the last couple of days have been pretty hard on me. it feels like life has been killing me for the last year an inch at a time. i have been trying so hard to look at the larger picture, and not to deal with the "small stuff" that is everyday life. things have just piled up and piled up, and i have less and less ability to throw off these downers and go on. finally, today, i just put my head down on my desk and cried for an hour in the dark. i just couldn't go another inch more.
and just in the middle of it, a gift of flowers was brought to me, a gift from a fellow teacher who is battling cancer. things suddenly go back to where they need to be. here i am whining over my woes, and i am reminded that life can and will get worse. diane has had a great attitude and during all of her chemo and radiation, she has managed to safe house 20 dogs, deal with her water and well going out and car problems. plus having nothing good come back after her surgery was done.
i blew my nose, got in my car and went home and fixed myself some lunch. my son hugged me and then i turned on the television to watch the news and see the devastation that is new orleans and the gulf coast of mississippi. two summers ago austin played in a weeklong baseball tournament in biloxi/gulfport mississippi, which apparently just isn't there anymore. we joked about the "redneck riviera" and how tacky and rundown it was. now i am sure that anyone would wish all of it back in the face of what has happened. bay st. louis and pass christian are no longer there either. one day gwen and i went down there to look around, and it was quaint and quiet. we went to a gift shop there, and drove around and looked at the old houses there. while in gulfport i visited the george ohr pottery museum which was located a couple of blocks off of the beach. i am sure it is gone, along with all of ohr's pottery. the day i went there, they had had no electricity for a week and the museum was closed. however, because it was my last day in biloxi, and i really wanted to see the pottery, they said that i could come down for free. there was no a/c there, but it was wondrous looking at his work. ohr was the "mad potter of biloxi" and i guess he sort of embodied a lot of what the people there have...earthiness, moxy, determination. they were real people, and he was too. the pottery being lost is a sad thing, but it is just pottery, and lucky to have survived as long as it did. ohr's work was not appreciated in his lifetime. i guess it goes to show that nothing is permanent, not things, not people. in this case, the people lost are what is most devastating. just now they said that at least 40 people are known dead in biloxi, with surely more to follow.
biloxi and gulfport. i went to the home of jefferson davis one day and toured it by myself. i don't know if it has survived. we ate at a tacky place that had a giant crayfish on the roof and shopped in a place where the door was a giant shark's mouth. i went to a casino, the first one i had ever been to, and i won $145, which i used to pay for our hotel room and trip to new orleans. all of these places likely are just flat gone. they were all on the beach, on the gulf, just like the rundown hotel we were staying in. i am reminded that we had our own personal homeless couple, shaggy and scooby-doo. they slept each night under the pilons that held up the hotel off the ground. when we were there you couldn't swim in the water because there was some type of chemical contamination on the beach and in the water. the whole place was sort of old and decadent and tacky and sunny. it is just a pile of matchsticks now. even then there were the concrete steps left from hurricane camille in 1969. steps that led to nowhere, steps that led up to the ghosts of houses. the trees that surrounded those previous houses were all that remained, along with the steps, of what once was. i wonder if they have even survived this catastrophe.
i am glad now that i took austin to new orleans. we stayed downtown and didn't get to spend a whole lot of time. i took him to jackson square, to bourbon street, to eat muffalettas at central grocery, to have beignets and chickory coffee at cafe du monde. we walked the t-shirt stores, and the old jax brewery. we parked along the levee and it was unbelievably hot and humid. we rode the street car line from bourbon street all the way up st. charles avenue through the garden district and back from the turnaround at the end. i was reminded then of having years ago taken the street car to a hotel to catch a ride to the airport. it was christmas time and hot as blazes. i didn't know much about streetcars and just stood along the line with my suitcase. when the streetcar came, it went right past me another block. i wasn't where it would stop. boy, did i feel dumb. a bunch of construction workers working on a library spotted me and hooted and hollered. i was glad to get out of new orleans then. to paraphrase mark twain a bit, the hottest summer i ever spent was a winter in new orleans. i couldn't imagine it could be 80 degrees in december.
and now it is all gone. and the whole entire town needs to be evacuated. there is no food, water, electricity. there is 80% of the town underwater. thousands are still trapped in their homes, on roofs, trapped in attics. there is looting, and the superdome is overcrowded with refugees who are to go to the houston astrodome if they can find a way to get them out. the superdome had part of the roof blown off and there is no air conditioning or toilets. there is no food, no gas, no way to get to people and no way to get them out short of walking through the water. people who left before the hurricane have nothing to go back to, no place to go to, and no money or gas to get them anywhere. my brother has friends in new orleans, but he doesn't know what has happened to them. it is hard to watch all of this stuff having been there. you would have to have no heart to watch it and not be affected.
so, nothing in my life compares to what could be worse. i needed a dose of reality today, and i got it. right now it feels like the end of the world, understandably so. no one could imagine an entire huge city, one that has survived so many hundreds of years, would have to be entirely evacuated. where will these people go? who and what will happen to them? how can you rebuild an entire huge city? i guess that these are the times that try men's souls. as people loot and steal and shoot each other and act like animals, they are balanced by those who have raced south to help, those who have given to those in need, those who have shared. this is the worst natural disaster in the history of the country. what we are truly made of may truly come to light in the next few weeks as the country reacts and responds.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Sunday, August 28, 2005
my greatest creation...:)
has anyone ever asked you what your greatest achievement was? not an easy question to answer. i think i would have to say that becoming a parent to a unique and interesting child was the best thing i never planned....
i wasn't sure i wanted to be married when i finally did get married. i was 33 and had been on my own for a long time. i was pretty self-absorbed and used to doing what i wanted to do and not much else. i had "issues" (and still do) and i probably got married because my ex-husband was a kind person who seemed to love me and he was stable and likely, i think, it was time. all of my other friends were settled and had kids. i had nothing but a future. i got married. i was happy. i am not sorry i did it and i learned a lot. it didn't work out and my ex-husband announced today that he is remarrying. my son, austin, has not taken to this concept well, although i have tried a great deal over the last year to pave the way for that idea. nonetheless, he is 13 years-old, and he has had a lot of instability in the last year or so, despite my efforts to keep things stable and on an even keel. but life isn't the burger king drive thru...you can't always have it your way. and so it goes. austin is going to have to adjust to his father selling the house he has always lived in and marrying a new person, not his mother.
if i live through my menopause and his puberty, austin will be my greatest creation. i did give birth to him, which was an adventure, believe me. however, i cannot take complete responsibility for what he has become. he has had many who have influenced him. i hope that their continued presence in his life will continue to positively impact him, and for those who have gone on, i hope the lessons they taught him are firmly rooted.
my brother-in-law, danny, died last year from esophogeal cancer after a 2 year fight. he lived a lot longer than anyone thought he would, and i think i was because he wanted to, and he had faith. he was always around all of austin's life, and i think from danny austin learned about hard work, dedication, and how to do the right thing. danny's work ethic was pretty solid. he was a surveyor who worked for himself, and he did not believe in cutting corners. he would rather lose money i think than do a shoddy job. his work ethic rubbed off on bebo, austin's father, to the point where i think it is hard for bebo to operate in the surveying world, which frequently doesn't care about the right thing. from danny austin heard "i love you" from a big old country boy who really meant it and thought it was important that austin hear it too.
from bebo's sister's, kitty and terre, austin has learned that he is loved and supported. kitty believes in having a good time, and being happy. terre is probably the hardest worker i know and will keep doing things until she drops. she is also the only one who can get austin to go to church with us because she asks. she is independent, and has just recently sold the farm where she and danny lived, and has bought a house in town and is starting over her new life as a widow at 53. that is not an easy place to be and it takes guts. i know austin has seen that and i know he knows she cares about him.
from my brother, austin has learned that creative and different aren't bad, they are just different. in our community, those who think differently are often ridiculed and considered a threat to the heterosexual status quo. austin has shown me a great heart in the way that he has accept his uncle as a person, and not a classification. he just recently put 2 and 2 together about my brother, and his overwhelming mission on this was to let me know that it made no difference to him. he did not just mouth the words. his interactions with my brother and his treatment of him absolutely validated what he has said to me and also to others, like his dad and aunts, when he was asked about this. i think he appreciates my brother's wit, his artistic ability, his kindness, and his sense of humor. because my brother lives in atlanta, we don't get to see him often, so his interactions with austin have always been special. i think from my brother austin has also learned to be yourself is not a bad thing, even when the rest of the world wants to make you think differently.
i am not sure what specific lessons austin has learned from the grandparents and older members of both families. all of them have a strict code of right and wrong, but they all clearly love him and dote on him. they tolerate his frequent bad manners and stupid, adolescent boy dumb stuff. i think he has learned that age differences do matter because of the culture that we were each brought up in. certainly life as a 13 year-old was different for all of the grandparents than it is for austin, and we certainly don't understand a lot of things that today's kids take for granted. he doesn't agree with a lot of what they say to him or believe in. but i do believe he knows they love him and their comments to him, when he doesn't agree with them, are made out of love or concern, and not out of a need to change him. sometimes that is hard to explain to him, but i think he gets it. like all teenagers, he thinks anyone old is an old fogey and doesn't know what they are talking about. his father's mother doesn't interfere or inject her opinion too frequently, but when she does, you know. i am hoping he learns from her the art of keeping your opinion to yourself and picking and choosing when you need to make a point. my parents are certainly outspoken, maybe overly outspoken, and he often does not understand some of what they do or say. however, once again, he knows they love him and look forward to seeing him and despite their methodologies sometimes, he absolutely knows they have his best interests at heart. what they think is best for him, and what i think is best sometimes clash, but that is another story. bottom line is that i know they mean well, and so does he. i hope he learns fierce loving from them, and the need to protect your cubs at all expense.
there have been many other people that have influenced the way austin has developed. there are his "cousins" ian and colton, the children of meg and rob. meg introduced bebo and i to each other, and she was my labor coach and saw austin being born. they understand his goofiness and how he is like a big, dumb golden retriever sometimes, yet they still love him. meg is very protective of him and treats him like her own and yells at him when he is an ass, and with my permission. rob doesn't take any crap off of him, and he isn't much of a talker. but he has shown his interest and care in ways that austin may never know about. ian and colton tolerate him! :) they are all 3 different boys with different interests and outlooks and they fight and play like brothers.
there have been many baseball coaches in austin's life, but chuck and andy have handled him since he was in t-ball. although he doesn't play ball for them now, they call and check on him, hug him and tell him they love him when they see him. when he has been down during some of the darker post-divorce/separation times, these guys stepped up to the plate and filled in when he needed a steady male influence. he hung with their kids and families, ate their food, took their ribbing and accepted their hugs. these are not guys afraid to hug another guy or tell him they miss him and love him. in an age where everyone is so homophobic and macho, what a breath of fresh air to have 2 guys who don't give a rat's ass about that stuff, and who feel comfortable cracking on him if he is bad because he needs it. austin also knows that they will always be around, and that is a secure thing for him when life has not always been secure.
sooooo...his dad and i created him, and i hatched him. but kids really do need a village to raise them, and he has been lucky that we have an interesting one! he has loving grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors. i am blessed to have so many people (and of course, i haven't mentioned them all) who have contributed to the upbringing of my greatest, creation, my son, austin, the animal! :) i sure do love that boy...and all these people...
i wasn't sure i wanted to be married when i finally did get married. i was 33 and had been on my own for a long time. i was pretty self-absorbed and used to doing what i wanted to do and not much else. i had "issues" (and still do) and i probably got married because my ex-husband was a kind person who seemed to love me and he was stable and likely, i think, it was time. all of my other friends were settled and had kids. i had nothing but a future. i got married. i was happy. i am not sorry i did it and i learned a lot. it didn't work out and my ex-husband announced today that he is remarrying. my son, austin, has not taken to this concept well, although i have tried a great deal over the last year to pave the way for that idea. nonetheless, he is 13 years-old, and he has had a lot of instability in the last year or so, despite my efforts to keep things stable and on an even keel. but life isn't the burger king drive thru...you can't always have it your way. and so it goes. austin is going to have to adjust to his father selling the house he has always lived in and marrying a new person, not his mother.
if i live through my menopause and his puberty, austin will be my greatest creation. i did give birth to him, which was an adventure, believe me. however, i cannot take complete responsibility for what he has become. he has had many who have influenced him. i hope that their continued presence in his life will continue to positively impact him, and for those who have gone on, i hope the lessons they taught him are firmly rooted.
my brother-in-law, danny, died last year from esophogeal cancer after a 2 year fight. he lived a lot longer than anyone thought he would, and i think i was because he wanted to, and he had faith. he was always around all of austin's life, and i think from danny austin learned about hard work, dedication, and how to do the right thing. danny's work ethic was pretty solid. he was a surveyor who worked for himself, and he did not believe in cutting corners. he would rather lose money i think than do a shoddy job. his work ethic rubbed off on bebo, austin's father, to the point where i think it is hard for bebo to operate in the surveying world, which frequently doesn't care about the right thing. from danny austin heard "i love you" from a big old country boy who really meant it and thought it was important that austin hear it too.
from bebo's sister's, kitty and terre, austin has learned that he is loved and supported. kitty believes in having a good time, and being happy. terre is probably the hardest worker i know and will keep doing things until she drops. she is also the only one who can get austin to go to church with us because she asks. she is independent, and has just recently sold the farm where she and danny lived, and has bought a house in town and is starting over her new life as a widow at 53. that is not an easy place to be and it takes guts. i know austin has seen that and i know he knows she cares about him.
from my brother, austin has learned that creative and different aren't bad, they are just different. in our community, those who think differently are often ridiculed and considered a threat to the heterosexual status quo. austin has shown me a great heart in the way that he has accept his uncle as a person, and not a classification. he just recently put 2 and 2 together about my brother, and his overwhelming mission on this was to let me know that it made no difference to him. he did not just mouth the words. his interactions with my brother and his treatment of him absolutely validated what he has said to me and also to others, like his dad and aunts, when he was asked about this. i think he appreciates my brother's wit, his artistic ability, his kindness, and his sense of humor. because my brother lives in atlanta, we don't get to see him often, so his interactions with austin have always been special. i think from my brother austin has also learned to be yourself is not a bad thing, even when the rest of the world wants to make you think differently.
i am not sure what specific lessons austin has learned from the grandparents and older members of both families. all of them have a strict code of right and wrong, but they all clearly love him and dote on him. they tolerate his frequent bad manners and stupid, adolescent boy dumb stuff. i think he has learned that age differences do matter because of the culture that we were each brought up in. certainly life as a 13 year-old was different for all of the grandparents than it is for austin, and we certainly don't understand a lot of things that today's kids take for granted. he doesn't agree with a lot of what they say to him or believe in. but i do believe he knows they love him and their comments to him, when he doesn't agree with them, are made out of love or concern, and not out of a need to change him. sometimes that is hard to explain to him, but i think he gets it. like all teenagers, he thinks anyone old is an old fogey and doesn't know what they are talking about. his father's mother doesn't interfere or inject her opinion too frequently, but when she does, you know. i am hoping he learns from her the art of keeping your opinion to yourself and picking and choosing when you need to make a point. my parents are certainly outspoken, maybe overly outspoken, and he often does not understand some of what they do or say. however, once again, he knows they love him and look forward to seeing him and despite their methodologies sometimes, he absolutely knows they have his best interests at heart. what they think is best for him, and what i think is best sometimes clash, but that is another story. bottom line is that i know they mean well, and so does he. i hope he learns fierce loving from them, and the need to protect your cubs at all expense.
there have been many other people that have influenced the way austin has developed. there are his "cousins" ian and colton, the children of meg and rob. meg introduced bebo and i to each other, and she was my labor coach and saw austin being born. they understand his goofiness and how he is like a big, dumb golden retriever sometimes, yet they still love him. meg is very protective of him and treats him like her own and yells at him when he is an ass, and with my permission. rob doesn't take any crap off of him, and he isn't much of a talker. but he has shown his interest and care in ways that austin may never know about. ian and colton tolerate him! :) they are all 3 different boys with different interests and outlooks and they fight and play like brothers.
there have been many baseball coaches in austin's life, but chuck and andy have handled him since he was in t-ball. although he doesn't play ball for them now, they call and check on him, hug him and tell him they love him when they see him. when he has been down during some of the darker post-divorce/separation times, these guys stepped up to the plate and filled in when he needed a steady male influence. he hung with their kids and families, ate their food, took their ribbing and accepted their hugs. these are not guys afraid to hug another guy or tell him they miss him and love him. in an age where everyone is so homophobic and macho, what a breath of fresh air to have 2 guys who don't give a rat's ass about that stuff, and who feel comfortable cracking on him if he is bad because he needs it. austin also knows that they will always be around, and that is a secure thing for him when life has not always been secure.
sooooo...his dad and i created him, and i hatched him. but kids really do need a village to raise them, and he has been lucky that we have an interesting one! he has loving grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors. i am blessed to have so many people (and of course, i haven't mentioned them all) who have contributed to the upbringing of my greatest, creation, my son, austin, the animal! :) i sure do love that boy...and all these people...
what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...
i suppose it is normal for every person to want to be in a place where he or she is happy, secure, and peaceful. isn't that what religion is supposed to be about? guiding you to that space, and it seems like our lives are on a never ending quest to find that space.
there are pros and cons to this. the pro is that when you find that space, it usually is peaceful, and the mundane, disturbing things in life are suddenly put into a perspective which makes them pretty innocuous and trivial. considering what everyday life seems to be, to be able to be in that place and not sweat the small stuff is good. but you can't live there all the time. that is the con. once you get there, it certainly is a separating factor from the rest of the lemmings. i suspect that i am actually i the flow about 10% of the time. i realize i can't maintain it and be in the real world. there are just too many challenges. it's like being in a plane all above the earth, but having to come down because you can't live in the sky. we have to be grounded, to refuel. and often once we are back on the ground, we are there for awhile. unless you are a permanent "pilot," you will primarily be on the ground caught up in the mundane, everyday things. you will daydream about being in the plane, but you have to work to really be there. and when you are there, you have to accept that it is a temporary visit.
how do we live between the two worlds? how do we establish a balance that doesn't keep us away from either one? the sky and the earth are just the soul and the body personified. above the fray, you see things in a wider, more global view. it isn't all about me...it is all about a lot of "me's" out there. i am just a stone in a big pond and you don't know where the ripples go. however, if i sit only from the perspective of the stone, i will always be dropping into the water, i will always be overwhelmed by the wake of the stone, and i will be sinking and always looking up for air or light. if i look down from high above, i will see many, many stones of all different sizes and shapes, each skipping and settling on and in the water, the wakes and ripples crossing and recrossing, dissipating and disappearing. from high above, no stone is more important that the other, and what i would really be watching is THE BIG POND. where are the shores? what happens to the ripples when they hit the shore? and better yet, who is throwing in the stones?
the overly religious zealot who only lives in the land of the sky is no more effective than the self-absorbed stone that is only concerned with itself. neither place is collectively good for mankind. a monk living on a mountain meditating and being one with god or spirit...no one can fault him for being above the fray, but what does his isolation do to contribute to the greater good? granted, there are few people who can live in this blissful state, certainly fewer than what is left, which is the ordinary person complaining and fighting about his/her daily life. so the reverse-monk, the whining, atheistic personality is equally ineffective in making a contribution, for he/she does not know or care about bigger things. he/she is only concerned with the here and now, which isn't always going to be your way.
in order to improve our society, i think we need to consider that both views are valid, but periodically being in a "sky above" point of view is of greater value to humans as a species and us as individuals. if we can see that the small ripples are temporary and not all that important, we will better be able to accept the curveballs that are thrown at us on a daily basis. it isn't winning the game that is important. it is what we learn from the curveballs, the spit balls, the bad calls by the umpires, the unfairness of it all, the what-doesn't-kill-you-makes-you-stronger factor. when the game becomes too frustrating, we need to leave the playing field and go sit at the top of the stands. looking down on the field, all of the players are the same. the diamond is finite with defined basepads and it is clear where a homerun can be hit.
there are pros and cons to this. the pro is that when you find that space, it usually is peaceful, and the mundane, disturbing things in life are suddenly put into a perspective which makes them pretty innocuous and trivial. considering what everyday life seems to be, to be able to be in that place and not sweat the small stuff is good. but you can't live there all the time. that is the con. once you get there, it certainly is a separating factor from the rest of the lemmings. i suspect that i am actually i the flow about 10% of the time. i realize i can't maintain it and be in the real world. there are just too many challenges. it's like being in a plane all above the earth, but having to come down because you can't live in the sky. we have to be grounded, to refuel. and often once we are back on the ground, we are there for awhile. unless you are a permanent "pilot," you will primarily be on the ground caught up in the mundane, everyday things. you will daydream about being in the plane, but you have to work to really be there. and when you are there, you have to accept that it is a temporary visit.
how do we live between the two worlds? how do we establish a balance that doesn't keep us away from either one? the sky and the earth are just the soul and the body personified. above the fray, you see things in a wider, more global view. it isn't all about me...it is all about a lot of "me's" out there. i am just a stone in a big pond and you don't know where the ripples go. however, if i sit only from the perspective of the stone, i will always be dropping into the water, i will always be overwhelmed by the wake of the stone, and i will be sinking and always looking up for air or light. if i look down from high above, i will see many, many stones of all different sizes and shapes, each skipping and settling on and in the water, the wakes and ripples crossing and recrossing, dissipating and disappearing. from high above, no stone is more important that the other, and what i would really be watching is THE BIG POND. where are the shores? what happens to the ripples when they hit the shore? and better yet, who is throwing in the stones?
the overly religious zealot who only lives in the land of the sky is no more effective than the self-absorbed stone that is only concerned with itself. neither place is collectively good for mankind. a monk living on a mountain meditating and being one with god or spirit...no one can fault him for being above the fray, but what does his isolation do to contribute to the greater good? granted, there are few people who can live in this blissful state, certainly fewer than what is left, which is the ordinary person complaining and fighting about his/her daily life. so the reverse-monk, the whining, atheistic personality is equally ineffective in making a contribution, for he/she does not know or care about bigger things. he/she is only concerned with the here and now, which isn't always going to be your way.
in order to improve our society, i think we need to consider that both views are valid, but periodically being in a "sky above" point of view is of greater value to humans as a species and us as individuals. if we can see that the small ripples are temporary and not all that important, we will better be able to accept the curveballs that are thrown at us on a daily basis. it isn't winning the game that is important. it is what we learn from the curveballs, the spit balls, the bad calls by the umpires, the unfairness of it all, the what-doesn't-kill-you-makes-you-stronger factor. when the game becomes too frustrating, we need to leave the playing field and go sit at the top of the stands. looking down on the field, all of the players are the same. the diamond is finite with defined basepads and it is clear where a homerun can be hit.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
are we living in the fall of the roman empire?
Slideshow of the whole mess: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031784469916
Sometimes it is really, really hard to be a human. for me it is hard when i see coverage of things like the i-book stampede that occured this week here in richmond. when this stuff happens, it makes me want to scream and then retreat and become a hermit. my cats are looking better and better each day, period.
obviously, for other people besides myself, it is hard to be a human because THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT BEING A HUMAN MEANS. it seems that animal instincts took over yesterday, as women and children were stomped by people rushing to purchase 4 year old used i-books. the price was $50 for the first 1,000 people. unfortunately, 5,500 people showed up, and some of those showed up just as the gates were being opened. they rushed the gates, creating the chaos and near riot. those who made it inside ran as if their asses were on fire and then tried to rush the entrance. they were not allowed in until they formed a line, and apparently that took some doing as well. obviously, there were no manners or anything that might identify you as a human involved here. basic animal instinct takes over, so YOU MUST SURVIVE. to survive, i.e. get a used i-book, so be it if you have to break the rules or break someone's neck. those with manners and some reasonable semblance of decorum didn't get the i-books.
things to note: before the day was over, someone had already thought up a way to profit from the madness, selling t-shirts, mugs, hats, etc. on ebay declaring "i survived the i-book stampede" or something of that nature. also, i-books were showing up on the internet for sale. obviously, not everyone really needed a computer for a real function, like your kid's education.
the mercenarys win. the low class win. the city loses, because once again we make national headlines as the place where dumb asses live, breed, and die. we make the news over corrupt politicians, the robert e. lee floodwall disaster, the arguments over the arther ashe memorial, a heroin addicted ex-councilman and an ex-councilwoman who took a bribe. does it ever end? we are forever known as the capitol of the confederacy and the war rages on still. perhaps the gaston storm was a precursor of some sort of apocalyptic end to the city, since half of it seemed to wash away. all that was missing was the ark.
mark holmberg's column this morning was also a good view of this latest mess. click below to find it.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031784479174&path=%21news%21columnists&s=1045855935174Monday, August 15, 2005
my oasis
i live in mechanicsville, virginia, a small suburban hamlet in hanover county, outside the richmond city limits. it is a nice place to live, and i have good neighbors and feel safe. crime is low. i live in a subdivision near the interstate, but my backyard runs directly into the chickahominy swamp, so there is nothing beyond my yard but miles of wilderness. it is a nice juxtaposition of urban and rural. the back part of the property not only borders the swamp, but also a small pond with bass fish and snapping turtles that lumber through the yard in the spring to lay their eggs . they are menacing and ugly and tough, but not tough enough to secure the future life of their offspring. the birds routinely peck the ground and eat the eggs, or maybe it is raccoons that i have never seen. i guarantee very few turtles are making it back to the pond, but the ones who do live there have been there for awhile. they are pretty large, and i wonder if there are any bass left in this pond, which was stocked by the previous owner.
i moved here 2 summers ago with my son austin, the move a result of a divorce. his father remains in our old house, which is only a couple of miles from where we now live. however, there are worlds of differences between the two places.
on the surface, both houses have a lot in common. both are on about 1 1/4 acres of land, and take some time to maintain. the old house was fenced in and the previous owners had been passionate gardeners. there was a huge garden, with underground irrigation, and many established plants and trees in an orchard. for many years we were quite popular when the asparagus came in in april. but as the years went by, less and less happened in the yard. the garden dwindled to a few tomato plants. the asparagus no longer exist and the blackberry patch was dug up and disposed of years ago. trees have slowly succumbed over the years to blights and bugs and no longer produce much fruit, which was never eaten anyway. the horrid, stabbing russian olives that formed a hedge have finally been torn out, as have the boxwoods in the front of the house. my ex-husband has been on a crusade to wipe out all of the plant life in the yard because he doesn't do the upkeep. while living there, it was a chore to cut the bushes, burn the brush, water the garden and weed. the house is sort of a perfect metaphor for the marriage. it started out with lots of life and potential, yet finally withered and shrank because some things became too much work to maintain. in a lot of ways i was the lone gardener and even i gave up finally on both the yard and trying to water, reseed, fertilizer and weed the marriage. sometimes there is just too much crabgrass to take care of.
my new house is all of the things the old wasn't. the lady i bought it from was also divorced, and something of a hermit. yard work she didn't do, even hiring someone to mow the lawn. i doubt she ever saw or thrived in the environment. by all accounts, she just stayed inside and drank and smoked. when she moved, she left me with a house with 15 years of cigarette smoke in the walls and lots of places that seemed to say "angst." there is still a hole in the bottom of my bedroom door, apparently created by a foot during some sort of tantrum. it isn't something i can repair, and i haven't covered it up, although i did recently buy some bumper stickers with that aim in mind.
i gutted the house and spent $20,000 on reinventing myself there. i repainted the whole inside, tore out all of the dreary carpet. i had to buy all new furniture for austin and myself. when i left the marriage, i took only what was mine or what we had agreed upon to split up (one gets the washer, one gets the dryer, etc.) divorce forced me into a realm that i had never thought i would be in at 46 years-old, but things do happen for a reason. it gave me a chance to find out who i was and to, more importantly, express myself creatively.
the way i decorated was rather unique, but it works. my whole downstairs is painted "nacho cheese" color and each room has a theme to it. the southwestern living room has an albert bierstadt print, a van gogh and my pottery. the furniture is southwestern in nature, and there is no television there. the kitchen is done in a chilli pepper theme, with all of my framed crate art lining the walls and a wonderful hodge-podge of items lining the top of the cabinets. my bedroom, in contrast, is a zen retreat, with sage walls, a partitioned meditation area, and plants and a shoji screen. my brother decorated both the bedroom and the kitchen, giving each a unique quality. my sculpture is also on display in this room, and i burn a lot of incense, listen to tapes and new age music there and read. i try very hard not to watch tv there.
austin decorated his own room in hawaiian blue and tie dye, with all of his athletic trophies and medals all around the room. he has bean bag chairs, a tv and playstation, and a desk, which he never uses. most of the time the room is just a depository for dirty clothes and clean ones that never make it out of the clothes basket. it is a 13 year-old world.
i have one schizophrenic room, the san francisco room, which is where the tv and computer are. this was the hermit's master bedroom, where she lived. having seen it when she lived there, i was determined that i would blow out the bad vibes and make it something interesting. i collected street signs and framed posters from my favorite city, san francisco, and put them all over the room. i also have 2 walls lined in my albums from back in the day, and have hung my guitars up on the wall, flanking the albums. the closet i gutted and turned into a computer/audio equipment room. the cds line the top of the shelf where boxes once hid, and i have all sorts of personal stuff on the walls. it is sort of a little junk room with personality.
but what i love the most about my house is the freedom to do anything i want there. i have gardened and landscaped like crazy and i am working on a 5 year lawn plan. i have an abundance of wildlife around me...hummingbirds, tons of dragonflys that will land on my fingers and let me take pictures of them. i have deer who routinely come to the yard at dusk looking for food. last year i had a mother deer and twin fawns. i have big blue, the heron, and ducks on the pond. i have a fish in my waterfall/pond which i built for myself last summer, having made the clay vessels for the water to run in. i also brought rocks from my best friend pam's farm and used them to build the waterfall, which i had mortared with hypertufa, a combination of peat, perlite and cement. i have bought all sorts of exotic grasses and plants and now it is just coming together. i can sit on my back deck or front porch anytime of night or day and feel happy. you can't put a price on that. the whole place feels like a canvas to me, something i can keep creating on.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
A Higher Ground
i am presuming that i am indeed entering into a higher ground, and not for anyone else, but for me. i need a place to write, i guess, and it seems to take too long to sit down with a pencil and paper and do it. i love journals, but my handwriting is horrid, so no one will be able to read them anyway. this solves the problem. period. type. enter. go away.
reiki, tie dye, books, pottery...what more is there? :)
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