I have neglected this little blog again and as I have clearly posted a Blogging Without Obligation widget in my sidebar I'm trying not to feel too badly. It's that busy, hectic, frenetic time of year when I've got far too many irons in far too many fires. Plus that other blog keeps me pretty busy. This is how I deal with the ebbing of the light. I just keep throwing things on my straw pile until I'm far too busy spinning to dive into darkness.
I've gotten to an age where I find it difficult to take myself too seriously. There are far more serious things in the world than my silly problems and complaints. I figure once you've reached 40, you have no one to blame for your unhappiness but yourself. You've been an adult as long as you were a kid at that point. I've managed to create a pretty damn good reality here and I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. I intend to continue seeking joy on a daily basis. If all else fails there's always dark chocolate and a glass of wine!
Still the light wanes and the skies have been relentlessly grey and a woman I know was killed in a bombing in Bagdad and one of our little guinea pigs died suddenly last week and I felt myself standing just a little closer to the veil. We take the bitter with the sweet. Death comes for all of us, so we might as well learn to embrace it.
We can dance with the darkness and still seek the light. It's one of the great contradictions of the human experience. The dark and the light, the joy and the sorrow...in the Tao it is all the same.
So last week was a little rocky, but that's life. If it was always smooth sailing, we'd get bored. Sometimes we need to be shaken a little to get us moving in new directions. I've refocused my energies on the novel I've started writing. Of course there's no pay for this novel until I write it and sell it, which makes it a risky endeavor. I believe in this idea and I think it's really got potential, so I'm going to devote a few hours each day to this and see if I can't get it done.
I'm impatient. Have I mentioned that? Like the scarves I started to knit that turned to pot holders, my past attempts at novels either never manifested beyond a few pages, were truly horrid concepts or became poems or short stories. So this is a test, but after writing in this blog every day for an entire year several years back, I'm sure I can do it.
I'm heading to Toronto this weekend to present an item for Ott-Lite on The Shopping Channel. I've never sold their products before, but I'm a big fan and I really believe in what they make. I'm excited to travel to a new place, though I'm afraid I won't get to see much of it as I'll be doing a 24 hour stint with small breaks in between.
I may be a little quiet on this blog here for a while, but I'll be back soon.
I had an idea. It was a really good idea if I do say so myself and I just did. I spent over a year working really hard on this idea. I researched it. I contemplated it. I nurtured it. I worked to make it a totally marketable and viable concept.
My mistake was...I didn't listen to my intuition.
It's complicated.
Now my idea is dying. There is nothing I can do at this point except try to keep it alive...and at some point...if I can not...I'll have to let it go. Everything has a season, every idea has a time frame. Success happens when the right idea meets the right moment.
I have a lot of ideas. I'm always chasing rainbows. At any given moment I've got about ten or more ideas simmering. I accept that if just one of them boils, those are damn good odds, but this idea was special.
Sigh.
My advice, hard earned as it is, is to always follow your intuition. Don't be swayed by shiny things. Shiny things are often not so shiny upon further inspection. If you have a gut feeling and it's telling you to change course, do it. It may not be easy, but the destination will most definitely be better. You are the captain of your ship, so don't go handing the wheel over to someone else. They can help you chart your course, but you have got to keep your hands on the wheel and you have got to trust your instincts. Always.
Although I'm liberal on most things, when it comes to abuse of children, I've got absolutely no mercy for the abusers. In fact, I think we have no use for them at all in society. I think people who physically and sexually abuse children should get the death penalty and I think that they should suffer a miserable death.
Just because someone is famous or brilliantly talented, they don't get a free pass on child abuse in my book. I know Roman Polanski survived the Holocaust and the brutal murder of his pregnant wife by a group of wackos led by a madman...but none of that excuses his raping a teenaged girl. He knew it was wrong and he fled because he knew he was headed for jail. Child abusers don't fare well in prisons, even criminals know they're the bottom of the barrel.
I'm curious why everyone seems so quick to disbelieve Mackenzie Phillips? I find it fascinating. We simply do not want famous people to be guilty. We simply can't fathom a 'star' committing such atrocities. We simply don't want to ever imagine anyone sexually molesting a child, especially someone famous. If your father raped you and then convinced you that having an ongoing sexual relationship with him was a good thing so that you consented to continue, it's quite likely you might have been so haunted by fear, guilt and sadness that you'd turn to drugs to escape your reality.
So because she turned to drugs...well she must be lying. Yes, of course, it's so logical.
I don't actually know if she's lying or not. We may never know. There's not going to be a trial, because the abuser is dead. I can't imagine what she has to gain by sharing this information publicly, except perhaps a sense of release. We can't release things until we're willing to take them out of the dark and put them into the light. We'll never know her motives or the truth, because abuse is often so carefully hidden, we're shocked to find it that it happened. By the time the abused find the strength to tell their stories, it's often too late. Of course, that's part of the plan.
Abuse is all about guilt, fear and denial. Abusers are often incredibly charming people. It makes it easier for them to get away with what they do if they can convince everyone around them that they're wonderful. They're almost always extremely smart and disturbingly manipulative.
Because abusers can be so charming, we don't want to believe them capable of abuse. Not wanting these things to be true makes us work harder at denying them. Dysfunctional families never want their family members to break the code of silence. They build lives around myths because they're ashamed of the truth. If someone in the family speaks out, they are often attacked. Don't tell. Don't share. Don't break the spell.
I'd like to believe in the wheels of karma, but I think it's more complicated than that. The thing about abuse is that it's already a circle. The abused becomes the abuser. Round and round and round we go...and where she stops...nobody knows.
This is why we have to stop the circle. The only way to do that is to stop denying that these things happen, that anyone is capable of these things regardless of their fame or fortune and to bring those who perpetrate these acts to justice. The only way to do that is to stop attacking the victim and celebrating the abuser. We have to suspend our disbelief long enough to find the truth. We can't allow abusers a get out of jail free card because they're charming.
I am exhausted. I've been hitting a wall at around 3pm every day. It's autumn, I'm afraid.
Something about the transition of summer into fall completely saps my energy. Perhaps that's natural. It's a time of folding inward. It's a time of decay. The light is waning. The warmth is leaving. I find this time of year incredibly bittersweet.
I've got big dreams planted and no indication of whether or not any of them will bloom. There is a time for sowing and a time for reaping. I can't control the outcome, but I have hope.
"Hope is the dream of the waking man." Aristotle
Even in times of darkness and decay, there is light. There is hope. The hope of rebirth and renewal.
As long as we breathe, we hope.
I am experiencing my annual tendency toward brooding Irish Melancholia. As I often do this time of year, I am allowing myself to dive into that. There is something of great value there. I intend to explore it. I think women try too often to smooth the wrinkles, but sometimes the wrinkles have gifts for us. It's okay to feel all of the glorious spectrum of emotions. I'm a passionate woman, it's my nature to feel everything deeply.
Will my big dreams unfold or will they wither and die? I can not say. I can say that no matter, there are always new dreams...and that I am ever and eternally filled with hope.
This is what I like to call "twilight time." Not because it's actually twilight or because of books about teenaged vampires written by a nice midwestern Mormon lady that I don't ever plan on reading. I call it "twilight time" because it's the small pocket of time in between work and making dinner during which I feel as if I can do what I please. Because I can.
So I'm blogging.
So there.
Take that dinner.
Dinner has become complicated by my husband's restrictive diet and my daughter's relentless specificity. They have needs and desires that are diametrically opposed. It's becoming a make two meals event every dinner hour and quite frankly, I'm finding it exhausting. I've run out of things we can all eat together and the challenge of figuring out which side to choose so I don't have to make three meals has become daunting.
I'm hiding up here in the studio in the hope that the food will arrange itself into three pleasing plates that make everyone around here happy.
I'm envisioning it as I type. It's like a scene from Fantasia, except without Mickey Mouse. Oh what fun! I can't wait to see what awaits for me on the table!
But wait...
...I hear my husband lurking at the bottom of the stairs...apparently my creative visualization isn't working and he's wondering where dinner is.
Damn it all to hell.
Twilight time has passed and I must go rattle some pans.
I often ponder why it is that we treat sick animals with more compassion than sick humans. If an animal is suffering and dying, we put them to sleep. We don't even think about the alternative, because we know it is the right thing to do. We 'put them out of their misery' and allow them to die peacefully and with grace.
If a person is suffering and dying, we expect them to spend unearthly amounts of money on expensive tests, hospital stays, medicines, pain killers and a host of indignities, we expect them to suffer and to hang on and hang in until they've exhausted their bodies, their spirits and their bank accounts. Even if they don't wish to live, we force them to until they've lost every grip on what it is to be in control of their destiny. Even if they have lived full lives and are ready to move on, they have absolutely no right to do so. They must keep on pumping money and resources into their sinking ship until the bitter, miserable end. Anyone who dares to help someone who has decided that they'd like to spare themselves and their families the expense and the suffering that comes from a protracted and painful death is considered a 'murderer.' We live in a culture that is terrified of death, so much so that we pretend it never has to happen. I think that's dangerous.
Why is compassion murder?
Why is allowing and assisting someone to choose the manner and the time of their death and to execute it as they see fit a crime?
If a chaotic event happens and I lose my faculties and I'm nothing more than an assisted heartbeat without an inkling of my former self, I want the Kool-Aid. Whether I've left the building or not, if it's burning indefinitely I'd like out, thank you. If I am diagnosed with an incurable disease and it has become evident that efforts to thwart it are in vain, I fully intend to choose the moment of my death.
I've got far too much to do to die right now, but when I am ready to shake this mortal coil, if it isn't a blissful transition, I will do what I can to make it so. I think we should all have that right. I don't understand why people feel they have the right to tell other people not only how to live but how to die. Why can't we all mind our own ever lovin' business? Why can't we find the same compassion we have for Fluffy and apply it to our neighbor?
One wonders.
Yes, one does.
I realize this is complicated by emotion and romance and the wishes of those around someone who is dying or on life support. Sometimes it's hard for other people to let go and I think that's tough to navigate. I remember the way the Terry Schiavo case was handled and politicized. So let me make this clear...pull the plug, give me the Kool-Aid and do what it takes to free me. I can't imagine anything worse than being stuck inside a body that is no longer serving me.
We all should have the right to decide. Compassion isn't always easy. Sometimes it means letting go. Sometimes it means loving someone enough to let them go.
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