Inspiration Can Come from Anywhere

Keeping a positive attitude and an open mind isn't always easy.  A lot of the time, I have to work at it but since I've tried living the alternative, I know I'd much rather be delusional and happier than realistic and miserable.  Besides, I just read yesterday that a positive attitude helps predispose you to positive opportunities.  Well, it's worth a shot isn't it?

Today, on my Miscellaneous Monday Just 10 walk, I thought about starting a blog or web site with a broader appeal.  I really appreciate my loyal readers and don't intent to halt my ramblings here but I'd like to explore some other possibilities.

Even though you can't tell it from my vision Book or from the photo above, I am quite crafty.  I sew, knit, crochet.  I also love to bake and cook.  Creating makes me feel like a powerful and a some what mad scientist/artist.

Walking this morning, I realized that crafting is a way for me to create myself.  It's a physical act that helps define who I am, where I end and the world begins.  Even if the finished product is of questionable merit or has no artistic value, it doesn't diminish my enjoyment in making it. 

There are already a lot of really wonderful blogs about crafting, cooking, etc.  So, I'm looking for my own interesting twist.  Feel free to give me a suggestion or two.  In the meantime, I'm going to meander through my Monday looking for inspiration.

Go A Mile

"Sometimes you have to go a mile to gain an inch."  Out of the mouths of babes, well, my babe, Shannon via dream Charlie Sheen.

At breakfast, on this fine Thursday, my daughter shared her memorable dream of the previous night. She found herself in one of three school buses full of students on a field trip to Government Island in the nearby Columbia River.  The driver of her bus was Charlie Sheen.  Gweneth Paltrow drove another bus.  A third was driven by a nameless and unknown "regular" person. 

Instead of taking an easy trip over the I-205 bridge, just a short distance away, they first had to go to California.  When dream daughter questioned the logic, bus driver, Charlie said with his distinct style of emphasis, "Sometimes you have to go a mile to gain an inch."

Once they finally arrive on the shores of Government Island, Shannon discovered that the beach sand was made from sugar cookie dough.  Again, curious daughter questions driver, Charlie who answers, "Try it and see."
Just before tasting the sand, Charlie changes his tune and gesturing like a wobbly windmill says, "Stop!  It could be poisonous!!"

Once his warning is delivered, he is distracted by a collection of beautiful wandering blonds plus ex-wife, Denise Richards.  He abandons his young charges and vanishes with a bus load of blonds and one ex-wife.

The abandoned children take this in stride and ask Gweneth Paltrow, "May we ride your bus?"  A happy Gweneth agrees and leaves the island with a bus load of singing children. 



This dreamer is definitely my daughter.  I've been having movie and celebrity dreams for years.   The telling of her dream was enjoyable to hear.  Charlie Sheen had helped her avoid "cookie beach poisoning".  He also imparted some sage wisdom.  "Sometimes you have to go a mile to gain a inch."
Even though he eventually abandoned the children and left with a bus load of bimbos, he'd served her well.

I feel for the real Charlie.  He's lost his ability to make good judgments, at the very least in regards to his public image.  He plays into the media's desire for a new "dancing bear."  Seeing him unravel publicly may be amusing at times.  It is also tragically sad.  We watch him disintegrate before our eyes.  He has become a caricature of himself.

With all this in the public backdrop, it's still nice to know that my daughter is becoming a woman of substance.  I am encouraged by her ability to accept what is, to adapt gracefully to the Charlies of the world and to sing along with the Gweneths.  Even more encouraging is that part of her already knows that "Sometimes you have to go a mile to gain an inch."

Seeking Inspiration

Imagine inspiration a place.  Yesterday, try as I might, I couldn't get there.  Under a hot, sweltering sun, I sat waiting for the bus bound for Inspiration.  Carefully packed suitcase at my feet, I scan the road ahead for a sign.  Only the summer sun and the high-pitched whine of summer insects answers me. 

They say, "No bus today.  All trips to Inspiration have been cancelled."

For a while longer, I sit hoping they are wrong but the sun is hot and I am tired.  This fatigue clings to me and I wear it throughout my day.  Later, when I had to leave the comfort of my recliner to search for milk, my son asks, "Can we have our ten minutes in the car?"
I say, "Sure".  But the fatigue had other plans.  My mind keeps wandering off.  At one point, I forgot about Just 10 and almost asked him not to talk to me.  His words swarmed around me like little gnats.  I couldn't catch any of them.  The arms in my mind swing like windmills trying to swat the gnats away.

My son's words stop the swatting.
"Mom, are you tired?"
I fall back to earth and reply,
"Yes, I am really tired."
"Me, too", he says.

I renew my effort to be attentive.  Knowing how to listen, knowing listening is the right thing to do doesn't keep my tired mind from drifting away again.  Too tired to resist, too tired to chide myself for my inattention, tonight, this is as good as it gets.  I surrender to the fatigue, my imperfect listening, the absence of inspiration, my imperfection.  Resistance is exhausting.  The day ends with my falling into a welcome sleep.

At night, I dream of funerals for young people.  I try to pay attention to the funeral, to what is going on, but I am too busy chasing naughty toddlers who need their diapers changed.  As I sit this Thursday morning, at the breakfast table, drinking coffee, eating a bagel and writing down my thoughts in cursive, I struggle with what this dream means.  How did my search for inspiration end with toddlers and dirty diapers?

As the warm coffee takes the edge off my grieving over the parting of self from the warmth of bed, I begin to understand.  Dirty diapers are a symbol of the baser things in life, the real stuff we can't escape.  All humans have the capacity to produce the contents necessary for dirty diapers.  Some more than others.  At a funeral, faced with the mortality that shows itself more to me with each passing year, I continue to try to clean up my "dirty toddlers".  Through mind-numbing fatigue and a lack of inspiration, I'm still involved in the substance of daily life.

At the Thursday morning breakfast table, I write of this in an old notebook.  The pages bear a few stray bagel crumbs.  Seeing them for the first time, I also realize that inspiration has found me within a dirty diaper while I slept. 

I smile to myself and think, "Thursday, bring it on.  I am ready for you."