On Turning 60

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The Mystic Chords of Memory

I’m a miserable failure at nanowrimo. By today, I should have written 8000 words. But four days into nanowrimo I have no idea how many words I have written, but it doesn’t even come close to 8000.

happy frog

Frog reacting to the number of words I have written for nanowrimo

I settled yesterday for taking Ernest Hemingway’s advice: write until you’re ready to write tomorrow. That’s where I ended up yesterday; with a character showing up in a way I didn’t expect. And now I have to listen to him to find out why he did that.

That’s what will move the story forward for me.

I have tremendous respect for anyone who can do nanowrimo. I don’t have a clue how they can.

But here’s what committing to nanowrimo did for me: it got me to commit to commit.

I haven’t blogged for a while. As those of you who have been following my blog might know, I have spent the last several months rewriting my story. Not the one that will be published, but the story that I want to live.

autumn light2I had a flurry of blogs during that time. Epiphany followed epiphany; it was easy to write. But epiphanies fall all over themselves during a time of change. Eventually, things calm down. Change happens, and daily life becomes more – well daily. That means that the change has taken effect – and it’s time to integrate it.

For me, that means start living the new story.

I heard the phrase “mystic chords of memory,” as “mystic cords of memory.” Thought that it meant the things that hold you to your past – as if they were tentacles. But chords are much different. They do not hold you to your past so much as give it texture. path autumn light

When I hear Crosby, Stills, and Nash I am transported to the place in myself that felt the music when I first heard it close to forty years ago.

When I hear Mahler’s second (I’m listening to it now), I just get transported to a timeless experience of being human, of being resurrected after a period of loss and grief.

Resurrection is a difficult time for me. To rewrite my story, I had to experience a lot of grief. Grief over loss of what I hoped would be; grief over the death of parents and friends; grief over losing family members who were not willing to be with me in my new story, even though the old one was destructive for me. We want to think that family wants the best for us, but sometimes what family wants is for things to stay the same, for everyone to keep their place, regardless of the damage it may cause the spirit.

chairSuch can be the price of change – learning that those you love, might not have a heart large enough to include you.

As painful as grief is, what is equally hard for me is being willing to step back into my life knowing that I will no doubt experience grief again. Knowing that loss is a part of life and that I have to be willing to grab hold as if life will last forever, and then let go when life shows me that its definition of forever is more subtle than mine.

And so, yesterday, when I realized that I was not going to come close to meeting the goals of nanowrimo, I had to look at what I was doing with my new story. Writing it isn’t enough. I have to live it now.

I said I was a miserable failure at nanowrimo. I actually think I’m a cheerful failure at it. I probably won’t reach the 50,000 word goal this month. But, I am using nanowrimo to focus. Focus on getting the first draft of my novel done.

And that is how I am living my new story. I’m committing to committing. I’m committing to letting go of the mystic cords of memory that tethered me to my past, and instead paying attention to the mystic chords of memory – knowing that they provide texture to my life, and that by letting go, the better angels of my nature will touch those chords – and from them will arise a chorus as life-affirming as that in Mahler’s resurrection symphony.

Note: The reference to mystic chords of memory comes from the last paragraph of Lincoln’s second inaugural address: “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will, by the better angels of our nature.”

Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin – pay attention.

And for you who are up to the task – Go nanowrimoers, go!

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Mature Women Wanted

Mature Women Wanted
Link posted on Craigslist, Gigs:Talent

So I’ve been wondering how to market myself and there it was on Craigslist: Mature Women Wanted.

Could it be more clear?

There’s a new book out titled Too Big to Fail that documents the bailouts last year that brought our economy back from the precipice. I believe the bailouts did indeed bring us back from the precipice.

But . . .

We, in the form of the powers that be (not even sure who they are at this point), didn’t learn the lesson. Or at least didn’t ask the right question: How did we get to the precipice in what seemed like overnight?

Bailing out a drunk, drug addict, or gambling addict, because they are too big to fail just sets them loose to get drunk, use drugs, or gamble another day and they always end up at the precipice once again – and expect someone else to rescue them.

Oh, and along the way they gobble up the money, so when it comes time to pay for necessities (oh, like health care, food, shelter, education), there isn’t any left.

We need a new economic system. That was Michael Moore’s point in Capitalism, a Love Story.

The fall of the Berlin Wall signaled the failures of communism. Twenty years later, the fall of Wall Street signaled the failures of capitalism.

We might not need to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but, we definitely need to identify the failures of capitalism. I think its biggest failure has been its denial of interdependence.

If you’re too big to fail, than you are dependent on those who are smaller than you to prop you up. Which means you really aren’t that big or productive; you’re just all puffed up. And like George Amberson Minafer, you need to receive your comeuppance in order to mature.

I’ve seen a version of this dysfunction play out with a friend of mine who has been battling the local school district to advocate for her autistic daughter.

The local school district has a one-size-fits-all approach to autism, which seems to be built on the premise that autism is a disease that should be approached much like leprosy was in Biblical times.

The autism class in Livermore comprises thirteen students from the ages of 5 to 9 – kindergarten to third grade. Try putting “normally” functioning children into this situation and you would have problems.

But when you compound that with the different brain wiring of children with autism, you get a train wreck – or to be poetic – a cluster fuck. The special needs of these children, such as sensory needs, are treated as inconvenience for the autism class. If a child’s unique sensory needs are not met, he or she is punished for the resulting behavior.

For you and me, it would be as if someone had locked us in a windowless room for 3 days, turned on a light, cranked up the heaviest metal music they could find, and left the light burning and the music blaring for the entire seventy-two hours –– then accused us of being an animal because we reacted to the lack of sleep and sensory overload.

Frankly, I don’t think any of the students fit the size. But my friend’s daughter definitely doesn’t, and instead of trying to meet her needs, they have labeled her as a wild rabid animal.

I see these two issues – enabling the greediness of the too-big-to-fail – and my local school district’s philosophy about autism – as symptoms of the same thing:

Fear of compassion and failure of imagination.

Compassion means the willingness to bear suffering – to feel what it is to be in the skin of the other who is suffering.

Imagination – well, as John Lennon pointed out, we don’t fly across the country because of the Wright brothers, we fly because for generations humankind imagined what it would be like to fly.

Fierce individualism is an American trait. It has its value. But the truth is we are interdependent. We are born alone and we die alone, but in between we rely on the tribe of humankind and the earth, its inhabitants and the ecosystem to live and thrive.

So we need a new paradigm and with it a new economic system – one that values imagination and compassion and recognizes interdependence.

Mature women definitely needed here.

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The Natural Sweetness of Life

Forgiveness is giving up all hope that the past could have been any different.
Either a direct quote from or a paraphrase of something really smart Anne Lamott wrote.

I’ve experienced a lot of disappointment over the past few months.

Hope by hope, I’ve had to let go. Not the hope for the future. But the hope that I could change the past.

That’s a bitter pill to swallow; accepting that the past could not have been any different. I think I finally understand that phrase – it’s a bitter pill to swallow. It doesn’t have anything to do with holding on to bitterness. It’s really about digesting it. Feeling the pain of disappointment at how things were, instead of how they could have been — if only. If only we all knew then what we know now.

But, of course, we didn’t know it then. And the only way that we can truly know it now is to forgive ourselves for not knowing before we could know it.

So I forgave myself for the number of times I strived for acceptance without really owning what I wanted to be accepted for. For being a child who wanted to be loved.

A door closed. And as is the case, another door opened – onto a blank page. And every writer knows how scary that can be – the blank page. In my morning pages I wrote, “What do I do next?”

Then I drew these three cards this morning from the Animal Wise Tarot deck:

Wolf: Intuitive guidance and guardianship

Beaver: Working for our dreams

Bear: Heeding inner voice and cycles

There was the answer to my question. Trust my own guidance and be willing to apply my efforts to what I imagine, not what I imagine someone wants me to do.

And here’s my favorite from today, the Bear card:

All bears have a fondness for honey, a symbol of the natural sweetness of life. When bear wanders in, it is a reminder that our innate potentials are awakening, but only by bringing them out in a new rhythm will we taste the honey of life.”

Here’s to today and the future, the bitter with the sweet.

May the past rest in peace.

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Applying our Hearts Unto Wisdom

Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
Moses, maybe

When last I blogged, I decided to work on my howl. Howling to find my pack.

Perhaps because of that, a friend who Tom and I last saw years ago (as in over 40), came to dinner. He was in town for a high school reunion. Kelly was a part of the group called Auxiliary Players – a group comprising audacious high school and home-for-the-summer college students – that produced plays and performances during the summer.

Our friend Jim joined us. Tom has known Jim since they were both in the seventh grade. I’ve known him as long probably; his mom was my mom’s best friend. They played bridge together for more than 40 years. Marge sorely misses my mom. They were the only liberals in their bridge group.

The conversation turned to memories of high school and what they have done since. There were no stories of missed field goals, favorite cars, or even girls that got away. Instead they talked about music – and how their experience in high school nourished them as musicians.

At one point, Tom put on the CD recording of Psalm 90, a psalm that he set to music when he was nineteen. The recording was of the 1969 a cappella choir’s performance – a high school a cappella choir.

Tom set Psalm 90 to music after hearing it recited over the graves of four students – eighteen-year old boys – who had been killed in a dorm fire set by a disturbed resident. For Tom, I think the most important verse is the one that reads “ . . . establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”

Let our lives matter.

His mentor, the high school music teacher, asked the choir in September if they were up to the choral piece – a fairly complex piece of music (anyone who knows Tom’s music knows of what I speak). Kelly told us that he thought if Tom wrote it, it would be okay. The choir worked on it through the year and performed it for their Spring concert.

As we listened to the recording, Tom heard the voice of a friend of his who died fifteen years ago of brain cancer. Kelly reminded him that the friend he had visited a day earlier was in the choir as well – a friend who is desperately ill with cancer and is not likely to live much longer. He asked for a copy of it so he could share it with his friend on his next visit, scheduled in two days.

The next time we saw Kelly, he had just returned from visiting his friend. Midway through the recording, Kelly said, his friend broke down in tears.

And I understood that this was my tribe.

People who transform and are transformed. These are not tiny-hearted men. They are men with enormous hearts. Men who had the courage as adolescents to follow the call of their creative souls and now, with the fragility of life staring them in the face, speak with a wisdom of the heart that had its seed in adolescence.

For me, the verse that resonates is the one I quoted at the beginning of this blog, “ . . . teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

For me, that means being willing to experience life through a mortal body. To be willing to own what being alive means to me, and not shrink from either the joy or sorrow that might bring.

To honor my spirit.

To howl.

Note: The verses that precede my favorite one talk a lot about god’s wrath. I’m not big on that. But given who wrote these verses (Moses, maybe, then translated into English during the time of Shakespeare, by people who think monothesitcally) I think that the point is if you really want to piss off god, waste your life by not living it.

And on another note: I’ll see if I can post the recording of Psalm 90. Stay tuned.