Yeah, I do.

It's weird.  Sometimes I just find myself in a space of unconditional love toward someone.  And sometimes not even a human, you know, like a cat or a painting or a day of life.  And sometimes, on the other hand, it's hard to get myself to be even basically fair toward some people, and I'm asking myself, "What's that all about?" but I really don't know.  Some people "rub me the wrong way," and others are slam dunks from the first time I'm aware of their existence. 

Another strange thing is that sometimes I meet people who "rub me the wrong way," and I really don't care for them at all, but when I get to know them, I find that I absolutely love them.

The hardest part is TRYING to love.  Is love a struggle?  In that intermediate area, where a person is one that I feel no particular connection to, neither attraction nor revulsion, no interest, no affinity, what is it to "love" that person?  Try or no try, they're just who they are.

I would say "everyone & everything," but on reflection, that's not true.  It's possible to learning from anyone or anything, but not all learning is from mentoring.

Mentoring involves trust.  There's trust that the mentee can confide in the mentor, and that the content isn't goin' anywhere.  There's trust that honesty and good intentions are involved on both sides.  Listening is an important part of mentoring, and I think in general the listening and trust are much more important than any advice.  And yet, I've been the recipient of some good advice over the years, and I appreciate it.  Another thing mentors do is help you think of options, help you reflect and value experiences.  They give you context and background.  They give you good feedback. 

People I work with have been wonderful mentors to me.  Sometimes we mentor each other.  Mentoring works well as a two-way street.  It doesn't necessarily imply an unequal relationship, although it's possible to have a productive mentor/mentee relationship when one side has much more experience/knowledge and so forth than the other.

Teachers have been my mentors.  My dearest was Dr. James P. Driscoll, a sociologist/criminologist who passed away several years ago.  Honestly, the love and patience of Dr. Driscoll gave me the life that I enjoy today.  What a sweet man.  Another mentor who really made a difference in my life is Dr. Thelma Shinn Richard  who taught me more than I can describe.  It was sort of like, "take Thelma's class and see God."  At least it was like that for me. 

What synchronicity!  After writing the paragraph above, I searched for an image about mentoring (what could that image possibly be?) and encountered this one.  Thelma taught about Leda and the Swan.  In the tiniest cliff note possible, it's about the feminine principle being devastated (death & rebirth into the corporal world) by the male air spirituality principle (think Jesus ascends into heaven).  Worldwide, a shamanic experience of spirituality is the inner vision of transformation to feathers, so that one can ascend the earth into the spirit world.  So, in the union of male and female, the male spirit principle unites with the female earth principle.  It's not something that can be explained logically.  You had to be there.

I got her picture yesterday in the mail.  It came in a very large box that I wasn't excited at all about receiving.  So unexcited, in fact, that I neglected to tell my husband and son that soon there would be a large box arriving.  They were disappointed when they found out that there was nothing to eat in there, and nothing fun at all.  Just a pile of old family pictures and tintypes.  Things like that.  Being the youngest of my generation, I'm starting to receive boxes of crap that the older ones don't want around but are afraid to throw away because of possible historical value.  I'm going to Antiques Road Show this summer, but that will be another story.

These items had been professionally packed by a moving company.  Each framed photograph was covered with an adhesive sheet that I would pull up carefully, wishing for a picture of my father, but revealing someone else's countenance instead.  This didn't bother me much until I saw her face staring up at me.  She tried to kill me once, when I was a baby.  I think I've written about that night before.  She also nearly drowned my mother and committed a karmic list of other colorful abuses.  She is my mother's mother.  Probably one of the most profoundly selfish people I've ever known.  Surely I take after her in some ways.  There are parts of myself that I don't love, when they remind me of her.

When I was five, she died.  I felt pensive about it, but not "sad" at all.  She left a box of dolls, but the kids who looked through them, including me, didn't want to play with them.  I wanted to go to her funeral just to see the spectacle, but was considered "too young." 

Where to put this picture?  Certainly not on the wall!  She will never rate my wall.  Why am I so bitter about this?  OF COURSE I know that the reason she beat the shit out of me when I was --God knows-- in my crib and very small (I have no concept  of my age at that point) is because she was sliding into senile dementia.  Shouldn't I forgive her?  But the thing is, I know some of the OTHER stuff she did.  AND I can see her character reflected in the various dysfunctions of a stellarly dysfunctional family.  Deeds both good AND unfortunately heartless DO resound through time.  The song, "This is how a heart breaks" runs through my mind, but the words are, "This is how the karma makes..." 

If I replace my disappointment and disgust toward this woman with love, then what of her will be left for me at all?  Is there ever a time when love gives us nothing?

What I needed to learn when I posted the previous blog (2/7) is how to heal with regard to the issues surrounding my mother's mother, and the whole "dysfunctional family" vibe that emanates from that connection. 

Thinking about that, I've decided that the root of the problem rests in the last question I asked:  "If I replace my disappointment and disgust toward this woman with love, then what of her will be left for me at all?  Is there ever a time when love gives us nothing?"

And the answer I found is that forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting.  To love doesn't mean to throw out everything real and just keep things that match some idea I have today of what "good" would be. 

I needed a grandmother, and if the only person who would or could fill that position was she, then I accept that, and I'm grateful for it--if only for the reason that I'm here. 

Other family members, who knew her before she became impaired, give her mixed reviews.  One says that she drilled them assiduously in public speaking and critical thinking, pushing them always to strive for greater achievement.  This person considers her a major mentor during their formative years.  But this person is tough.  You've gotta be tough.  My mother was never "tough."  Bad luck, really.  Her personality was her undoing.  And as my mother's late-born and unwanted daughter (at least I could have been a boy), what a disappointment, what a great burden I must have represented.

When hallucinating, my grandmother mistook me for a childhood playmate in another time and place.  I played along.  I was curious.  My parents told me that from now on, it was my job to play along.

Throughout my life, I've worked hard to achieve everything that would assure myself a place in the family, but... there's hardly any family left.  Just stories and myths.  And I know some of them.

I won't throw the photos away.  Ironically, people wash up on the doorstep once in a decade or so, and they're looking for a mirror in which to see the past and their own form at the same time.  I'll keep all the pieces, and let them figure it out for themselves.  I might even...  I might even put the grandmother up on the wall somewhere, someday.  Because I know that it's true, as strange as it sounds, that she actually did the best she could. 

The video that goes with this half of the story is "Footloose," because everybody cut footloose.  They're all over the place--spread out.  If something doesn't have a strong enough center, it breaks out and scatters apart.  And I can explain it.  I can tell a story, my version of the story, of how the family well, more or less failed.  The center would not hold, but there's a lot of spirit there.  We are footloose.


Photo by ryan franklin az

Enough with the serious stuff!  Time for games!  :)  I got this one from Tara.  If you like it, consider yourself tagged!

Things you have done during your lifetime:

( ) Gone on a blind date
(X) Skipped school
( ) Watched someone die
( ) Been to Canada
(X) Been to Mexico
( ) Been to Florida
( ) Been to Hawaii
(X) Been on a plane
( ) Been on a helicopter
(X) Been lost
(X) Gone to Washington, DC
(X) Swam in the ocean
(X) Cried yourself to sleep
( ) Played cops and robbers
(X) Recently colored with crayons
(X) Sang Karaoke
( ) Paid for a meal with coins only
( ) Been to the top of the St. Louis Arch
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't.
(X) Made prank phone calls
(X) Been down Bourbon Street in New Orleans
(X) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose & elsewhere
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
( ) Danced in the rain-naked
(X) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(X) Been kissed under the mistletoe
( ) Watched the sunrise with someone
(X) Blown bubbles
( ) Gone ice-skating
(X) Gone to the movies
( ) Been deep sea fishing
( ) Driven across the United States
( ) Been in a hot air balloon
( ) Been sky diving
( ) Gone snowmobiling
( ) Lived in more than one country
(X) Lay down outside at night and admired the stars while listening to the crickets
(X) Seen a falling star and made a wish
( ) Enjoyed the beauty of Old Faithful Geyser
( ) Seen the Statue of Liberty
(X) Gone to the top of Seattle Space Needle
(X) Been on a cruise
(X)Traveled by train
(X) Been on a motorcycle
(X) Been horse back riding
(X) Ridden on a San Francisco Cable Car
(X) Been to Disneyland
( ) Been in a rain forest
(X) Seen whales in the ocean
( ) Been to Niagara Falls
(X) Ridden on an elephant
( ) Swam with dolphins
( ) Been to the Olympics (watched it, not in it)
( ) Walked on the Great Wall of China
( ) Saw and heard a glacier calf
( ) Been spinnaker flying (not entirely sure what that is ;-)
( ) Been water-skiing
(X) Been snow-skiing
(X) Been to Westminster Abbey
(X) Been to the Louvre
(X) Swam in the Mediterranean
(X) Been to a Major League Baseball game

That love is the most important thing to learn about.

That learning about love is best accomplished by loving and being loved, in which case it's not just a learning thing.

That love is all that lasts.

That love is ultimately the shape of all meaning.

A friend sent me this video.  I donno if you've seen it, but I'd like you to have the opportunity.  I get chills, and I tear up.  In a good way.

I betcha you'll smile...!

I got tagged by Peggy J on facebook to list 15 albums that deeply affected my life.  No can do.  I never collected or explored that many albums.  I was traveling, traveling, traveling!  And then I went through a phase that I would "never" own more than would fit in the back of a station wagon.  But, I think I can list some music that deeply moved me, woke my spirit, shaped who I became as a person.  Here we go: (and I think these are in chronological order, starting from my pre-schooler life)

1.  Daddy's Home (I used to wish and wish for my daddy to come home from work)

2.  Indian Love Call by Janette McDonald and Nelson Eddie (the song I most used to learn to sing.  It became my "paradigm" of what it is to sing)

3.  Volare  (my first feelings of happiness and joy expressed through music)  My first "favorite" song.

4.  A Disney children's record of songs from all different countries and cultures.  I could still sing some of them to you.  This was donated by my exotic aunts and uncles.  This didn't "spark" my love of culture and communication, but was merely the first tiny trellis rung to which this inner orientation could take hold.

5.  Rondo ala Turka.  A piano recital piece.

6.  For Elise, Beethoven.

7.  The Queen's Lament, Purcell.  Oh this simple, sad piano piece was a safe and sanctioned way to express a school girl's depression and captivity.  Once in a while I touch a piano.  I could play you this.

8.  Sunny for Home.  I wrote it, still perform it sometimes.  A few others.  Ha!  "my own album" perhaps.

9.  Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline was a gift from Paul Murray for my 16th birthday.  Hey, it's an album!

10.  There's an old album by The Joy of Cooking, an all girl group that was an anomaly back in the day (1972), and I heard the album over and over while I was lying on Marian's living-room floor, healing from the car accident for the many days she took loving care of me.  Thank you sweet woman, thank you for my life.  It was her favorite album, and it's gone extinct, which is too bad.  It was a really good album.  Here's one of the group, Pegi Young, who has been married to Neil Young for 30 years.  She sings (sorry, it's not such a great recording) one of the best cuts.

11.  The Point, Harry Nilsson.  I've never even seen the album.  Paul had one.  He used to play it, but I don't remember looking at it.  All of that Point stuff used to keep us all sane.  "What's the matter, friend?  You been goofin' with the bees?"  "Have you ever been to Paris?  No.  Ever been to Beirut?  Well there you go!  You see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear."  During my wandering days, for a short while, I had an Irish Setter named Arrow.

12.  Perhaps my soul-closest wandering song, "City of New Orleans."  I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.

13.  Om Kalthoum, greatest singer of the Arab world.  The oud.

14.  This song is about the golden moments I shared with my daughter, Michelle, and also about community building:  Wonderful World  -   and cheating with an extra song, this one is about dancing and giggling together at bedtime, me and the kids.

15.  This song moved me so much as a woman.  June Carter Cash wrote this song.  It's about love between a man and a woman.  This felt so true, so real to me.

Wondering what title for Mr. Blog today, looking up at computer monitor, top right hand corner.  Oh!  The time!  9:10:11.  And then it was gone.  By the time I'd processed the moment and decided that this must be the title, it was already 9:10:13.  Time goes on and on, doesn't it? 

But when do I notice it?  I'm one of those 11:11:11 people, and so is my friend, Gail.  I'll look up at the clock, "What time is it that I've just decided that I am going to bed?" And the clock will be at 11:11:11.  Again.  And it never happens with the other numbers.  When I wake up, it's never 06:06:06 (which is probably pretty lucky it's not, yes?) And I never leave the house at 08:08:08.  I never look up from the book that I'm reading and find 03:03:03. 

Some people believe that 11:11:11 has some type of metaphysical significance, like a warning of the 11th hour or something.  But if so, what am I supposed to DO at the 11th hour?  There are no dykes to run out and put my thumb into.  I don't know where there are any nuclear bombs I can disarm, and I'm already working on seriously reducing my carbon footprint.   Maybe it just means, "Wake up, even if you're going to sleep for the night now."  It does kind of jolt me awake.  At least for awhile.   ...looking around the internet for 11:11:11 stuff, I found the video below, which is pretty interesting...


Ok, Weirder than strange:  See that birdcage up there?  It's my 3rd or 4th try (depending if you count only successful attempts) to come up with an image from the internet for this blog.  Each one had a longer name, but I would rename them "11.jpg".   Going through the images, I began to get frustrated.  I wasn't finding the "right" image.  Then I found this one.  It was pleasing to me and attractive, not boring, ironic, rather mysterious.  What made it related to my "11:11" search anyway?  Well, it is an auction item that was sold on 11/11/2001.  Funny thing, though.  As I decided this was the picture for my blog, I went to save it.  But I didn't have to change the title.  It was already called, "11.jpg".  (a little Twilight Zone music, maestro!)

I could be an angel bunny!  This one is a Christmas fairy angel bunny!  Yay!!!

Do you know what they do?  They follow around people they love (and they love everybody, you know), but I'm sure I'd like to follow YOU.  And they give just the very best advice and encouragement, and so many good ideas! 

I'm so grateful for the wonderful advice that angels have given me in the past. 

There are all kinds of angels.  Some are Super Important and Serious (like Gabriel or Michael).  And some are our own spirits set free.  We scoot around like leaves on a breeze, tumbling so artfully through the ALL that we get dizzy.  We are drawn by the compass of our heart to here and there.  We grant no wishes, but inspire people to dream, to try, and to love.

OK, you know the name of the kitty.

Lisa caught me oreoing today, and wrote a blog asking about how we eat oreos.  She asks about it, like, 20 different ways, my favorite of which is: 

"What sort of spiritual thoughts and feelings do you have as you experience the Oreo?"

So, I'll speak to that part of it.  When I first started to think about this, I thought that if I really appreciated, was really present with, the consuming of the oreo, really reflective, that this would be "mindfulness."  But I realized that appreciation and attention to detail isn't the same as awareness. 

Actually, I usually don't like oreos at all.  I'll pass them up.

This morning, however, I found them in my briefcase.  Mike, my husband, had put them in there, in a plastic bag.  There were about 10 of them.    "Awwwww, how really sweet!" I thought, and my heart was happy, happy, happy.  So I was doing something atypical eating those oreos, yet loving the eating of them because they had been given to me with love. 

What I DO like about oreos is the stamped texture of the crisp dark cookie.  It contrasts so well with the white mooshy stuff in the middle. 

Usually, I'll pull them apart and slowly lick the middles, and maybe even throw away the cookie part.

But today I was nervous, edgy, a little spacey, so I was just biting them all and chewing them up the way one normally eats anything, and of course in my office I don't have any milk, so I was washing them down with cold coffee.

But, you see, I KNEW and was aware the entire time that I was doing it, that I was just chewing through the cookies to assuage a nervous, spacey edginess.  And of course the cookies were no balm for that.  And I realized while I was eating them that it was not.  So, I was awake and realizing what I was doing, and that the deepest reason I was eating them was because Mike had given them to me.

That awareness did not assist me in any way in stopping my behavior.

So, I was "awake," but at the same time, not so awake.  I spend a lot of time in that state of consciousness.