Risky Words

Image credit goes to my talented daughter

Some days another person can say things so much better than I can.  Today is one of those days.  I'm sharing this poem.  I'm often a lousy risk taker.  It's time to take the leap!

BE A RISK TAKER

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental,
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self,
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss,
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
People who risk nothing, do nothing, have nothing, are nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But they cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.
Chained by their inaction, they are slaves who have forfeited freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.
(author unknown)

Memory: Alone in the Moonlight

 Wednesday's word is memory.



Memory:


(mĕm'ə-rē)
n., pl., -ries.

1. The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience.
2. The act or an instance of remembering; recollection: spent the afternoon lost in memory.
3. All that a person can remember: It hasn't happened in my memory.
4. Something remembered: pleasant childhood memories.
5. The fact of being remembered; remembrance: dedicated to their parents' memory.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/memory-psych-in-encyclopedia#ixzz1YbNEUM5q




 The words below are an excerpt from the book I'm currently writing.


Memory is both fragile and powerful.   We all have a need to make sense out of our lives and the events in them.   We all write the stories of ourselves basing then on the bits and pieces of the past that break into our now.  We are often wrong.  Our subconscious works overtime trying to protect us.  We shield our sanity in a fragile shell.  Our capacity for denial is especially strong.

We weave the scattered parts of our lives into a past that explains our futures to us.  There is much that doesn’t make sense.  Life rarely has a neat beginning, middle and end but we so desperately seek some order in the chaos that we become masters of fiction.  This fiction supports our tomorrows.  We come to rely on it as we stagger toward an uncertain future. 

If we were to stop assembling the fiction of our lives, how could we continue?   If we were to face the truth hidden behind all that we deny, all that we block from our awareness,  would we be rendered useless before all that is to come?

We are fiction writers.   Cutting away all the layers of time as we create the character that we believe ourselves to be.   How could we bear the truth?   So few of us are really special.  We  aren’t more noble, more honest, more gifted than others most of the time but we believe ourselves to be.  Those assumptions move us forward into our tomorrow. 

Try to feel equal to, just as worthy as any one you meet today,   I dare you.  It’s very hard to do.    Critical judgment will break through our best intentions.  We all have “feet of clay” and yet we all believe we were blessed with wings.

I know that my memories of childhood and of my life carry only bits and pieces of reality.  Reality and I are often at odds.  Over the years, I have just begun discover how much my memories have tried to save me.   They guard the dark corners of my mind.  Memory protects and disturbs.  I struggle to make sense of it and in the struggle I weave a tale.  In sickness and in health, for richer and poorer, till death do us part, memory is an unfaithful partner.   It is all I have.

Chorophobia

Wordy Wednesday

Chorophobia:  the fear of dancing.

I think I have this.  Dancing without dulling my senses with alcohol is extremely difficult.  In my mind, I see myself lurching across the dance floor like a rusty Tin Man.  I die a thousand deaths of embarrassment. Now, that any form of alcohol makes me instantly nauseous,  I do not dance.

Photo Source

I know my fear is irrational.  I feel as if all the eyes of the world watch me and find my dancing an insult to rhythm.  I never want to insult rhythm.  I feel the beat.  Life has a pulse.  It surges, it throbs, it sleeps.  Everything affects this pulse.  Everything.  The idea makes my heart race.  I have trouble finding the line that separates me from the rest of the universe.  In odd moments, we are one and the same.

This fear of dancing must be conquered.  My life lacks form without it.  I need rhythm. . . something fluid, something memorable, something lyrical to guide my steps as they plod through the days.  Without feeling the music within me and moving to the magic of its charms, my life is dry and empty.  I need to know where I end and everything else begins.

Dancing would define my edges.

It's time to form a support group:  For those who fear dancing.  It has a nice ring to it.  A nice ring is important in music and in the dance.  Surely, I can't be the only one who carries this fear.  Maybe, as well grow together and become braver being who we are, we can start with a simple circle dance like the Hora.

Who can resist this?  It is a special form of madness guided by the frenzy of the music. A sacred infectious  madness.  No one dances alone.

Maybe, this fear of dancing taps into the fear of being alone.  Cast adrift by life, I float in the middle of a vast ocean.  There are eyes everywhere.  Watching.  Waiting.  They do not like what they see.  I feel it in my bones.  It robs my body of rhythm.  My bones slowly begin to dissolve and I melt into a puddle on the dance floor.  Life can feel that intimidating.

But is life without the dance worth living?  Life is much more than just showing up.  It's about jumping into the dance.  It's about whirling like a dervish.  It's about stepping on your partners toes and apologizing while you keep on dancing.  It's about riding the rhythm and being the music.  Any thing less cheats life.  I have been cheating myself.  I have been cheating the dance.  My dance.  My life.

Chorophobia:  the fear of dancing.

Today, I'm going to dance.   I hope to make the angels in heaven laugh.  I'll be laughing at my fear.  Dance with me.  Please, dance with me.

Accepting Pell Mell and Hurdy Gurdy

Wednesday Words:  Hurdy Gurdy and pell mell.  First, a Youtube clip of Mike Smith playing a Hurdy Gurdy (a musical instrument that originated some time in the middle ages.)



The word hurdy gurdy made me think of pell mell.  Both words sound like thoughts tumbling down hill.  At least that describes the feeling that wrapped itself around my heart as I awoke. This feeling that was demanding definition but the words did not come easily.  When they did they dashed pell mell down into the valley of my soul.  They lie there. . .at the bottom. . . broken and incomplete.

pell-mell [ˈpɛlˈmɛl]

adv

1. in a confused headlong rush the hounds ran pell-mell into the yard

2. in a disorderly manner the things were piled pell-mell in the room

adj

disordered; tumultuous a pell-mell rush for the exit

n

disorder; confusion

[from Old French pesle-mesle, jingle based on mesler to meddle]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

Both these words were a screen.  They tried to hide what I  knew.  Pell mell to the tune of a hurdy gurdy was only a means of getting to the bottom.  The confusion that I feel isn't necessary.  It is a soothing salve, preventing me from fully acknowledging the role I was playing in my own suffering.  Words can sometimes form a barrier between us and what we already know in the bottom of our hearts.


When what you know isn't what you want to know, suffering moves in.  Some where at the bottom of the hill, in the mess that lies broken and scattered, the truth also lies.  It whispers one word:  "Accept."
I repeat this word again,  "Accept."
No blame, no name calling, no self-incrimination.  What is, simply is.
"Accept"
I repeat it again, and again, and again.  I rise to meet my day.

We Are the Earth

A recent sunset in Vancouver, WA

Symbiosis is my word for today.

Here's how Dictionary.com defines it:

sym·bi·o·sis

   [sim-bee-oh-sis, -bahy-]  Show IPA

noun, plural -ses  [-seez]  Show IPA.

1.

Biology .

a.

the living together of two dissimilar organisms, as inmutualism, commensalism, amensalism, or parasitism.

b.

(formerly) mutualism ( def. 1 ) .

2.

Psychiatry . a relationship between two people in which each person is dependent upon and receives reinforcement,whether beneficial or detrimental, from the other.

3.

Psychoanalysis . the relationship between an infant and itsmother in which the infant is dependent on the mother bothphysically and emotionally.

4.

any interdependent or mutually beneficial relationshipbetween two persons, groups, etc.

Lately, I've been possessed by an interesting idea: 


                              The earth is in turmoil because it's inhabitants are.  


Yes, I know it sounds a bit crazy but bear with me.  Hasn't the United States experienced wild and unusual weather this year?   Record heat for some, record rains for others, a huge hurricane, deadly tornadoes, floods.


Don't forget the East Coast earthquake, an rare event.   That's just for the US and we've yet to factor in the turmoil and unrest that leads to war, military conflictand revolution all around the world.  Libya and Egypt have risen up and deposed long-time leaders.  Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia are not happy places.


Recently, in London, unhappy youth with little hope for employment and a better future, rioted in protest of government budget cuts.  Pictures captured a world on fire, a furious earthly hell.


A restless earth reflects a restless people.  Peace, satisfaction, achievement, success, prosperity are words we don't hear enough.  So many lives don't reflect these qualities. Neither does our planet.  A planet, we continue to abuse.  As the rain forests continue to disappear from the face of our earth, we have yet to grasp the truth.   


 Killing the planet, its resources and each other will only bring about more death and destruction.   


We tumble through space and time, lost souls desperately seeking comfort.  Few know where to find it.



Maybe, the earth isn't alive but you'll have to prove otherwise to me.   The Earth is troubled and I know its people are.  Instead of dividing, conquering, looting and pillaging, maybe we could try working together for everyone's mutual benefit.  What a revolutionary idea.  It is not mine alone. 


Today, all I ask, is that you:


* Think harmonious thoughts.  
* Try to work well especially with the difficult people.  
* Learn to listen to what others are saying.   
* Know where you end and where others begin   
* Focus on the positive things we hold in common.  


In doing so, we could create a different world, a more peaceful and more productive one.  

Mercurial

Wordy Wednesday

Carol's 3rd grade photo

Mercurial.    I do not like what it means: changeable; volatile; fickle; flighty; erratic: a mercurial nature.   It describes how I often feel. . . maybe even, how I've always felt. 

On good days, it makes me feel alive, creative, some times even witty.  On bad days, my mercurial nature is a source of embarrassment and shame.  I wrap myself in side it and look out at a world covered in cold gray fog.  It is a world I have created, my mercurial mind and I.

Last night, I finished a book:  The Dark Side of Innocence.  Terri Cheney writes of her childhood.  After struggling for years with depression and its evil cousin, mania, she was diagnosed as bipolar.  Her first book, Manic surprised her with its success.  Encouraged to write of her childhood, she resisted until realizing that telling the tale might help others and herself.

I'm no Terri Cheney.  Mania and I are not as well acquainted. It teases me from a greater distance.   I did not label the darkness within as the Black Beast when still very young.  She is brilliant and talented in ways I am not and yet, when I read about her childhood, the feeling her words conveyed, tapped into memories that I had long tried to escape.  The circumstances of our lives were very different in so many ways and yet, I knew on the most basic level that the things I felt, the things I tried to run from and deny, the things that haunt me at the oddest moments, were experiences and emotions so similar to hers that reading them felt like being kicked in the stomach.  Like Terri, I, too was the unusual child who began her struggles with light and darkness when still very young.

Maybe it's no coincidence that I came across her book, when I did.  Lately, I have felt the weight of being a mother to a bipolar child.  I look at my son and feel the terror of uncertainty. 

I often close my eyes to it but, there are times when his unique way of being forces my eyes open.  At those times,  I have to face what I have always known.  He is not an average child.  His world is tormented by worry and obsession.  His despair can feel bottomless.  He questions his worth, his life and often needs help to carry on.    The depth of his sadness is profound and frightening.  We both tumble through space in pitch-black darkness and wonder when will we hit bottom and what will it look like?  Can I save him?  Can I teach him to save himself?

Once in a while, a light shatters the darkness and we are blinded.  We forget we are falling.  We are saved by our own glory.  Always, the light fades and disappears.  We return to our dark descent and wonder, have we ever left it.  Was the light a dream?

In my own private, mercurial hell, I often avoid dealing with the facts.  Facts.  I can not escape some of them.  The fact that he requires so much supervision, so much encouragement, so much attention is one I often ignore.  Recently, his ability to upset others couldn't be denied.  As much as he wants the love and approval of everyone, he becomes his own worst enemy and pursues his own brand of madness in such a way as to make those around him frustrated and annoyed.  Once he's achieved this alienation, he is filled with despair and remorse. 

My awareness of this tapped into something very primal within me.  I grieved for the child he is and the child he is not.  Words failed me.  I began my own odd mercurial shifting, swinging slightly between two extremes: hope and despair.  I couldn't write about it or talk about it.  I had to learn to walk around with this secret burning inside me until I felt empty and hollow.  And, then, I read Terri Cheney's book.  I saw myself.  I saw my son.  I felt for both of us and then for all of us cursed in this way.

But it is more than a curse.  No matter the reason, it is what is.  It is not all bad.  I realized that there is a great value in being honest and open about the truth about oneself.  Terri Cheney did not have to write her books.  She did not have to tell her story.  I did not have to read it.  But, she did and I did and one day my son might read it or another book like hers and feel hope.  Maybe some where between the crazy kaleidoscope of light and dark that plays across the mind and heart and soul, he will see how special he is.  That is what I saw in between all the words, those in Cheney's book and those in my own head.  Mercury is part of who I am.  It is one of the things that makes me uniquely me.  I am no better or more "special" than another.  It is simply one of the tools in my kit and it's one I can embrace as my own. 

Walk into the Word

Wordy Wednesday

Image credit

"Get up and walk!", my spirit yelled at my body.

I force myself out the door.  My body just wants to lay down on the conveyor of life and let life stamp me as I pass by.  The spirit is having none of it.  It pushes my body out the door and down the sidewalk.  My legs do an odd jitterbug while my arms and torso hustle toward the trail.

I look to the trail to give me a word for the day.  Instead many words fill my head.  They swirl and flutter around my mind like a playful breeze.  I can not hold on to any of them. 

Today, the trail is filled with activity.  Joggers, walkers, bicyclists greet me in gentle waves.  The lulls between the swells are filled with thoughts, not all of them pleasant.  Panic and fear want to crawl into my head and set up camp.  I walk faster to escape them.  My mind reaches for words to comfort it. 

As I round a bend in the trail, I see, under a familiar tree, the man I met the other day.  This time he sits cross-legged and just off the trail.  The familiar can is in his hand.  His face wears the familiar leer.  His eyes the familiar stupor.  Is this sighting an omen or a sign pointing me to something I need to know?

Quickly, I wrap him in a prayer of comforting hope and hurry on my way.  From behind me, I hear the sweet tinkle of a bell and a small pod of bicycling women, all seniors, pass by.  Their gentle conversation makes music as it passes.  I think about the beauty within the voices of women.  For a moment, I feel my separation and isolation keenly.  I want to make music with them.  Instead, I sink back into the comfort of my own solitude and rest easily.  I'm not alone.  I have words and the world around me.  I walk into the word.

Parsimony Isn't Bad

Wordy Wednesday

From: DISNEY’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL. ©2009 ImageMovers Digital LLC.

"I, see you Mr. Scrooge."

He brings us the word for the day, which is parsimony.  For a long time, I pronounced it "par sim o nee".  It sounded like an herb.  Dictionary.com defines parsimony: 

parsimony (ˈpɑːsɪmənɪ)
— n
	extreme care or reluctance in spending; frugality; niggardliness
[C15: from Latin parcimōnia, from parcere to spare] Once upon a time I would have thought this word only had negative connotations.  It seemed to epitomize the grumpy, shrivelled, old miser.  It loomed large like a crotchety Dicken's character.  But is it really that bad?  Quickly, thing back to your most recent purchase.  Did you really need it?  Thing back to the last thing you really wanted.  Once possessed did it lose some of it's charm?  Did a new thing, a new object of desire take its place? Your Money or Your Life, Vicki Robin and Joe Domenguez, co-wrote a very insightful book that tackles our misconceptions about money and success.  I suspect we've been giving parsimony a lot of bad press over the years. "Goodbye, Mr. Scrooge.  Hello, Life!"

I Can

Wordy Wednesday

The first word I wanted to feature was: Antidisestablishmentarianism. 

(I'd skip over the explanation if I were you.)

Wikipedia says the word means:  (listen to British sample (info), American sample (info)) is a political position that originated in 19th-century Britain in opposition to proposals for the disestablishment of the Church of England, that is, to remove the Anglican Church's status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales.

The establishment was maintained in England, but in Ireland the Church of Ireland (Anglican) was disestablished in 1871. In Wales, four Church of England dioceses were disestablished in 1920, subsequently becoming the Church in Wales.
The question of disestablishment of the Church of England is still current, often tied with the position of the English monarch as "Supreme Governor" of the Church (see Act of Settlement 1701). Those who wish to continue the establishment of the Church of England are referred to as Antidisestablishmentarians.<sup>[1]




The only fun thing about this word is it's length and the fact that cutting and pasting the definition has changed my text into superscript.  Curses on you, Blogger!

The word for today is actually two words,  two short, sweet words:  I can.

I didn't start out saying them this morning.  On my Just 10 walk, I came to a curve in the trail and wanted nothing more than to sit down on the asphalt and await rescue.  This time my body was screaming, "Enough,  I don't want to go any further."</sup>

Fortunately, my spirit said two short, sweet words, "You, can!"  (Don't let the change of the pronoun or the font size fool you.  Just internalize it and make it your own.  You can transform it.)

Of course, me being me, I wanted to argue.  I started making a list of all the things I can't do. 

I can't do gymnastics.
I can't be 5' 11 and have blue eyes.
I can't walk on the moon.
I can't sing on key.
I can't possess a super power or a even a super cape.
I can't have a jet pack.  (The jet pack that flies over water and uses water to hover just isn't the same.)
I can't be the Queen of England.  (They've already got one and I'm not British.)

After playing with my silly list for a few minutes, I started to make a list of what I can do.  (I like this list much better even if it isn't as funny.)

I can reach the intersection and walk all the way back home.
I can breathe deeply and enjoy this morning walk, (in spite of the dead mouse and dog poop on the trail this morning.)
I can focus on what I have and not on what I don't.
I can say I love you to the people I love.
I can take time to listen to them, to just be with them and I can let myself enjoy them.

Today, instead of thinking about what you can't do or can't have, take time to find out what you can.