Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Agnes Varda was an amazing filmmaker.  Her last film, "Faces Places" was delightful, playful and full of what makes us older gals interesting:  collaborating with and understanding youth (she worked with the artist JR on this film), letting her own buoyant nature bubble up with playfulness, her ability to engage with all kinds of people, and her self exposure as the director.  You come out of the movie smiling.  Her half gray half magenta hair tops a body short and chubby and solid.  This woman is grounded.  Of course she could relate to the blue collar workers she highlights in this film.  Her empathy and openness are refreshing.  You trust her.  She had an extraordinary life, and influenced many artists.  She lived long and prospered.  She was becoming more and more famous each year.  And she did it all her way.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I wait and wait for a new book from the mystery writer Harlan Coben.  Finally his latest came out this month and I devoured it.  "Run Away" is another domestic mystery which features ordinary people, put in extraordinary situations.  I always love the protagonist, in this case a father of three in Manhattan, and his tugs and pulls mirror mine.  My favorite Coben books are with the protagonist Myron Bolitar, a NBA basketball star whose knee is injured enough he cannot play any longer and he becomes a sports agent.  His goofy staff and weird best friend and adorable parents only prove his likeableness, and the mystery part is first rate.  This new novel involves a teenage daughter who suddenly drops out of college and becomes a drug addict.  The why and how of that transformation drives the plot, as her parents struggle to make life normal for the younger two kids while searching for her and attempting to get her out of the life in which she's drowning.  The book is filled with heart and at the center is her dad, who cannot give up on her.  He enters upon a strange set of circumstances, and the twists just keep on coming.  I needed this distraction this week, as we wait to hear about our daughter's MRI.  Come to think of it, now, this minute, I get why this was the perfect book:  parents worried about their daughter.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm feeling like all my friends right now have heavy loads to bear:  elderly parents, family dying, health issues of their own, and coming to grips with the aging process in themselves.  My gratitude journal last night had a prompt that asked me when was the last time a person met a need of mine unasked, and I struggled to come up with something.  When I did, it was something my younger son had offered to help me with three months ago.  I was a bit stunned, then realized my friends have so much on their plate, and are so weary from the demands of their families and personal situations that they don't have the "juice" to offer unasked.  And I am the same.  That flame is really low right now.  I'm glad I volunteered to help with a foundation that serves youth, but my friend had to ask me, I did not offer unasked.  This is not who I want to be, so now that I'm conscious of it, I'm going to make the effort to offer help to my friends and family by noticing, really noticing their needs.  Not big stuff, necessarily, but the help that shows I'm aware of them and their struggles.  I need to wake up a bit more.  There is one friend I offer help unasked, and that is because she does the same for me.  We are currently attuned.  She usually doesn't accept, but she knows I'm ready and willing.  Now I want to extend that openheartedness to the rest of my world.  Being careful not to do so much I drain myself.  It's a fine balance.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm exhausted, but in that mellow, dippy, happy way.  We returned yesterday from our anniversary weekend away with our entire family.  Yesterday afternoon we put our older daughter and granddaughter on the plane back to their home.  We saw Captain Marvel and stuffed ourselves with popcorn.  Though we were without a phone at home last week, we managed to have them reconnect us right as the plane was landing for us to pick up our daughter and granddaughter, and we went to the Monet exhibit that afternoon, then saw our younger son for dinner that night.  The next morning our younger grandson was dropped off early, and we all headed to the California exhibit at the zoo, then had lunch and drove in the rain to our getaway destination.  All twelve of us had a great celebratory meal that night, and the next day we lounged and swam at the mineral hot springs pool, then had another meal at a different Inn that night.  The next day we swam in the morning, packed up, ate at a bistro, then drove to the petrified forest and had a lovely hike and lots of two and three year old bungling as well, then we all headed back here.  I bought petrified polished stone hearts for the three grandchildren.  It seemed the perfect gift.  My heart is very full with the blessings of my dear family.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My younger son and his wife texted us last night asking for family names of males.  They had already gotten the names of her family.  It was kind of fun looking up my family tree again, and as my mother was one of thirteen children, it brought up a lot of memories.  I have many uncles, and I included the grandfathers.  If I'd listed male cousins it would have been a epic account, but since I'm mainly close to one male cousin and one female cousin, and the rest are vague memories, I didn't burden them with a mountain of names.  Many of the cousins are named after their fathers, so it might not have been as varied as possible.  But remembering the faces of favorite uncles, some of whom are dead, really brought up warm memories, and one uncle and cousin had a name I really love.  But I didn't editorialize.  Let them see if anything appeals.  It's really interesting to me what my kids name their kids, and I stay out of the selection.  My mother wanted me to name my younger daughter after her mother, but it was also my husband's mother's name, and he had a troubled history with her.  I now regret not giving her at least that name as a middle name, because we gave our younger son my dad's name as a middle name.  Actually, my real regret is I didn't give our daughter MY mother's name, as I've always loved it.  Either her first or middle is lovely.  Instead her middle name is from a friend I haven't seen in two decades.  Oh, dear.  Life does play jokes on us.  When my daughter married, she took her husband's last name and made her maiden last name her middle name.  So she efficiently got rid of the lost friend.  There you go!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had a lovely day yesterday, attending my daughter-in-law's baby shower with my daughter and other daughter-in-law.  The mother-to-be looked beautiful and so very happy.  Then I played with my two grandsons for a couple of hours at my daughter's house.  I came home and read until we went to our dear friends' newly renovated house for dinner.  We hadn't gotten together in a while, and it was great to catch up.  It was a day of connection.  In between, my older son, his wife and our older grandson went to my favorite bookstore, seven houses away, and we each picked out a fairy series for the grandson, as he is very big on fairies these days.  He went home with three sets of seven books.  I did this with my granddaughter and foster granddaughter, so its my tradition, and last year we had a scare that the bookstore would close, but neighbors invested in it to keep it open.  It's a mystery/scifi/fantasy bookstore, with a huge inflatable dragon out front.  Inside is chaos, but cosy, with books spilling from everywhere and stacked on the floors.  You have to go up narrow stairs to the second floor to get to the children's books, but the owner has everything you can imagine and didn't know was ever written.  We got down on our bellies to find the fairy shelf, and there were many complete sets just on that topic.  It's a magical mystery tour, that bookstore, and I treasure it.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Well, the black blanket may be gone, but I wonder if it forecast the terrible tragedy in New Zealand.  I have relatives there, though not in Christchurch, and since I married a Muslim in 1965, and though we are long divorced and he died decades ago, I keep connected with my Muslim relatives, especially the ones where I live, and I feel devastated for them.  When I married my first husband, no one blinked twice at his Muslim heritage, including my parents.  They never once spoke to me about it, and when they visited us in Fiji they also saw many of our family there, without prejudice or any mark of judgment.  But after 9/11 and other events, people have confused terrorists with ordinary Muslims from all nations, who have no agenda and no quarrel with others.  My Fiji relatives immigrated here to escape persecution there, and now, ironically, they are nervous here as well.  Because they are labeled with a cause they do not represent, and because they practice their religion.  When I married the first time, I loved the generosity of spirit and concern for the poor that Muslims practiced.  Some of their cultural customs were uncomfortable for me, but not their attention to kind behavior.  Their ban on drinking and other bad behavior was appealing to me.  I often joked I was a better Muslim than my husband.  And I've respected those who are religious ever since, whatever their faith.  And an overwhelming majority of Muslims do as well.  Terrorism is not religion.  Killing is not a precept of Islam.  These terrorists in New Zealand are violent, cruel anti-Muslims.  But they'd find a target in any time and place, in order to spread their hatred and nilism.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I woke up before dawn and felt as if a black blanket had settled over me.  I was deeply depressed.  I'm worried about friends and family, and every day brings new health issues for them that I empathize with perhaps too much.  Then the news, though I try to avoid it, and these old, old sadnesses that can't really be erased:  my brother's suicide four years ago, my daughter's cancer struggles, the deaths of friends and a sense of detaching from life.  I finally went back to sleep and woke up late.  I felt as if I've been in a fight.  I made breakfast, thank goodness we had raisin bread, which I love, and marched myself over to my doctor to give him my blood pressure readings from this last week as he'd asked me to do.  The walk did me good, and later he called and said the readings were okay and just to continue until my blood test in three months.  I observe in myself massive anxiety when dealing with my very kind and understanding doctor.  No meditation or deep breathing whisks it away.  I know I share this feeling with many of my friends.  We dread appointments and tests and there seem to be more of them.  At my writing group last night we talked about this fact of this stage of our lives.  As they say, old age is not for sissies.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Well, nice to know Jared Kushner, like his father-in-law, only needed a few million dollars to bribe himself into Harvard.  I guess I knew rich people had "legacy" and "clout" and chits to call in, vaguely, at least, but this level of injustice is stunning to me.  These are the same kids who have already been given every privilege over us ordinary folk, and they will use their "resume" to gain further power and influence and a little check written here and there will smooth their way and their kids' way through life.  The rest of us were shoved to the side to make room for the ruling class.  Actually, I went to a state school, and it was the best in the country at the time, and my parents, who had not gone to college and in my mother's case even elementary school, would not have had any idea that such activities lurked beneath the surface.  I'm thinking again of some of the schools my kids didn't get in, and they were private schools, no doubt filled with "generous" parents.  They ended up at great schools, on their own merits, but now I'm amazed they even got in those.  What a corrupt world of class we live in, and people gravitate toward these rich people as if they are better than us.  They look younger (plastic surgery) and are complimented on their looks, arranged by surgeons and stylists and wardrobes that dazzle.  They take credit for their kids' successes, yet they have bought those bragging points, and they are in such a bubble they forget there may be honest, hardworking people out there, doing well without networking, which I now see means bribery.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In talking to my friend on the phone last night I was struck yet again by her amazing aunt, over 100 years old, who recently lost her best friend and now has lost her son, every parent's nightmare.  She is so brave and resilient and went to her volunteer work helping feed the poor soon after learning of her son's death.  She told her niece that these people still needed to be fed, no matter what was happening in her own life.  Wow.  Her ego and grief did not get in the way of being compassionate toward others.  She is a Bodhisattva, no doubt about it.  What a mystery it is how some people accept what is so and others fight with their "fate" and cannot see themselves in the context of the whole of humanity and sentient beings.  How lovely for my friend she has this role model and can herself help her aunt and listen to her, which is so important as we age.  My friend is blessed with this relative, and I feel blessed hearing about her.  She inspires me.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

There is so much moss on my brick stairs it's trapping the rain like sponges, so this morning I scraped it off with a kitchen spatchala and there is more work to be done.  A friend said boiling water gets off the moss, and I'm going to try that this afternoon.  The moss is so beautiful that I've let it linger past danger, and I've got to get rid of it before it gets rid of me, by me slipping and falling.  I love all the vines and tiny plants that determinedly push up between the bricks.  It's charming, but eroding the mortar that keeps the bricks together.  I am a romantic at heart, and love the ivy covered walls when I spy them and the whole secret garden look.  I love overgrowth and jungle, but know it's unwise to let the fantasy run rampant.  Needless to say, I was in heaven living in Fiji, where it was a jungle to our front door:  orchids and banana trees and papayas and coconuts.  We could subsist on our property's bounty for days.  Of course, there, being on the wet side of the island, we never needed to water, only to hack away when plants got too overgrown.  I can't have that lush a garden here, as the dryness half the year makes that impossible, but right now, with the bulbs coming up, the trees about to blossom, and little independent plants popping up like gifts, I have the illusion, and will have, for a month or so longer.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We drove out early this morning to see a Monet exhibit of his later paintings, and everyone else had had the same idea, but with our audio stuck to our ears, we managed to negotiate the throng and have an enjoyable experience.  I was wanting to test whether the show would be appealing to our three year old grandson, as he's quite amenable to looking at art.  I do think he would love it, and the two year old might also be persuaded to join him.  I bought them each a "Linnea in Monet's Garden" book and a cardboard Monet book for the almost born third grandson.  You can never begin too young.  I realized that the explosion of energy Monet experienced in his seventies and eighties was maybe partially a reaction to his cataracts but mostly that thing that happens to us as we age where we release ourselves from the constraints of our culture and feel free to be imaginative and creative and truly express ourselves.  The effort to be "what we are supposed to be" collapses, and we gravitate towards our grandchildren because we are exploring and rediscovering in the way we see them do.  Our facades crumble and we do not care.  We are complex, fluid and willing to try new experiences.  It's wondrous, and Monet's paintings are spectacular, huge, alive with color, free from the old forms.  It's joyous to see.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We had some of our trees trimmed yesterday, and it was fascinating to watch, and I don't mean just for our two year old grandson.  There was a big crew, and they were way up in the cedar tree, swinging, sawing, hanging by blue belts, clearly a rival to Cirque du Soleil, but even better, as we could watch from our cosy chair in the living room.  Debris rained down everywhere, but at the end of the day, all was neatly swept away, and after our daughter took away our grandson, I sat in the living room and could see the trimming had made the room, normally pretty dark, much lighter and more cheerful.  So there were side benefits as well.  For these men, I have nothing but admiration, and I hope a large part of the check goes to them directly, and not the owner.  My grandson, who is shy, on our way back from the park, said hi to them, and proudly pointed it out to me.  His heroes.  Mine, too, because taking care of trees is a noble profession in my book.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We are experiencing more deluge this week.  The rain pours down our front steps and I wear rainboots that look like a child's just to get to the street.  Any other shoe would be ruined in five minutes.  And the newspaper tells us none of this will prevent raging fires this summer.  It's still good for the reservoirs and plants and trees, but it's like telling us we're always going to be in high danger from floods or fires, with tiny breaks possible in between.  Too much information!  I don't want to be in catastrophe mode.  The rain is a good thing:  it clears the air, it refreshes the landscape, it creates mud puddles for dogs and toddlers.  I know, too much of it and disaster.  But though I absolutely believe in climate change, it is also a fact that Mother Nature is often not judicious, and can have a nasty temper.  Destruction is in her nature, and randomness her methodology.  We really are saying we want to control this planet, and that is a delusion.  We are subject to this planet and it's cycles, and our power for good or bad is pretty limited.  We will reach a tipping point when Mother Nature will erase the writing on the chalk board, and begin again, with a different configuration.  I just wish people had more ability to see our interconnectedness with all things, and stop acting like the boss of all things.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I saw "Gravity" again last night, and I viewed it a bit differently this time.  Kudos to Cuaron for using Sandra Bullock's natural sadness and alienation to the advantage of women empowered.  Despite the character Ryan's feeling like she needs the MAN to rescue her, he untethers, trusting her to save herself.  And she does, once she realizes nobody else can save you, and that she needs now to let go of her grief over the loss of her four year old daughter.  Her skills move her instinctively to get to the Chinese station, and from there home.  But this time I realized we don't know where she has landed, or if the landing is part of the hallucination, as when Matt seems to come back to guide her in the cockpit for a few moments.  The green is strange, there are no people rushing out, and she appears to be giant as she stands there at the end.  Will she be picked up and return to Ohio?  You have no idea.  It's unsettling.  It's strange and beautiful and enigmatic.  When you let go, the world is wide open with all it's possibilities. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm recovering from a week of virus from the three year old grandson and then a weekend of babysitting the two year old grandson.  That went great, and I think we made him very happy.  He got to see "Robin Hood" with all the animal creatures, and he laughed and laughed.  The only thing that scared him was the fireflies in a scene at night with Robin and Marian.  We fast forwarded and he loved it up until the end.  I got him to bed in our bed, where he normally takes his nap, then my husband transferred him to the toddler bed in the guest bedroom, but after fifteen minutes he somehow realized he'd been moved, so he shared the guest bed with me and slept until six am, his normal wake up.  He voted for the zoo, and we headed out at nine thirty and had a relaxing time.  We saw the jaguar up close and the wolves marching around their huge enclosure below.  Then we headed to the giraffes and lions and elephants, and with that, we were done and drove to our local burger place for lunch.  He saw one episode of Daniel Tiger then I read him to sleep, woke him up after two hours, let him see another Daniel Tiger, then he played with his trucks until Mommy and Daddy picked him up.  They had a 24 hours get-a-way, and he had his first overnight with us.  He's so comfortable with us that he never showed any signs of distress.  I was proud of him, of us and of his parents for trusting us.  Then I slept like a log last night, making up for a little fellow with great kicking abilities trying to take over the king sized bed.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Oh, boy, did I get a virus, probably from either my grandson or daughter-in-law.  On Wednesday I began sneezing, on Thursday I sneezed what felt like millions of times, and had to blow my nose.  On Thursday I had a low fever and did nothing but sleep, blow my nose and sneeze.  That night I took Benadryl, which dried me up to an alarming degree, and left me Friday morning with a headache, fever and a zombie like state.  I canceled seeing my grandson, and pretty much stayed in bed, and took Tylenol.  Last night I didn't take anything and slept breathing through my nose, and this morning I feel pretty good.  No fever, not much blowing of the nose, and the ability to think and want to come out to my studio and relay all this incredibly boring information about my health.  The thing I know now, in my elderly wisdom, is that I don't push myself.  I just lay down and quit the engines until I've rested and wallowed in my sickness.  I slept in the morning, I slept in the afternoon, I read a cheesy book in between.  Last night we watched "Hugo", Martin Scorcese's film, which is beautiful to look at but somehow incredibly boring.  It was just right for my mental dullness.  I admire Scorcese but don't like any of his films.  Yes, I've seen all the famous ones, but his romanticism, love of gore and lack of emotions makes it impossible for me to engage with his characters.  He gets all the great actors, and they are in gorgeous sets and lighting, but it's like looking through a picture book.  The eye is pleased but the heart is cold.