Morning

The word for today is MORNING. MORNING is when the day begins. But when does the day begin? Does it begin at 12 am, when the date of the calendar changes, or at 5 or 6 am when the sun rises and the rhythms of earth start anew?

I am not a MORNING person. While I do appreciate the sunrise, the fresh dew on the grass, the quiet before the day's commotion, I much prefer the time just before and just after sunset. The end of the day is my favorite time; it is a time of relief and satisfaction, a time to anticipate the moon and the stars, a time to savor the peace and rest that awaits.

At the beginning of the day, each MORNING, I wake up not knowing where I am. For the last year or more, I have not had to be anywhere first thing in the MORNING. I have been able to take the dog out and then visit with a neighbor or return to bed for another hour. And while this may sound like sloth, it is how I let my thoughts resettle after the rumble of sleep, it is how I locate myself in the day. In the early morning I can feel my tectonic plates shifting, finding balance.

This week I'm going to a training that starts each day at 8 am in the MORNING. I wake up at 6:30 with a blank mind. All I can think of are tasks, things that must be accomplished before I leave the house. I walk the dog, shower, put on presentable clothes, earrings, make sure I have my makeup, cell phone, wallet, car keys and work documents. I start the car and join the MORNING traffic. I know this is how the vast majority of working Americans live. But where are my original thoughts? I am going along a road with lots of other cars. I am going, going; I am gone.

At the training today, our crew leader told us that starting next week we will not have to start our project work until 9:30. I felt like singing and skipping down the hallway at the break. I felt like she had given me my life back. I think I can figure out where I am by 9:30 each MORNING. I think I can figure out who I am. I can stay up at night and write this blog. I can take a longer walk with Rosie in the morning. I can be a person, not an automaton.

I was very, very scared.

Today I offer two songs.

The first, the one I prefer, is a peaceful vision of MORNING.
Cat Stevens' aka Yuseef Islam's "Morning Has Broken."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TWd3skb-Rw&feature=related

The second is "Let the Day Begin," by The Call. A good morning commute song, a good I have to get energized song. It was one of Al Gore's campaign theme songs in 2000, and we all know how that turned out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXywSZ-Zdmg

Cram

The word for today is CRAM, as in I have to CRAM for that exam. Today winter is cramming in one more snowstorm, a small kiss of accumulation coats the not yet budding branches and the pot-holed streets. My sink is cram full of dishes and I have a cramfull laundry basket of clothes. But the word for today is not cramfull, it is CRAM.

CRAM, I think is an ugly word. "Crambo" I have discovered, is a game in which one side has to provide a rhyme to a line of verse provided by the other side. Now that sounds like fun; I'd much rather sit around playing "Crambo" than cramming.

When I was young I crammed for exams. I still CRAM for life. I count the hours before something is due or before an event or a meeting and try to figure out how much longer I can sleep or otherwise avoid what I need/have to do. What is it that is so hard about getting prepared ahead of time, about making and sticking to a schedule, about giving myself a break? Oh yes, it's another dirty and not so little word--discipline.

As I get older, I cannot CRAM so much into my mind or my body. In college, I tried to read Moby Dick in a day and a half, I barely remembered anything from the book, although I did pass the exam. Now I can go back and read and enjoy detailed descriptions of mastheads or ambergris (discharge from the intestine of a sperm whale); I can contemplate philosophical passages on journeys and quests. I couldn't do that when I crammed.

Later today I am leading a local community meeting to garner support for MoveOn's PowerUp America campaign. I've been worried about whether we can CRAM all the people who want to come into the cafe space that's been donated. I've been worried about what I need to do: explain to about 50 people what MoveOn is doing to support the creation of green jobs and clean energy, describe the connection between federal funding and local action; introduce a DVD and several small group facilitators; reconvene the group. I'll need to be on, be ready, alert, engaged. I can't know everything before the event, as I mentioned before, I can't know the exact shape of it before it happens. I have been preparing for this event all week, but it is now four hours before and I need to end this post about the word CRAM.

I was about to write that I need to CRAM for the event this afternoon. Instead, I am going to take an hour and prepare; I am going to relax and bring my full, expansive self to the event. When I CRAM, I try to FIT too much information, too much activity. There is the implication that there is not enough room, not enough time.

One of my co-facilitators asked me recently, "Amy, do you have a problem with abundance?" I wanted to reply--no, as long as it's an abundance of time to sleep or wander with Rosie. (The brittle part of me also wished he'd stop his new age nosiness!)

There is yet another 12 step slogan that can help me today. It is How Important Is It? The answer--as important as I want it to be. Since I get to choose, I don't have to CRAM. The future of the world, the country, even of Evanston, does not depend on how much I can CRAM into the event this afternoon. I can choose to do what fits in the space and time and energy that I have. And maybe I can remember to make room for other people too!

Song for the day: Joni Mitchell's "Just Like this Train." Beautiful lyrics describing people in the train station waiting room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Woo9SpTPDU

Star

The word for today is STAR. On the way to training for the Census job this morning, the rock station for middle-aged folks who like to think they listen to new music once in a while (like when the Pearl Jam or Phish or the Rolling Stones put out a new album) was playing the Sly and the Family Stone's classic "Everybody is a STAR." I had one of those I don't want to get out of the car moments. I could listen to that song forever.

When I walked into the training room it didn't feel like I or any one of the 20 odd other folks in the room was a STAR. I began to think about what my niece had said to me a week ago, "Aunt Amy," she asked, "do the other people working on the Census have the same kind of degrees you have, did they go to the kind of schools you did? Why are you wasting your education?" I looked at the personal profile sheet of the woman to my right, it said high school graduate; I looked at the sheet to the left, it said the same thing. Oops, I thought, maybe my niece is on to something.

The crew leader, a young perky woman, with a mop of curly brown hair tied atop her head, told us this would be a verbatim training, meaning she had to read word for word from a big government instruction manual. Oh boy, I thought, this could be really boring.

She read fast, she whipped us through the papers we needed to sign, the fingerprints we needed to make, the details and the generalities. She made eye contact, she checked in to see if we were following along, she smiled a lot. This woman is my crew leader, I thought, this woman is a STAR. Toward the end of the training she said, ok, I don't need to read anymore, now we can be regular people, let's tell each other something about ourselves.

I listened to people introduce themselves. I discovered that I'll be working with an architect, a pianist, an actor, a laid off computer programmer, a real estate agent, an interior designer, a stay at home mom, a cartoon animator, a romance novelist. I didn't check where they went to school or their degrees. I could tell that each and every person in that room is a STAR.

At home this evening, I put on my bluetooth headphones and typed in a YouTube search for "Everybody is a Star." I walked around my house and played that song over and over. I listened to all kinds of funk classics. (James Brown is on the headphones right now.) I discovered that Madonna had incorporated "Everybody" into a medley during one of her concert tours in the 1990s. I thought about Sly Stone, whose genius, whose STAR burnt out into drug addiction, rehab and finally just became utter strangeness. I thought of Madonna, who I have always thought was strange, but has been a STAR without fail, without interruption, ever since she broke into the music scene in the early '80s (when I lived near her haunts in the East Village in NYC).

When I started the day, I thought I would need to prove something at the training. I thought I'd need to prove that I was better, smarter, sharper, more capable than the other people in the group. I noticed another woman who spoke a lot and drew a lot of attention to herself. She's doing what I had planned to do, I thought. She's forcing herself to be a STAR.

In nature, a star just shines, it doesn't have to force itself. At home this evening, with the help of good music, food and companionship provided by my next door neighbor, my animal companions, the people who read this blog, my STAR has been shining. Thank you!

Song of the Day: Sly and the Family Stone, "Everybody is a Star." Inspirational!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aKVpxR4rUc

Listen

The word for today is LISTEN. Sometimes when President Obama answers a reporter's question the first word he says is look. But what he really means is LISTEN. LISTEN to what I have to say because I have really thought this through. I like to LISTEN to President Obama.

I LISTEN to a lot of cable TV news--too much. There isn't much to LISTEN to. In this 24/7 news cycle, everything gets repeated over and over. The actual news is a small ball of solid glass packaged in a large box of styrofoam peanuts. Instead of looking through the glass, the cable news anchors and their guests spend their days and nights popping the peanuts, popping that small kernel of news into oblivion--and I LISTEN to them. I LISTEN to them when I don't want to LISTEN to myself.

To truly listen is to pay attention. More often than not what people really want is attention. One of the playwright Arthur Miller's most haunting lines is "Attention must be paid." To me it is more haunting than any quote from Shakespeare.

People crave attention, more than alcohol or ice cream or even status or success (unless they bring attention). Sometimes when I listen to a friend, he or she says thank you for listening. But I don't like it when I find myself saying that. It goes against my pride--a defacto admission that it is difficult to find someone to LISTEN to me.

A woman who lives in my neighborhood starting talking to me when we were out walking our dogs one day. She had finished graduate school, she had started a job, she was homesick for Texas. I got the sense that she was lonely; I got the sense that she needed someone to LISTEN, to pay attention, to acknowledge where she was in her life. Recently, her 93 year-old grandmother, who lives in Texas, had a stroke and was hospitalized. My neighbor is worried about her grandmother. When I saw her this week she told me she didn't think that people in her family were making the best decisions concerning her grandmother's care. But she wasn't there, so why should they LISTEN to her.

This woman has gone to Texas to visit her grandmother. Maybe if she is there with her grandmother, with her family, someone will LISTEN to her. She may say LISTEN mom to her mother or LISTEN Uncle Fred, this is what is going on. When I listened to her, this is what I heard. I heard, I'm worried, I'm scared, I'm lonely. Maybe something bad will happen and I can't change it, or maybe I can. Maybe if some one just LISTENS to me.

Out

The word for today is OUT, as in spin OUT, wipe OUT or chill OUT. Or the runner is rounding second, heading to third, going for home, and he's OUT! Sometimes when I call someone I get their voicemail and the message says the person you are calling is OUT. Sometimes I go to the store to pick up an item advertised on sale, but the item is sold OUT. Sometimes, if there is an intruder in a nightmare, I'll scream get OUT!


Is there anything good about the word OUT? I consider the many conversations I've had with my wunderdog Rosie. When the conversation doesn't center on food, there is only one other topic, when are we going OUT, or more accurately she tells me, I want to go OUT. For Rosie going OUT means she has opportunities, to visit the neighbors, to find fast food in the street or peanuts or breadcrumbs along the curb, to smell where other dogs have peed, to roll in the mud or the grass. OUT means relief from her blase life on the couch. Oh, I almost forgot, OUT means physical relief for her too. She knows only to relieve herself when she is OUT.

Tonight I wanted to go OUT. I wanted relief from the blase life in my head. My thoughts were OUT of control. I needed to get those thoughts OUT of my mind, get the feelings out of my body. For years, whenever I was troubled my friend Bertelle would say, up and OUT Amy, just get it up and OUT.

A friend had a change of schedule. I thought I was going to be OUT in the far suburbs he said, but I'm in Evanston if you want to get together and play Scrabble. I love to play Scrabble; it always puts me OUT of my misery. The point of the game is to make a word OUT of the letters you pick and to place that word in the highest scoring position on the board. The person who is leading towards the end of the game tries to go OUT, to use all his letters to end the game. If you go OUT and you have the highest score then you win.

Sometimes people say, I just need to get OUT of the house. Sometimes people say, I have to get OUT of my relationship. Sometimes people say, what did I get OUT of that experience? Don't worry, I hear myself saying, it will all work OUT.

In my days working in non-profit management I learned a principle of data management-- garbage in, garbage OUT. The same is true about life, what I get OUT of it depends upon what I put in. The ingredients determine how the meal turns OUT. I'm not going to turn myself inside OUT over this entry. I'm OUT of ideas for this post. It's over and OUT.

Shape

The word for today is SHAPE. I wanted to pick a simple word, a word I could get my head and my hands around. Then I started thinking about SHAPE and as with so many things, the simple became complicated.

SHAPE is one of the first things we learn. I remember a set of colored wood blocks. Someone held a block or put it in my hand and said circle, square or triangle. I felt each different block, I remembered the word that was said, I remembered the name of the SHAPE. Later there were blocks shaped like bars of soap or candles or towers. Later still there were parallelograms and trapezoids, and other shapes containing angles and formulas I could not touch. When I was a toddler there were holes I could fit the shapes into. I wrote about the word FIT before. When we're young we're taught that shapes FIT into spaces. Things FIT.

I don't remember anyone ever teaching me about dimension. What makes something flat and what not? I didn't really understand the concept of dimension until I took hallucinogenic drugs. I saw the shapes of leaves, like cookies cut from the light blue dough of the sky, I saw the other side of the stars, I saw the roots of trees beneath the soil. Often drugs are referred to as a gateway to a life of abuse, but for me they were a gateway to another way of seeing. For the last twenty-five years, I have not used drugs, but I have seen many, many shapes that I never could have imagined. Nature has given us the gift of a myriad of building blocks, an infinity of shapes.

It is difficult to imagine how things will take shape. I am planning a political event with a friend. We conceive, we discuss, we set forth our intentions, yet the shape of the event will not be known until it happens. When I graduated from college, I did not know what shape my life would take. I could only see a long black tunnel. I have always hated tunnels.

Now I know my life is as big as the sky, as big as the ocean. I live next to Lake Michigan. Can you see across the lake, someone asked, is that dark line the state of Michigan? Oh no, I answered, that's just a different color on the horizon. I want to feel the SHAPE of a bar of soap or a cup of tea in my hands; I want to be able fold a clean, dry sheet into a rectangle. I don't want to know the shape of the sky or the ocean or even of a great lake. These shapes, which are constantly changing, and even the SHAPE of my life, are all well beyond my grasp. That pleases me very much.

Shave

The word for today is SHAVE. Many men SHAVE every day; some women do too. Right now, lots of people have to shave their spending. Ten years ago, when I turned forty I went to see a gynecologist. The physician's assistant told me I could expect to grow facial hair as my hormones changed with age. Thank god this has not happened--or else my eyes are just so bad I can't see if it has.

If it had, if I had developed facial hair, I would know better than to SHAVE it. Long ago, my mother taught me that if you SHAVE something it comes back stronger, thicker, tougher to resist, better, she advised, to completely pluck it out. She brought me and my sister along when she got her legs waxed. As teenagers, way back in the 1970s, we were old enough to have our legs waxed too. Ouch, it hurt. The price of vanity. Sometimes, when my mother didn't go to get her legs waxed she used the hair removal product Nair. My sister and I did too. Nair smelled vile, it was one of those products you believed in partly because it smelled so bad. It looked like calamine lotion, but it smelled like nail polish remover and ammonia and unflavored cough syrup all in one. It worked. I remember the small black hairs falling away as I rinsed the thick pink goop off my legs.

Crazy people don't SHAVE. There are street people (men) in my town who have long white beards. I stay away from them. Recently, the LA TIMES printed a photo of a 70-year-old Charles Manson. He is bald and his beard is close shaven. He doesn't look as scary as he used to--is it his age or the fact that so much of his hair, his power is gone. Part of the enigmatic power of Osama Bin Laden is in his beard. Sadaam Hussein looked crazier and scarier when he was taken out of his hiding cave, unkempt, unshaved, than when he had used chemical weapons to kill Kurds. When he killed the Kurds he shaved and wore a suit. I think the Iraqi government had Sadaam shaved before he was hanged, but I don't know what he was wearing. I don't understand the logic in these things.

Sometimes people who have given up don't SHAVE. Maybe they haven't given up, maybe they just don't see the need to bother, maybe they don't see the need to conform. No matter how much I may personally resist it, spring is coming, spring for the earth, spring for me. You see I am one of those curmudgeons who likes the cold challenge, the stark severity of winter, its subtle whites and grays and blues. But I will conform or at least admit that I can't hold back spring's energy. Already, people are out and about in the 50 plus weather, college kids playing frisbee, regular folks running, riding their bicycles, some of them even wearing shorts and t-shirts.

The other morning in the shower I looked at my legs--lots of little black hairs made me feel old and ugly. They reminded me of my grandmother's legs. When my grandmother was still alive, I would look at the twists and turns of the hairs under her stockings. Her hair was not thick, but it was there, stating with much certainty that she was "off the market." My grandfather had died when she was in her late 50s, she lived almost 40 more years without finding another partner.

Unlike my grandmother, I am not completely "off the market." I know I will SHAVE my legs. I SHAVE my legs whenever there is a potential him. Spring is all about potential. (Notice the potent in potential.) I will probably get a pedicure where a woman from somewhere in Asia will shave the dead skin off my feet. I will remember to apply moisturizer to my legs and use a pumice stone on my feet. I will remember to groom my body and my mind. I will pluck my eyebrows. I may even whiten my teeth. I don't want to be crazy, I don't want to be left out, I don't want to go 20 more years without a partner. I don't want the OUCH of waxing or the horrible smell of Nair in my house. I think I'll just go and SHAVE my legs.

Bitch

The word for today is BITCH, as in a female dog is a BITCH, or that woman is acting like a real BITCH. I'm not even going to get into the term bitchin'--bitchin' is way out of my league. Maybe when I'm 80 or 90 I'll be able to say bitchin' because then it'll just be so bitchin' to be a feisty old lady who doesn't give a rat's ass about what anybody thinks of her. (Obviously, I'm not there yet.)

I'm thinking about the word BITCH because I was a BITCH today. But first, I want to mention an actual BITCH in the neighborhood, my friend's new dog Sarah. Sarah is a seven-year-old cocker spaniel whom my friend rescued from the animal shelter a couple of weeks ago. The folks at the animal shelter said that Sarah was aggressive towards other dogs and could not be adopted out to a family who had a dog. My friend and her husband already have Charlie, also a cocker spaniel, so she brought Charlie to the animal shelter to meet Sarah and to prove to the animal shelter "officials" that Sarah and Charlie could get along. Charlie is the kind of dog who is scared of his own shadow; he is incredibly sweet and docile, not a threat to anyone or anything. He and Sarah did (and are still doing) just fine.

Sarah came home with Charlie and my friend. She accepted my dog Rosie into the pack. On the streets of southeast Evanston though, Sarah has something to say. She barks at joggers, cyclists, baby strollers and other dogs. My friend tries to distract her and is honing in on the best ways to break the barking habit. When Sarah barks, Charlie joins in, and sometimes Rosie does too. Sarah isn't used to all the interaction with other dogs and other people. When a new dog comes into Sarah's new turf, Sarah not only barks, she shakes and shivers, her body rattles, her heart races. The barking is the fight part of her fight or flight response. It didn't take long for my friend and I to realize that Sarah is just scared.

This evening I met my sister and my nieces for dinner at a local restaurant. One of my nieces has a birthday in February, the other at the end of March. Before I met them for dinner I stopped at a local store to pick up gift cards--I had about 10 minutes to spare and I'd still be able to get to the restaurant on time. And, since I have a well-deserved reputation for being late, I really wanted to get there on time.

No problem I thought as I walked into the store. I interrupted two employees talking at the customer service desk and asked if they still carried gift cards. Oh yes, over there, one of them said and pointed to the front of the store. I ran over, found the cards I wanted, and went to the cashier--five minutes to spare. The clerk rang me up, I swiped my card, transaction approved, but then the clerk told me, oh, one of the cards didn't activate, I'll have to ring it up again. I already had a receipt that said $50 (for the two gift cards) and the clerk rang up another receipt that said $25. Why do I have receipts for $75 when I only bought $50 worth of gift cards I asked her? One of them didn't activate, you weren't really charged, she tried to tell me. If I wasn't charged why do I have two receipts that show my credit card is charged both times? I was an impatient customer with an attitude. The clerk really didn't know what she was doing. She brought me back to the customer service desk--no more time to spare.

I don't mean to complain, I said to the customer service representative (of course I did), but that cashier doesn't know what she's doing. The customer service rep. read through the two different receipts with three different gift card numbers as though he were translating them from Greek. Well at least he was being careful. If I had long, manicured nails I would have been tapping them. If I had chewing gum I would have been cracking it. If I had fangs I would have been showing them. If I had claws I would have been scratching something or someone. But all I had was a bad attitude. I could almost smell the nastiness exuding out of my body. I just want to pay for two gift cards, I said curtly, two gift cards that work, can't you just void out the other transaction and start over so we can do that? According to the store clock, I was now three minutes late for dinner....

The customer service rep. did finally correct the transaction. The original clerk disappeared into the land of shameful mistakes. I strode out to my car, dumped everything out of my purse, and called my sister from my cell phone, ready to blame my tardiness on the ineptitude of the store employees. My oldest niece answered the phone. Are you there already, I asked? Oh no, we'll be there in about five minutes, she said. Me too, I told her. I pulled into the parking lot just as my sister and my nieces crossed the street to enter the restaurant. I waved to them, smiling and friendly. I'd already left my angry BITCH behind. I hadn't kept my sister and my nieces waiting; I hadn't screwed up; I hadn't disappointed anyone or done anything wrong;--except be a BITCH because I was scared of doing any one of those things I just mentioned yet another time.

License

The word for today is LICENSE. To LICENSE is to give permission. You need a LICENSE to drive, to own a gun, to operate a tattoo parlor, practice medicine or law, get married or own a dog--but not a cat or a bird or a ferret, as far as I know. You do not need a license to have a child, or two, or three, or.....you get the idea. You do not need a LICENSE to run for public office. You do need a driver's LICENSE (or some other federally authorized photo id) to get on an airplane. This can be a problem if you get stopped by the police on the way to the airport and they take your LICENSE.

When I moved to Illinois just about four years ago, I held on to my Maine driver's LICENSE for as long as I could. I held on to a lot of things from Maine as long as I could. But my driver's LICENSE expired and I needed to get a new one in February 2006. Not so simple. Suffice it to say that I have had trouble keeping track of my paperwork in the past. I discovered that to obtain my new Illinois LICENSE I needed a Social Security card. I couldn't recall the last time I'd seen mine. I had lived as a fully privileged US citizen without one for years. A month before my LICENSE expired I went to the Social Security office to order a replacement card for "Amy Kurtz." Much to my surprise I was told that I did not exist. But I've been paying taxes under that name for years, I told the clerk, the IRS seems to think I exist. Well, we have no record of you, she replied, have you ever used another name? And then I realized, that when I got married in 1986, I had legally changed my name. I had agreed to take my husband's name and he agreed to wear a wedding ring. The logic in our agreement now completely eludes me.

But I've been using my maiden name for the last 18 years, I told the clerk. The IRS thinks I'm Amy Kurtz, my law school diploma says Amy Kurtz, all my paychecks, my bank accounts, my Maine driver's LICENSE, my lost US passport, my voter's registration card. You have to bring in your divorce decree she told me, then we can put in an application for a replacement card with a change of name.

I went home and looked through all my important papers. I found the divorce decree that had arrived in the Rural Route delivery box in Harpswell, Maine in the fall of 1989. I brought it back to the Social Security office. I can't accept this, the clerk told me, it is not a sealed copy from the court. In the eyes of the metaphorical eyes of the Social Security Administration I remained married. I could not believe that I was still unraveling the effects of a marriage that had ended in 1989, in what I have frequently referred to as one of my other lifetimes.

My marriage and my divorce took place in the borough of Manhattan in the City of New York. Through family I knew a practicing lawyer there who was kind enough to obtain a copy of my divorce decree with the proper court seal. At this point, my Maine driver's LICENSE was on the verge of expiring. I brought the document to the Evanston Social Security office, but it would take several more weeks before my replacement card would come in the mail. And, I could not get my new Illinois driver's LICENSE without the Social Security card. I entered the world of illegal behavior; I drove without a valid LICENSE.

I now have an Illinois driver's LICENSE. It doesn't expire until February 2011. I have a Social Security card with MY name on it. On the back of the card it says DO NOT CARRY IT WITH YOU. It does not say, except to the Department of Motor Vehicles when you are applying for your initial Illinois license or when you are applying for a job with the federal government (although you will need to have it in your physical possession on both these occasions). I have a sealed copy of my divorce decree and a sealed copy of my birth certificate. I am relatively certain that I exist. And if I ever have any doubts, I'm sure that Equifax, Experian and Transunion, as well as a host of security cameras and other surveillance devices, could provide some unsolicited confirmation. I am sure they have LICENSE to monitor me, though none of them ever asked permission.

Sign

The word for today is SIGN.

Today I saw a sign in a Kinko's window "SIGNS MEAN BUSINESS."

In just about two weeks I will start a part-time, temporary job working for the US Census. How did you think of doing that, somebody asked. I was at the Civic Center getting my 2009 parking permit and I read the SIGN. The SIGN stated there would be a test for people who wanted to work for the Census, it gave the date, it gave the time, it gave the location; I showed up.

So maybe this post is about showing up, or showing up and reading the signs. Long ago, when I lived in Maine, I dated a man who rented a room in a boarding house. When I first met him I thought he drove a Volvo and worked for a graphic arts firm. The Volvo was a friend's car and the graphic arts job an unpaid internship. He had three teenage daughters who came to visit him on the weekend, they all slept in the same room on air mattresses and in sleeping bags. He owed back child support, he smoked a lot of pot. He was a very sweet and lovely man, gentle and kind--an addict. Every time I left his house I saw a SIGN as I pulled out of the driveway--Dead End it said. I dated this man for three years.

A friend of mine recently failed her written driver's license test. They had all these questions about signs she told me. The test asked her to identify road signs by their shapes alone without any words or pictures. I've been driving for over thirty years, she said, but I've never seen some of these signs. I guess I better read the book before I take the test again.

When we're on the road, they--the government--wants us to read the signs. They want us to be so familiar with the signs that we know them just by their shape. We know a stop SIGN by instinct, the curve SIGN on a steep hill when we can't see around the bend. The more we know
the better for us, the better for everyone else on the road.

We know the signs of a troubled person, someone unkempt, bedraggled, sitting on a street corner or standing at a busy intersection--with a SIGN, Please Help, Will Work for Food. Do we know the signs of some one trying to hide their troubles. Do we notice our cohorts with one too many worries than they can handle, trying to look as though everything is fine even as tears fall from their eyes? I see more and more people like this every day. In the past, I have been one of these people.

I was walking by the lake with a friend this afternoon and a man passed by on a bicycle. That's stringy haired Harry, said my friend, he's a photographer, he's out of work. How do you know, I asked wondering if my friend interpreted being outside at 2 pm as a SIGN. He told me, said my friend, he told me the last time I saw him.

Listening is one way to know something, so is looking, so is feeling. I've been feeling tired, ornery, off, crabby, short-tempered, lonely, dissatisfied. I took these feelings as a SIGN, a STOP SIGN. I needed to stop noticing the signs of trouble in everybody else's life and start paying attention to my own life's signs. I don't need to wait until I can read all the letters or see the symbols, the shape of the SIGN is enough for me to know--pay attention Amy, something is wrong, or at least not quite right. I don't need to wait until I am so tired that I am velcroed to my bed.

The SIGN I saw right after "SIGNS MEAN BUSINESS" said "Information and Assistance." Now that's a good SIGN.

Marriage

The word for today is MARRIAGE. What do I know about MARRIAGE? Not very much. I was married for three years in my twenties, in what now seems like another lifetime. I arrived in that MARRIAGE with all kinds of personal preconceptions--that my husband and I were supposed to do everything together (everything I wanted to do) and that my husband was supposed to love everything about me while I could change whatever I disliked about him. Given those preconceptions, it is no wonder the marriage didn't last. At the time I thought it was my husband whom I could not tolerate, but it was really the person I had become whom I could not stand.

So now when I look at MARRIAGE, it is from the outside, a view from which it is easy to be judgmental. I look at couples quibble, disagree, put one another down, I look at them respond to each other with silent frost or angry heat and I think, never in a million years would I want that kind of relationship. I idealize about a relationship based on mutual respect, honesty and admiration, in which partners treat each other with reverence, care and kindness. Then I get slapped back to reality by none other than my very own wunderdog, the one and only Rosie.

This morning, mid-March in Chicago, was one of the warmest days of the year. Rosie and I took a walk to the neighborhood coffee shop and I tied her up to the tree outside, as I have done many, many times. I went inside and ordered my cafe au lait, and she began to bark. I wondered if she was bothering the other customers, some of whom looked up from their laptops, so I went outside to tell her "No Bark." When I returned inside to wait for my order, she began to bark again, so I returned outside to wait with her next to the tree. She was definitely the one in charge.

Once I had my cafe au lait in hand, I untied Rosie and prepared to head home. We made it just past the coffee shop and Rosie decided she didn't feel like going home. She didn't feel like going anywhere. After all, I had gone inside a place where food and drink were available and I did not emerge with anything for her. What was I thinking? Obviously I had been inconsiderate of her desires and therefore did not merit her cooperation.

So she sat and stared at me as I tried to get her to walk. She was having none of it, and as she glared at me I imagined her thought bubbles (no way, why should I, who the hell are you anyway.) "Let's go Rosie," I said, "let's go home. Time to go. No, honey, you can't stay. Sweetie, let's go now." And as I began to lose my patience with her, I realized that this game between us has been going on for nine years. Rosie and I have been together--dog and master (or more accurately human servant)--for nine years. We've been going to this coffee shop for almost four years and we're still having the same "conversation" on the street. Oh no, I thought, it's like we're married! Any one observing us would think we looked ridiculous, but we're in a pattern, we've been doing the exact same thing with each other for so long, that it feels natural.

That's just what my parents had been trying to explain to me about MARRIAGE. Mom and Dad, I'd ask them, how can you treat each other this way, how can you stand the disagreements, the arguments, the standoffs. In his and her own way, each of them told me, Amy, that's what marriage is like, that's what happens after 54 years. But I am single and sanctimonious. Until this morning that is, until my dog set her butt on the ground, stared up at me and taught me that I too am blind in the most intimate of my relationships.

Stress

The word for today is STRESS. I cannot STRESS how much I want to keep this blog as a daily practice, and yet I STRESS about it.

My neighbor has bronchitis and sinusitis--STRESS. Of course I'm stressed she says, I'm the sole breadwinner for a family of four, my co-workers are getting pink slips, my 10 year-old tells me he wants to get a job to pay for basketball camp, my 4 year-old needs a scholarship for kindergarten, my husband to get his teaching certification. I am fortunate. I do not have my neighbor's kind of STRESS.

My mother has a STRESS fracture in her foot. You know what's the worst part, she tells me, I think it's related to my osteopososis. I can't take Flossomax or Boniva, she says, because of my stomach. Both my mother and I experience our STRESS gastrointestinally. We are high-strung, nervous, anxious, fast metabolizers who have a hard time relaxing. I have to wear this ugly black shoe for six to eight weeks, she continues. You know how restless I get, what am I going to do?

Recently, my mother was angry at my father's doctor because the doctor ordered blood tests to check my father's liver enzymes shortly before a scheduled vacation. Doesn't the doctor know we're going away, she wondered out loud, doesn't he know he's causing STRESS. But then, my mother got the STRESS fracture and she and my father agreed not to go on their trip.

My mother got the STRESS fracture the day before I turned 50. She had invited me to visit her and my father in NYC for my birthday. My mother, my father and I were walking around the Central Park reservoir. My mother is a regular walker; she is a fast walker. It was the end of February and there had been some warm weather in NYC. The ground on the trail was pocked after a recent thaw. My parents each set out with a determined stride and did not talk to each other or to me; they walk for exercise, not pleasure or socializing. Sometimes in my family we say too much, but frequently we say nothing at all. As we reached the last quarter my mother and father were a good 10-15 yards in front of me. My father started to open a lead. My stomach was growling, my head was congested, my ears hurt. I thought about trying to catch up, at least to my mother, and then I decided no, this time I'm going at my own pace, a pace with which I feel comfortable. They didn't look back once. The analytical, resentful part of me thought, story of my life...I've fallen behind and they just don't seem to notice or to care.

Later that night I noticed my mother limping as we walked to the a theater. She went to the podiatrist the next morning. At first he thought it was just an inflammation, but when it did not get better in a week, she returned and the x-ray revealed a stress fracture. She is certain that she fractured her foot because she was walking too fast along the reservoir's uneven path. You know your Dad gets competitive with me, she explained, he was showing off how fast he could walk, and I was just trying to keep up with him.

There is a lot of STRESS involved in keeping up. For a while last year I stopped. My stress had evolved (or devolved) into depression and fatigue, a constant weariness and achiness. Years of anxiety had paralyzed me. All I wanted to do was to sleep, walk dogs and play Scrabble. I didn't want to feel any STRESS.

I hate when people say that STRESS is a necessary part of living. I hate the phrases, STRESS management, time management, anger management. I don't want to manage these things. I want them to go away.

But I don't feel stressed about this blog any more, and I don't feel angry or resentful the way I did for much of the weekend. That's because I did my entry for the day. Phew....

Fit

The word for today is FIT. This morning I was FIT to be tied; I wanted to throw a FIT. I'd had a dream in which I did not FIT. In the dream I was back in high school, my friends would not sit with me, would not walk with me. I woke up feeling unfit; I woke up with that adolescent feeling that I still did not FIT in.

A friend asked if I use one of those big blue balls to keep FIT. No I do not. A big blue ball would not FIT in my apartment. When I ate ice cream every night, my pants did not FIT. If I do not eat ice cream and I walk a lot every day, my pants do FIT, sometimes they are even a little loose.

Some women have a hard time finding a bra that fits. I remember my mother told me that you have to lean forward and throw your chest into the cups. Then I learned that you also have to adjust the straps. I figured out that you could have very small breasts and a wide rib cage or large breasts and a narrow rib cage, hence all the different combinations of width and cup sizes. Sometimes I go to a store, try on twelve pair of jeans and none of them FIT, and then I can go to a thrift store and the first pair I try on is a FIT.

At the Career Center, the job coaches tell us to look at the FIT when we're job hunting. An acquaintance told me to think about becoming a life insurance agent because I like to talk to old people, but it just doesn't FIT my personality.

It's good to have a wardrobe and furniture that fits your lifestyle. It's good to have friends who FIT too.

You have to know yourself to know if something or someone is a good FIT. I've learned to know my size, shape, temperament, idiosyncracies, likes and dislikes, moods, energy and comfort levels. I've learned about my strengths and weaknesses. I've learned that sometimes I can't make myself FIT, I can't make myself shut up or cut myself down to size or artificially inflate my ego. If I don't FIT, I don't FIT. Accepting that makes it feel oh so much better when I do.

Dirt

The word for today is DIRT. I like DIRT, I like getting dirty. Now I worry about what the search engines and the censors and cyberspies will think. (Though there is nothing untoward about my statement.) I don't usually worry about getting dirty. I don't often get manicures or wear fancy clothes. I like the DIRT of the earth--mud, soil--that kind of dirt, outside dirt. Not dust bunnies or grease stains or sweaty soiled clothes lying in piles. I like DIRT the way I imagine pigs do; the way I know dogs do.

I don't make people take their shoes off when they come into my house. This may be a mistake because my floors get very dirty. I notice the difference when I go to friends' who do ask me to take off my shoes. Their homes seem more ordered, sometimes more serene. Some of these friends do not have animals.

Here I come to my point. I like dirt because my dog likes DIRT. It makes her happy. It makes her happy to pad around in the thick swampy mud. It makes her happy to run through the woods and accumulate dead leaves and branches and burrs of all kinds in her coat. It makes her happy to roll on her back and wave her paws at the sky after a fresh snowfall, then right herself and nuzzle her snout a few inches into the snow. And though I do not do these things myself, it makes me happy just to look at her, to experience her total joy and abandonment vicariously.

Friends of mine know, if they bring their dog for a walk in the woods with me and Rosie, my springer, most likely mud will be involved. When it is, when the dogs are slick and coated, I make my offer. Full of guilt and pleasure I say I will wash your dog.

Rosie and I have many rituals. One involves "tubtime." I hold a treat over the bathtub, she jumps in, I direct the sprayer at her paws, then her legs and her underbelly. I flush out the dirt the way she was trained to flush out birds as a hunter. I watch with great satisfaction as particles of dead leaves and clumps of antediluvian mud slowly fall from her body and float forward to the bathtub drain. Once she is thoroughly rinsed I wrap her in a bath towel and rub her down. She jumps over the side of the tub, shakes her entire body and runs around the living room, looking for a soft surface to press against. Black watery streaks drip along the bathtub wall. I take a sponge and wipe them away. I fold the dirty towel and lay it over the side of the tub. The shirt I'm wearing is splotched with water. But as long as I've done my laundry, a clean dry shirt is just in the other room.

Mountain

The word for today is MOUNTAIN. If I'm feeling positive I'll think of the strength and energy of a MOUNTAIN; if I'm feeling negative I'll think of a MOUNTAIN of trouble. Today I'm feeling positive.

MOUNTAINS, according to the science of geomancy, are places of great power. I was reminded of this when I was in NYC two weeks ago at a lecture about Buddhist monasteries in Buryatia, a former Soviet republic in eastern Siberia. A professor from Tulane University, William Brumfield, showed slides of monasteries that had survived the vast destruction of Stalin's rule. The monasteries were built within view of the Sayany MOUNTAINS. The monasteries and the monks who lived there drew from the MOUNTAINS' power.

In Chicago we do not have MOUNTAINS, but we do have a great lake, which according to geomancy, is also a source of power. I do not know how far we have to travel to find a MOUNTAIN, since I do not know when a hill becomes more than a hill, when it graduates to mountainhood. About a year and a half ago I drove north through Wisconsin and purposely stopped at the location of highest elevation in the state. There was a water tower at the top and a bit of a view; it was really easy to climb.

Back East, where I come from, there are MOUNTAINS. There are the White Mountains in New Hampshire, which include the presidentials, there is Mt. Katahdin in Maine, which is the beginning of the Appalachian trail. In NY there are the Catskill Mountains and the Adirondacks; in New Jersey the Palisades. In western Massachusetts, where I went to college, there is the Holyoke Range. I could sit on Memorial Hill almost any fall afternoon in Amherst and gaze at its gentle glory.

When I still lived in Maine, my young nieces, who are native Midwesterners, walked with me on the rocks besides the ocean in Cape Elizabeth. These are MOUNTAINS, the oldest one said, as we walked along the trails of wildflowers and berries that bordered the sea. No, no this is not a MOUNTAIN I told her and I laughed to myself at her lack of perspective. I had not lived in the flatness at that point in my life, the flatness was still to come.

As a child I drove with my family up the Taconic State Parkway to visit my great aunt who had a home in the Catskills. She owned over a 100 acres of property. She had inherited the land from her second husband; her third husband had built a stone wall along the roadside, stone pillars to mark the driveway, and a manmade pond from a stream behind the house. My great aunt rode a tractor to clear acres of lawn from which we could look out to other slopes of the MOUNTAINS. At dusk we saw deer, at night we saw stars that I never knew existed in my suburban experience. I felt the power and the peace of the MOUNTAINS; I smelled the freshness of pine, heard the cooing of owls or the brief snapping sounds of a fireflies.

When my great aunt grew old, unable to live alone in the MOUNTAINS, she moved to an apartment on 68th and Lexington in Manhattan. She moved her antique collection, her armoire, her figurines, what remained of her jewelry after several robberies. Unfortunately, when she moved, there was construction on a building across the street. The peace of the MOUNTAINS was replaced by drills and jackhammers. After several years in Manhattan, my aunt moved again, to a retirement community in Connecticut, but I believe that her peace was permanently destroyed by those years living amidst the pollution and noise of NYC, a city where buildings tried to replace MOUNTAINS, and they simply could not.


ADDENDUM: I first heard the word geomancy several years ago when I learned that someone I had met at my network chiropractor's office wanted to start a practice. She helped people situate and arrange their homes to align with the power of the earth. She made several trips to Scotland to study at a geomancy school. Later she considered attending a "green" architecture program at a university here in the US, but I don't think she ever did. Geomancy refers to a practice of divining the patterns of scattered pebbles, sand and seeds. Another use of the term (the one I am more familiar with) refers to the Chinese practice of Feng-shui, which is the use of landscape and topography to determine the optimal location for buildings and human energy. Geomancy is thousands of years old and was used in both Islamic and Buddhist cultures.

Information

The word for today is INFORMATION, as in too much INFORMATION. I began to think about this because as I tell more and more people about this blog, I realize that the bigger the audience the more I may limit what I write about and whom I write about. I will not dishonor the confidences or indiscretions of friends. I will be discrete in revealing my own ugly indiscretions and judgements. Promises, promises....

But I now participate in this particular INFORMATION genre. I want to make some of my thoughts public, not my entire life, and it's up to me to make sure I honor the difference between the thoughts I want to share and the intimate details of my life that I want to keep private (nothing salacious believe me).

So now I feel like stopping because I don't want to reveal any more INFORMATION. I am one of those people who think of myself as very open, yet tell others almost nothing about myself. I walk the streets with my dog Rosie, and let her take care of the introductions. Which 12 step program were you in, asked an acquaintance the other night. I don't talk about that, I replied, the whole point of the program is that it's anonymous! The manuscripts I submit in memoir class consistently receive the following feedback: I love your style, but I want to know more about the narrator.

Recently, I found an old college friend through Facebook. I appreciated the INFORMATION about where she lived and worked. I appreciated being able to get in touch with her again. The day after our reunion in NY I saw that somebody posted INFORMATION about the latest marriage of my friend's college boyfriend, the man who broke her heart in her twenties, the man who broke her heart hard. Too much INFORMATION I thought. And then, I got my dose. I checked this same friend's Facebook page and saw that she had "friended" my college boyfriend/ex-husband. Without thinking I clicked on his name and saw a picture of him looking very happy with his second wife.

Too much INFORMATION. The INFORMATION superhighway. I thought it was a place to run away, but it leads me right back to where I started. Maybe that's not so bad. After all I'm still breathing, and Rosie is still here, somewhere.

Wanderlust

The word for today is WANDERLUST. I chose the word earlier, but it is a bit funny, because I struggled to get myself off the couch and over to the computer to write. For a couple of hours this evening, I was content to sit in front of the television surrounded by my animal companions and the usual cast of cable news characters. Throughout the day I thought of silly ideas, a novel with a bawdy main character named Wanda Lust or a fairy flying around sprinkling aphrodisiac powder on random people with her wand o' lust. My WANDERLUST is my passion for exploring, the spark inside me that means no matter how dark or paralyzing my depression may become I do not completely or permanently lose my wonder. For me, my WANDERLUST is my lust for life.

As a child I got to go places. Not exotic places like Africa or India or China. I've still never been to any of these, and would still like to go--to Africa especially. I grew up in the suburbs of NYC in a community that was established during Colonial times along a wooded hillside. From my family's sunroom window we looked down on railroad that led to NYC, a small river and over to another community on the opposite hillside. We could get in the car and go to the Atlantic Ocean or cross the great Hudson River and continue north to the Catskill mountains. I saw a change of landscape, a change of scenery. I knew how to find the space of the mountains or the sea.

During the summer and on school vacations I visited friends who had summer houses in Maine or Martha's Vineyard. In fourth grade my best friend moved to Ithaca, NY; I visited her twice a year throughout high school, often taking the bus from the Port Authority in Manhattan to the western part of NY near the Pennsylvania border. In my own neighborhood, I remember walking up a long, steep hill from town and turning the corner to my family's street. If I hadn't gone anywhere in several months the repetition, walking up the same hill, turning on the same block, bothered me. Repetition still bothers me.

I love maps. I love using them to help me find my way. When I moved to Maine in 1989 I took myself on weekend excursions with my newly purchased Delorme atlas to explore my new state. I drove from the coast to the Sunday River ski resort near New Hampshire, not to go skiing, but just so I'd know how to get there. I explored the winding peninsulas that make the actual coastline miles longer than the relatively straight Route One and came to know which one had the best lobster pound or the most solitary lighthouse or the most colorful wildflowers. I graduated from the coast to the inland woods and searched out swimming holes where only locals knew to pull off the road and take a dunk.

Moving to the Chicago area was hard. I loved being on the road, heading towards the midwest, especially taking time to walk across the Niagara River and see the falls from the Canadian side, but I felt swallowed crossing the Indiana tollway over to Chicago. During my first expeditions in my current home state, I could not get over how many strip malls on the thoroughfares that extended west in every town from Evanston north. Was TJ Maxx on Dempster or Church? Was Target on Howard or Oakton? The Office Depot, the Petco. These were the landmarks in my new area.

Some weekends, the wanderlust prevailed. I got in the car and drove to Iowa, just to see the Mississippi River or to Wisconsin just to see and feel some hills. I began to wander north and west on a regular basis through Lake County into McHenry where horse farms and forest preserves still survived along with ominous housing developments. The farther I drove the more it felt like home, like Maine, where I might find a neighborhood swimming hole or a rural farmstand.

When I have the WANDERLUST I get in my car and drive--north usually. My true north. Some people feed their wanderlust in cities, discovering historic buildings and budding neighborhoods. I need nature, I need space, I need something that looks familiar and different all at once. I need something that was created by a passion that didn't come from man. Then I am happy.

Dishes

The word for today is DISHES. I don't usually think a lot about dishes--until the last few days that is. DISHES are just there, in the cabinet, on the kitchen counter, in the sink. And, for folks, unlike me, who have the usual twenty-first century appliances, they are in the dishwasher. DISHES in the dishwasher is exactly what prompted this post.

The other day I read a friend's Facebook status update which stated that she was too tired to unload the dishwasher. Maybe not the most thrilling information, but it prompted more comments than any other status update posted by my 23 Facebook friends (not very many I know). Maybe I'm not using the most accurate sociological data, but hey, people out there care about dishes, more than bad backs, new puppies, trips to Florida, publicity tours, childrens' accomplishments, and birthdays and anniversaries. They care about dirty DISHES. I keep trying to remind myself about the basics and here it is, right in the sink in front of me.

I think of a former Al-Anon sponsor who said that she knew her life had become unmanageable when she could find only one teaspoon in her kitchen drawer. I think of a friend a who visited me from the West coast and bought me extra light bulbs during her stay so I'd have a replacement when one blew out. I think of another friend who urged me to spoil myself and buy the twenty-four pack of toilet paper rolls for my single-person household. Every one of these people cared about me and taught me an invaluable lesson.

When I was about to get married, more than twenty years ago, years before any of the incidents mentioned above, my fiance and I went to a fancy department store in NYC to select our every day DISHES and our fine china. Lenox and Wedgewood and patterns by other elite manufacturers stood nobly on mirrored glass shelves. I didn't know how to choose; I didn't understand why my parents liked china with seagulls flying over a blue sea or country French versions of the pied piper. I felt dizzy, paralyzed and inadequate looking at all the different patterns, as though there was something the matter with me because I didn't care. I was more horrified rather than thrilled to be engaged in this pre-marriage ritual. My parents and my soon to be in-laws told me I had to do this--you have to register, otherwise how will the wedding guests know what to get you.

I went through with it, as I did with so many other things back then, finding what I disliked the least--a simple blue and white plate with tasteful flowers in the middle. I have used my Wedgewood less than a dozen times. For the last ten years at least, it has remained wrapped in old newspapers inside cardboard boxes in my basement storage unit. Maybe a friend will sell it for me on Ebay. Maybe someone out there wants or needs these DISHES. I guess they were never what I really wanted.

Microphone

The word for today is MICROPHONE. It should mean a little phone, but instead it is the electronic device that amplifies what someone says so that an audience can hear it. I think this blog is my MICROPHONE.

Yesterday I went to the coffee shop to write the blog entry. It was after 6 o'clock on a Saturday evening. I circled the streets around Hinman and Main in Evanston at least half a dozen times to find a parking spot. I could not see inside the coffee shop from the street because the combination of the moisture and the air temperature caused fog to layer over the windows. Once I walked in the door I found a packed room of people listening to singers performing at an open mike night.

There were performers whose music had a country Appalachian sound, others with a 60s pop sound, and still others with a roots or blues sound. There were flannel-shirted, middle-aged men performing the songs they wrote to woo their wives thirty years ago and young, ethereal women experimenting with the power and lightness of their voices--reminding me of Joan Osborne or Tori Amos. For the most part, I could write with the music in the background. One man sang about his friend Mike who is running for Alderman on the Green Party ticket. "My friend Mike," he sang, "he rides a recumbent bike. He likes to go for a hike. Go vote for Mike." It is one of the best campaign songs I've ever heard.

Then a young dread-locked, African American man took the microphone (he didn't actually take it, he just sat down on the stool behind it). He said he was a rapper and that he was going to cover a tune that he'd learned at the Old Town School of Music and then perform an original song. He started singing "House of the Rising Sun"...there is a house in New Orleans. At first I thought he'd just slowed it down as part of his interpretation, but then he began to struggle, he strummed, he paused, he apologized (this was the first song I learned), he continued, he strummed, he paused, he apologized, he continued.

I found it harder to keep the music in the background. I began to wonder if he would give up and just go into his original song. He didn't give up; he struggled through to the end. The audience applauded, not out of a sense of duty or gratefulness that he was done, but with appreciation---he had performed, it didn't really matter if he made mistakes. No one sneered or sighed; they smiled and laughed along with him. His original song was quite good, something about taking away the evilness inside, something about how could it be evil if the source is god's love. The next performers were a woman singing the Sixpence None the Richer song "Kiss Me" and a man accompanying her on guitar. Her voice wasn't really that good. I wondered if she sounded better at home, in the car, in the shower? But again, it didn't really matter. Everyone was having a good time. Anyone who wanted the MICROPHONE could have it.

Proud

The word for today is PROUD. I am wondering about the difference between PROUD and pride. I am PROUD; I have pride. Parents are PROUD of their children's accomplishments; parents take pride in their children's accomplishments. Umm, maybe this is more informative...to be PROUD, to have pride; to be happy, to have happiness. There is a grammatical explanation--PROUD is an adjective; pride is a noun.

Yesterday, at the wonderful group birthday dinner party at my neighbor's house, a man I had just met asked me if I am PROUD to be Jewish and I said no. Immediately, like a good Jew, I felt guilty; one should never say she is not PROUD to be Jewish. Later though I thought, I am not proud to be a white person, I am not proud that I have brown hair (although as I age I probably will be), I am not proud that I have type A positive blood. These are characteristics that I was born with, that have nothing to do with the kind of person I have consciously decided to become. So when I said that I am not PROUD to be Jewish, what I meant was, I am Jewish, it is something I am, something I accept about myself, something that will never change.

PROUD. Am I PROUD of anything? As a Jew, I come from a PROUD people. As an upper-middle class American, raised by second generation Americans who educated themselves and achieved material success, I learned to be proud of accomplishments, to be proud of doing. It was much, much more difficult to love myself simply for being human--a white, American, Jewish, brown-haired, brown-eyed, tall, slender, long-legged, type A positive, right-handed female who breathes the air, walks the earth, swims in lakes, rivers and oceans, and lives in a third-floor apartment with two cats and a dog.

One of the many thoughts about COMMUNITY that I did not express in yesterday's post has to do with the Twelve Steps. The Twelve Step COMMUNITY is where I first learned about COMMUNITY, where I felt and experienced COMMUNITY on a deeply loving and trusting level. It is also where I learned that being PROUD, being too PROUD, can hurt me, can separate and isolate me from my fellow human beings. Pride can create an illusion that I can manage things all by myself, without help from a higher source, without the help of COMMUNITY. I don't have a positive reaction to the word PROUD. If I think of pride as the opposite of shame, I have little use for either. I strive for acceptance of myself and of others, especially those who may be proud--very, very proud or very, very ashamed of themselves on any given day.

Community

The word for today is COMMUNITY. It is a long word; like time, it is a concept; like time and window, it is manmade. As soon as I write that I know that while it is manmade, it is not only of man. All living creatures, all organisms exist in COMMUNITY. Dogs in COMMUNITY for instance are called a pack; geese a gaggle, and so on.

This morning I was ironing a table cloth at my neighbors' house. We might as well form a commune I said. My dog is part of the pack at her house. I am part of the pack at her house. I share morning tea with my neighbor; soup or salad for lunch. I watch Presidential news conferences and panels of pundits with her and her husband on their enormous flat screen television.

Tonight my neighbor, who I will finally admit, is also my friend, is having a dinner party. It started as a party for my 50th birthday. I must have been very concerned about my 50th birthday, which has now come and gone, because I made a very big deal of it, in a preemptive way. The dinner party, which my friend originally planned to celebrate my birthday,is now a celebration for her husband and for two friends of ours as well. Now that I am over 50, I have finally learned how to share. I want to recognize though that my friend recognized, and honored, my need for acknowledgement.

After I ironed the table cloth, I helped her pick up the dining room. We put the extra leaf in the table. I took the fine china down from the high cabinet that she could not reach. Another friend will come over early to help her cook. Yet another friend will bring a bottle of wine. And, on this Friday evening, our community will be defined in this way--six people, two connected by marriage, two connected by work, and the rest of us by the loose ribbons of friendship, sharing food, drink, and the incredible blessing and comfort of companionship.

There are many more paragraphs to write about COMMUNITY. When I start to think about COMMUNITY in my life, the COMMUNITY I found and left in Portland, Maine, the COMMUNITY that exists when I join my best friend at her summer house in Tamworth, NH, the COMMUNITY I observed when I walked along Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn with my friend Candace, I get confused. I know I am drawn to these places--or to the idea of these places. I envy the people who I think have COMMUNITY. I envy the people I think belong. And, I get overwhelmed by the idea of writing down all my thoughts. So I just wrote about my COMMUNITY today. TIME to go. My COMMUNITY awaits.

Window

The one word for today is WINDOW. Don't worry, this has nothing to do with Microsoft Corporation, which, I now realize, probably meant to use WINDOWS as a metaphor before the term became synonymous with an operating system that most people dislike. A WINDOW, as I am thinking of it, provides an opportunity, an opening, something which we can see through, that lets air, smells, or thoughts out, and lets fresh energy in. A WINDOW is like the in breath and the out breath.

Yesterday a friend of mine shared a recent experience with me. "I told him," she said. "I told him about what happened that weekend." She was referring to an incident about which she feels ashamed and humiliated. She does not tell many people, but she told someone who is helping her in her job search, someone she has come to trust.

"Do you think it is okay that I told him?" she asked me. Of course, I responded. The more he knows about you, the more he can help you. You are opening a window for him, when you open the window there is more room for him to give and more room for you to receive. She told me that she'd never thought of it that way before. I like that, she said.

Maybe I'm talking about doors, but for some reason I like thinking about windows. Windows can be opened or closed and I can stay where I am while still allowing for an exchange of giving and receiving. If it's a door I feel pressure to walk through it, to be on one side or the other. I can look through a window, I can see what's out there, I can open it, I can decide how I feel and then I can lift it open or pull it shut as I please.

Time

My one word for today is TIME.  It's about TIME that I start my blog.  It's about TIME that I start doing what I really want to do.

Thank you to Stephanie Springsteen and to all my writing colleagues and classmates and cohorts for inspiration and encouragement.  When Stephanie saw my Facebook status recently:  "I am back in Evanston wondering what is next," she commented, "Start writing."  Oh yeah.  Start writing; start blogging.

I returned from a trip to NYC late Sunday night.  The last TIME  I'd been there was over five years ago.  The logos on the taxicabs are different.  The graffiti on the walls of the subway cars is gone.  Approximately, one of out every ten storefronts on the Upper East Side is vacant.  There are more dogs being walked than people walking them (or walking themselves).  The Catholic school girls' plaid skirts are really short.  

I saw my best friend from college.  The last TIME I'd seen her was in January 1993, sixteen years ago.  She still works for the same economic development consulting firm, but is now married and is a mom.  She and her husband were able to take TIME off from their respective jobs to spend seven weeks in Kazakstan in the summer of 2005 .  At the end of that TIME they came home with a beautiful boy, Otis.  I fell in love with him almost immediately, once he decided to crawl out from under the dining table and show me the remote controlled dinosaur who lives in the closet in his bedroom.  TIME to go for now.