Fairness?!

When my boys who are 6 and 7 won't share I will sometimes take away whatever they are not sharing.
  Yesterday Soren (the younger) came up to me all proud because he had made things fair by destroying the cave the Ben had made and would not share. Soren's caves kept collapsing. I spent five minutes explaining how destroying(his word) did not make things fair it made things worse. ( A novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. )
  Later I realized that my taking things from them was exactly the same in his mind as him destroying the cave. Now what?

change?

I am a very thoughtful person. I do not mean that I think things through in an orderly and organized manner or that I necessarily think well about others .
I just think a lot. About anything that comes into view or mind or hearing or whatever. So it is kind of noisy in my head. It doesn't bother me and it makes running alone quite entertaining, if not peaceful.
  I was taking a break the other day and saw the perfect tree. The "Platonic" tree if you will. Plato had this idea that there was a perfect everything somewhere in idea land and that all out existence was but cheap copies thereof. Hence the platonic (ideal) relationship being one without physicality
 Anyway way I wanted to paint a picture with words so others could see this tree. I realized that that would be a poem which brought back memories of many short poems I wrote in my last year of high school and my first (sounds so much better than only) It was very easy and I wrote a lot. Of course since it seemed too easy  and the few times I had tried to read poems outside of court.. class ordered pence I had never been able to make myself pay attention. Robert Frost "Whose woods these are...." and "...I took the one less traveled" And who could miss Leaves Of Grass. (Full disclosure I do not remember anything but the title and maybe something about wind...or was that "They call the wind Mariah?) The point being that if it is easy and if one can or will not read poetry one by definition cannot be a poet? Luckily all those poems have magically disappeared from the Earth so there is no way to test that theory.
   I just read the title then the post and they do not seem to be connected. What was I thinking about when I started.... Oh yeah how my life right now is relatively stress free and it feels uncomfortable because I have always had some sort of crisis since ... well since before I was born Any way strange times...

mind and body

Went for a run for the first time after remembering in a visceral sense that feeling of ...fitness? That is part of it. It was a sudden shock plunging back into a 48 year old body. After the feeling of diving into freezing water wore off it ended up being an acceptable experience.
 I found it very interesting how the mind and soul took my awareness back to that day on the field at Santa Fe Prep. The body did not follow. Bummer.
  I guess there is a reason we have mind,body and spirit. I felt like a passenger in my mind and a passenger in my body. Memory separate from "reality" or just an astral form of time travel? 

Strong memories

The spring of 1983 finally getting down to the important part of the day, track. I am fit and strong, the self described "athlete who reads" Mrs Epp our English teacher had requires us to write and autobiography. i, wanting to skip, or rather not remembering the gory details of an interesting childhood, had stuck with semi fiction. Anyway changing into running gear and going through the necessary but bothersome details of stretching and strength work I am finally on the field with Coach Maas . Today is the test of fitness. I know they have measured out the 440 yards around the soccer field for the workout. 12 440 at 65 seconds each. I do not remember the rest period. 30 sec for partial recovery 90 seconds for race fitness (half mile race) or heartbeat down to 120 for another test. Nerves and concentration start the first rep easy stride and float around the turns my idea is to do each one at exactly 63.5 seconds. First one 63.8 pretty good stand quietly with big but still easy breathing waiting for the signal to go. The agonies of adolescence forgotten. The broken family and all other concerns are gone just the sound of my breathing and the focused waiting for the signal to go.  63.3. better. The outside world recedes still further 64, 63.2 .63.6 63.5 yes! Now I am at one with myself as the reps roll around till the last one. maybe a little extra? Yea 59.5 to finish off the day.  I am ready. I cannot wait till tomorrow when for just a little while my world is simple clear and hard.

actions

I have been trying to look at what I find important by keeping track of what I do,not just what I think or say I find important. So far pretty boring. Work some blogging posting political stuff on facebook, hanging with my kids reading fiction. That is about it. When I have time and energy a little "running". Oh yeah netflix on the laptop. I thought I was interested in a new relationship. For some reason it is not a top priority in terms of my actions. Something to explore.....

honesty?

Just finished to novels in which one of the main characters was honesty and or truth. Always something on my mind as I can feel that sometimes the truth of what we believe is not the Truth and then there are little white lies, then there is protecting someone from the truth. There is also radical honesty, which in theory I am all for,until I run up against the truism that it is sometimes better to say nothing if you cannot find something nice to say. Of course there is always our old friend the half truth. I wonder what he puts on the census sheet? A friend of mine told me that the truth can be used as a weapon. Interesting. Are some things better left unsaid?
  When one is hurt by another's actions it is natural (maybe not good) to remember and to seek redress for these wrongs. When one injures another with or without intent it is just as natural to wish that they would just get over it. I just read some quote from some famous guy who, when ask why it is important to forgive stated that you only have to forgive once but holding on to resentment to a serious effort every day. Sometimes forgiveness seems like a lie as over against actually forgiving. What does that mean  anyway. Forgive. Lay down one's armor? run from a battle? be the better person?
  So I went from truth to forgiveness Hmm. Is there a connection ?
  I remember reading one of those little homey things old people put up in the kitchen about gossip. First ask yourself "Is it true? Is it kind? is it useful? The value of truth only being part of the equation., Of course I also read a little thing on facebook "If you don't want me talking about those horrible things you did maybe you should not have done them!"
  I could go on, but I think that is enough "Truthseeking for one day.

Self esteem?

So what is self esteem? My 7 year old has a crush on a classmate. When we went to drop something off at her parents  he hid until we left. Shyness or self esteem? It seems to me that there is a difference, although I cannot define self esteem. Shyness seems simple; fear of social interaction with other humans. 

snow, life cont..

I had decided that the bald tires on the car could last through the summer. Due to our late start we got to I70 in Colorado at nine pm in the middle of o crazy rainstorm! The car was sliding all over the road, we slid into Papo's house around 10:30.
  On Sunday the boozing and watching did not workout so well. I got to ride up "Fanny hill" and walk or jog down holding one of the little skiers around ten times. Nice workout. We then took the kids to the mini fossil museum with the hostess who had the weirdest hair I have ever seen. Sort of a brownish blonde rats nest on top of and all around. We did miss the end of season costume ski jump into a pond. Papo was a little disappointed but the boys did not care at all.
   In the morning I realized that with the snow I would not make it home on bald tires so I spent the morning getting new ones while the boys hung out. By the time we left the snow was falling heavily. We drove past the big road closed sign in Glenwood. I thought that it was a little sloppy of the highway guys to just lay it on the side of the road. The boys being practical thought that maybe they left it there because they were going to use it again. 2 minutes later we were parked in the snow with no cell service on the highway for an hour. I guess we should have taken a closer look at that sign. Definitely would not have made it on the old tires.
We had another hour long rest on 70 and then a nice long rest on 184 before we got to dry and very windy conditions. Of course we had to stop at the Alligator farm by the great sand dunes and get our picture taken with a very cold alligator. Apparently the alligators are the cleaning crew for the talapia farm. The water is geothermally heated for the tropical fish. Then a nice uneventful brown air drive to Santa Fe

Life?

So  a-lot of people have been bugging me about skiing,which I do not like. Okay to be honest ,I probably would like if it was not so expensive,time-consuming, cold and expensive. Did I mention the number of people I know who have had acl surgery due to skiing "accidents"?
 My 2 boys,who are 6 and 7 did not get to go skiing this year because that is the ex wife's responsibility(she tells me skiing is next to Godliness.Of course she did not have the financial resources to take them. I do not either
I may dislike skiing because during my mute phase somebody signed me up for public school lessons. Probably my dad because I remember the skis from the bronze age came from him. I had to find the bus and ride up to a freezing snowy place with a bunch of snot nosed strangers. After half an hour the instructor decided that I was an advanced skier and ordered me off to the other group. I, being mute, was unable to tell her that I had never skied before. Off we went to some sort of moving chairs that scooped me up and dropped me off at the top of the mountain. Halfway down I realized that I had only half of a ski on the right side. I guess exposure to oxygen is not good for fossils. My Sears and Roebucks jeans were soaked as  walked down the mountain. Being a smart mute child I have managed to avoid skiing since.
  Since somebody whose name will not be named to protect the guilty had introduced the boys to skiing the are disappointed to not be skiing. Grandpa lives down valley from Aspen Colorado so I decided that we could drive up and I could drink Grandpa's booze while he too the boys skiing during spring break at the famous ski resort. Since the ex had forced the boys to play soccer it did not work out, so we left Santa Fe at  one pm on Saturday after a doubleheader for the 7 hour drive to "papo's" house. Of course I had to stop in Chimayo and put some orthotics on a horse on the way.
  I, of course realized that I had bald tires on the VW Golf that I had was driving up. Since it costs one third what the big truck costs to drive we took it anyway.
 To be continued.... Alessandra.

"

I misplaced my "smart" phone... well to be honest ,first I left her charger at Grandpa's house, then I misplaced her. Double crime! First of all my "smart" phone is deaf. This is a serious issue if you take hands free seriously.  Please call sparky. "Did you say call the IRS? " No!! you stupid. #@%#$^%$^%$@^%$^!
 Next time just say "please call Sparky. 

Try and try again

Destiny Allison had a cool little graphic on her blog of an arrow point skyward"what we think success looks like and another arrow that was all twisted up where the tip eventually points skyward. "how success is."
  I have been actually trying to deal with stomach (that word really needs an e on the end) ills for the first time in my life for about forever(really about 8 weeks).
  For the first 30 years I thought my gut was normal. To show the weird way my mind works(maybe not just mine) I saw a movie where they made fun of irritable bowels syndrome and I thought "Oh that is my stomach(e). Shortly after that I discovered Imodium and was a happy camper. Of course I had these chronic headaches and somebody doctory told me I probably had fibromyalgia. I asked about treatment and got bored halfway through a long winded explanation and decided that I did not have fibromyalgia, whatever that was.
  So taking tons of Ibuprofen for back and headaches and ton of imodium for you know what I was pretty happy until my finger started hurting. That is when I went to the naturopath who told me that the arthritis is probably from immune response caused by covering up the symptoms of food allergy or sensitivity.
  * centuries into this food allergy diet (with of course some timeouts for wine and one for cake) I am ready to throw in the towel. However there is Destiny's post. This reminds me of a few years ago right after I had discovered the my physical strength had limits. I was trying to move a pile of roofing tin and had just about given up. I thought "One more push then I will give up and leave the whole project undone. Of course that time the pile moved .or I thought it moved, one millimeter. I redoubled my efforts and was able to remove the obstacle and finish my little project.
  When I was younger I never had doubts like that. If I thought I could do a project I did what it took to get it done. Of course the few times I did not think something feasible I did not even try. This did leave many things undone, but it was useful once a project was commenced.(sometimes big words are fun)
  Anyway it does not sit well with me to throw in the towel now, because I like to think that I only give up when the task turns out to be impossible, not just really difficult. So I listen to the story of King Richard watching the spider try again and again until the web is finally spun and continue to eat a very limited diet. for another day. looking for the day when my stomach may end up not needing that e after all

Elementary school

Allessandra making fun of me for "publishing" half written posts. Well this half written post just disappeared. Reminds of "the one that got away" The tragedy of my best blog ever disintegrating into the ether without a trace. Ah well I guess it is true that since i was selectively mute for 5 or 6 years I have plenty of words backed up in the system. 

  I just hate to repeat myself when I can still remember the gist of what O was saying. The is nothing like a well worn story to comfort oneself with on long cold nights before the fire in Paleolithic days when there was no tv on internet and apparently all our ancestors ate was grass fed beef and roots. I myself suspect they ate a lot of bugs and stuff too. Anyway.... 

  My mom and her new boyfriend 22 year native American Vietnam veteran with ptsd and substance abuse problem came moved us back from Oaxaca, Mexico in January of 1971.

  So my older brother and I were dropped off one morning at a big black building call Agua Fria Elementary school. I remember being ushered into a room filled with kids and one adult and finding a book filled with math problems. Well I went right to work solving all these cool problems and all was hunky dory until suddenly the lady comes up and tries to force me to go outside into the freezing wind and hang out with a bunch of strange kids. I of course objected strenuously, to no avail, I was thrust into this cold dengerous world with no defense but my wits.. This was the start of my hatred of this thing called "school". 

Shyness

Allessandra made an interesting point. Shyness or self esteem? I had never thought of those feelings as related to self esteem. Of course if you know you are good everybody knows it, no need for being shy.
Fear of unknown people? could that be related just to self esteem. Huh.
    As I watch my 6 and 8 year old grow out of (hopefully) shyness that puts a different spin on how we. Mom Dad and the boys might think about dealing with ,I am guessing that shyness is really a fear response, the experience of not wanting to be seen or heard or experienced by new people. Cool.

More memories

A memory? Or is it a story.
  I remember 3rd or 4th grade at Agus Fria Elementary school. My friends invited me to stay at their house. I agreed and th next day we hot on the bus to go to Frankie and George Montoyas.
Did I not tell my Mom? I have no memories of my brothers being around. If I was in 4th grade I would have been 10 years old. I remember suddenly realizing that Mom would be alone on her birthday and sobbing on the bus because I would not be there to comfort her.
  We have all these stories of how cruel kids are. Frankie and George comforted me and tried to figure out a plan with me.  That instinctive empathy sticks with me to this day.
 The weird thing about this memory is that it ends there. I don't know if I got off the bus or their parents gave me a ride home. Did my Mom come and get me? Maybe I cheered up and happily spent the night?
   Somehow this memory is connected to working on stomach issues?! I have the frustration that occurs when I put down a good mystery/adventure book before the and can't find it again,or when sadistic director leaves a cliffhanger for you. What happened? Did the boy save his Mom? where was everybody else? Why did this little boy think he was responsible for his mom's birthday?
   Having grown up in a dysfunctional household I am paranoid about memories. i come from a family that makes up histories(my version of what happens ,maybe not the others version) so if the memory becomes complete in my mind how will I know it it is real or memorex. This is very worrisome to me because hav have few phobias, but that is one and it is very strong.
  One sits on the edge of insanity and watches others slip down that slippery slope into nowhere (see now i am worried about that little extra w that I had to erase in nowhere because spell check warned me about him.Did he feel his death? I am certain it was a he. Well one more little life snuffed out. Anyway my point started out being that reality is slippery and my experience of growing up in an environment where reality changed to fit the story has made me leery of trusting my own memory.
  As with shyness the daily battle with that monster in the back of my mind whispering"Are you not lying?!" Or worse like George Castanza "Have you begun to believe your own lies and slip into nutsville?"
  So far at the end of the day I am reasonable confident that I am still in he mix of or social reality, although even then I wonder if we are all making up stories and are lost in unreality not even knowing. Something more than the confusion and sense of unreality is the fear that I might be hiding from the fact that I am destructive like I perceive certain others to be. They don't realize it and that scares me because maybe I am like them.
  One other thing it is very hard to fight for oneself when you don't believe in you.

  Wow all of this came out of not being able to remember the end of a story that I was in. Jeez Or is it Geez?
 spellcheck says Jeez is real and Geez is not. Okay.
   To end on a lighter note. more empathetic young people. This is a very strong memory because i was a vulnerable young person. I was a 9th grader at Santa Fe Prep. (once again a good supportive experience at that place.) on the soccer team I was defending  in our first home game f the season and Ron Ellis got by me twice and scored goals. I remember saying I was to slow and feeling horrible. The team gathered around me and (I remember for some reason especially Peter Bickley, odd because we never rally spoke before or after) told me I was okay and that I would do better next time. They were right Ron was completely frustrated the rest of the game.
   I remember a conversation with my friend Laura Lewallen last year where I was telling her I thought that at that time i was close to turning bad. She said that that would not have been possible because I had always been so sweet. I don't know , I look back on a few critical instances in my life like that one at just the right time and I think of Fernando from my elementary school who ended up in jail and is dead these many years. He was sweet too.

 Thank you Folks of SFP in the 70's and 80's. 

Busted!

Soccer potluck giving a ten minute treatise on the evils of the sugar industry and how everybody has been fooled by flavored "yogurt" which often has more sugar than dairy in it. Then reminded that I am in charge of snacks for game the next day,.
 Dang go to the evil Sam's club. for gogurt, danimals and cereal bars all high sugar . Deb catches that right away I am stuck saying oh well at least I know that I am poisoning your kids with sugar and blue dye #5
  Dang sucks to be hung by your own petard! As Dr. McCoy once said.

Shyness and memories

 I grew up in a liberal intelligentsia culture where psychology was considered a real subject in terms of how humans live and think and feel so I sort of take it semi seriously.
   Dredging up memories that supposedly affect how I react to present day situations somehow makes sense to me.
  I remember YAFL football I must have been in the 3rd grade. One of my teammates could not get to practice so I told him we wold pick him up. When I told my mom she freaked out,but went along to his house. Whatever problem I had precluded me from going up to the door and knocking. this enraged my Mom who proceeded to beat the crap out of me from the drivers seat of the car. My mom was a great screamer so there was lots of sound affects to go along with the punches as slaps.  I sat there and took it. After her rage was spent we left without picking David or resolving our conflict.
  I guess I was terrified but I honestly have no emotional connection to this memory. Apparently it would be good for me to know how I felt in those moments. A lot of me brain says that this is a crazy idea, who wants to relive moments of total helplessness and terror?
 When people ask if I was abused I always say no.... then I think of this experience and wonder... I guess somehow we think our experience is not abuse or I convinced myself that being targeted once does not make abuse. Maybe I have separated so far from that experience that I do not associate with "my" childhood. That was some other kid. I do not identify as a victim of abuse. That is a whole nother subject.
  As things go I had a similar experience with my oldest yesterday. He left something at his friends house and refused (For no good reason from my perspective) to go back up the driveway to pick it up himself. In case I am doing the usual and using one word when ten will do. (the opposite of the New Yorker which seems to use ten when one would do) Ben is 7 years old and both he and my younger son seem to have the same demon haunting them that makes them very closed off around people. We sometimes call it shyness. I started thinking that I should force him to do this difficult thing then I started to get angry at him for delaying us by his irrational seeming behavior.  Just as I opened my mouth something inside changed and I felt myself saying. "Ok let's go look for your toy. I felt a physical change i my body as the words of censure I had intended to say died and were replaced by something softer and more inclusive. He and I happily went up to the door and spent more time with the cute mom and Ben's friend. Both of us were satisfied that we had done our best and we felt like a team even though e actually did not find the toy.
  I actually had a flashback to the football story as we walked up the driveway and I felt that as a parent I had dodged a bullet on the voyage of raising and growing with a family.

  The story that we have to force kids to do things or they will grow up to be lazy and immoral runs strong in American culture. This is a thought that I think often justifies abuse of young people. (Spare the rod, spoil the child) If we are not hard enough on our kids they will not survive the rough and tumble of the "real" world.

Shyness

There is an experience that some of us call shyness or social phobia, or as my sister said Nancy Zeng told her, just a lack of willpower.
 What is shyness. An experience? A feeling? A genetic issue? Emotional scar tissue? I guess that maybe all of these describe it.
  Friends and acquaintances are often surprised when I claim shyness. I am proud of that.
  I experience what I call shyness( from speaking with others who seem to have the same types of experience in relating to other humans) as a sort of a demon who lives in the back of my mind whispering to me and trying to control me. "you are not good enough?"  he whispers "You are bad " "You are dirty, weak and so on. As well as on the other side of the coin"Those people do not like you" "They are dangerous, snobby, better than you, worse than you .....and so on. Anything that this fearful(in both senses of the word )being or demon can think of to keep me from relating with other humans.
  So it is a daily battle with the Demons of our souls for us "shy" people to go out into the world and act like we are not terrified that our fellow humans are going to humiliate, ignore, and damage us physically. We must first fight the battle within in order to just look somebody in the eye or say hello.
  When somebody says to me "You do not seem shy to me?" with a question mark I am proud to have won the field on this day and stand proud on the field of inner universe with the flag raised high.

 Maybe I have been reading too much adventure fiction lately? I enjoyed composing this though.
  

Advertising and morality

I know I know another oxymoron. This is on my mind because I got in a big email fight with my tea party uncle about Coca Cola's morality. They spend over $3,000,000,000 a year convincing people that they should drink Cola's,which are very not good for you. I also finally looked at the NYT magazine my friend Allessandra gives me and sort of read their article on the art of making fast food tasty and addictive.
  I was tossing around the idea that we could make all advertising be about healthy, kind lifestyle.
"Kale is good Kale is great let's put it in our cake!!" and so on.  Instead of young men in liquor advertisements pretending to be what young women want in order to get them drunk on Captain whatever so they can have an orgy.... well I can't really think of something cool and appropriate but maybe you get the gist.
  It seems that advertising looks for humanities "weakness" and encourages those aspects of our community in order to make MONEY and that bothers me. Of course I do not know what to do about this. 

Memories?

Working on remembering my childhood in order to heal mind and body from the traumas. It is interesting that  I do not have a continuous memory until 8th grade when ,according to family myth, I who was selectively mute (for some reason it really bugs me when people confuse a moot point with a mute point)at the time, was sent to Tucson (the four boys took turns going to visit?) to stay with my Dad and I told him that I would never go to school again. Interesting factoid, I went to school 3 days a week and got all As and Bs.
    So my Dad drove me up to Santa Fe and used his army disability pay to put me in the local prep school. That fall is when my memory becomes contiguous. I guess that Santa Fe Prep became In Pater Familias. I got my sense of community and belonging  from my five years at this small private school.
  As usual something in my mind distracted me and I got off of whatever subject was interesting me when I started typing. Oh yeah dredging up childhood memories so my stomach can heal and I can start eating junk again. Although the cute naturopath assures me that it still will not be good to eat the old way no matter how healthy my psyche is. Hmph!! well I guess it is worth it since I am no longer dependent on loperamide.
  Oh well I guess I want to be the best that I can be. (I still can't believe the army stole such a good slogan) If that includes eating Kale and forcing myself to relive my childhood so be it.
  

sexism?

I just read that there was a sexist obit in the New York Times because it talked about the woman as a parent and housekeeper first before it mentioned her professional accomplishments.
  It seemed to me that the complainers were falling into the same old paradigm that "women's" work is less valuable than "men's" work. It is something to think about. Whenever I ask somebody what they do and they say "just a housewife" or "just a Stay at home mom or dad" I am always aware that there is something oppressive about that assumption that that type of of work is "less than" ":real" work liking ruining the economy of BSing clients and competitors to make a little more money.
   Would it be weird to say "He was a great Dad?" before saying somebody was a banker? "She was a great Mom." is sexist unless one realizes how important and difficult parenting is. So how do we respond when some CEO is called a great Mom before she is applauded for her part in the banking fiasco?