want some of that. But, what IS it? Someone once said, "Allowing yourself to want something is an act of courage."  I think that is true.  To openly want something, whether with reason or beyond reason --is a noble thing.  Or maybe it's being/feeling like you're a part of something huge and that's a great feeling and we're so huge already, we American's, that we've forgotten what that particular feeling is.  Because what matters to us is the meals.

Oh, the medals, the medals, the medals.

"And now, here's So and So, if he wins this medal it will be his third gold medal in a row, bringing it home to the U.S., wow, won't that be something....."

Why will that be something?  Medal hog. How many medals does he need?  It's like he's a great big mouth, swallowing medals, year after year.....

(See how cynical I am).           (And yet- - I love the Olympics).          

Well, I don't know. Last night I cried when the Russian skaters won the gold medal.  I wanted them to win so badly.  When I was a little girl I read every book I could read about the great Bolshoi ballet and its magnificent Russian dancers. When the Russian male skater, tears flowing from his eyes, went to his knees on the ice, and threw his arms up to the sky,  it brought back to me my love of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which take up at least one large shelf inside the library in my brain, cancelling out Kruschov pounding his big black shoe and shouting out, "We will bury you!"

 So we not only have cultural responses, but individual responses which, if strong enough, can cancel out the mainstream neural imprints.

Socrates said it.  "The unexamined life is not worth living."  Do you live by your own rules or by the rules of others?   But to know what you are "living by," first you must go deep, deep down and acknowledge that dark stuff, the black moss, the stuff you don't want to know about yourself.

The Olympics is as good a place as any to begin the examination.        

                                      

                                                       The Wu Li Masters

 "This is the message of the Wu Li Masters: not to confuse the type of dance that they are dancing with the fact that they are dancing."
 

It's been a hard  two weeks, folks.  My dear friend, Ann, fell outside my home and entered Harborview's ICU and I haven't been able to get her out of my mind. But this situation has truly been a hard two weeks for Ann and for Ann's wife, Jan, who has had to endure this pain, this agony, these decisions, this experience. I have "been there"in my own way  and remember my own world of experience, but I have not been able, this time,  to enter Jan's world of experience because my own reality handed me a different card. 

Two days after Ann's fall, my grandson became suicidal after being relentlessly bullied. for two months,  at his private school in Bremerton, and I have been doing everything possible to regain balance at this school; with the boys who had been doing the (outrageously damaging) bullying, and with my grandson's psyche and soul.  The latter, of course, has taken up most of my effort and my time.  No matter how hard it might be, no matter how terrible it might be, you must plot out your own territory.

Where is the map.  Where is the territory. What are my powers. Which powers do I use. I want to mangle. I want to kill. I am filled with anger and fear, they gnaw at me, but can either of these emotions help, in this situation? Knowledge; that is what I need. 1 need help. I call my friend Jane, who was a highly successful principal of a grade school for a long, long time. First step. Use what  Jane tells me. I call the Director of my grandson's school. I talk with him for an hour. I tell him what I know, what I am willing to do. Restraining orders. Police. Let him know. Bullying is illegal. Period. Once I know what is happening I can and I will take action. This is the map. This is the territory. I will do what I can do.

I track down a new therapist for my grandson. A therapist with more strength. A therapist with more knowledge. A therapist who will guide him better, ask more of him.  "You are thirteen, we cannot force you to come here," says the therapist, to my grandson. 

 "I know this," my grandson says, "but I know it is important."

I check in with my grandson twice a day. Hi. How are you. How'z it goin'. Better.
  
To know that this is your one precious moment, your one precious life, and that, ultimately, it is up to you. To know that, as the poet says, the road is made when we walk on it.

So much is up to my grandson.  Schopenhauer asked. "Can anything happen to you for which you're not ready?" Was he speaking about children, too?  We will never know.  As a therapist whose specialty is Women And Trauma, I have heard stories of such trauma dealt to children that grown men and women would not, I believe, be able to endure for one moment, were they to know ahead of time that they were asked endure such torturous situations. The children disassociated, of course; their central and autonomic nervous systems softened things and hardened others and allowed them to keep on living.  And then they paid.

Take this.
And this.
And this.
And this.

"I know this," my grandson says, "but I know it is important".

He is right.  Awful things happen unexpectedly. You are bullied for a year. It is seemingly unbearable. You want to hit back but you, the youngest person in the school, are also the largest person in the school, and you know that if you hit anyone, you will be the one in the most trouble. So you take it. You take it. You become angrier and angrier. You eat it, like a cake.

Good things happen unexpectedly. You tell somebody. Oh, finally. This starts the ball rolling. It's your mother. She tells somebody. They get involved. Maybe you matter. Maybe you matter a lot. You didn't think you did, now you do. It doesn't matter that you are big. Reporting isn't the same as tattling. It's okay. You have a right. You can breathe.   

"In the world of symbols, everything is either this or that.  In the world of experience, there are more alternatives available. This is how it is in the world of the Wu Li Masters."
- Gary Zukav

                             Is It A Bomb Or A Bullet, And the Examination of Gaps

This past Saturday I walked into Poulsbo's WalMart, took a tour around the place as if I were a woman who knew exactly what I was doing and where I intended to do it , and finally walked up to a man wearing a name tag, and asked, "Where do you keep your bombs?"    

The man, wearing a white shirt and blue vest, took an immediate step away from me and attempted a smile. So did I. "Where we keep our bombs?" he parroted back. He appeared to be looking for Time.

"Yes," I said.  "I know you kekep them in the kitchen section, but I can't find that!"
"What kind of....um, bombs....are you looking for?" he said, his brow furrowing and his right arm motioning in what might seem to be a wave  action or a some kind of truly large tic.  Actually, he was waving to another man wearing a white shirt, a blue vest and a name tag. 

When the second man came up to us, the first man said, "Hi, Dave, this lady says she is looking for our bombs, which she thinks we keep in our kitchen section.  Do we have any kind of......well, I mean, (turning back to me) "....what do these bombs do, exactly?)

Glad to be back in the conversation, I said, "All my friends  have them. You put all kinds of stuff in them, turn them on, and in only minutes, maybe seconds, really ....boom!  Everything is liquid!  Or  mush!  I would think you would know exactly where they are!"

Dave smiled, patted Mr. First Man on the back and said, "I think she is talking about  'The Magic Bullet', Jim.  Are you sure you aren't talking about the Bullet?" he said, turning to me

Well, now. The Bullet.  The Bomb.  The Bullet.  The Bomb. Well, the Bullet certainly sounded more .....reasonable, calmer, and fast, yes, a bullet would be fast.  "I can go with that," I said.  "So where's the kitchen department?  Let's go see if we can find this Bullet."

And there, amidst blenders of all sizes and various modes of complications, was The Magic Bullet.   
"I'll take it," I said, and put it in my cart. Easy, see?   How could I have become so attached to the idea that it was called "The Bomb" in the first place? What is that about me? I'll think up a word or phrase or line from this or that, and I'll bet money on its accuracy, if need be.  There are areas in which no one in their right mind would want to bet with me, because they'd know I'd be right.  There are also those areas in my brain wherein if my friends were - - well, not my friends - - they'd be betting against me  and making money hand over fist.

It goes back to my Gaps.  

When first I entered psychotherapy at nineteen years old, suffering from the sickening, debilitating symptoms of anxiety disorder and panic disorder, I happened upon a very good doctor of psychology in Tacoma, Washington, where I was then living, with my first husband, Tom.  I couldn't drive, I could barely speak, I could fly in airplanes, I could sing on stage, but as soon as our set was over, I had to rush back into the kitchen and hold my head in my hands. Mostly, what I could do was read, which I did,  most eagerly.

And, somehow, what Dr. Raymond did, was to bring me back to Life again, to teach me how to look people in the eye, to help me find my tongue so that I could speak again, to give me stacks and stacks of old New Yorkers  and Saturday Reviews  and medical and  psychological journals to read and to give me an IQ test to prove what he already knew about me but I refused to acknowledge and, best of all, to listen to every single word I could muster about my life and ask questions and make comments and remain interested and supportive and never repulsed and never scared but always loving and  interested, even fascinated.  So that, at the end of our three years together, he said this: "I have not diagnosed you. You have no insurance and there is no need, therefore, for me to go through what I believe to be a certain type of  nonsence.  I do know you have been very sick and now you are capable of living a life of creativity and meaning and, most importantly of love. We have established the fact of your high intelligence.  But this level of intelligence does not mean you will not always have gaps. You just will.  It is my opinion you should simply accept these gaps and stay in the area of your brilliance.  Analytically, you will  always be successful..  Mechanically, directionally, you will always be quite low on the scale. Go to University but stay away from engineering. Get enough schooling under your belt that you can hire others to do the "gappy stuff".

So I brought The Bullet home, got out a banana, some strawberries, a handful of spinach, some yoghurt, chopped it all up a bit, and read the directions. In that order.  How hard could it be?  Until I noticed that the container part which held the ingredients appeared to be sitting upside down on top of the rest of the machine. Upside down. On top of the rest of the machine. How could it not spill out, while I was trying to attach the bottom--bladed-part?  But, life being somewhat magical inside the "gap part" of my mind,  I tried. I tried, like I have always tried, and what happened is what always happens, in one form or another - - fruit flying all over my kitchen,is what happened. The counter, the island in the center of my kitchen, the floor, my boots, the bottom hem of my wool skirt, and the gratitude, of course the gratitude that no one had been around to witness this travesty. Unless I had simply had the bad luck to purchase a Bad Bad Bullet.  But, of course and alas, that had not been the case.

It is never the case. It is me, it is always me, it is me and directions or me and mechanics or me and any given space like a garage or an automobile and a pole or, say,  a curb and the way my mind works. But. Give me a test  in a certain type of class,  give me several tests,  give me a masters thesis, give me a doctoral dissertation, and I will  ace it, I will cream it, I may well receive the highest score. Or.  Give me a piece of equipment which most of the populace can figure out in ten minutes and I will deck the halls with fruit and spinach.


The next day, I got up, ran downstairs, grabbed the Bullet box and a cup of coffee and sat for half an hour, reading and imaging, reading and imaging. Yes. I see. You need to turn over the extractor-ring-thing--- - you need to attach it to the bottom of your filled-jar - you need to attach it and then turn the filled-jar over AND THEN plug it in and then - -  but what makes it go?  WHAT MAKES IT GO?  There is nothing on the box that says, "And now, dear READER, here is what you do to make it GO.  TO MAKE IT GOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  To. Make. It. Go.   So there it all was, all filled, all fine and turned over and looking just like the picture on the box, but I couldn't make it go.  I plugged it but it wouldn't go. I felt all over for a button, for a place to press, for an indentation, for ANY indentation,  but....................so..........................
...........I.................unscrewed the    whole thing, poured the ingredients into a bowl, and ate them, in their original form,  with a fork.

I hated my Bullet.  I just hated it so much.  I wanted to throwthe damn thing off my deck.  I wanted to bang it down into my garage and hammer the hell out of it.  

Instead, I went down into my office and sat with the first three patients of my day.  I felt like I was supposed to feel, or at least how I have come to feel. Curious, calm, ready for anything, eager to see these people, interested, confident.  At the end of the third session my patient asked if I needed more eggs, for she is not just my patient, she is my fresh-egg deliverer, and I confessed that I can think of nothing that has anything to do  with my kitchen just now, because I have just purchased what is called "The Bullet" and, whatever the game we are playing together is called, it, The Bullet,  is winning and I am losing.

"May I come up for a moment and give you a hand?" she asked.
"Of course," I said.  I am not loathe to allow a patient of twenty-some years to give me a hand with the loathesome Bullet.  So up she came and said, "Well, tell me what problem you have having."
"Well," I said, "I don't know how to start it.  I can't find a way to make it go."
"Oh," she said, "that's easy. We don't have to put anything inside at all.  Just attach this to this, plug it in, and push."

She pushed, a motor sound began sounding, blades started running, and I knew that, if any fruit-substances were inside that glass thing, they would be being pulverized.

"Now you do it," she said to me.
I pushed.  No sound.  "Push harder," she said, kindly. "I pushed harder."  No sound.
"Give it hell!" she yelled.  I gave it hell, the motor came on, I could hear those blades a'runnin, and it sounded like heaven.

Ahhhhhhh. Now I knew. Surely I could do it, now. On my own.  She handed me a check which I should have handed back, but didn't, and all was well with the world. Or wasn't.

 So.  The next morning, that being today, I chopped up a banana, some strawberries, added some yogurt and a few rasberries, dropped them in one of the jars, took the mean-looking gray lid with the metal teeth, attached it to the top of the filled-up jar, turned the whole thing upside down, attached it all to the big holder, plugged it in, bore down hard, hard, and - vrooooooom, vrooooom.  Then I0 swept my arms up in the air in sheer triumph, whereupon the other gray lid with the other kind of metal extractor blade got knocked off the counter and slammed itself  down on top of my right bare big toe, banging me down to my bottom and making me to weep in pain for about two minutes before bringing myself back up to a standing position and sampling the contents of my mooshed-up breakfast  Magic Bullet. 

It was good enough for folk music.
 
Sometimes I fear for my heart.. 

Sometimes I think I was doomed before I was born.

Sometimes I think that to know me is to endure me.

****************************************************************************
The author Dani Shapiro once wrote, "My father has a great philosophy.  He says, "You are the same person you've always been.  That doesn't change.

    Yeah.  That's a problem."
                                                                   +

From the colored little condo where it's never too late to figure out how to live.