Point of View

John Donne said no man is an island but I am such an isolationist. I lament never knowing people who die because I am afraid to get to know them. Fear...is such an invisible motivator for me. I want to fit in, I want to get to know people but I work against that clear water of ... well, fear. So the best I can do some days is just make a kind remark and then run back into my safe place. But is isolation a safe place or is safety an illusion? Meanwhile, enjoy the picture. It is a very famous Lake Erie Island. Looks beautiful, doesn't it? There was a Confederate Prison Camp there during the civil war. So where is safety? It is all in your point of view.

Middle Life Education

It has been a year of shock and awe healthwise in the family. If wishes were fishes, I'd have the whole year swim backwards to save/retrieve/rewrite the script somehow. But it isn't fantasy. It is life in the awful, awkward middle years where people get ill, deathly ill, and death visits far more often than Elijah at Passover. Death drops down like an owl on a mouse, quietly, whooshing up the soul before we know there is danger. Damn, damn, damn. No course in Humanities, no course in history, no course in college ever prepared me for this. Not ever....

Invisibility

Invisibility! Is it a curse? Or a plus? I struggle with invisibility daily at work. No official recognition, no official praise, no smiles from higher ups to lighten my days. I know I prefer the shadows and corners and have lived in the dusty outlines of file drawers for years. But after 14+ years, I would think people would care whether I was there of not. So, I ask … why am I here? I ask … what role do I play? I ask … do I make a difference? I ask … am I of help to anyone? And the final question is what keeps me driving down roads increasingly clogged with secret service (doing secret stuff), Feebees (doing whatever useless things they do) and DC cops/park police who shut the roads to work keep us Safe. In some way, to some people, I make a difference just by showing up. But the price in stress, in emptiness, in lack gets higher and higher and higher each day I give part of myself away.

Breaking Points

Invisible points on the interior compass of behavior.

Bothers

What bothers me today in the after-math of yesterday? Tipster lines for police. Tipster lines for colleges to report troubled youth. Tipster lines for public schools. Our local school system used to have an anonymous tipster line to call if a student witnessed or felt something was about to happen. I looked for that phone number today -- just in case -- and it wasn't online anymore. So now if someone makes my kid feel uncomfortable, if somehow there is a threat or a student paints a threatening sign on a locker, I have no one to call.

Both of my girls have had run-ins with bullies. I have to trust the school to find the person who hurt her and punish them appropriately. I don't trust anymore. All too often students who bully get off easy. Lunch time detention or a stern talking to. It may not be easy to pass students who do poor school work but it seems all too easy to let students who harm others move on to higher grades to get them out of the administrators hair. Less pain for the administrative people, more pain for the rest of us.

The Sand Shifting beneath our Collective Feet

Virginia Tech could have been any college, any state, any country. The tragedy is that it happened at all -- anywhere. The bigger tragedy is that this kind of death happens throughout the world -- in Darfur, in Gaza, in Israel, in Africa, in Iraq -- all the time. And there really are only a few news agencies that cover these losses. Now there is a killing in South America of 19 individuals. And the beat just keeps going on and on and on. As a sometime animal rescuer, I find this lack of concern for humans disturbing. It is deplorable to ignore animals. It is worse to ignore humans.

Just the Facts Ma'am...

Tonight's Law and Order had a phrase "just tell the truth and you'll be ok." But whose truth? What are the consequences of telling the truth? It reminds me of the warnings I was told last week at voir dire. The judge and the attorneys asked the jurors tons of questions about whether we could be impartial. When I was asked if I could be impartial, I said no. So the attorneys and I trooped up to the judge where I told them I'd already made a snap judgment on the case. I told the truth. Was it what the judge wanted to hear? Was it what the attorneys wanted to hear? I couldn't tell. I only know it took guts for me to admit that I couldn't be the perfect juror. There is a not so subtle pressure in the jury box to say "sure, I am just as good as the next man," "sure I can be impartial," or "what will the other people think if I admit I have an opinion." Just the truth...yeah, sure. And yet, in a way that's right. By telling my personal truth and not what the "system" wanted to hear, I set myself free. All it cost was letting go of my attachment to how it looked to others.

CaringBridge

This is a bad year for survivability so far. From my brother-in-law to friends of my daughter and now to news reports of 30+ dead at Virginia Tech. Life is unpredictable. I can't blame this year on my horoscope. I wish I could. I can't blame it on sunspots. I wish I could do that. I can't even blame it on politicians who are full of hot air. I wish I knew who I could blame so I could say a brocha for them. If you are Jewish, you know the kind: "God bless and keep ____ far away from me." But I don't know. I am grateful I found this organization http://www.caringbridge.org/ though just in case the worst happens and I need to keep the family informed. It seems to be a reasonable website.

Lights when Dark

Light on a gloomy night. Mostly when I am glum, I need to light more than just my computer screen. I need to actually turn on lights to fight the gloom.

Marking Time

Marking Time. Calendars, water clocks and sundials all mark time. Spring is a season that fools me into marking time faster. Waiting for that first perfect daffodil, that first perfect spring rain misting the plants and grass, that first warm sunspot to linger in as I go about my errands. I wait, I wait impatiently trying to read the celestial signs -- is it going a hot spring or a cold summer, a dry season or one full of wet shoes. Kids mark time too. Only in the spring of their lives they mark time with going out with their friends or as they grow older with going into the army or to college. Marking time with dances, marking time with college applications, marking time to have fun. Now with the kids growing older, I realize that releasing them to be themselves is perhaps the biggest gift I can give them. The gift of them finding themselves. So yes, mark time, measure it however you want, but enjoy each second deeply. Otherwise, you just fooling yourself. Marking time but forgetting to live. What a waste...

Tapping to Heal

Fear, Adrenalin and anxiety disorder. Adrenalin which helps us run away from danger is a memory enhancer. So, where do we store remembered fear? Apparently, in the brain somewhere. After 9/11, I first heard of psychotherapists using a type of desensitization for survivors which involved tapping the face to release fears. Although I respected the research and its results, this article is the best I have seen on explaining why it seems to work. http://www.psychotherapy-center.com/energy-psychology-ruden-paper2-2005.html

Electromagnetic Sensitivity and Ghosts

Bumpkum, I hear you blurt. Personally, I agree with you. The Science Channel had a show on this morning discrediting paranormal sightings. If you believe them, these hauntings are caused by houses being in the wrong location. Granite absorbs energy and under the right circumstances releases electromagnetic fields which cause humans living in the house to see things and for things in the house to move about independently. The investigators of the show even went so far as to accuse a man who lives in a haunted house of doing the haunting himself. Here is the program description: MegaScience Ghosthunters TV-PG, CC Do you believe in ghosts? To those who claim to have seen them, there's no question ghosts are alive and active in our everyday lives. Others flat out deny their very existence. Now scientists say there may be an alternative explanation.
Humph!!! Alternative explanation!!! I lived in a haunted house. I've got personally experienced stories. Not hearsay. Direct contact. My house was nowhere close to granite, power lines, or other things. Grrrr. And we had those incidents until my mom had the back porch where two spinsters hung themselves torn off the house. Grrrr. It just irritates the hell out of me when scientists try to say this stuff doesn't exist.

For an interesting website that is about ghosts try the shadowlands. http://theshadowlands.net/places/

Troubling Trouble

Cancer (June 21 - Jul 22)
You may be worried about the consequences of your feelings today as you realize the significant practical ramifications of them.

You probably don't know yet how it will all work out, so thinking about the ramifications of expressing yourself can be a bit scary.

Keep in mind that your emotions always impact your life, whether you say anything or not, but it's pointless to hide them now.

I always check my horoscope. While I believe in never troubling trouble, until trouble troubles me, I like to know when a train is going to hit me. Sometimes my horoscope is really in left field. Sometimes it is spooky good. Today's a pretty accurate reflection of what I am feeling. Today I watched everyone around me wrestle with feelings. Maybe it is the phase of the moon. Maybe it is pre-tax season which tenses everyone up. Whatever it is, today was full of a lot of people troubling trouble and getting tense.

Public Perception Private Pain

The 4 Ps. Keep a still upper lip, don't ask, don't tell, Henry James, Golden Bowl, fashion, never tell family secrets, always keep private things private. And the list could go on and on and on. It is really a battle for Congruence between the physical outside and the emotional inside. The last stanza of Moody Blues' lyrics to "Nights in White Satin" is really the best I have read on the eternal struggle:

Breathe deep the gathering gloom

Watch lights fade from every room

Bed sitter people look back and lament

Another day's useless energy is spent

Impassioned lovers wrestle as one

Lonely man cries for love and has none

New mother picks up and suckles her son

Senior citizens wish they were young

Cold-hearted orb that rules the night

Removes the colors from our sight

Red is grey and yellow white

But we decide which is right

And which is an illusion

Back Away from Snap Judgments

Arrrgh, voir dire. Given the tinnitus, when I listen, do I hear? Given my migraines, when I look, do I see? Given my emotions, when I hurt, do my feelings cause the pain? All too often, I get migraines or myofascial spasms when I feel trapped. Yesterday's civic exercise in jury duty voir dire was a classic in feeling trapped. Today is not so bad. The illusion of having control lessens my pain.