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.