ANY GIVEN OR TAKEN SUNDAY

Today is Sunday; presumably the one day of the week when rest and relaxation are allowed to be plumbed guilt-free.  I mean, if someone asks you tomorrow what you did on Sunday and you respond, "Nothing really.  I slept late, read the 'Times' and pretty much just laid around all day." they wouldn't think twice or feel the least bit inclined to pass judgement.  In fact, they might well simply answer, "Me too."

However, if someone asks you on a Wednesday what you did all day on Tuesday and you gave them that same answer, they'd likely have an entirely different presumptive internal response and might assume you are either unemployed, chronically indolent, or perhaps have an issue with substance abuse.

About the only requirement on Sunday, for those vested in the ritual of prayer and reflection in a more formal setting, would be church attendance; but even that obligation usually concludes by noon at the latest leaving the rest of the day open and devoted to rest and a possible muffin, eggs over-easy and bacon at brunch.  It's all good.

We are expected to be occupied Mondays through Saturdays, and unless one of those days is legitimately our one day off from work or we are lying in a hospital bed, we'd better have a good excuse for any evidence of a laissez faire-attitude or endorsement.

Sunday is a blessed day for secular reasons, too, as it offers grace even to those not of a mind to attach any sacred or religious values to the day.  Perhaps we should view it as the space-time continuum's version of the Parker Brother's "Get-out-of-jail-free" card in Monopoly; although now that I've said it, I find the comparison between the Cosmic Designer of our galaxy and two brothers from Salem, Massachusetts (who also produced a couple of  patently racist board games in the early 1920's) extremely disturbing.  It was only the the 'free-pass' element I was intending to focus upon, just to make that completely clear.

But on Sunday we've got carte blanche and are, without exception, entitled to exercise that pass-card and escape from whatever form of physical, emotional, cerebral or psychological incarceration we are bound by the remaining six days of the week.  It is a cosmic law, I think.

If you really examine our perception and expectation of Sunday, you'd realize that just like nearly everything else we humans concoct, deconstruct, impose and abide by, it is really all in our minds.

WE are the sole creators of the concept of Sunday, and of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and all the rest of the days.  We even gave them cute little names to correspond with the celestial bodies most representational of each specific day; and those celestial bodies were, prior to that, named by the ancient Romans after the mythological gods they felt most effectively jived with the nature of the specific planetary energies.  Somewhere in between those rounds of naming, the Germanic people interjected their own linguistic spin on the names using the Nordic gods corresponding to the theme and energies of the originals but keeping the concept firmly intact.

Like everything else, God didn't construct the fine details of our world.  He gave us a template and the bones of it all and just let us go to town.  His request of us was simple and uncomplicated:  To love and honor Him first, and to love each other as we would ourselves.   It seems to me that we were the ones to conceive of the laws and rules and strictures as to how, when and why these basic tenants should be carried out and under what conditions would they be deemed acceptable and viable.

I don't think He expected us to lay around the house and love Him more on Sunday or is as petty as to remand us to everlasting hell fires if, by necessity, we had to report to work that day in order to make the rent or mortgage payments.

In fact, until the exodus of enslaved Jews from Egypt under the command of Moses, there were no recommendations or edicts from on High mandating that we set aside one day in particular to worship and give thanks; and when that came about, it was merely to signify the pact between God and the Israelites.  Unfortunately, I think they might have taken it a tad too seriously and the penalty for violating this mandate of Sabbath observance was death.

Of course, the Sabbath Day was on the seventh day; Saturday.  Once Christ came and delivered the 'New Testament', there was no further mention of any specific day of religious observance.  Basically, it comes down to each man, as it says in Romans 14:5-6  "One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike.  Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind."

There it goes; back in our court again.

We lay so much unnecessary guilt upon our psychologies.  We are the ones who felt compelled to bend, twist, designate and carve up time within our linear parameters and call it organization.  But as the great sophist philosopher, Antiphon, said, "Nature is envisaged as requiring spontaneity and freedom in contrast to the often gratuitous restrictions imposed by institutions."  He also said, "Time is not a reality but a concept as a measure."

So, we gave ourselves days of the week with attributes and corresponding duties, which, in turn provided us with just that much more reason to fret if we fail to conform and comply.  Friday night is 'pizza night' or 'date night'; Saturday you play, go to the park with your dog and a Frisbee, clean the yard, go to the mall; Sunday you attend religious services, rest and relax (or if you're Italian, you have every family member within a fifty-mile radius over for a pasta dinner); Monday, you get back to the grind...etc., etc..  We even gave ourselves a modest, mid-week reprieve designating Wednesday as "hump-day", which basically declared it a non-day.  Poor Wednesday; overlooked like a middle child.

Frankly, I find the whole structural mess we've made to be a bit stultifying, even though I am also well aware of the need for a certain sense of order in the world.  I just wish we'd put more emphasis on our Internal order and less on what day of the week we decide is laundry day or errand day or the designated day for worship and rest.

Why can't everyday be UNCONDITIONAL LOVE WITH ALL OF MY HEART DAY?

Thomas Chalmers had the right idea when in the mid-1800's he said, "We redeem time and do not merely use it.  We transform it into eternity by living it right."

But the ultimate characterization of time still comes from Ford Perfect in Douglas Adams' book and screenplay, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY:


"TIME IS AN ILLUSION, LUNCHTIME DOUBLY SO."


With that in mind, have a great day!

BIRD ON A HARDWIRE OF INATTENTION...Among Other Thoughts

Seventeen years ago when my son was only ten, his basketball coach recognized certain impulsive behavioral characteristics in him that were consistent with those of his own son who had recently been diagnosed with ADHD.

Being a very kind man,  the coach suggested to us that we take our son to a group of psychiatrists and therapists in the adjoining town who specialized in this area.  Being responsible and loving parents (also a hair's breadth away from exhaustion ourselves due to our son's utter in-exhaustion), we readily and immediately complied.

I remember this day well because I ended up heavily implicated as the sole contributor to his genetic misfortune, and I wasn't sure whether I was at all prepared to add yet another square of maternal guilt to the substantially dense guilt-quilt I was already in the process of manufacturing.

Unfortunately, I owned that large square with the small blue dots and purple stars.... well, not actually purple; more of a soft lilac color with little rings of gold that were stripped with crimson red but not the bright shade like you see on fire trucks although some fire trucks are a deeper shade of red than others but at least the firemen can be distinguished by their odd hats, although I wonder if they are expensive and whether they have to cover the cost themselves or do they get the hats when they graduate from fireman school, but I don't suppose they call it "Fireman School" because it sounds pretty ridiculous but ....oh!...  Look at that bird!

Did I mention the background was teal?

The first question the doctor posed to my husband and I was, "Which one of YOU has A.D.D.?"

He looked first at my husband who had on his lap the requisite index cards he carries with him religiously every single day listing all of his upcoming and pressing activities, phone calls needed to be made, items to be picked up at the grocery store, bills to be paid, as well as his datebook, and his teacher's planner.  His shoes were shined (a thrice-yearly ritual), and his attention was focused.

Then all eyes turned to me.  I didn't notice at first having moments earlier become quite captivated by a painting above the sofa as I was bending down to tie my shoes (after realizing I had forgotten) because that painting had such a peaceful cast to it it set me to wondering if that sofa was the one his patients would lie on to relate their dreams and sorrows, and how many various textures of both skin and material must have made contact with that fabric but did they have a satisfactory vantage point when reclining to benefit from the tranquil nature of that beautiful painting or were they probably in SO much pain that their eyes were shuttered from any tactile forms of consolation and it might just make them too tired to speak anyhow, which would defeat the purpose of all the money they were shelling out to visit a shrink, and I wonder just HOW much money the doctor actually takes home versus the insurance companies and does he use it to take elaborate vacations, and I wonder if he loves his wife and....oh!....Look at that bird!

The following Tuesday evening I found myself sitting in a circle of women all having psychological issues of one sort or another after having been unanimously fingered as both the culprit in this hereditary misfiring, as well as possibly in need of a healthy dose of behavior modification myself.

I was not happy.

Before the session began, the therapist and moderator suggested we go around the room and have everyone state their name and give a brief statement about why they were there, etc..  As long as I went last, I could handle that.

We began with the woman on my immediate left; a frail slip of a thing about thirty-two years old with thin, mousey brown hair.  She gave her name and in a voice barely above a whisper said that she was there because of an eating disorder created as a result of issues revolving around something of a non-sexual nature that happened between herself and an uncle once when she was twelve.  She lived alone and was thinking of getting a cat.  She had been coming to this group for ten years.

Next in line was a stout, matronly-looking gal in her early sixties who had been having difficulty asserting herself in her marriage to a man with a large appetite for other woman but little regard for the one who bore his children and picked up his laundry at the cleaners for the past thirty years.  She would be at one moment smiling and releasing an abnormally tinned and staccato-paced laugh, then the next be glassy-eyed and folded over unleashing a desperately hollow but positively subterranean bellow of moans and sobs such as paid keeners at an Irish Wake could only hope to imitate.  She had been in therapy with this group for twelve years.

And as the tales were told one by one, I couldn't help noticing two stark, recurrent facts:

The first being that entirely without exception not one of these women acknowledged or inserted any sense of ownership for their present situations.   They each described their specific situations and issues lacing their words with syllables of defeat as though they were nothing more than the ragged human refuse washed up upon the shore by an indifferent and unkind tide and without aptitude nor inclination to learn how to swim nor walk.

The second blatant commonality were the sheer number of years these women had independently and collectively devoted to this roundtable of battered hearts with their varying levels of indulgent self-pity as well as with an intractable reluctance to let go of the past and grow some cojones!

  This was a progesterone-catered pity party with dainty finger sandwiches of victimization served with estrogen punch spiked with tears.

By the time the circle had moaned its way to me, I was already hungover from drinking too much whine, and somewhat unnerved at the professional impertinence of the therapist who, after I stated my name, that I had three kids and the fact that I was married, quietly interjected, "But she shouldn't be."

It was then I understood that there was an accepted, albeit silent, collusion between these women and the therapist, who, however well intentioned, was unwittingly enabling the feelings of victimization to thrive within them to a certain extent and it was also quite likely one of the reasons why the tenure in this co-dependent klatch of sniveling womb-holders was so radically over-extended.

So, when I was asked if I had any questions, the only one that came to mind was, "Does anyone ever graduate from here?"

For a moment there was silence at our psychogenetic soiree, then some muffled coughing errupted in the far corner of the dimly lit room, which shifted the focus once more to the cowering domestic keener who had yet to stop blubbering and whose hubby was probably out getting laid at that very moment; only at this point, he had my total sympathies.

Out of devotion and in deference to obtaining clean psychological passage for my son, I attended these dark, group sessions for several of months and was even game to play a little one-on-one.  Yet in the back of my mind was the clear understanding that for me this was little more than an exploratory adventure, as it  it seemed that was inadvertently designed to break down autonomy and foster dependency through mutual consent, which was about as distant from my vision of authenticity and definition of empowerment as it could possibly be.

 I decided to find purpose in my deficit of attention and use it to my best advantage, which should be true of all who suffer with the supposed disorder.  I also opted for the belief that the best change agent we can hire is ourselves; and while I don't argue the fact that, of course, there are legitimate disorders, dysfunctions, phobias and psychological conditions that require professional assistance to manage and/or conquer, there are equally as many, if not more, challenging physiological and psychological states that can easily be mastered and navigated with just a little help and a lot of determination.

Yes, my mind wanders incessantly and I find it to sometimes be a nuisance.  But most of the time, I find it takes me to shores of thought I never would have discovered if it were not in my natural wiring to let myself travel down that current of ideas and explorations.

I think of stories to write while on that damned elliptical and paintings to paint while vacuuming and all manner of things to build and design and concoct while driving the car or preparing a meal or standing in the shower.  So what if I forget to shampoo my hair or burn the occasional chicken?

I'm harvesting all the random blossoms of miraculous, creative grace and putting them into form to share with whomever is inclined to sit under my tree in whatever the season; although it could get a little chilly in the fall and I wouldn't suggest a visit in winter because the snowfall index has been quite high the past couple of winters, but autumn would be fine if you wore a sweater; which reminds me of the one I wore to the Fourth of July fireworks at Winged Foot when I was seven because it was white with these tiny mother of pearl buttons and always made me wonder how they got those pearls out of those oysters....or are they clams; and oh how I loved going clam digging in summer in Shinnecock Bay out on Long Island in Quogue; but summer, of course, is always favorable unless it happens to be a rainy day in which case you'd need to.....oh!.....Look at that bird!

FIT TO LIVE

Forget what I said a couple of entries ago about my thumb being on the mend.  I was misled by the visual.  However, after a visit to the doctor yesterday, two courses of antibiotics and a Tetanus shot, I'm good.

Damn dog.

Some lessons take longer to learn and some realities are harder to fully recognize, I suppose.  I am only surprised because I am old enough to be more savvy and to have evolved well beyond this point.

 I should know better than to have labored under the constraints living with an unpredictable dog demand, entertained disingenuous people calling it friendship and believe now that by enduring exceedingly long hours punishing my body on that damned elliptical I am going to somehow preserve or restore my youth when in reality, it is going to get me in the end.  I will never again be twenty-eight or thirty, but my knees and joints will eventually wear out, if I don't exercise some restraint instead of reckless abandon.

A 'happy medium' is in order.

Yesterday I did make some strides in that department by taking myself to the doctor for my thumb, thereby recognizing I, indeed, had a problem; and by getting up early to meet my friend, Shelley, at the park for a walk.  Not only did my body appreciate the change of pace from that machine of torture upstairs, but I realized a whole different set of muscles were being engaged when walking briskly and that I was taking some slack off my knees and thighs as well as amping up those muscles in my derriere.   Who, at any age, couldn't use a tighter ass?

But the question should really be, "Why do I care?"

Being healthy is all well and good, but the rest seems only relevant and achievable when you neither care about it as much or need it at all.  Think about it.  How many hours did you spend on treadmills or ellipticals  or engaged in other toning, ab-chasing exercises when you were in your prime?  How about, NONE!

I know I didn't.

And the real irony is that at the ages and stages of life when we are naturally fit, resilient, outwardly fresh, toned and strong and can most readily and easily handle these grueling tortures in our quest for enduring physical attractiveness,  we don't need to!

 We only need to once we are at the point when the external elements of feature and form are becoming lax; where torn ligaments, sprained muscles, and damaged joints are most likely to occur without a whole lot of provocation, and when the possibility of actually achieving the restoration and rejuvenation of our former glory is.....well, impossible!

But it makes us temporarily feel better about being older when we can still run faster, jump higher and leap tall buildings in a single bound in comparison to our aging competition; not to forget the inevitable comparisons externally.  It seems only the brave and the inspired who willingly embrace gray when bottled blonde or brunette are so readily accessible;  to embrace baldness or drooping eyelids when hair transplants and brow lifts are possible or to wear those fine lines and wrinkles when botox and other procedures are available?

The sad element to our collective compulsion to hold onto our youth, aside from the obvious, freakish appearances of those who can no longer recognize the difference between a naturally youthful face from that of an inflated, pulled-back look as though your face has been frozen at the point of descent on a really, really steep roller coaster, is that by doing so, we become more imprisoned by the limitations of this world than ever before.

There is something incredibly and profoundly liberating when you reach mid-life and make the choice to fully BE and to accept who you are and at what stage you are without reserve and with excitement.  At no other point in life do we really have it all quite as generously as we do in our middle years.

When we are very young, we are busy growing up.  When we are moderately young, we are busy raising families or careers.  When we are elderly, we are busy processing and reflecting and preparing to bring things to a close.

But right now, smack dab in the middle, we are privileged to indulge both ends of the spectrum.  Generally, our kids, if we have any, are at ages of self-sufficiency to a large degree, we still have a lot of energy and stamina, our minds are sharp and our experience, long.  These are all good things, and if recognized and heeded, can lead to a wisdom and a freedom so profound we'll never want to look back.

If you put any faith at all into the idea that there is a deliberate design in and a much larger purpose for the process of aging, you have to conclude that the only logical explanation would be to attempt to inform us of the power inherent in letting go of the ways of this earth and to organically but forcefully instruct us to begin putting the energies and accumulated wisdom we've gathered from our earthly tenure into the ways of the spirit and all the transcendency that exists from the point of heart and beyond.

The shift of emphasis would go from our forms to forgiveness, our abs to absolution, our Body Mass Index to Being More Illuminated; and the muscle we would exercise the most would be our heart.  At that point I think we'd be of much more value and service to our younger counterparts and the entire planet as compassionate mentors for them rather than competitive agents against them.  We are designed to lose at the latter anyway.


Obviously, I'm not advocating sloth.  I think it is important to remain active and conscious of how we walk through the world making sure to do so with grace and compassion as well as in the best possible health.  However, whatever beauty exists within the qualities of grace and compassion has far and away a more enduring power to beguile and transform than any toned bicep or lifted jowl.

That being said, I don't plan on foregoing my ongoing exercise routine.  As I have alluded to before,  my time on that damned elliptical is as much a time to plumb the depths of my soul and my imagination as it is to push to the limits my ripened bones; and my personal issue has to do with staying focused enough on what I am doing so as not to remain in a state of heightened movement too long and to the point of injury.  I daydream to a nearly unfathomable degree.

But I've tried not to let the declivitous effects of time on my face and form undermine my confidence and overwhelm my thoughts.  Some days it is definitely harder than on others.  And there is always this lame and underlying concern that those who knew me before the ravages of time had made their mark, will be disappointed in the mature version and will not give me the chance to restore my faded image with the internal and heart-funded version I've been working so diligently these fifty-four years to cultivate and feature. That they will just say, "God!  What happened to her?  She didn't hold up very well!" and stop there.

I guess it is my hyper-awareness of what is important and impressive to most people that causes me to react to the restrictive conditioning, which puts more emphasis on the least important aspect of ourselves; how we appear.   I don't want to care, but I do.  I care about how I am perceived, and I make internal calls based on the initial appearance of others.

Happily, I've gotten to the point where I quickly shut those perceptions down and immediately open up other channels when meeting someone for the first time or assessing someone I've known.  But it took a long time to get there.

Sometimes I wish we were all just floating bubbles or formless wisps taking each other in by essence alone.  It would eliminate so many of our misguided impressions and unfounded prejudices and expedite our journey towards enlightenment and our return to embracing love alone.

And the best thing would be that I could finally get rid of that damned elliptical.

LETTING GO OF THE WHEEL

What is it about the principle of letting go that is so difficult for most of us to engage?  You would think that laying back and riding out the waves of life in compliant, complacent abandon would be just about as easy an approach as anyone could take.  It would be the existential equivalent of a salted, tanned and healthy surfer dude only with less skin damage and more natural introspection.

Today I am very unfocused and adrift without an agenda; but the urge to write is pressing leading me to understand that should I choose to yield to the latter activity, I had better have full confidence in my ability to successfully operate under the conditions of the former.

I don't always, of course, which again gets back to that whole principle of letting go.

Before I ever began this creative writing experiment in the blogosphere (still to this present moment having NO idea of either what a blog actually is, where it goes or who gives a damn), I held as one of the main tenants and esoteric substructures within my eclectic belief system, the idea that beneath our obvious dialogue with ego and id lies the much more powerful and profound connection with The Divine; and that if given half a chance it would lead us all back to our angelic roots and celestial family of origin as well as to the concise and perfect fulfillment of our ultimate purpose for being.

I have been fortunate enough to witness many times in my life verifiable evidence of this radical truth, and I am sure almost anyone else who has worked to become a vigilant observer of self can also attest to similar revelations.

However, it has been an unexpected but pleasantly obvious fact that this same principle of gently subduing the ego and yielding to The Divine has practical and profound implications even in something as ostensibly meaningless, random and patently narcissistic as writing a blog.

At it's earliest inception, this particular blog was supposed to have had one aim:  To attract readers who would eventually navigate their way to the Website that I was in the process of building with Johnny Asia, my webgod.  It was to be a minor adjunct to a major enterprise, that being my artwork.  And so in those first couple of entries I struggled to conceive and subsequently develop a theme for each.

I mean, I really sat down and thought about available subject matter and whether I knew enough to craft a sort of shallow and somewhat entertaining thesis about whatever final topic was selected.  The whole thing terrified me especially when I was forced to come eye-level with the reality that I don't really know a lot about too much that is either educationally enlightening, esoterically uplifting or philosophically provocative.

But even in the face of that apprehension I knew one thing without question:  I wanted to keep on writing.  I HAD to keep on writing.

That is when I realized that the only way this passion would find expression would be if I just LET GO.
I'm not talking about the kind of letting go I have referred to before where you are letting go of a response to something taxing or otherwise unpleasant.  I'm talking about the whole enchilada version of letting go.  The version that plants you firmly in the hands of God, the universe, the Holy Spirit,  angelic choirs, spirit guides, creative forces or all of the above without reservation, pretension or any overriding agenda or intent.


Wanna talk about scary?

Yet I was willing to give it a shot because, as I stated, I am simply not smart enough to contain my thoughts to only those few brilliant themes, principles and philosophies I've read about in books, and my blogging enterprise would hasten to a short and pathetic end long before I'd succeeded in my initial goal for recognition and to lead an eventual clientele to my website.

If nothing else, operating under the liberal reigns of unlimited restraint has bought me some more time.

Some might suggest that is ALL it has bought me.

But at the very least I've been able to watch the magic of serendipity and improvisation collide in nearly every post as it spontaneously erupts from my soul.  From the first sentence to closing I have little idea where I am going or why, yet by the time I finish, there before me is a coherent, cohesive and (usually) beautifully laid-out essay that almost looks as though it sprang from a detailed outline crafted the night before.  Given my limited abilities, I find this nothing short of a literary miracle and a profound grace.
My gratitude is immense.

What is more, in all but a few entries I have been able to illustrate each post with just the right drawing or painting or, as in the case of my son's story, the perfect photograph to enliven the text with visuals and color.   Many of these drawings were done years earlier and without the remotest idea that they would one day be utilized in this way, and I don't know until the post is complete what visual example I even have available to use.  But I always find one.

Of course, this can't continue indefinitely because I don't have an unlimited supply of artwork to accommodate what I hope will be a long compositional affair.  But for now it has been an encouraging and unexpected convergence of word and image so perfectly appropriate that it could have come only from a source much greater than the one between my ears.

I may never know why I am so drawn to language and communication and the development of each as they can be shared in this vast, vague and abstract venue of cyberspace, but that is alright.  If I'm going to let go, I am going to LET GO.  The whole object of faith is to be committed to the process without any assurances as to the purpose or the plan.  We all know we have one.  Usually multiples of them.

But there is something kind of exciting about navigating the linguistic hairpin turns and curves at break-neck speeds, half blinded by the glare from the rising sun of consciousness above the dashboard of mundane consideration.  You know that at some point if you are true enough to the moment and allow the acceleration of thought to drive you faster into and around the next bend, you just might find yourself  involved in a spectacular crash with no survivors.

In the past such collisions have been given names:  Don Quioxte, Catcher In The Rye, Grapes Of Wrath, A Farewell To Arms, Moby Dick, One Hundred Years Of Solitude and War And Peace, to name a scant portion.

Obviously, I don't presume to have anywhere near the sacred and creative genius of those mentioned and I can only aspire to such a colossal death in my dreams.   Yet no matter how illogical my compulsion and in spite of the brutal odds against it, I simply cannot ignore my crazed drive to keep on the road, lay off the brakes and just LET GO.


And if I run out of gas, I'll walk.