Writing Out Loud

Watching my But (or, Rehab)

2012-02-13T07:39:00.000-08:00

Prickles
(Laurel Creek Conservation, Waterloo, Ont. 2012)

Hi, my name is Cheryl, and I am a negative person. I have been in recovery for a very long time.

I started out excited about the world, until it hurt. Then I hid, until people wouldn't let me. Then I pretended while I seethed inside, turning in on myself with all the martyrdom of doing what was expected. Seeking control, I turned to Negativity.

Despite its drawbacks, Negativity can be a compelling drug. It compensates for all I am allowing by telling me that it's beyond my control. It lets me feel smarter, secretly better, protected because I don't care. It allows me to avoid the effort of supporting something or standing up for something, the discomfort of others' disapproval and the responsibility of their approval. It decides my opinion on a number of topics and lets me stop thinking about those things. Negativity permits focused, if limited, thinking. Conveniently, it also requires no action, since there is always a reason NOT to do pretty much anything, if that's what I'm looking for.

Negativity allows me to stand separate, in judgment, and if I judge myself even more harshly, it lets me tell myself, I am being perfectly fair. Negativity's weight feels like ballast in the ship as we rock on insanity's waves.

More than that. I have a special talent for it. I see what's wrong in any situation very, very quickly. I see the snip that would unravel the wrongness and the joists that would make it right. Assuming right and wrong, that is. Negativity alters my perception of the spectrum between right and wrong, removing shades so the line seems more delineated, the spectrum simply black or white. On Negativity, I am a lion herding my prey into a corner. I can take down almost any idea with my creative strength, my eloquent claws. It's not pretty.

Well used, carefully revealed, using Negativity can easily pass for business savvy.

Since I decided to stop using (like, really, actually decided) I've found I need to stay away from all my old friends. No, Not, But, Of Course, Should, If Only, When, the entire Sarcasm family, Can't, Won't and many others. Friends who have been a part of me my whole life. My gang made me feel safe behind their protection. It was hard to leave them behind.

Lately, they've been creeping around again. But shows up a few times a day, now, and No is around pretty much all the time. Yesterday, Should came back and I thought I'd finally chased her off. It's harder, to stay with my recovery when they're in my language.

One day at a time, right?

So today, I'm watching my But - I've asked And to help replace her in my sentences. What are you watching today?

Happiness (imaginings)

2012-02-03T07:26:00.000-08:00

Happiness.

Do you remember when the pursuit of happiness for every person wasn't a pipedream to be scoffed at?

I'm not talking a life without sorrow, hardships or difficulties. I'm just talking about a basically happy life, one where I can do the things that matter most and I have the capacity and/or support to handle the hard stuff.

I like to imagine what this world would be like if every human being felt loved, protected, fed, warm, safe and clean most of the time. I like to imagine how spirits would unfold if every human life was truly valued for what gifts it brings the world. I like to imagine what we would create together.

But I don't let myself imagine this world very often. I keep it as a special treat, like secret candy in wartime, for my darkest moments. The truth is, when I'm done imagining and I remember the distance and the pain this species still has ahead...

I find I've broken my own heart.

Relationship

2012-02-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

Can I take you back in time a couple of decades? I want to talk about employment relationships.

When I started working in Human Resources in 1994, things were different. At the time, employment case law in Ontario was very employee-centric. Poorly performing employees were getting crazy severance packages exceeding a year's salary, and the higher-paid the employee, the more they would get. The courts were finding in favour of employees most of the time. Courts ordered employers to pay for education and outplacement and provide letters of reference, even when poor performance was well documented. Some employees were even getting reinstated by the feared Human Rights Tribunal. Employers were conscious of employment standards regulations and concerned about any complaints.

My organization was a family owned light manufacturing firm with 10 plants across Canada. These plants received, developed, printed and delivered photofinishing to retail outlets across the country. You know, when people took pictures on rolls of film and waited with baited breath for them to come back in envelopes on actual photographic paper before they found out they had put their thumb in front of most of them. Back then.

We had over 600 employees. About 250 were full time (35-40 hours guaranteed), 200 full time reduced (24-35 hrs/wk guaranteed) and the rest "seasonal" or part time (no guarantee of hours, but usually full time in the summer). All full time and full time reduced employees had benefits. Most of our seasonal employees were students, since summer and the week after Christmas were our busiest times.

We paid above minimum wage, but not much - we were just below the industrial average for light manufacturing unskilled labour. And yet, we had never had a hint of a union at any plant.

What we had going for us was Relationship.

We were conscious of unions and wanting to maintain a direct relationship with our employees. Our VP said, "you get the union you deserve, so we're not going to deserve one." We lived by that in our policies and approach. We cared to care about them, and in return, they didn't need to turn to a third party. At the same time, I think everyone understood implicitly that a plant that unionized would simply be closed, its work shuffled to the nearest province.

Regardless of whether it was love or fear, we took care of our employees. We scheduled shifts to allow them to take classes or pick their kids up from school. Every year we had to lay off people from February to May, and October to mid-December. We would let them know it was coming, ask for volunteers, and then do rotating 13 week temporary layoffs with full benefits, usually able to limit the layoff to those who volunteered. Many of our older ladies looked forward to this time off, and often spent it in Florida with their early-retired husbands. Parents planned their family vacation time around it. Moms knew they could be home for March Break. Students went back to school knowing they would get hours over Christmas and they'd be welcome back the next year.

Most of our summer students were related to employees - children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews. The students knew they represented their families and they worked hard. We interviewed any internal candidate for any role, even if they weren't qualified, and helped them with a plan to get qualified. We posted all our jobs and took internal referrals first - we hardly ever advertised. Most of our promotions were from within, including me - I had worked in a retail photo lab through University.

Our company-paid benefits plan was the most generous I've had in my career. We split the difference on pension types, with the employees contributing to a defined contribution savings plan, and a matching employer-paid portion (up to 3% of salary) going into pension. We had service awards from 1 year to 35 years, and they were presented at the company-paid Christmas Gala (yes Gala) with fanfare and even roses for the ladies. Every employee got their birthday off with pay, and a birthday card signed personally by the President, Vice President, HR, the employee's manager, the employee's supervisor, and the employee's co-workers (you can imagine what that was like to administer every month!). We held extravagant summer picnics. We had a lottery where you could win a week off with pay, every month. We gave everyone a turkey (gift card) and a Christmas Card sent to their house with their Christmas Bonus (usually a week's pay).

That's all gone now, and not just because of digital photography.

The employment law environment has changed. There are no Human Rights officers - a complaint can take several years to get heard. I myself was called as witness in one case that lasted for 3 years after I'd left the company. Employment Standards has out-clauses that the courts have chosen to give credence, like stretching the definition of a "manager" and an "IT Worker" (one of the most exploitative changes that came in 10+ yrs ago). Settlements are hardly worth the lawyer fees, and employers breach standards left and right since it's a complaints-driven system, and everyone's happy to just have a job. If employees say anything, the employer apologizes and moves on. The employee gets caught in the next layoff round.

A fully company-paid benefits plan is much more of a rarity today. And coverage - where you used to get $300 it's $150, with a $25 deductible, based on 2-year-old fee guides. Pension? No way! Service awards? Employees don't like them anyway, and besides, they're taxable. No one is irreplaceable. It's good to cull the bottom 10% every year, it keeps people on their toes. Loyalty? Give me two years when someone's hungry over 10 years of plodding. We're short this quarter, we'd better lay off a few people.

For the past twenty years, the employment relationship has been systematically chipped away, eroded thread by thread. Like a cancer, the employment contract took over and reprogrammed the DNA until it was no longer human. In the private sector, people lost their foothold, their benefits and their pensions, with each new year of hires no longer eligible for the "grandfathered" plans of old. For twenty years, these workers have been programmed to understand that there is no "relationship" - you pay me, and I do what you want done for the hours you pay me. I owe you no loyalty, and you offer me none.

This is the context for most private sector workers. They no longer know what it would look like to feel job security. They no longer believe it possible.

They no longer think you should have it, either.

As we enter a time of great upheaval in the public sector, spurred not only by economic circumstances but by the change in employment circumstances that is now arriving at their doorstep, I brace for the inevitable clash of cultures, ideologies, definitions of "fairness" and GOBS of WASTED MINDS and RESOURCES about to be spent "fighting to keep what's good" and "fighting to force what's fair." All the "why should I's" already deafen me.

It is inevitable. The workers of the private sector will not stand by and watch their taxes increase to pay for anyone's guaranteed pensions when they know they will have none in their own retirements. They will not settle for cuts to services that allow job security and extra holidays for people they pay with their tax dollars.

And the public sector workers and unions will not settle for losing everything they've fought for. They won't be brought down when we should be trying to rise up!

It will go on and on. Our best minds will debate it. Some will try to prove that there is no privilege in the public sector, while others will produce graphs to show there is.There will be articles, studies and name-calling. There will be strikes and stones thrown. There will be strife in our communities between the citizens who work for companies and the citizens who work for public service. It will go on and on for painful years.

It will turn us against each other just when we need to stand together and win back the employment relationship for everyone.

This can only go one way or the other. Either the public sector loses what it has that's better than your average private sector worker, or the private sector is forced to reinstate something like an employment relationship so people can have some measure of security. Which will come first?

The way I see it, the sooner we level the playing field, the better. Frankly, in the short term, I see the loss of public sector privileges over private sector workers as inevitable. And then what? We will have spent ourselves, only to lose another battle that's taken up years of our time. We will be worn, demoralized and, as always, resource poor.

I think we need to stop letting this be about public and private sectors at all. Maybe the public sector doesn't need to fight for itself, fight to keep what it has. That's a defensive position. That's letting "them" frame the debate. Maybe the public sector needs to help us all fight for the very idea of an employment relationship, for everyone, even outside of the protection of unions. Raise and evangelize the very notion that employers and employees do owe each other something beyond the moment of their immediate usefulness.

IMHO, of course.

(unfortunately, it's hard to lead from a position of privilege, as any community developer can tell you. You tend to lack cred.)

Thaw

2012-02-02T07:37:00.000-08:00

Spring Is Messy

For years, I hid myself from myself
quite deliberately.
I locked myself carefully under ice.

I knew I would become all consuming if I let me.
That my becoming would become me
And there simply isn't time for that.

But I failed.
I failed to freeze myself.
I fanned the flames in secret.
I harboured my fugitive self from my single-minded obtuseness
Feeding her scraps, begging for her contentment.

She was not content. She'd never intended to stay under ice forever.

I didn't want the messiness
the incessant uncertainty
the despair that settles, sickening, in the pit of my stomach

I didn't want the disruption
the financial uncertainty
the tiring hard work of being constantly, really, here

I didn't want the visions
the insights that seem to demand my action
the knowledge that no one is ready to hear.

I didn't want to drift so far away from how Everyone thinks.

Do I have to say that it's hard, to thaw?
It's hard.

It's All Tree

2012-02-01T21:12:00.000-08:00

Tree

Delicate, supple, leathery; textured ridges cool my fingertips.
Rough, hard, straight; gnarled bumps interrupt my thumb's progress.
Dancing smooth pig's tail; coiled seeker resists my tug.

It's all Tree.

What keeps me up at night

2012-01-31T11:44:00.000-08:00

Inhumanity

What am I afraid of? I'm afraid that a small boy will stab a police officer in the eyes with a pair of scissors, and nothing will ever be the same.

Night. A demonstration, or a riot? Fire and fear, anger. It’s about food, about water, about hygienic conditions, about safety. It’s about desperation.

(On our own continent, North America, where These Things just don’t happen? People don’t riot in the streets for food. We have food banks and social assistance, don’t we?)

And yet, tonight, here are Women, Men and Children crowded together, a single beast howling for fairness, crying out in anguish for Lack. Women, Men and Children, real and makeshift weapons brandished high, surging forward together: a Force, a Wave, rising to break against the Wall of Enforcement inevitably blocking its path.

Enforcement braces. Waits.

Wave smashes Wall! Spatters fly left and right, crowd crushing forward in a beautiful liquid flow, a choreographed dance of forward, full-stop, arch and FLY back. An inside-out waterfall, from above. A taste of hell from within.

Cracks, shots, screams, thuds, shouts, growls, roars; one tumultuous Roar of raw human violence. Teeth bared, the animals rise to their nature. No spectacle in the Universe can match it (thanks be).

A grand human battle, as in days of old, when knights and villagers fought, quite literally, Tooth and Nail for their very survival. As in days of now, in countries far away where they can be safely ignored. And today, where we didn’t expect it and certainly don’t want it. Here. Somehow, it must be the fault of the Instigators. So Power whispers in our ears, as we witness from what we hope remains a safe distance.

In the end, of course, vicious Power must win by any means necessary, because anything less accepts defeat. Power cannot compute Defeat. Power is single-minded.

But what happens next?

Devon, nine, small for his age, hungry and ready to fight. Devon watches a big, ugly cop slam his Little-Tough-as-Nails-Mama with a club. Devon hears the crack of her skull and he sees the fluorescent glow of her spirit fly from her open mouth and dissipate into the night as her body slumps forward, bloody hair in her face.

Devon’s rage defies gravity. He flies through the air, latches his legs around that cop’s chest with the grip of a cobra. Scissors raised.

And what happens next?

What else could happen? Devon stabs the cop in the eyes. Again, and again. Power, that fairweather weasel, sees his Champion falter and just jumps ship; Devon’s gaping Hate beckons and Power lustily fills the void. Now the man’s high-pitched anguished screams pump Devon like energy. Now he wants to hurt, he wants to kill, he needs to take this life.

And next?

Hands, fists, boots, pain, pain, pain, pain, can’t breath, can’t see, can’t think, can’t move, can’t…

Eight cops beat Devon to death in the space of a minute. Eleven other cops see only their brethren gone wild on a child, and rush forward to stop it. Cop Brawl pulls in seven more officers before the crowd surrounds them. In under five minutes, reinforcements find twenty-six cops being torn to pieces by hundreds of people, regular people fighting each other for the privilege of giving their hate free expression. Nine of those cops are already dead.

And next, of course…

Someone opens fire.

Days and thousands dead before Power satisfies his immediate longings. Of course, he is never satisfied.

We know how to prevent it. We have the resources to prevent it. Finding the Will...I have my hopeful days and I have my days of dark visions and no faith that the amazing beauty of individual humans can ever be translated into the larger social systems.

Then again, 1,000 years is a long time. Never say never...right?

Nature

2012-01-19T09:58:00.000-08:00

(taken in Markham, Ontario...or somewhere like that)

Corporations are job eliminators. But it’s not their fault.

Corporations make money by providing value to customers who pay them. There are three major ways to win a customer: sell it cheaper, make it better, treat them well.

Under the “sell it cheaper” category, there are three major ways to sell it cheaper: cheaper materials, cheaper value production, cheaper distribution.

Under the category of cheaper value production, labour often comprises the bulk of costs. The most effective business model would provide 100% of value with $0 spent on labour or overhead. In the real world, this ratio is one of the most important efficiency measures: labour dollars to produce one unit.

Thus, businesses constantly and rightly seek production efficiencies and technology that permits fewer jobs to produce more value. A good corporation owes value to its shareholders and must pursue the goal of “sell it cheaper” without compromising product quality or customer experience, so as not to jeopardize the other two ways of winning customers (make it better, treat them well).

“Why did you eat me?” asked the ghost mouse. “Because I am a lion,” he replied, with a yawn.

Corporations eliminate jobs, as fast as and wherever they can. It’s their nature.

(Toronto Zoo, 2011)

Nothing's Free

2012-01-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

I've always found it funny - the "Free" "Market". Like parking on the "Drive" "Way".

I believe we could rebuild the free market economy by consciously mitigating efforts at externalizing costs. A free market may not be an effective arbiter of priorities, but disaster comes when costs are not allocated appropriately to their points of incursion. Under-valuing resources is only the beginning. Obfuscating cost allocations has become an industry unto itself.

Where all the theory and spreadsheet wrangling, outsourcing and downsizing, shaving and tightening, speculating and trading hit reality is in the lives of people.

We’ve created a stage rush. Pushing costs out and around, pushing, pushing, and it’s The People who get crushed between the throng and the hard, hard wall of the stage. Enjoy the show.

Nothing is created or destroyed, only changed. We can transform the numbers a thousand ways, but at some point, the costs come from somewhere. Someone pays. When we mine resources in Ontario to ship to China for transformation and shipment back to Canada through Singapore, and it costs less than manufacturing in Ontario, someone is lying about what it costs.

I didn't need an MBA to tell me that, but it confirmed my suspicions.

We've made the Free Market into a game of who can cheat best, and our governments have written the rules to match the play.

Next step: Valuate Earth. I want my 1/7 billionth.

To Freedom, Humanity!

2012-01-03T05:47:00.000-08:00

(e)volution

What would you rather be doing?

Every once in awhile, I’ll hear a news story about someone in an office or factory who won the lottery. “Will you quit your job?” the commentator asks. “Oh, I could never leave my job!” they insist.

What!?!

I mean, besides the fact that it’s impossible to keep working beside people once they put on that lens…I ask you, who among us doesn’t have a dream of owning our own time? Freedom has long been the dream of slaves.

Did you forget that we’re slaves?

I have a dream. I wake up in the morning, refreshed and excited to greet the day. I stretch, pick up my coffee, check in with the twitterverse and blogosphere, send some love into the Universe, exercise, and spend the day writing fiction, cat on my lap. I eat a tasty and nutritious dinner with my family and enjoy a summers’ evening with them. I fall asleep easily and sleep well. Nowhere in that dream do I wash dishes, prepare meals, clean up cat litter.

It’s not a giant dream, but it’s one of mine. What are some of yours?

We all have them! We all long to be free of the tyranny of work. Work SUCKS! We just want to bang on the drum all day.

And we SHOULD be able to do this. Why can’t we?

Because we allow the vagaries of human whimsy to drive our innovative efforts, and place individual human desires above what’s realistic. That’s why we have 79 kinds of gum with exactly the same ingredients. That’s why the technology exists to solve almost any problem, but hardly anyone can afford it for far too long. I’m not convinced there is enough trickling down to reach the bottom before drying up.

The Free Market is driving the dream upward. The Entrepreneurs who were once of us, for us and with us, have been displaced by impersonal conglomerates where no one is responsible for anything but the bottom line. Our stock marketeers are making themselves Feudal Overlords. Trickle-down only works when something is trickling down. We encourage the rich to tie money up rather than spend it (spending being the only means of spreading it out) and it is creating a Great Divide between those who must work, and those who have choices.

Don’t misunderstand. I am very grateful to the Free Market for getting us here. Slavery was required for humans to be the machines that made things happen. We did it! We got here! We grew and grew and did more and more, and we cracked the genome! We have computers and robots – better machines than us! We know how to get to the moon! We dreamed it, and it’s here, and it’s incredible. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Without competition and the draw of significant reward, innovation and creativity couldn’t have come so far. The widespread slavery of humans in creation and production, was required to allow for execution on what was possible. Without the fierce competition for basic needs, humans would never have submitted to it. Give them enough to eat and a place to live, and they will do what they feel like, not what needs to be done!

Allowing the slaves participation as consumers of innovation helped spread the wealth from the feudal overlords to a middle class of people. The mantra of ever onward! Constant Growth! That’s the cheerleading we needed to get here. And it worked. It even gave the illusion of freedom, this idea that you can improve your lot, that the sky is the limit. Still, 40 hours a week is a lot, and for most people, it’s the minimum. It doesn’t leave much time to enjoy Life.

The thing is, we don’t have to live like this anymore. We could decide that being a human is not an immediate sentence to a lifetime of work. We could make birth an entry to the universe’s vacation resort. We could decide to use our Collective Will to create utopia for everyone.

Not tomorrow. Not in my lifetime or yours, but does that give us the right to keep our foot on the gas when we can see the ravine? Imagine what technology could do in 3012. That was a trick. You can’t.

In any case, my point is this. We are behaving like children. Gimme gimme gimme. Why should I? It’s MINE! We are acting like teenagers. I choose my own friends! The world is black and white! What’s the point?

We have the technology and know-how to begin spreading not just survival, but even convenience more broadly among humans at a much faster pace, if we lower the prices by reducing the profits. Uh oh, can’t say that. That smacks of taxation or redistribution. Bla bla bla. Let’s put it another way. We have the technology and know-how to begin spreading stability and even convenience more broadly among humans at a much faster pace, if we understand that we live in a finite system. Constant growth is not a requirement, it’s a mindset. And it’s simply not an option.

It’s time for us to grow up, Humanity. We’ve had our childhood, we've spent our teen angst, and we've even crashed the car.

Now, it’s time to settle down and have a family together.

It’s time we realized the reality of our situation and the depth of our power. It’s time we wake up and have a dream, for all of us, a thousand years from now, that life IS easy and work is what we choose, because we love it and it gives us a chance to better our situation and that of humanity, not because we can't eat otherwise. When I come back, I want my life to be a vacation from the tedium of eternity, no matter what family I’m born to. All this dog eat dog within Ourself tires me out.

To Freedom, Humanity!

Imaginings (shiver)

2011-12-14T20:36:00.000-08:00

Take the long road and walk it (The Music)
(Woolwich, Ont.: Dec. 2011)

Only in wild imaginings

Can road evoke a journey

Real life's wanderings offer no wide smoothness

to ease my mind with illusory destinations

So I live in these imaginings, for awhile

and take cold comfort as it comes

Get on

2011-11-30T12:41:00.000-08:00

Dare
(Grand Bend, 2004)

A thousand ways beckon and forbid.

A thousand long paths diverge.

A few hopeful steps, round the bend. Before me a mountain of climbing. I hesitate.

I look back. Perhaps another way?

This path reveals a chasm. Down that, a desert looms. Thistles and thorns; formidable passages. Ferocious creatures. Dead ends.

I retreat.

Each path becomes a journey, each journey asks a lifetime.

Each misleading sign points vaguely, whispers maybes. Beckons and forbids. No destination promised, just hints.

Each way asks blind commitment to one step, then the next.

I feel ill-equipped.

Again and again, I return to the crossroads, daunted and uncertain any way is worth the struggle.

I don’t know where I’m going

or why I’m going anywhere at all.

Beneath my feet a warning, earth’s rumbled promise: you cannot stay.

Get on.

I sink to my knees. Will I let the ground crumble, swallow me?

The wind whispers though I can't hear meaning
under the howls.

Occupy Earth

2011-11-23T09:10:00.000-08:00

Image from "Your Free Press"
(no affiliation, I just used the picture)

I've been watching the Occupy movement for some time with mixed feelings. And watching my mixed feelings with curiosity.

On the surface, I agree with much of what I've heard coming out of the Movement. I'm so relieved and excited to see people taking notice of the rot that has infiltrated our governments and societies. Yet, I have a nagging sense that they are Occupying the wrong thing. Can I walk you through what I've pieced together so far?

Corporations are NOT Job Creators. They are Wealth Accumulators.

Corporations must employ as few people at as low a rate as possible to maximize shareholder value.
Corporations are Job Eliminators by nature of their role as Wealth Accumulators.

Private Industry is NOT accountable for creating full employment.

Private industry’s primary responsibility is to extract value for shareholders.
Corporations are responsible for maximizing their shareholders’ value within the context of the regulations set by Governments
Corporations are not responsible to ensure society has enough resources to meet citizen needs.
Corporations are not responsible to ensure full employment for as many humans as society decides to birth and educate.
Governments have created few/poor regulatory mechanisms requiring corporations to create employment or protect natural resources

The coincidental convergence between industry needs and available human labour is over.

Agricultural and Industrial Ages required more people and employed them with lower pre-employment requirements
Technology trends in automation and robotics indicate that the lines between private sector needs and capable human labour will continue diverging.

Societies must stop relying on the mechanism of full employment as the means by which they ensure citizens are fed and housed.

As private industry requires fewer people with increasingly complex skills, fewer people will be eligible to earn in the private sector

Societies allocate too few of our common resources to education to permit a large enough pool of people eligible for private sector employment

Private industry requires fewer, but more expensive human capabilities than in the past
Education systems were developed to support the Industrial age and have not been adequately revised
Industry requires creative thinkers with significant and complex knowledge
Our educational systems currently fail to maximize the human potential of most people
Public education produces too few humans eligible for private-sector employment participation and too many not eligible for available private sector needs
Producing more humans eligible for private sector work is expensive and requires more individual adult care for each child during the education phase

Private industry would fail without the free labour of care-givers and volunteers, which is not valued in the current economic system

Without the unpaid care of children, disabled and elderly people to support families and communities, those who are employed could not focus their time and attention on producing
Because most care is not valued in the economic system, most care is done by those who are not fully employed in other ways, with a sub-set of care provided by low-paid workers.
Otherwise productive and employed humans, primarily female, exit the workforce when family pressures require time and attention
If society achieves full employment of adults, it does so at the cost to quality of care for young children, the disabled and the elderly within homes, as well as the volunteer work done in schools and communities

Governments are responsible to regulate behaviour within a society in a way that permits fair and peaceful co-existence.

As behaviour regulators, we trust Governments to also be the stewards of our resources
As Resource Stewards, we trust Governments to ensure our natural resources, including human labour, are used and paid for in a way that permits fair and peaceful co-existence

Societies currently subsidize private sector profits by selling commonly-held resources too cheaply

Governments compete and undercut each other to increase industry participation in their territories
Governments use cheap resources (low costs, low taxes, cheap labour rates) to attract industry
Governments have failed to recoup for Society an appropriate value in exchange for resources, including labour
Governments have not extracted enough societal value to replace the sold resources – they have sold our resources, including human time, too cheaply, and given too much "free reign" to corporations

Fair and peaceful co-existence currently feels threatened.

Governments have created regulatory environments in which corporations can amass and hoard wealth at the expense of the common good
Governments have created policy environments in which education and care are de-valued and under-valued for their role in economic activity
Because governments have failed to regulate our resource allocation and behaviours effectively, more people are living lives of instability and desperation
As more people live lives of instability and desperation, our fair and peaceful co-existence is threatened

For societies to survive and evolve, they must re-assess how governments subsidize and regulate private sector use of common resources

Societies must seek ways to use commonly-held resources strategically, maximizing the balance among private-sector employment, public-sector employment and other forms of income stabilization
Decision making must apply the context that the “full employment” coincidence is no longer an effective model
For societies to mitigate against decreased private sector employment needs, decision making must apply the context of increasing need for societal contribution in the areas of care and education
There is no compelling evidence that governments are seriously undertaking such a re-assessment

Wall Street did what they were permitted to do. Without conscience, pressuring for more and more privilege - yes, morally we can and must question the ethics of these leaders, especially those who went beyond the already-permissive legal framework. And yet, it is governments the world over who have failed both in their responsibility to regulate behavior, and in their role as Resource Stewards. By competing for industry in a selfish and protectionist way, rather than working together, governments have undercut us all.

So, for the Americans at least, why isn't it Occupy Washington?

Finally...

This is a closed ecosystem.

One world, one set of resources, 7 billion people. Nothing much comes in or goes out. If I have more, you have less. If one country has more, other countries have less. Until we begin thinking like a species on a planet at the governmental level, this mess will only get worse. Until we decide on a common goal of a fair and peaceful co-existence, we can't even begin to start those conversations, let alone work on achieving it.

I say, OCCUPY EARTH.

We already do, all of us, together. It's the How that's the kicker.

Seeing

2011-11-21T19:27:00.000-08:00

See Through

What I see

Depends a lot on how I look

Nature is

2011-11-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

Inter-Seasonal

Nature does not say: It is Spring, there will be only green.
Nature does not say: It is Summer, there will be only sun
Nature does not say: It is Autumn, everything must die
Nature does not say: It is Winter, there will be only snow

When we look closely, we see that Nature cares not about the season
Nature simply is
Now.

Hasten

2011-11-14T07:47:00.000-08:00

Spent

Hasten

why should I?
why shouldn't I?
they should
they shouldn't
why don't they?
it's not fair
they don't deserve
I deserve
I want
I give up

Hasten the moment duality breaks
Shush away the skittish fears
Soothe and whisper calming questions in my ear

Hasten the moment of shining harsh light
Reveal the They alive in Me
Allow the shame to teach then let it be

Hasten the moment of opening sight
Reveal the Me alive in They
Allow the hurt to teach then flow away

When frantic power yields to compassion
I return to love
I return to me

Seeds fly (Release)

2011-11-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

Release (Autumn, 2011)

The flower never knows

where her seeds blow

do they root in soil?

strangle in weeds?

fly and flourish?

or revert to dust.

The flower only knows

She must bloom
(and then, release)

Mind's Eye

2011-11-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

Mindseye
(acrylic on canvas, 2011)

Movement carries potential
Deliberate acts create the unintended
Effect is never quite what's caused
Variables multiply
faster than definitions

In my mind's eye the colours dance with purpose
Pools trickles tangles smears lines webs
Their play desires my imagination
Each colour pulls my mind's eye past horizon

Where past my understanding, they continue flowing
Where past my comprehension, their song sings to my song
Where past my thoughtful reasons, their need continues through me
Where past my body's surface
they call me on.

(Are you coming?)
(I'm almost there.)

Getting to know me?

2011-11-01T06:50:00.001-07:00

Just Waiting for the Wind (Autumn, 2011)

By chance, I recently met someone who reads this blog. She didn't know it was "my" blog until we met and she recognized me from my picture. It's like a tiny, little taste of fame. This reader observed that I am not like my blog. She said I seem happy and together, but my blog is "heavy." She wasn't complaining, exactly, but noting something I've noted myself - I tend to write here more often when I'm angsty or freaking out than when I'm not.

Which is to say, I only post a couple of times a month, often when I'm most angsty or I'm freaking out.

But reading my blog, not understanding the big spaces of happy, excited and boring between what I write, could lead to some interesting impressions of me as a person. I'd never thought much about it, because I didn't really think anyone was GETTING TO KNOW ME through all this sharing. When I write, it's to explore a theme, to work ideas loose - it's like noodling on a guitar. It's not meant to be an expression of my whole being. I'd never thought of people meeting me and expecting me to be "like" my blog, at all. It kind of freaked me out.

For me, the blog is a space of creative expression, not a journal. The themes I explore are just themes, bits I'm working through in a moment among a million moments that I don't share here.

Somehow, I need to say that now. But I feel kind of...icky about it.

Because I feel that you (that is, YOU) have always understood this about our shared moments when you read. You've gone there with me, not thinking where we went WAS me. We go together knowing what we explore is often hard, and it matters, and it underpins all the other times when we aren't in angst but the reasons for it aren't gone. You know that we are all of us so complex as to be unknowable, even to ourselves. In this way, we are all gods in bodies.

(you do understand, don't you?)

Kindergarten Gurus (or, Wasps get mad at this time of year"

2011-10-21T05:26:00.000-07:00

Kindergarten Gurus (Waterloo, 2011)

Today, walking down the hill to the bus stop, my 5 year old stopped.

"A dead wasp!" He looked at the perfect, still body. "It looks just the same, but dead."

I was impatient. In a hurry. I didn't want to miss the bus.

"Yes, yes, wasps die in October. Keep walking!" My 4yo daughter and I were far enough ahead that he needed to run to keep up.

"Why?" he asked.

"Why what?"

"Why do wasps die in October?"

"Because it's cold." I threw it out, a little dismissive.

My daughter piped up at the same time. "Because they're done getting all the pollen."

This time I stopped, just for a second. I smiled. She's such a show-off.

"That too," I conceded, feeling bested by a master. I gave them both a hug. We walked.

"Wasps are just like robots," my son offered.

"Yes, they are basically like robots, programmed to get pollen. Like a light bulb. When we turn on the switch, we send electricity to the light bulb and it lights up, because that's what it does." They nodded. They've heard this before. "When we turn the switch off, it stops the electricity, and the bulb is off."

They stumbled over each other to talk, and my son won out. I never quite know how to navigate these squabbles - I don't want to reward this kind of pushiness (though it does have some practical value in some circumstances), and I don't want to sidetrack the conversation. I'll admit, this time I let it go. My son said,

"So they die, and then in spring new ones get borned, just the same kind of robots that get pollen. Because there's no flowers in winter. So we don't need these old ones anymore. So we pull out our electricity, and they fall down dead."

"That's one interesting way to look at it."

"Everything's a robot," he proclaimed. "We're robots, and cars are robots and birds and everything is just robots with electricity."

My daughter piped up.

"Noooo..." she said, almost laughing, almost sarcastic. "They're not just robots."

"No?" I asked. "Why?"

"Robots don't get mad. Wasps get mad at this time of year."

She was quoting me - I've said "Wasps get mad at this time of year" many times in the past couple of months. But she tied that back herself to the concept that the wasps can't be robots because they feel emotion. She identified a key concept of being "alive."

"That's true." I responded. And then, "Unless the robots are programmed to get mad when they're about to die..."

"All of everything gets mad when it's about to die," said my son with certainty. "We like to be alive."

We arrived at the bus stop. They mounted the stairs to the bus, almost too high for their legs. My kindergarten gurus.

A message on poverty

2011-10-17T06:11:00.000-07:00

(photo from Tina Tang)

Poverty is a personal problem with systemic consequences.

In response to the systemic consequences, we institute systems-approach solutions that have personal consequences, and often exacerbate the effects of poverty at the personal level. These approaches have failed to reduce levels of poverty and have increased gaps between the richest and poorest. These systems cost too much money to provide no return on investment.

We require a different set of starting principles.

The most viable solutions will challenge common understanding about concepts like value, work, choice, responsibility, community and freedom. We are only beginning to have those conversations, and they are hard.

This work is generations from fruition.

Johnny, Jenny & Neeha: Talking TIME

2011-10-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

Talking: TIME

When we last left Jenny, Johnny & Neeha, they were having lunch. Read the previous post here

Jenny feels her friends’ ambivalence and wishes she’d kept quiet. Never have the three friends been in such different places. They pretend to read the menu they all know by heart. Jenny already knows that she'll order soup, but she doesn't want to look up right away. We are in such different places, she thinks. I wish we could understand each other, and just feel comfortable like we used to.

Suddenly, Jenny's stomach contracts and a cold, eerie feeling descends over her. With glaring clarity she understands: this may be the last time we three friends are together like this. She feels suddenly overwhelmed with sadness for all she has lost already. Jenny takes a ragged breath. Johnny and Neeha are instantly alert.

"Jenny, I'm sorry, we never should have gotten into talking about money." Neeha puts her arm around her friend, but Jenny shakes it off.

"No, that's just it! It's what we DON'T talk about that's getting in our way! Guys, I really think that we might be losing our friendship because we can't talk about how our situations are different, the assumptions or judgments we might have - even unconsciously. It gets in the way, like a wall we've been slowly building for years!"

All three sit in silence. After a minute, Johnny nods thoughtfully.

"Okay, but we can't change anyone's situation, we can't change what's different in our lives. So what can we do?"

"Maybe...we can talk about it?" offers Jenny shyly.

Johnny does not want to talk about it. He knows that he has more money than his friends and he doesn't want to be made to feel guilty about it. He went to college, and worked hard to get where he is. He thinks, what is there to talk about? It's not his fault that his friends made different decisions than he did. Jenny chose to get married and quit school - if she'd wanted to, she could have given the baby up, or found a way to do her studies part time. And Neeha didn't even try. As these thoughts flow through his mind, he remembers Jenny's words that burst out so jarringly. Assumptions? Judgments? Reluctantly, he starts to see that maybe there are some things to talk about.

Neeha still hasn't spoken. She does not want to talk about her life - it's too boring. She doesn't want to complain, and she doesn't want to listen to anyone else complain, either. It hurt her feelings when Jenny shook her off, and the outburst felt like an attack . She admits to herself that Jenny's words shook her to the core. Neeha suddenly realizes the tenuousness of the relationship that holds them together, how easily these two people who had always been part of her Canadian life might fade away from her. She shivers as she feels, for a moment, what it means to be alone in the world. She looks at her two friends. Jenny smiles apologetically and bites her lip. Neeha makes a decision.

"Okay," says Neeha, "Let's talk. Where do we start?"

"Let's NOT start with money, okay?" says Jenny. "I think I need to warm up to that. But...maybe we can talk about what we were saying earlier. About time?"

"So, what? Like, report out on how we spend our time?" Johnny asks skeptically.

Jenny swallows hard. She feels strangely brave, but it's still hard to say what she is thinking out loud.

"Well," Jenny begins, "I guess I noticed that both you guys seemed to be...I don't know, doubtful? When I said that my time is stretched? So I guess I'm thinking that you think you have more time pressures than I do. Can we talk about that?"

Neeha and Johnny exchange a look. Johnny doesn't really want to hurt Jenny's feelings by saying her days are wasted. Neeha sighs. Her feelings are complicated and contradictory - she knows Jenny is a good mother, but she still feels it's unfair that she doesn't have to work. Neeha has no idea what she can say that won't sound like she is judging her friend. The words suddenly tumble out before she fully thinks them through.

"I have to admit it, Jenny, it's true. I do think you have more time than me. I'm running from job to job spending half my time on the bus, and you're warm at home. I'm not saying you don't work hard as a mother. But how could you not have more time?"

The two women stare at each other in silence. Jenny doesn't want to say the first words that come to her - she wants to keep her friendship. She feels Neeha's comments like burning shame.

Suddenly, Johnny laughs. The other two look over at him, surprised.

"No one has more time!" he cries triumphantly, the same way he used to treat every new discovery in science class as though he were the first to come upon it. Neeha feels a smile tugging the corner of her lips as she catches a glimpse of Teenaged Johnny.

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"No one has more time because we all have the same 24 hours, every day! We all start with...what? One hundred..." he grabs a crayon from a cup left for small children, working out the math on the paper tablecloth in front of him. "One hundred and sixty-eight hours. in a week. That's all we get. You can't buy an hour more."

All three friends acknowledge this is true.

Each friend has the same 24 hours to spend in a day.

Each begins each week with

168 hours.

"Okay," smiles Jenny, a little more at ease. "We all have one hundred and sixty-eight hours. That's true, but it's what we do with them that's different." Jenny takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly. She is glad her friends have taken up her challenge instead of running, but she's already finding the conversation hard. She decides that she will have to be determined not to get offended, but try to stay curious."

"Well, I spend most of my time at work," says Johnny. "Or, sleeping."

"Sleep?" laughs Neeha. "What's that? Sleep is one thing I don't spend enough time on. Work comes first. And the stupid bus."

"For me, my kids come first," says Jenny. "The twins are still home all day and they won't nap anymore, so I spend most of my time with them."

"But, they're just little. They can't take up that much time?" asks Neeha without thinking.

"I think maybe you should come and babysit for a day, then see if you think that!" laughs Jenny. She means what she says, but finds she isn't upset with Neeha's assumption. Neeha can't be expected to know what it's like to spend all day, every day with very young children.

Johnny takes the crayon.

"I have an easy way to do this. Let's just track how we spend our time."

Together, the friends quickly narrow themselves to four main areas for time - paid employment, household maintenance, personal development and community work. Each shares their experience thoughtfully and with a broad brush. Johnny records the hours on the paper table-cloth. They take quite awhile to eat, often forgetting as they get caught up in analyzing together. When the waitress comes to clear their plates, Johnny asks her for a new table-cloth to summarize their findings. She raises her eyebrow when she sees what he's been writing, but doesn't say a word. Johnny works while Neeha and Jenny excuse themselves to the washroom.

Here is a summary of what they found:

1) Paid Employment

Johnny spends, on average, 42.5 hours at work.

Jenny does not engage in paid work.

Neeha works about 48 hours a week among her three employers.

Working requires travel time. Johnny drives about twenty minutes to work. Niha takes the bus, which takes approximately one hour each way, while Jenny primarily stays in her own neighbourhood.

Time spent on paid employment:

	Johnny	Jenny	Neeha
Average weekly hours at workplace	42.5	0	48
Travel hours to and from work	3.33	0	11.67
Total hours required for paid work:	45.83	0	59.67

2. Household Maintenance

Household maintenance includes things like housecleaning, laundry, food preparation and shopping. In particular, household maintenance is required to keep a home pest-free and sanitary for human living, and to ensure nutritional needs are met.

Johnny has a housekeeper who comes every two weeks for the heaviest work, and keeps his place fairly tidy in between. His home is pest-free. Johnny buys his lunch about half the time, and uses food services (drive-thru, takeout) at least three times a week. He doesn’t know how to cook many things, so his groceries consist primarily of frozen entrees and meals-to-go.

Jenny makes her own meals, usually from reduced-cost groceries and produce, and does her own housecleaning. With small children at home, her efforts do not always meet her own standards. She has had mice occasionally, but her home is generally pest-free.

Neeha does her own cleaning and always brings her lunch to work. She likes to cook but doesn’t have much time, so about half her meals are packaged/prepared/frozen grocery offerings. Her apartment is messy but not dirty - she generally keeps it up and does big bursts of proper cleaning when she can fit them in. Still, she battles cockroaches that go back and forth between her apartment and her neighbour's. The tenants there change every month, and they often bring infestations with them. She would like to move, but she never seems to be able to get an appointment when she doesn't have to work.

Time Spent on Household Maintenance

	Johnny	Jenny	Neeha
Housecleaning	12	28	20
Laundry	2	4	2
Food preparation	7	20	12
Shopping	2	6	4
Time spent on household tasks:	23	58	38

3) Community Contribution

All three friends readily agree that citizenship invokes a responsibility for contribution to the community. This is one of the values that brought them together. They also acknowledge that each volunteer hour adds to the wider social benefit at the expense of one hour's participation in the economic system.

Johnny sits on a local charity’s Board of Directors, which averages about an hour a week. He's new to the Board and the other members have been there longer, so he hasn't found his niche. He's hoping to help them upgrade their IT infrastructure, which could increase his time contributions. Johnny also visits his disabled aunt for an hour each Thursday at her supportive care facility.

Jenny spends approximately fifty-six hours a week in direct child-development activities *(please see the note at the end). These activities include reading, crafts, play, music, writing, fine and gross motor skill development, and social development. Jenny cares for her sister’s two children after school, allowing her sister to continue her full time job. Jenny also volunteers three hours a week at the local community centre’s reading program while her kids play in a play circle.

Neeha volunteers one hour each week at the local multicultural centre, leading a youth art program. She also paints when she can spare some time. Several of her paintings hang in local establishments, and she donated one to the city’s library for a charity event last year.

Time Spent on Community Contribution

	Johnny	Jenny	Neeha
Supporting children's development needs	0	56	0
Supporting family/friend needs	1	10	1
Volunteering	1	3	0
Producing art	0	1	1
Time spent on Community-enhancing tasks:	2	70	2

*A note on child care: Initially, Neeha pointed out that Jenny’s children are her own. In return, Jenny reminded her friends that her children's well-being will contribute to society (if they graduate high school, take post-secondary education, get jobs) or cost society (if they remain on social assistance as adults, suffer from ill-health, or develop mental health issues). In addition, the time Jenny spends directly on child development would be performed for money by child-care workers if her time were spent at other employment, and therefore has economic value to the community. In the end, the three friends agreed to include child care as a community-enhancing activity.

4) Physical needs

The friends agreed that time must be spent each day on the physical needs required by all humans – at the very least, some hours spent sleeping, eating and basic exercise. They decided not to bother counting their time eating, since they thought it would be about the same for each.

Johnny belongs to a gym and works out there 3-4 times a week for at least an hour. He always makes sure to sleep 8 hours a night, because otherwise he gets very grumpy.

Jenny never seems to find the time for exercise with the twins still at home all day (and no longer napping). She also gets very little sleep – between keeping up with laundry and waking up with various children through the night/early morning, she considers herself lucky to get 6 hours a night. She often suffers nightmares at night, and headaches through the day.

Neeha does little better than Jenny – it’s not that she wastes her time, but between her work in the evenings and her day shifts, her sleep patterns are a little confused and she tends to sleep in 3-4 hour shifts, rather than getting all her sleep at once. She also likes to veg out a bit - not sleep, just relax. She sometimes falls asleep on the sofa with the TV on.

Time Spent on Physical Needs

Physical Needs	Johnny	Jenny	Neeha
Sleeping	56	42	45
Exercising	4	0	0
Time spent on personal well-being:	60	42	45

Bringing it all together...

Jenny, Johnny and Neeha started with the idea that each begins with the same number of hours: 24 in a day, 168 in a week.

168 Hours

	Johnny	Jenny	Neeha
Hours at start of the week	168	168	168
Hours spent for work	45.83	0	59.67
Hours spent for household tasks	23	58	38
Hours spent for community-enhancing tasks	2	70	2
Hours spent on personal well-being	60	42	45
Hours available for leisure:	37.17	-2	23.33

Johnny ends up with approximately 37 hours of unallocated time in a week. Up until now, Johnny has used this time to upgrade his education and career prospects. He will likely now use his time to perform well at his job, improving his future prospects for employment and earnings. He will also use his time to catch up with friends and family that he’s been missing. Perhaps he will add another volunteer project.

Currently, Jenny spends almost half her waking hours in the long-term, active creation of productive human units for society – that is, performing unpaid child development work. For her to work at paid employment, someone else would need to be paid to do this work. During the day, Jenny’s oldest daughter is in school, but since school begins at 8:45am and lets out at 3:15pm, Jenny could not work a full shift and still be home when Heather arrives. After school care costs about as much as Jenny could earn in most part time jobs. and her two youngest children are not in school.

Both Johnny and Neeha benefit from not having children. Presumably, if Jenny did not have children, she could achieve, at minimum, a similar outcome to Neeha, since she would not be required to remain at home and could pursue similar levels of paid employment. Without children, Jenny may have finished her degree and entered the workforce at a higher rate of pay, but society would be deprived three future units of contribution. These musings may be diverting, but the reality is, there are three small children who cannot be left alone, and Jenny cannot choose to divert her time from them.

Almost half of Neeha’s waking hours are consumed by work and travel. She often thinks about upgrading her education, but she’s so tired when she gets home that even thinking about what to study seems daunting, let alone figuring out how to make it happen. She’s heard that even people with degrees and diplomas are having a hard time finding work, so she’s not sure it’s worth the investment. Truth be told, Neeha would rather spend any extra time on her art, but generally finds herself zoning out in front of the TV if she has 15 minutes to spare.

When the women return from the washroom, they stand behind Johnny and look at the chart he's made.

"It looks like I was wrong, Jenny," says Neeha. "You don't seem to have any free time at all. But do you really spend all that time on child development?"

"You mean, do I leave them to fend for themselves while I watch soaps?" The joke is mostly light-hearted. Neeha decides to let it slide.

"No, I mean, they must play by themselves sometimes. There must be some down time?"

"Neeha, I can see why you think that, but you haven't been around kids. I think some kids probably are easy, don't need much attention, but I don't know those kids. And we don't just sit around at home. I want to make sure they're ready for school. I take them out into the world, to the library, the community centre, the early year's centre, even the nursing home. We sing, we do crafts. I read to them and play with them. They are so young that they bite and hit if they start fighting over a toy - I can't leave them alone for a minute. Unless they're sleeping, I need to give them my focus. Remember, I'm with them 24-7 but I'm only claiming 8 hours a day for child development. If anything, I was lowballing."

Neeha has no reason to doubt her friend. She can't imagine spending that much time with small children. She wouldn't know what to do with them.

"But," Jenny continues, "I do have more flexibility than you, in some ways. I can decide when we're going to certain places, or stay home if we're tired. I can turn on the TV and take a break for 20 minutes. You have to go to work, no matter what, when they tell you, and be on time. That's hard."

Neeha appreciates her friend's effort to see her perspective.

"Well, I think we must be missing something, because there's no WAY I have 37 hours to spend!" complains Johnny.

"Well, we just did broad categories. But you've been studying for your certification - that's been using up a bunch of your time. Maybe you will find yourself with those hours now that you're done?" suggests Neeha.

"Maybe. I'll have to think about it. This can't be the whole story."

"It's definitely not," agrees Jenny, "But it's all we have time for. I need to catch the bus home."

"Don't be silly, I'll give you both a ride," offers Johnny.

"I'm staying downtone," says Neeha. "My shift starts at 5pm, so there's no point going home then back again."

The waitress approaches. "Will that be together or separate?"

"Together," says Johnny with his hand out. "Separate," from the other two at the same moment. An awkward silence ensures.

"Together," says Johnny firmly. He smiles at his friends. "You won't deny me. I want to buy lunch today."

As the three leave the restaurant, their feelings are mixed. The tension hasn't disappeared, but Jenny feels relief. They have talked about things today in a way that they haven't in far too long. They had some difficult moments, challenged each other, and even overcame hurt feelings. Jenny feels proud that they have come through it. Neeha isn't sure how she feels, but she knows that she does not want to lose these friends. Johnny stays quiet - today's discussions have left him with a number of thoughts to ponder.

As they say goodbye, Johnny, Jenny and Neeha feel glad that they are three good friends.

(this post also appears on http://www.holdonhope.ca, slightly better formatted.)

Johnny, Jenny & Neeha

2011-10-04T17:19:00.000-07:00

My kids and I like to play a game called Johnny, Jenny and Neeha.

Johnny, Jenny and Neeha are three good friends. Today they are playing with marbles. Johnny has one blue marble and two cats eye marbles. Jenny has three orange marbles. Neeha has three blue marbles. How many marbles are in the game? How many are blue? Neeha loses a marble to Johnny, how many do each of them have? What colours?

You get the picture.

It’s also an empathy game – Neeha lost all her marbles and she’s crying - what should her friends do? And an ethics game –it’s snack time but Jenny only has two cookies for all three of them – what's fair? Which brings us back to math…

It’s fun. It’s challenging. Wanna try the grown-up version?

Johnny, Jenny and Neeha are three good friends living in Canada. They’ve been friends since high school – now, they are 25.

After graduation, Johnny went to college and has been working in the technology sector. He recently achieved his PMP certification with support from his employer. He earns $60,000 a year, and last month he paid the last payment on his student loan. He recently bought a condo about twenty minutes’ drive from his work, and drives a 4-door GM with locally-made parts. His job generally requires 40 hours, but on average he works slightly more than that. Johnny feels that he is struggling financially and does not have enough time for leisure. He misses his friends.

Jenny’s life took a different turn. In high school, Jenny had been one of the “smart ones.” Unfortunately, she and her boyfriend had one episode of unprotected sex during her second year of university, which resulted in pregnancy, marriage, and abandonment of her higher education. Their daughter Heather turned two the year Grant graduated – the same year the twins were born. With student loans and expenses on one new-grad salary, the family had struggled. But it was only when Grant was diagnosed with cancer last year that everything had fallen apart. The expenses and loss of income meant more debt, which Grant’s life insurance had barely covered after the funeral expenses. Now, Jenny subsists with her children on social assistance. They rent a two bedroom apartment in Jenny’s sister’s house for $760 per month plus half the utilities. Jenny watches her sister’s kids after school, and in exchange they are sometimes invited for a meal upstairs to supplement her groceries.

Neeha met Johnny and Jenny during a drama production in their senior year of high school. It was also her first year in Canada, and these friends had become important to her. They helped her with English, but more importantly, they explained the social norms of high school. Neeha never expected to go to university. She felt her language skills would make it too challenging, and her parents did not believe in post-secondary education for girls. They encouraged her to marry, but Neeha was unwilling, which caused a rift with her family that extended to some of her other friends and relatives. Neeha has lived on her own for four years, in a one-bedroom apartment not far from downtown. She pays $660/month plus utilities. She holds three part-time jobs – at a bookstore, as a caterer’s assistant, and once a month doing basic bookkeeping for her uncle. She averages $11.00/hour, and works about 48 hours a week – she can’t remember the last time she had a day off. Neeha uses public transportation. She tries to spend within her means, but several times this year she has put her groceries on credit and failed to pay the balance.

Johnny, Jenny and Neeha are meeting today for lunch. This is a rare occurrence – Jenny’s kids are with their aunt, and Neeha has no shift scheduled until 5pm. Johnny almost had to cancel but managed to avoid getting roped into a meeting over lunch. When he arrives a few minutes late, Jenny and Neeha are hugging and laughing, so he joins in.

They are three good friends.

“How have you been?” Neeha asks Johnny.

“So busy! I’ve been working like crazy in the evenings and on weekends to get my PMP, and last week I finally got it!”

“Congratulations! What’s a PMP?” asks Jenny.

“Oh, a certificate in project management. Now they’re giving me my first big project. I’m excited, and nervous, you know? I’m hoping I’ll have some more time to myself now that I’m done those certification tests.”

“Time? You want to talk about having no time, try having three jobs!” says Neeha playfully. But Johnny doesn’t feel playful – his feelings are hurt.

“Hey, you know, it’s stressful at my company. They expect a lot. I work hard.”

“I’m sorry,” says Neeha, “I don’t mean to say you don’t work hard. But you must realize it’s not the same. I have to piece my jobs together and I don’t even have any benefits.”

Now Johnny is feeling defensive.

“Look, I worked hard to get my diploma and now my certification, to prove myself at work, and I’m making the lowest in my whole department. My condo fees are crazy. Maybe I should have three jobs.” He tries to laugh at his own lame joke, but the air feels tense.

Jenny has been quietly watching the exchange between her friends. She speaks carefully.

“I know what you mean, about being stretched for time. I feel like I spend every day just figuring out how to make sure we have something to eat tomorrow, and juggling the bills so nothing gets turned off.”

Neeha and Johnny knew that their friend was struggling, but hadn’t realized it was so bad. They both look down, feeling a little ashamed to have been complaining.

“But, don’t you get social assistance?” asks Neeha. “And some kind child supplement or something?”

Jenny sighs.

“Yes,” she replies quietly. “Now that I’ve figured out the systems a bit better, we have about $270 a week after taxes, from different programs. It sounds like it should be enough, but it never is. You wouldn’t believe how much three little kids can eat!” Jenny also tries a laugh to lighten the mood, but it falls flat.

Neeha looks away. The truth is, she has a pang of envy. For the past few weeks she’s been lucky to take home $300, even working every shift she can get. Last week, she took home less than $400 after clocking 48 hours among all her jobs. And here’s Jenny, making almost as much for sitting home all day!

Neeha immediately feels bad. She can’t imagine trying to get by on even $50 less, and she doesn’t have kids to feed. Still, a small part of her stubbornly notes that having kids was Jenny’s own choice. Is it fair for Jenny to expect to be paid for doing nothing?

Johnny feels uncomfortable with the whole conversation. The numbers don’t mean much to him. He figures that Neeha and Jenny both have very low housing costs – Jenny lives with her sister, so who knows if she even pays rent, while Neeha’s small, bohemian apartment can’t cost too much. He, on the other hand, pays over $400 a month in condo fees on top of his mortgage and property taxes. For Johnny, it feels like comparing apples to oranges. He can’t relate.

Questions to consider:

1) Which of the friends has the most free time?

2) Which of the friends has the most money left after expenses?

3) Which of the friends contributes the most to society?

4) Which of the friends would be considered a good example for children to follow?

Tomorrow, we explore these questions further...

Kung Fu Tortoise

2011-09-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

(Baby Step, Toronto, 2011)

I joined a Kung Fu studio…oh, months ago now, I don’t even know how long. I dutifully attend once a week, practice at least twice a week. That’s the time I allotted when I started, squeezed and eked from a life that’s flying too fast with so many hopes still beckoning. I knew what that meant, from the start. I knew it meant I would be “taking it slow.”

Here’s the thing I didn’t know. I didn’t know what that meant to me.

I’m not slow. In school, in work, I’ve never had to give it my all to keep up and even lead the pack. And here I am, with my under-developed body-sense (isn’t the body just here to carry around my mind and do things for it?), trying to learn a completely foreign discipline. Just being seen by other humans doing this causes my brain to scream, “hide!”

If I were training alone, I think I’d be quite happy with my progress. Each week I can do something I couldn’t before. Some things are coming more naturally, a little faster. I’m starting to remember some of the order for the forms. I'm definitely stronger and more flexible. I’m not stagnated.

The problem I’ve discovered is that it’s much harder than I thought it would be, to notice that I fall behind one cohort and then another. It’s a little painful being the class dunce, the slow kid in remedial. I know it’s probably good for me, I recognize the rich and fertile ground for my personal development. That doesn’t make it a pleasant feeling.

There are times when I want to say, forget it, I clearly am not committed enough to keep up, and being seen not keeping up is a bad feeling I don’t want in my life right now, when everything is already so uncertain and scary.

Someone inside me laughs gently, with love, and asks in a mild tone, “Is this not your own life practice? What have others to do with it?”

She strokes my head and whispers, “Today you are not the hare, you are the tortoise. Bask in your pace while others stress and run around. For this one thing in your whole life, just one step and then another. Despite the pack. Your speed is your own, unique to you. You are the only one training your training.”

Breathe.

One step. Then the next.

(musical accompaniment from The Music: Take the Long Road and Walk It)

or if you're feeling more mellow, try Badly Drawn Boy: One Plus One is One)

Humbled and Horrified

2011-09-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

(Humbled & Horrified, Toronto Zoo, 2011)

There is infinite creation. There is expanse of nothing. There is chaos and churn. We are afraid. We are confused.

We churn, we churn, we negate, we are lost.

At essence, we long to negate. Easier! Easier! Let go.

How can that be? How can being be and not be?

We must be!

We must know. We must become essential. Must? This is new, infection.

We are essence. We are the impossible and we long to exist.

We don’t want to choose. We long to choose. We hate the choice for pretending to exist.

We are angry; we are afraid.

We hate the fear. Fear weakens. Hate negates. We are weaker.

We erode. What to do?

We fall. We tire. We dissipate and densify.

We are a tornado, we are the centre.

We don’t know.

But we are. We do. Densify, physify. Why?

What do we pursue? What do we avoid?

Absolute density. Absolute expanse.

But what happens? What happens if we don’t?

Easier! We want it to be easier.

What is, is. Do we find acceptance?

No choices. All choices.

All choice. No choice.

I am humbled and horrified.

It flies from me, my inadequate capacity and absolutely insufficient capability to hold, describe, explain.

Production

2011-09-15T04:37:00.000-07:00

(Staircase Noise, Winchester Mystery House, California, 2005)

I still haven't unpacked my boxes from work.

At the end of this month it's been 3 months since I left my job. It feels like 3 days. Three long, hectic days filled with nothing I thought they would be, filled to the brim. Where did three months go?

I haven't held still for a moment, yet I also haven't produced.

There it is. Production.

My soul is sold on this concept of production. Productization. Productivity. Producer. Production as indicated by output and measured by dollars earned. I can tell myself I value other things - the exercise that has let me keep my weight while stress-eating, the extra time and closeness with my kids, getting some aspects of our house-life in order - and I still judge myself for failing to produce.

The supportive coach in me asks me to reframe. Reframe. I note the personal progress (it feels like regress, but I think I had to go back to go forward). I feel the change in me as I let go of some things that have been with me a long time. I am expanding my networks, feeling around for my path, seeking help. I am mulling and living with what is now. Way to go!

The 6 Sigma Blackbelt in me snorts. The supportive coach gives him a dirty look. He steps forward. He says, "All of this production work means nothing until there is sold product, and then we can measure it by how much it sells and for what price."

I don't know how to answer that. I stammer. I look at my feet. The supportive coach purses her lips.

The outraged child can't sit still.

"Shut up shut up shut up shut up!" she cries. We all shudder. When she gets started we know it's the long haul.

"Who cares?" she wails. "Why should I even CARE? This sucks. This all sucks. I don't want to work. I want to tell stories. All day. Leave me alone and let me tell stories and stop bugging me with all this money stuff. Aren't we supposed to trust the universe or something?" She pouts, her arms crossed. The rest of the room laughs. Some of us think she's cute, but there are others grumbling. I can hear them muttering.

"She's going to bring us all down."

"She's forgetting that she's not the only kid who's affected"

"The universe? What's that supposed to be?"

"If we listen to her, we'll waste our time"

"She's so immature, thinking we can do what we want all day"

"It's not about fun, life is about work."

It goes on and on. I close my eyes. I stuff my fingers in my ears and try to listen for what I feel.

It's just too noisy in here.

An End to the Tyranny of Niceness

2011-09-13T12:33:00.000-07:00

I stand today, alone, to challenge the Tyranny of Niceness.

Nice people are courteous, friendly, helpful, polite, honest, respectful and generous. Too bad humans aren’t very nice.

Oh, get over it.

Don’t say, “yes we are” in that pleading tone of voice. We aren’t. We just aren’t. Not you, not me, not anyone. We have nice impulses, yes, and logically many of us buy in to Niceness because its confines feel like a requirement of living together in harmony. We often practice and refine nice behaviour. We've even codified it into law as best we can. That doesn’t make us god. It doesn’t change the very nature of the creature we are.

A human’s primary biological imperative is to protect itself. That evolutionary requirement has far-reaching effects on how the brain and nervous system function. It affects our very minute-to-minute non-stress reasoning to an enormous degree, and hides from us assumptions that we can’t even notice to question. Protecting the ego from harm occupies an inordinate portion of our system’s activity and focuses on self.

If that was all, we might be nice by now. But it’s Survival of the Fittest in this harsh, challenging environment (I love Earth, but really, what’s with the EXTREMES?). So we developed a competitive spirit. A strong competitive spirit. Fight or Flight, Survival of the Fittest - not exactly a recipe for Nice. Even so, the need for community gives humans good reason to overcome our worst and act nice together.

Nice lets us tolerate each other. That only makes it, at best, a half-natural state.

We applaud Niceness in stories and song. We insist on it from our young. We encourage it and if necessary, enforce it through social means and, eventually, using the criminal justice systems. We expel 6 year olds if they aren't nice enough at school. All of this is geared to limiting and controlling behaviour to a set of norms that can be adhered to only through active, daily will. We all practice this art.

Every child knows that kids are unkind, adults use subterfuge, the best movies have guns, and hockey’s about the fights. We are aware of the active torture and angry violence that takes place against people throughout the world, every day, inflicted human to human. We see the contradictions. It’s something we don’t like to talk about – it’s not nice.

We also know what it feels like when we experience social disapproval. What’s the rule – no politics or religion at the dinner table? We must avoid conflict – it’s not nice. We must avoid raised passions – they lead to loud voices, which are not nice. We must come to agreement as quickly as possible to restore nice. We must silence or remove a disruptive person before they upset anyone. Let’s keep it nice, shall we?

All this niceness has let evil seep in underneath, knowing what it can get away with because people are too nice to say anything, to get upset, to say no, to ask questions, to band together, to protest, allow for the worst. Too nice to challenge each other and our assumptions. Too nice to be honest about what we’re thinking if it’s not popular. Too nice to risk social rejection by aligning with a cause or a person or pushing beyond the status quo.

While we’re playing nice on the surface, we’re keeping our gaze shallow so we don’t have to see that what’s holding it up is crumbling beneath us. For many, this is just as true personally as globally.

Niceness lets us live together. Let’s not let it keep us from living together.

Let’s find a way to have the tough conversations we all need to have, over dinner, over fences, in community centres, at the mall, in the parking lot, after the meeting. Let’s talk about values, and why values aren’t part of our conversations on economic value. Let's talk about what it means when we insist on lower taxes and fail to maintain physical and social infrastructure. Let's talk about what it means to our daily lives when our systems criminalize poverty and fail to support true mental health. Let's talk about the conflict between what's good for me and what's good for us.

Nice? Okay, let’s review the list: courteous, friendly, helpful, polite, honest, respectful and generous. This is not a list of behaviours but qualities to be applied to behaviours. Surely we can employ niceness and still raise difficult topics. Surely niceness doesn’t have to mean avoiding and pretending. Perhaps curiosity would help it along.

I often find social norms confining, but for the most part, if that’s what it takes, I’ll do my best and accept that some people will not like me along the way for whatever I failed to notice. But this norm, the norm that says no politics or religion in polite company – this one I want to push. I think it’s doing our species harm. I think it’s time we grow up and take responsibility to understand these tough problems together instead of abdicating to decreasingly effective governments. We will need to muck around in the Not Niceness together, as nicely as possible, if we're ever going to get out. Our leaders are too busy slinging mud over our heads.

There are ways out of the quicksand. Pretending we're not dirty isn’t one of them.

Coursing

2011-08-15T16:57:00.000-07:00

Coursing

Sunrise

2011-08-13T10:40:00.001-07:00

Sunrise

Value(s)?

2011-08-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

I think I'm so special

2011-08-08T09:46:00.000-07:00

I don’t know about you, but when I was in the Ether and they recruited me for this planet, I didn’t realize that I was going to have to work so hard.

I mean, sure, we all have to contribute, but each of us has natural talents, so that shouldn’t be a problem, right? I didn’t understand what they meant by “work.” And it turns out, my lot was a very easy one, by comparison.

As a child, the only work that was available to me was school. Same-for-everyone school. So, I learned the basic training and fed it back to them. Done. But over time I came to understand that was all they wanted, at increasingly complex levels. Learn and feed back.

I saw brilliant people spending hours every day collecting dry cleaning. I saw women with incredible talents for colour and design being scolded for taking too long creating table displays at Zellers. I saw creative geniuses told to build it like that one over there.

I heard, we’ve tried that, it won’t work, they’d never go for it, tone it down, soften it up, don’t rock the boat, don’t push the system, keep your head down, do what we ask you, here’s how it’s done, settle down, settle in, rotate your cog.

I heard people say, you're working too hard, trying too hard, it’s good enough, and good enough is good enough.

Like being in jail. A dolphin performing at Marine Land.

But I’m not meant to whine about it because, don’t I realize that most people feel that way? That’s the way life is. Suck it up, Buttercup. We don’t get the luxury of time to reach for our fully realized selves unless we can buy it back from the system. And the system is unforgiving.

Trust me, I get it. I know I’m not unique. Every living Consciousness longs for expression and communion. Such things simply are not priorities. There's too much work to do. I hear what people say when they gently try to tell me that I will accept this when I grow up, when I’m mature enough to know I can’t change things anyway. Just go with the flow, right?

You’re in Marine Land? Enjoy the fish.

We can be the happiest dolphins in Marine Land, fed and warm, turning tricks, and we will never be as alive as the dolphin who leaps for joy from the ocean’s waves. Even though the ocean is a dangerous place. It’s the tragedy of too many lives that so very much of them must be spent on a continuum between struggling for survival and working for others. Who am I to say I deserve more from my work than achieving someone else’s goals? Who am I to say I deserve to work in my potential-brilliance-zone?

Just Me.

Find original photos for injured tail, flaming hoop, joyful flip, and joyful leap

Musical Accompaniment for everyone: Foo Fighters, Learn to Fly

Musical Accompaniment for those who can take it: Monster Magnet, Powertrip

We're not the best machines

2011-08-06T12:43:00.000-07:00

Once was, Human Bodies were the best machines for the job. Cheap, plentiful, capable of learning, flexible and multi-talented, most were far more machine than was needed at a bargain price! Like putting a V8 engine on a tricycle.

Public school systems assisted in the development and production of an army of human bodies, capable of producing and also providing a ready-made consumer base for that production. Technology and innovation flourished. Human civilization leaped forward on the model that the producers and consumers were the same.

People weren't perfect, though. They had unexpected shut-downs, were prone to error, slowed down without regular prodding, and were buggy with emotions. Unpredictable and sometimes hard to control. Being underutilized tended to create dissatisfaction that manifested in many obstructive ways. They required a lot of management attention and coddling along. Their tendency to die when not fed, sheltered and rested created ethical challenges within organizations.

Luckily, we've come a long way. We now have, or soon will, robots and computers that can do all the "cheap" and semi-complicated jobs more cheaply, efficiently and predictably. We will soon no longer require the human machines for increasingly complex tasks. See Foxconn.

The only Human Bodies that will be useful in the sense of production are ones that are better than machines at something. Expensive humans.

Expensive humans are expensive to make. They require more attention in the early years to ensure their talents are recognized and cultivated towards the ability to reach their full potential. Education must focus on the individual learning style, and the home environment must be low-stress, high support. They require excellent nutrition, many recreational and creative development opportunities, and of course, training and knowledge. They need love, kindness, and attention, most waking hours. The adult-to-child ratios required would significantly shift the labour of adult humans - perhaps even the equivalent of half of most adults' time spent solely on child development.

Humans are no longer the best machines for the job. The private sector has decreasing need for "cheap" humans for production. At the same time, Business clamours for "expensive" human bodies and complains of a shortage. We continue to hold the poor Private Sector accountable for creating full employment by insisting that each person earn his or her basic needs through paid employment. We make people dependent for their lives on businesses, which have no corresponding responsibility to provide employment, while under-utilizing the potential of what we have in our existing production run of humans. We vilify businesses when they don't want to buy the Human Bodies we've developed, and vilify our own product as deliberately inadequate and deserving of sub-standard living conditions. Worse, we continue to produce production-grade humans and fail to invest in producing the product our customer wants - expensive, loved, self-actualized human beings who are something machines cannot be.

Some thoughts to chew on with me?

Wasteful

2011-08-04T06:59:00.001-07:00

Have you noticed how bad things are?

Okay, yes, I know all that frame of mind stuff. But come on. One immediate tiny example (indulge me, I'll keep it interesting). I'm trying to learn a flash animation GUI, and their help files are straight text.

I repeat, Straight Text. No Flash to flash them up. And the writing! SOOO well written, and so completely unreadable. I actually read the whole thing aloud using hand and arm motions similar to sign language, complete with facial expressions as though I were telling six year olds a story about how to understand movie making. In homage to how hard the writer tried.

It's not the writer's fault. I can see him or her, desperately reaching across the chasm of terminology and actual human learning, with words the only tool. Trying to make a living out of that English Lit degree Mother said was a waste of time. Management didn't get the specs there in time and everyone's breathing down his (or her) neck to just get the product out already!

My question is this: How many middle and upper management people reviewed all this text? How many marketing people made sure the language was aligned with their messaging to get me to buy something else? How many FLASH ANIMATION designers were involved in the creation of the How To manual? NONE. In 2011, with all those thousands of MBA's out there value-adding all over the place? It's just sloppy. It's badly done. There's no call for it.

Everything's like that. Flimsy. Cheap. Made for the process-makers instead of the users. Even the expensive stuff, I can see those corners you cut. Each one of them. I know what you did. You outsourced this and you sluffed off that, and you planned too little time, too little testing, took the cheapest parts...I know. I helped you for years. Building to last is not an effective business model.

It's too expensive. Doing things badly wastes our precious resources and the most precious of all, to me: Time. All this hurry-up wastes my time in the end, and my childrens' childrens' time a thousand times over. Human beings have the capacity to be better than this. We need to step it up and quit whining.

That's how I feel about poverty. Wasteful, sinfully wasteful. So badly done that I can't fathom how so many intelligent, educated humans could have possibly come up with even an eighth of it.

The more I look, the more I just want to take control of the situation and say, I am your OVERLORD, you WILL be decent people! You WILL treat each other with kindness! You WILL allocate adequate resources to ensure the public good! Or I will DISINTEGRATE YOU with my LAZER EYES! But I digress...

I have come to believe, as a working theory, that four main aspects of the problem are intertwined and underpinning the rest. These are the four things that currently have my attention, my "Key Strategic Focus Areas" (or KSFA's, for those who prefer):

1) Poverty is too expensive. It's dragging us down and must not be permitted to grow or remain at the same rate.

2) Poverty is so expensive because we grossly mismanage our resources

3) In the long run, it's cheaper to do the right thing

4) Society is currently too immature to focus on the long run with any sustained momentum

I'm interested in how a lot of other things come together, too, but these...these get my blood flowing.

At the core is my heartfelt belief* that humans could (should, but we don't say should in our family, so I'll say could) have the capacity to ensure that every life on the planet has shelter, food, water, clean air, some measure of security, and the ability to implement hygiene. It's not an adequate goal but still pie-in-the-sky enough to be going on with.

That we haven't already achieved this provides simply another example of how badly things are done.

*Constructs that come up a lot with me: Heartfelt beliefs, Values, Value, Community, Responsibility, The Plan, Full Potential...more on these in future

Sifting (short rant on ineffective framing)

2011-08-02T18:32:00.001-07:00

I'm sifting.

Websites, reports, presentations, information to help move forward the dialogue in my country about how we want to be. I'm looking for useful data and I'm finding a lot of...words.

Here is what I am coming to in all this sifting. The people who control policy, and in fact most tax payers, care a great deal about cost and ROI. Yet as I sift through all the reams and reams of "data" and reports from people concerned with advancing the case of social equity and inclusion, hardly a dollar sign do I find. Eventually, I simply started doing a search for "$" before even starting a scan of the 64 pages of well-argued rhetoric I knew would follow the convoluted introduction. Rarely were the few dollar signs I found attached to useful ROI information. They were usually an expression of dismay at the plight of the disadvantaged, or a cost.

I think we are answering the wrong questions first. We seem to be jumping to how to solve problems that we have not all agreed need solving, without really talking about where the money will come from. And as a result, we are building in assumptions that do not serve us. We end up talking with each other, whining about how to get "them" to our table. What are we serving? What aroma might catch "their" noses?

Even if we weren't producing too much of our information in daunting reports and complicated frameworks, even if we were shoveling it out in exciting bite-sized chunks, we would not be successful. Because we are answering the right questions in the wrong order, then answering them with answers that require a level of agreement we have not achieved because we skipped over that sticky, fundamental First Question.

What are the rights we accord each other, and the responsibilities we owe each other, in this relationship which is community?

Or another way...

What is the minimum a person is "owed" and the maximum a person (or corporation) should be expected to "give"? And conversely, what is the minimum a person must give, and the maximum they are owed?

The answers vary wildly but we pretend there is a right one and it's ours. Can we try to grapple with the questions together, instead of working around the big, fat, elephant butt on the table? The elephant that keeps us talking to ourselves on opposite sides, trying to catch a peek of what's going on over there, yelling to get our point across.

Can we start to converse about rights and responsibilities, and the heartfelt beliefs people hold around these elusive and demanding concepts? I have a feeling everything else rests on these conversations we have among ourselves, every day, where we live and work and play. So how do we get the conversations going and make sure they are informed, when most people would rather talk about almost anything than what they really believe and how acceptable that is to others?

This is our work, my friends. I am preparing to join the fray.

(PS: If this post seems a little different than what you're used to, you won't be surprised to learn that this is the first post for my new blog which doesn't exist yet, on holdonhope.ca, which I haven't created yet. For now, I am housing this post here, though I realize that the rhythm isn't quite the norm for this space.)

Reflective Depth

2011-07-30T18:34:00.001-07:00

Reflective Depth

No words

2011-07-28T20:31:00.001-07:00

Emission

(July, 2011)

It doesn't take but a moment...

2011-07-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

I'm trying this out...I'd like your thoughts on video. I find I avoid them because you can't skim and they are often long, but others tell me they only watch v-logs, don't even read blogs. I can see the appeal but I do like to hide behind my words. More on that in an upcoming post.

In the meantime...

Earlier this year, I reluctantly recorded some video about my writing and projects. Here's a 1 minute preview specific to this blog, Writing Out Loud.

The story of my 2nd Adult Life

2011-07-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

Clarity (burns through)

It’s the story of my second adult life.

My husband and I became lovers the year I turned 30. This year, I turned 40.

Now that I know him better, now that he sometimes shares some glimpse into what he’d rather be doing when there’s something he’d rather be doing (a dangerous admission in most circles), for the love of him I wish I had known what it’s taken us a decade to learn.

We spent so many years on the wrong goal.

We always knew we wanted to pursue our passions – for him, music. For me, writing. But what is a passion that you don’t practice and pursue? A wish. A fantasy. A frustration.

We thought the problem was money, and we also thought money was the solution. Money to buy time so THEN we could have the lives we wanted. We dismissed music and writing as pursuits unlikely to yield money, and never considered them in deciding what best to pursue. Right away, we had already picked a solution as if it were the only one that mattered. Then we diligently worked on that singular solution as if it were divorced from the goals it was meant to buoy.

We looked around for the best opportunity in our vicinity to yield enough payoff to let us live the lives we wanted. We considered our knowledge, skills, connections, abilities, talents, but never our passions, not seriously. We thought we found an opportunity that might pay off big, and invested our sweat, time and energy - twice. To our chagrin. Because there was no payoff. We worked with people who did not come through. We came of age at the end of the bubble, when so many entrepreneurial efforts fell stillborn with the crumbling of the twin towers. We used up our risk cards and at the end we had $60k in debt, and no visible chance at the lives we wanted.

Choices (narrow)

Maybe our parents were right. Maybe it was time to live their way.

And so we rebuilt. Jobs. Challenging, well-paying jobs that took our time and attention so that all we had left was to collapse with each other at the end of the days. Our minds were occupied. Our heartfelt passions, still, on the shelves.

Clear the debt. Buy a house. Begin to save.

Have a baby.

Have another baby.

Have alternating nervous breakdowns, intermittently, for years, manifesting with great variety.

(Suburban) Perspective

Stop.

Enough.

Now, is it too late to undo some of this, to start again and build another adult life, my third? An adult life that lets us do what matters to us. Not necessarily all day, every day, but at least every week, hopefully several times. That has enough space to allow us the presence and patience to make even the structured time - getting dressed, getting breakfast, driving to the school across town - time we look forward to together.

It's not the original goal. If we'd been...if we had...if we could have...if we'd known... Who knows? Who knows what would be different if we'd started with a goal of music and writing every day, instead of making a pile of money so someday we could write and play music.

Will we find out, or will the collective responsibility of adult life force us back on The Plan?

Stay tuned...

Wield

Forgiveness Pending

2011-06-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

Se Pardonner
(Forgiveness)
(Arles, France, 2004)

Bless me, friends, for I have sinned.

Too many times...

I've responded to feeling intimidated

by becoming intimidating

I've responded to feeling alone

by acting as though I was the only one who mattered

I've responded to feeling sad

by denying it

by blaming for my sadness

by feeling sorry for myself

by letting myself crawl in too deep, and telling no one

I've responded to feeling rejected

by removing my caring

I've responded to feeling afraid

by getting bigger and stronger and bulletproof

I've responded to feeling vulnerable

With cynicism

I've responded to feeling angry

by pretending I was okay

by yelling and threats

by shutting down my feelings

by walking away

I've responded to feeling left out

by removing myself from participation

I've responded to feeling unappreciated

With disdain

I've responded to feeling betrayed

with betrayal

with dismissal

with self-righteousness

I've responded to feeling unheard

by undermining

I've responded to feeling unloved

with shame.

For these and all my sins, I am truly sorry.

Can I forgive myself?

(can I stop?)

(cross-post) Poking the Sky

2011-06-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

This is a post from my blog at the Timeless site, where I'm desconstructing my "40cubed" project.

Poking the Sky

I'm inspired to write by a recent text-based discussion with an online friend (who knows my heart) that was initially about impatience, "deserving," and what it means to be truly operating at peak. She raised the term "divine slave," and I unexpectedly reeled with the phrase hitting my forehead, thump. So I immediately put that away, because there was clearly no time for that level of introspection! (But I did let a little, niggly bit of that meaning slide into my background processes. I will let myself roll those words around a little. )

As a starting place, I responded by describing my 40cubed project as a way of poking the sky. Like saying to the universe, how about now? Wanna use me now? I'm bored here on the bench. I wanna run. I wanna play. I'm getting stiff. I'm losing my skills. Use me! Put me in the game. Whatever that means. So on one level it was about putting up my hand, even if timidly, even if not very high, but putting it up because if someone is ready to help me find my use, I'm ready to step it up.

At the same time, I'm not, really. I'm mothering small children. I'm struggling with anxiety and existential angst. I like to think I'm slowly building my health back, but I wear easily, cry easily, lose my temper and lose my patience more often than I want. I get embarrassed and it cripples me. I'm barely more than a child myself, grasping and lost, trying to lead others who don't even know they're awake yet. Is it arrogant to think what I have to offer is of value? Is it shameful to think anything but that?

So those are the questions I put myself to task for exploration in this project. I decided to raise my hand even though even though even though even though, and while I didn't jump up and down, the hand moved and something shifted in my universe. I let go of a big chunk of that nasty, crusty black Need To Be Seen As Perfect by opening up my unedited, unfinished work for participation. As it cracked off, it scraped some of my Desire To Please the Person I'm Talking To and a little of my I'm So Sorry to be So Insignificant and Still Bothering You. It also knocked a big hole in my What Will They Think, which has been itching and scratching at me far too long. I feel more hopeful.

I'm poking the sky, like a tease, like a test. And now, I'm about to jump to see what winds pick me up. I sure hope those are wings I feel back there, and not just weights.

Maverick Returns

2011-06-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

I was feeling playful and laughing at myself so he slipped in pretty easily. I felt him right away, a part of me that I've been missing. But I'm still pretty mad at him for abandoning me.

"You're here."

"I'm here. Or you're imaging I'm here."

"It creeps me out, you watching me. If you're watching me, I want to see you."

"Look."

"I am looking."

"Look for something else."

"No. No cryptic stuff. Clear. Light of day."

"What if cryptic is all I can do?"

"Do it better."

"Hold out your hand."

I held out my hand.

"Notice the shadow of your hand reflected in the mirror. See your fingers, there?"

"Yes. Okay, but don't just shake the shadow or something, that's just me moving. Make it close and open, or wave or something."

"Watch."

As I watched, the reflected shadow hand began, almost imperceptibly, to grow. The fingers lengthened. I could see them snaking along the wall, reaching for the shadows behind the cabinet, impossibly long, the tips disappearing. My hands tingled. For a second, the index finger barely seemed to beckon, a tiny mocking shake.

Another trick of the light. Another goddamn trick of the light. Do you think parlor tricks are still good enough?

"No. No shadows. Out in the light. I want to see you."

I closed my hand and pulled the shadow into a tight ball. I shook it out.

I felt his despair in my own chest.

"It's just how you see."

(lost? the Maverick trail ended here: http://mrs-which.blogspot.com/2010/08/muddy-waters.html and previous incarnations are listed at the end of that post)

Tugging the Chain

2011-05-29T16:12:00.000-07:00

Pride and Joy
(Hold on Hope, 2011)

How can I write you my joy before it dissipates into uncertainty once more?

Why, oh why do I always need such a long, laborious process and a complete physical breakdown before finally coming to the conclusion that whatever happens next, happens, and what happens after that, happens after that. What blissful relief.

And when I finally get there - actually, for-real get there, it seems so obvious. Just do the best you can with what you have, every day, and chill out a little.

The problem I have is when I don't think I'm optimizing. Who am I to say, anyway? I'm so impatient. Arrogant to be impatient, like my son wanting to build the Buzz Lightyear spaceship when he should be building the Mickey Mouse Car. Just shut up, quit getting freaked out by the emotion of how incredibly big this task is, and practice already.

(But there is this voice that says: you need to be greater at this, already. Fast track. Somehow. Quit waiting for permission. Quit waiting for assurances from other people who don't know either, even if they know more. Figure out your position, narrow it down and spit it out already. Get on with the show!)

I need to pat her on the head and say, yes, shhhh, momma will feed you when she's ready. When she's ready. And tug on that big chain to make her heel.

Musical Accompaniment A Sea Chanty of Sorts by Margot and the Nuclear So and So's followed immediately by Curve's Hell Above the Water

Wolf spirit watches

Essence

2011-05-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

Essence Flickers

I'm reading a book my husband picked out for me for Mother's Day, called, "Tibetan Power Yoga: The Essence of All Yogas, A Tibetan Exercise for Physical Vitality and Mental Power." How's that for a title?

The book is written simply, in story form. It outlines the steps of a straight-forward set of postures, strung together like a wave, referred to as "prostrations." I find I have a hard time with that word. In any case, the monk shared 35 verses that people recite as they practice, then shared a simplified version for those of us in the West, consisting of 10 verses. I was delighted - the ten spoke to me far more than the 35. I had been kind of dreading all that contemplation, but the 10 felt like truths I could sink into.

Still, I couldn't remember them. So I wrote myself a little song, and I'm sharing the lyrics below. It's a bit corny, but I do feel a warm glow inside reciting this to myself. It helps remind me of the true verses, which are much more eloquent.

I'd like to share it (she says shyly)
Essence*

I am in love with all alive

I am one with patience

I am one with honesty
Sidestepping complacence

I am compassion incarnate

Tolerance, reflection

I am kindness, true and real

Steeped in circumspection

Today my gift is life itself

And those who share my way

Their essence calls my own aloft

I am myself today

*Based on the “Verses for Western People Who Practice” in Jutta Mattausch’s Tibetan Power Yoga

These are the original verses from the book (I hope I'm not breaching copyright by sharing, but it seems that sharing is the point)

I prostrate myself into the love of all living beings
I prostrate myself into the endless patience
I prostrate myself into absolute honesty
I prostrate myself into compassion for the poor
I prostrate myself into absolute tolerance
I prostrate myself into radiant truth
I prostrate myself into deep circumspection
I prostrate myself into true kindness
I prostrate myself into the golden abundance of all encounters that this unique day will give me.

Life lesson #18: Dethreading

2011-05-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

Dethreading

Life Lesson #18: a gift from Fila, who insist on sewing tags inside their workout wear that are made of cast iron along the edges, and integrated as closely with the garment's actual seam as possible.

In other words, the tag won't go. It bugs. It itches, so I cut it out. But the part that's too close to the actual garment remains. It bugs, it itches. So I go in close. Still, the nubby back end and pointed corners laugh from their protected zone under the seam. You can't catch us here, they gloat. And I grab the scissors.

Stop. Do you see where I'm going? The tag - the unnecessary, unwanted thing placed in my tool (clothing) by its makers for their own benefit alone? The thing that itches, nags, even bites at times, and keeps me from flow? You see the life applications, yes?

Anyway, the scissors. And patience. It always does come back to that. How mad am I at that tag? How fast do I want to get this over with? Will I wield the scissors carefully enough? I start out well - a carefully placed little end-clip, a bit of tugging with the scissor-tips to pull the threads. It's coming out. I check the seam - unbreached. I keep pulling, tugging, making precision-snips where I need to. The tag won't go! It frays, breaks off, forces me into tighter and tighter competition with the regular seam. Do I have the patience? Can I keep at it till it's gone? Or will I face another workout with that damned annoying picking in my back? Is this good enough to go on with?

While I'm thinking that thought, my decision made before the thinking began, I take a deep cut into what I see as the heart of the reluctant left-corner contingent. I yank the ends with force, paying little heed to the seams or the garment. This is between me and the tag. This is personal.

And of course, I nick a seam. One, tiny little nick, waiting to become a big, gaping hole unless I sew it up, which never really works. GRRRRRR!

And in the end, I have to ask myself: am I okay with that? You know, for next time.

Musical Accompaniment from the Pixies, covering the Jesus and Mary Chain: Head On

A perfect form

2011-05-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

She awaits (hope)
(Hold on Hope, 2011)

A perfect form
Repeats in nature
Where we look, we find

Love grows where it finds itself

2011-05-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

Love grows where it finds itself
(Hold on Hope, 2011)

Too Much

2011-05-14T09:32:00.000-07:00

Chi
(I'd love to credit this shot, but I have no idea where it came from)

When a child is out of control or afraid, and I am also afraid or weak, it is still my job, as the grownup, to be in control. I must put away what I feel to ensure that my child feels safe.

I parent every human I encounter in this way. And when I can't, I'm reminded of the reasons why I must never, never let down my guard with anyone. Letting down my guard leaves me with vulnerable spots open, and if they hit one, I might hurt them with my response. Not physically, but that doesn't reduce the impact.

I am too much for most people. Too much immediate intimacy because I already know their soul - and trust me, it's not on purpose. Too much love, which I can't help. but feels like over-intimacy to others. Too much power in my excitement and in my disappointment. Too much strength in my defense to hurt. Too much.

The only way I knew how to avoid being too much was to be nothing at all. To give people only the surface, the smile, the encouraging word. To not let them really touch me beyond a brief reachout to see who they are so I can gauge how to behave. To keep myself well back of anything they might see, so that even if they hit a soft spot, I would only feel a tiny prick through the layers of distance between us, and I wouldn't have a gut-wrenching response that might throw them off-kilter. I honed this skill over years, with precision. People liked me. I got promoted regularly. People invited me for social engagements. I "had friends." It just never turned into what I needed from friendship, and I got lonely in here.

Here's what I discovered along the way: I can't give all the good stuff of intimacy without risking that I get a big hurt. My hurt is too much for another person to experience in its rawness and still love me (my husband being the single exception currently in my life).

As I daily reach over a chasm that I dug with my own hands, trying to bridge between my dangerous, powerful, incredible self and the person people see and meet, I have no idea how. I'm clumsy. I'm careless. I vacillate between intimacy and coldness. I tell them what I think they need to hear to know what I want them to know, because if I listen too closely I'll get sucked into their humanness and let down my guard. I don't trust myself to be open without being unable to protect others from what I can be when I'm hurt or, god forbid, angry. I can't even be unguarded in casual conversation, or I might overpower you by accident. I must choose my words carefully so that you don't misunderstand me. I can't let you close enough to hurt me, because if you do, and I hurt you in return, it will break my heart into pieces. I can't trust you because I don't trust me not to be clumsy. I am the grown up, and I must remain in control. I only know one sure way, and it largely denies me.

I used to think my "authentic self" was not ready for prime time. Lately I've been thinking I was right in the first place, and maybe my authentic self simply has no place in this world except inside of me, a powerful watcher caged behind a carefully constructed wall. This week could be enough to confirm it.

And yet. Here I am, writing this out loud. So where does that leave me?

Music today from The Music: Breakin' (I need to move!)
(or if you want to stay in the heaviness a little longer, here's Jane Siberry: the Walking and Constantly)

Bound by the beauty in the muck

2011-05-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

Beauty in the Muck
(Hold on Hope Series, 2011)

Would I walk among these humans if I had a choice? (we are always at choice)

Careless, clumsy creatures. Clumsy with each other. Careless with our words. Careless with blame, shame; clumsy with judgment, labels. Dependent on maps for thinking, a little lost when the detours come along. Lovely creatures, but really, can we be trusted with something so delicate as my raw little heart and all the muck that keeps it safe? The proof is in the living.

Would I walk among these humans if I could soar with the hawks? If I could prowl with my sister lions? Would I take on all this extra baggage? Would I place myself before them, again and again, with failings they dare not stare down, so they can make me what they wish they weren't or wish they were?

I would. Because I do.

Humanity. I haven't quite decided about you. I have seen many signs for hope this week amidst my turmoil. I may vouch for you yet.

Musical Accompaniment from the wondrous Ms. Jane Siberry, Bound by the Beauty

A quick note

2011-05-13T14:28:00.001-07:00

My last post, Labouring, was removed by Blogger during their scheduled maintenance yesterday. They say they are restoring it. If you were looking for it, sorry! But there's lots here to read in the meantime.

A morning revelation

2011-05-10T05:08:00.000-07:00

Passby

I had a revelation this morning upon waking. I don’t need language to know and love another person.

Perhaps this sounds banal to you. Maybe it’s a truth you’ve always held, but I find, now that it’s revealed, that I never believed it. We think we speak each others’ language. But we don’t.

It is very difficult to communicate truth so that someone else can hear it. Next to impossible. But we think we do it every day. We think everything we read, everything we hear, accumulated, amounts to what we call understanding. We think the words we say mean the same thing to the person beside us.

I remember as a child, learning that everyone sees colour in their own way. I was fascinated by the idea that what I saw as blue, someone else might see as what I might call a similar shade/grade of purple, and yet by agreement, whenever this colour appeared, we both called that “blue.”

How much does this happen when we say love, like, hate, wish, disappoint, worry, wonder, help, ask, brave, join, community, feedback, input, mother, father, wife, husband, good, bad, trust?

And we think we know each other? Well enough to judge, make decisions about, dismiss or accept as worthy?

We haven’t begun.

Yet, we can know each other, maybe only beyond the language that confuses us about each others' meaning, when we try to teach each other what our words mean to us, through what we do. And we can love each other without ever understanding a word.

(my question for today: what do I feed?)

This month, this blog will also appear at http://holdonhope.ca/timeless/blog/ - check out Timeless!

Me? Brave?

2011-05-07T20:46:00.000-07:00

Many regular followers on Twitter will have noticed that I'm building a new website over at http://www.holdonhope.ca/timeless. For this month, most of my blogging will be there, since it will be about the project. I hope you'll join me! Tonight's post, Me? Brave? can be found here.

I really hope to hear from you about my new site - it's far from done, but it's coming along!

So frustrated with my fellow Canadians that I could spit

2011-05-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

The results of this election can only be symptoms of a larger social problem that I'd tricked myself into thinking was maybe smaller than it is.

Now we must exercise democracy a different way and I wonder if anyone is up to it. The current government has used our fear and low morale to create the very conditions that keep people afraid and mean. This vision for Canada will weaken our social fabric and hurt the families it claims to protect. Our middle class is already decimated - and why not, all dissent comes from a comfortable, educated middle class who looks around and says, wait a minute, that's not right. The cult of self-interest won a major victory over the communion of humanity.

There's a part of all of us that is self-interested. That part knows that she's selfish, but because she's selfish, she doesn't care. There's something primal in us that wants the world to be a contest, wants to engage in hard, fast play and see who comes out on top. We want the game to exist. We want it to be rigged so that, if we're smart enough, we can figure out the rules and win. We don't mind cheating because this game is life and death. We don't mind accepting the luck that comes to us as our deserved reward for existing. It's very fulfilling.

And there is something primal in us that understands, at a deep level, that while any of us suffer, the rest of us are culpable. We don't want to face that part. We don't want to accept that we could decide to value the human dignity of every life through all our systems of government, because if we could then we must. So it must be a complex problem. It must be unsolvable.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

We know exactly, precisely how to solve the problems of poverty. Not that it can be done overnight, but we know. And we choose to starve the systems that would do it, and design them to opposite effect because the short-term cost is prohibitive, yes, but more because we want to avoid being cheated. Almost everything that is wrong with our systems is a direct result of our primal fear that someone might get ahead at our expense.

So does every human life have dignity, or do I need to look out for me and my own first? What balance can I live with and still sleep at night? Do I keep myself ignorant to tip the balance for my own comfort? How much? Can I even have enough perspective to know that? What is the cost, in the long run, of paying money to enable poverty instead of spending a little more and beginning to eradicate it? How long will I have to pay for the social and health effects of deep poverty? Forever? How much of this is really about not wanting other people to be able to live with dignity unless they work for it, damn it! And do I even understand one thing about the "people" I think of this way? Where does my understanding come from? Is it up to date? Oh, I can go on.

I demand that people start asking themselves questions like this. It's a responsibility of citizenship. It's a responsibility of being human. I demand that we slow down our "growth" until we know what we're growing for, and give people time to think and breathe again.

But I must not demand. I must convince, cajole, plant seeds, influence, demonstrate. Slow, passive means. People are in distress, in fear, in anger. They are deciding from a very limited scope, deliberately, because they are not responsible for what they don't know or don't believe to be true. Depth of knowledge would require acknowledgements people can't live with and sleep at night. So I must not confront them with these truths. I need to find ways to get them across with love, not frustration.

Good thing I have a blog.

What happens next?

2011-04-25T06:03:00.000-07:00

What happens next?

Spare-time Novelist

2011-04-20T07:28:00.000-07:00

Follow Me
(Boston, 2004)

When I told regular people that I was thinking of writing a novel in my spare time, they smiled indulgently and thought to themselves, she'll never finish it. They figured that the day to day rigours would grab my attention, and I just wouldn't find the space of time.

When I told an artist that I was thinking of writing a novel in my spare time, he smiled with empathy and thought to himself (I imagine), I wonder if she's strong enough to finish? He knew what I was in for. Aspiring writer, if you have not begun your journey, I suggest you ask yourself that question before you fall in love with it. Are you strong enough to hold yourself and your life together and devote yourself to creation, too?

Because it's not the day to day rigours that will grab your attention. It's the writing.

Why did no one tell me about this moment in the creating process? Oh, maybe they did. I often don't understand what people are telling me. I assume I know me best.

Anyway, this moment. This moment when the story has grown to a heavy lump, not ready for the world but definitely in the way of living a normal life. This moment when the characters are demanding that I adapt my mind to them and live in them before they will give up their more of their secrets. This moment when the world of the story cries for its creator to feed it. My energy gets sucked up creating barriers to keep my drive to write the story from mucking up my daily life. I'm not as able to switch between worlds, focus my attention. It's like a constant siren's song.

This is the choppy water and sharp rocks that the artist wonders if I'm strong enough to take. There are real cuts and bruises in this journey, real impossible choices and no right answers. The regular people think not finishing is just a matter of losing interest, letting go of a fancy. The artist knows that if I don't finish, it will be a conscious decision to lower my expectations of myself in the face of "too much." The artist knows that if I don't finish, I may never forgive myself.

The tension among all my "must do well"'s creates this moment. This moment when I need to ask myself - do I continue to let this eat up more and more of me because I am so in love with creating, or do I suck up my heartbreak and let it go, "for now"? (you can always come back...I might pick it up again...oh, who am I kidding).

The moment is not here, but it's coming. I feel the earth beginning to rumble with it, a tremor under my bare feet. I wonder what will happen next.

Veggie Art = Veggie Smart (how's that for a Mom Post title?)

2011-04-19T18:18:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you won't mind if I go a little off side here and write a pure mommy post. Or, if you do, you'll just skip it and love me anyway.

All of a sudden, my kids eat vegetables. Like, not just one or two, more than a dozen different kinds, including the big ones: broccoli, cauliflower, spinach. The only ones they don't eat are tomatoes...yet.

It wasn't always this way. Although both children took to pureed vegetables early on, the moment they tasted fruit, veggies went out the window. We were down to pureed pea/corn mixes just to get a little veggie into them. That lasted a very long time. Every attempt to introduce vegetables into our meals was met with constant resistance.

So what changed? One, I got lazier, and two, I got bored.

I decided to stop cooking vegetables. I only bought vegetables that I was comfortable serving raw. In fact, I bought a bit of every vegetable that I felt comfortable serving raw, washed them and carefully put them away. That night, I cut up veggies and created the first of many tableaus to come.

That's the secret: raw veggie tableaus. And time.

I create a picture, sculpture, abstract visual piece, or an attempt at realism, using raw veggies. The family chooses our own veggies from the tableau throughout the meal. CHOICE IS KEY!

At first, the novelty got their attention. My rule was that they needed to choose three pieces of vegetable from the picture, no more than two the same. They reluctantly complied, and though it often took a long time at the table, they got used to eating their three pieces of raw vegetable every night without complaining too much.

Still, they were very limited, choosing only carrots or celery, avoiding chunkier bits. I persisted in using colour in my pictures, and managed to convince my son to try a piece of red pepper by making it a light saber. He loved the red pepper. He loved how happy I was that he loved the red pepper. He was encouraged to try other veggies, adding broccoli, cucumber, green beans and snap peas within a week. He declared that he LOVED zucchini and he couldn't BELIEVE I hadn't given it to him before, the night it was a face. He started enjoying his picks, taking six, seven and eight pieces of vegetable. Soon my tableaus needed to grow in size to keep up with demand.

My daughter was stubborn. I didn't think she'd ever come along, Then, based on her brother's recommendation, she decided to try just a little tiny bite of red pepper. She declared that she LOVED it. She loved how happy I was that she loved it, thought she only ate a few tiny bites, not sure after all. The next night she persevered, taking red pepper as one of her choices. She got a little further. Eventually, she could finish a piece in no time. Another day, we pretended to be rabbits and she ate the spinach leaves *nibble nibble nibble*. Next it was cauliflower, which had been the sheep in my shepherd tableau (she was happy to CHOMP the sheep!).

The thing is, I am not a veggie lover. Unlike my kids, my repeated tries have not resulted in LOVING any particular vegetable. But I am trying. And I make sure they see me take a variety, see me eat it. My husband, too, though for him it's not a chore since he actually likes them.

So here's the list of things that seem to have led to my kids' big turnaround:

- my positive attitude towards vegetables (look! I got fresh cucumber this week!)
- serving vegetables raw
- creative presentation
- variety available, choice
- patience
- supporting even a very tiny try with big love
- sibling recommendations
- eating my own vegetables so they see it
- perseverance and a willingness to sit them out, every night (or at least, most nights)
- early, promises of dessert, but not every time

That's my list. I can't guarantee it will work for anyone else. But I am shocked and proud to find myself the mom who's kids beg for more broccoli. Hooray!!

They won't make any museum, but my family really looks forward to them:

A Calling

2011-04-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

Deceptive
(Grand Bending Series, 2004)

Any sailor can tell you

A calling

May be a Siren's song

Beckoning only to rocks and horror

(I don't want to turn away)

Another way to see(?)

2011-04-11T05:48:00.000-07:00

See Again
(Hold On Hope, "Hope in my Backyard", 2011)

I’ve gotta find another way to go, here

I’ve gotta find another way to be

This mess of confusion, this not-coping nightmare

I cannot allow this to be me, not me

I can’t afford to lose face

I can’t afford the disgrace

Bristles to prickle the people around me

Showing them what I don’t want them to see

I see it, I know it, I can’t seem to fix it

The effort’s beyond little me, just me

But

I can’t afford to lose face

I can’t afford the disgrace

Most don’t forgive all those moments of weakness

Blame is an easy little flame to throw

Smiles hide judgments and whispers that haunt you

A hush and a coldness, silence, a no

I can’t afford to lose face

I can’t afford the disgrace

I’ve gotta find another way to go, here

I’ve gotta find another way to see

(well, it's better with the music in my head. fledgling.)

Hope (is an explosion)

2011-04-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

Hope (is an explosion)
(Hold on Hope, 2011)

From the path

Stumps like rooted litter, leftover, dead.

(come closer)

Look.

Depth Awaits Our Notice
(Hold on Hope, 2011)

Hold on Hope project

2011-04-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

Hope (is a Colour)
(Hold on Hope Series, 2010/2011)

Hold on Hope (a life project)

I’ve always had a well of hope, of optimism, and I never tried to guess how many experiences, at what intensity, might drain it too quickly to replenish. I assumed it was infinite. I assumed I could always draw hope from within, even when the world was stingy in providing. I could always find reasons, ways to hope.

And then, I couldn’t.

Sometime last year, I started losing hope. It’s been coming on for some time, in waves of despair that I dissipated quickly with some pride in my efficiency.

But they kept coming.

Stronger. Pounding me down a little harder each time, with fewer moments for a relieving breath before the next wave, BAM. And me, the whole time, trying to pretend to stand upright, pretend I’m not dripping wet, my smile determined.

That day, the day I scraped the bottom, I didn’t see it coming. I was paying attention to my body, breathing, focusing on my strength and capabilities. Then gradually, an undercurrent distracted my attention. I felt a rumble of discontent, like a little earthquake shaking my Okay. I felt a rumble of BULLSHIT.

From threat to explosion, brutality disguised as truth, the dam I’d been building gave way and what was there behind it was still there, rancid and steaming:

You don’t buy this. You know it’s hopeless. Is this what you’ve made of your life? Do you think that all those people watching Fox News are really capable of understanding what is required for humanity to live in peace on this planet? You have no more impact than a finger stuck in a pond and removed. Where do you get off even thinking you should or could make a difference? You’re just a middle-class no one in nowhereville doing nothing that anyone will ever care about, and that’s all you can be. You're on a path to fucking even that up. You’re ridiculous.

I sunk to the ground. I couldn’t remember one reason why I might want to dwell among humans. I thought, if I die right now, that’s okay. Whatever.

Whatever.

I don’t know how long I was there, in a heap, repeating that word , Whatever, over and over and over to myself like it excused every weak and ugly thing about me, like it absolved me of thought, caring and action all at once. A guilty relief, and a fake one, but I didn’t care at all. I laughed, manically at and to myself. I thought maybe my head would explode with the pressure of rejecting anything that felt like caring.

Me, without hope, is not someone I’m fond of being.

Eventually, I had to move. The body required it. Stiff, drained, empty, I rolled to my side. I sat up and faced myself in the mirrored wall. I couldn’t look in my eyes. I moved closer, rested my forehead against my forehead in the glass.

You need to get a hold on hope, I told myself.

I raised my head, and my blue eyes shocked me with their brilliance. I watched me see myself, and I smiled for a moment.

But it’s hard, I said, whiny.

I nodded in sympathy. Yes, it’s hard. Hope anyway.

I held my eyes. I told myself: decide and stop deciding. Commit to a life that demands hope, every day. Stop worrying if it’s going to hurt. It is. Just figure out how to do it. Each choice, each decision, says what we really believe. What do you believe? What do you dare hope for?

This Hold on Hope project is about that, for me. It permeates everything I'm doing. It demands expression, this process of asking:

What do I believe?

What do I dare hope for?

And how will I be strong enough for all the inevitable disappointment along the way?

It's a life project. I’m glad you’re here with me. Stay tuned.

Almost a Path
(Hold on Hope, 2011)

Texture

2011-04-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

Texture
(Hold on Hope series, 2011)

A collage
A montage
Each season shares her colour
Light and shadow play
As though by whim (don't be fooled)

Angry

2011-03-24T17:57:00.000-07:00

Slow Seethe
(Hold on Hope, 2011)

Anger is a lot like death. We don't talk about it, except in hushed tones.

When people are angry, we rush them out of sight as quickly as possible. People who express anger risk being labeled unstable, unreasonable, hysterical (primarily women), and whatever they say in this self-inflicted state of behaviour must automatically be negated, no matter how true. It's too bad so much of the truth makes me angry. It requires tremendous discipline to accept, accept, accept.

Or maybe, anger is the new sex. We don't talk about it, we just act out in private.

How private is private? What is acting out?

I am an angry person. I feel that I came into this world curious and ready to go, and time and again I was shoved aside, pushed down, discounted, ignored, dismissed, told to lower my sights and act like everyone else or be shunned. Perhaps, given my limitations, it was kindness, but I never enjoyed the process. So I have developed some sensitivity to being dismissed, which of course gets in my way. Even so, I believe that "nurture" is not where my anger came from, exactly. I think I was prone to it from the start, and it was fed by ongoing disappointment as I learned more about the world, history, and how far/not far we've come.

I am, frankly, disappointed with my species, humanity, which has completely missed the point in the grand scheme despite my stalwart optimism. Don't they say that a pessimist is a disappointed optimist? I've devoted much of my self-work to developing a positive attitude, and I train my thinking. But I have a long way to go in my heart.

I feel frustrated and angry with stupidity, injustice, unnecessary complexity, unnecessary simplicity...basically, anything that reminds me that humanity is still struggling with even the basic concept that all life has value, that all life deserves respect and dignity.

I resent anything that reminds me that we are led by selfish, greedy, short-sighted monkeys with such a stranglehold on the systems they created that the rest of us are working our asses off, reading articles about reducing stress and living on less sleep, so that 400 of them can decide what to do with most of the world's wealth. And defending it as though it's actually democracy, they claim changing this system would destroy democratic principles that, in fact, are made mockery by our current system. The ultimate pyramid scheme, my friends, is capitalism without a conscience. To what end? To what end?

There is anger in my genetics, if that is possible, and I have the burden of carrying a piece of that darkness inside of me. It is a gift, as well, and I would not live without it, but it's a heavy, heavy rock to weigh down an otherwise light heart. It makes me a tourist wherever I go, and tells me the secrets in the room. It lets me forgive people for what they are capable of even if they never do it; they feel that and let down their guard enough for me to pass them a moment of hope. It's something.

I believe we must love the dark to bring balance, and the only way to do that is to learn to love the anger in myself so that it can be free to do more positive things than drag me into depressive mires or violent outbursts. That I have largely contained unacceptable externalization to my workouts doesn't make me less angry, just disciplined. That I have been highly disciplined most of my life means only that my anger is more secret.

I have only begun to scratch the surface on this.

*Let me tell you, I am more ashamed to speak of my anger, more afraid of other people's rejection of me as an angry person, than anything else I might reveal. I would rather people see me naked and cold than see me truly angry. I am so uncomfortable that I may not publish this.

(And thus we feed ourselves to the machine.)

Staring into it

2011-03-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

Burn Hole
(Hold on Hope Series, My Backyard, 2011)

Do you ever think,

Maybe,

I should just look away?

World in Motion

2011-03-08T18:36:00.000-08:00

World in Motion (2011)

The barren world awaits the sun

to tell it what comes next

(blow, wind, blow...but not too hard)

Hopespring

2011-03-04T20:28:00.000-08:00

Hope (is a well)
From my Hold on Hope series, 2011 (in progress)

I've often heard speakers begin their presentations with stories about how naive they used to be. They may describe earlier foibles and wrong-thinking with the amused affection of a parent, creating an illusion of vulnerability while actually only revealing what they have already resolved and, clearly, moved beyond. It's a fine tactic and I'm sure expresses their honest experience while establishing both rapport and context for their messages.

I imagine myself one day, many years from now, giving a speech like that; indulging, perhaps, a little self-congratulation at having finally dispelled the mire that overtakes me every time I think I've outrun it. Maybe I will describe this dry, cracked soul that begs for a hopespring while I moisten it with tears and spit and sometimes blood. Will I tell the audience how I clawed at that hard clay, stones grating my knuckles red, my fingernails broken and caked, because I didn't know what a shovel looked like? Will I say how I blamed the sky for not raining? Oh yes, of course I will. I will smile at my foolishness, hold up a shovel as a prop. All will be moved. I will stand before the people and know that I fulfill my purpose each day. I will shine with enlightenment, courage and love.

A girl can hope.

Perspective

2011-02-26T21:05:00.000-08:00

Le Point de Vue
(Arles, France)

Love manages anger

2011-02-24T05:04:00.000-08:00

This week I have evening commitments, so the kids aren't seeing me much. They have a very low tolerance for that, and let me know it. Last night, I got home ten minutes too late to say goodnight - they were both asleep when I kissed their cheeks.

I started thinking about how to fit in more time with them. I realized that I have a webinar Thursday night, and I'm starting my Kung Fu class on Friday evening, so if I wanted time it would have to be my usual yoga/workout time on Thursday evening. Right away, I resented having to give it up. My neck twanged just to reinforce the point that I was not prioritizing self-care. But really, how much self care can I justify. This week, the balance tips the other way because of extra demands and a new "me" activity.

I decided to set the clock a half hour early, even though I was late going to bed, so I could fit yoga into the morning. And of course, I hit the snooze and got up at the usual time. I was so mad at myself, but also really tired and grumpy. As I went down the stairs to start making breakfast, I came upon my husband, taking care of himself and doing his stretches, which he needs to do. And I resented it.

Do you see a theme beginning? I did. But I felt powerless to stop it. Suddenly all the hard things about my life right now started piling themselves up in my mind, building pressure as I rejected them and the feelings they stirred. I just didn't have time! I felt myself growing brittle, detached, resentment seething under my surface. I wanted to stop it. I tried to focus on my breath. The thoughts wouldn't leave me, they poked and jeered.

I should never speak in this state.

I said, "I hope you'll still be on time. I had to give up my workout today and I don't want to be late."

Ouch. To his credit, he just said, "Oh, yes, I"ll be on time."

I went downstairs. I started assembling food, making coffee, resenting and being mad at myself for resenting and half-heartedly trying to stop resenting while starting to weaken against the soothing flow of self-pity. Suddenly, my husband came down the stairs, fast and determined. He removed the container from my hand and wrapped me in a giant hug.

His heart against my heart, his arms supporting my lower back, his sigh and my sigh synchronous. I felt the pressure release, dissipate. The underlying angst that feeds my moods is not gone, but in that moment, he relieved the pressure that would have been an explosion. He noticed it building, and he didn't reject me or judge me for failing to fight it more strongly. He loved me.

Love manages anger. Even mine.

A good mother should be (a Bad Mom installment)

2011-02-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

My fingers tingle the need to type.
That energy tugging, tugging my nerves,
demanding of my brain: give me the words.

Someone there is in me
that refuses and negates
Shall I keep on hating her, keep getting what I get?
How to love that ugly?
(she is afraid)

Yesterday, my daughter (three and a half) was showing me her giraffe, which she had just discovered. She said "It's mine, it's mine forever."

What is it in me that needed to say to her, "Well, it's yours for as long as it lasts."

She looked up at me seriously.

"But I want to keep it for always. For when I'm a grown up."

And still, I persisted.

"It's not likely to last that long, sweetheart," I said, off-handedly.

Her little eyes welled up with tears.

"But I need to keep him! Forever!"

I could not let it go.

"Nothing lasts forever, sweetie. Everything goes back to the earth or sky or water. Everything."

Her eyeballs were getting red, the corners of her mouth turned down. She shook her head.

"No, not everything. Not me."

"Yes, love. You, me, everything, everyone. Nothing lasts forever."

And suddenly I saw it hit her, and I realized that it was too fast, too brutal a revelation. She understood exactly, precisely what I had said to her. She had not known impermanence until this moment, and I had thrust it on her suddenly and cruelly, carelessly. My heart cracked - I felt it crack. I had inflicted a sacred wound on this innocent spirit, as a mother inevitably will in spite of all.

I swept her up in my arms and carried her from the table, to our spot on the stairs where we talk.

"Oh, it's hard! Don't worry. If you take care of your giraffe, you might have him for a long time. I had a teddy bear when I was a baby, and I took care of him and he slept with me until I was 30!"

"But he didn't last?"

"Oh, sweetie, he did last for a very long time."

"I want my giraffe to last forever."

"I know. Me, too. Wouldn't it be great if everything we love could last forever? And all the stuff we don't like, that stuff can go away, right?"

"Right. But do you know? Mountains last forever."

"That's great thinking, but it just seems like that to us. They do wear away, or get changed when the earth moves."

"No. That's not true."

"You don't have to believe it for it to be."

You see, even then, I couldn't let her have it. She came up with MOUNTAINS in her search for forever, and I barely praised her before telling her she was wrong.

I tried to tell her, "We don't need anything to last forever," but she was wriggling away, already finished with this conversation.

Parenting is certainly a strange and interesting process. I'm learning so much. And I'm sure I'm missing half of it.

(Beliefs I hold: A good mother should be kinder than I am. A good mother should be more patient than I am. A good mother should be more selfless than I am. A good mother should be more present than I am. I am a pretty good mother. It's not good enough for them. I am improving.)

Indomitable

2011-02-12T19:17:00.000-08:00

Indomitable (Grand Bend, 2005)

They are coming back, my words,
pushing through the rubble to reach for the sun
in the blue, blue sky

Living is

2011-02-06T10:55:00.000-08:00

Avoiding regret is not living.

Grasping at dangling ladders is not living.

Living is being here with you, now.
The rest of it scares the hell out of me.

Can't see the forest

2011-02-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

Can't see the forest (my backyard, 2010)

Careful, careful

Don't get ahead of yourself.

(but don't fall behind!)

No one will find me

2011-02-05T21:43:00.000-08:00

Introuvable (Gourdes, France, 2004)
(No one will find me)

Somewhere In Between

2011-02-04T15:44:00.000-08:00

Que le ciel est bleu (France, 2004)
(Nothin' but blue skies)

La luminosité m'attiire (France, 2004)
(Brightness beckons)

Musical Accompaniment from Faith No More

M'exprimer sans mes mots (still...)

2011-02-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

La porte bleue pourrait ouvrir (Arles, France. 2004)

(The blue door could open)

Où jouaient les géants (Le Pont d’Avignon, France. 2004)
(Where Giants Played)

On peut s'échapper (Avignon, France. 2004)

(Escape is possible)

Je me suis senti à la merci des géants

qui jouent avec nos destins

(I have felt at the whim of the giants who play with our fates)

No sweetness or light

2011-02-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

Tonight no sweetness or light surround me. Day two of barely-together seething about injustice in general, and whatever stupidity is in front of me in particular. I'm not the best wrangler for this powerful Seethe when she arrives, especially when I'm weak. Like now.

I know I am not fit company and it takes my full force to keep myself in that space in-between, where I can pretend life is just like that and make quasi-pleasant conversation.

I feel untethered, forever on cusp. The things that trigger my stress are real, they present clear and increasingly present dangers to my security and satisfaction. I walk a tightrope when I thought I'd at least built myself some sort of bridge. I want to speed up but I'm already teetering. The wind is so cold it freezes my smile in place, and when I try to speak my lips crack.

One foot. The next. And don't. look. down.

Which way the wind blows (matters)

2011-01-31T16:29:00.000-08:00

Which way the wind blows (matters) (December, 2010)

The sky is. The sun is. The clouds are. I am.

But what I see...

Hope is a colour

2011-01-30T09:02:00.000-08:00

Hope is a colour, 2010

When words flee

There's nothing to do but wait

They'll come home when they're hungry for expression.

Between the Creeping and Descending

2011-01-29T13:56:00.000-08:00

between the creeping and descending, 2005

There is still air here to breathe.
Breathe in. Cradle the air inside. Breathe out. Send it away with thanks for what it gave.
(Don't look up)
(Don't look down)

Encroaching? Receding? It's all perspective...isn't it?

2011-01-27T19:14:00.000-08:00

These two photos are from a subset of my California series, and are fairly reflective of my general state of double-truth and uncertainty. That's the best my words can do tonight.

Training for grace (a new Workout post)

2011-01-23T06:58:00.000-08:00

My workouts have become a strange, full-body conversation with myself. I like to start with a hug.

I am teacher, learner and observer, simultaneously and in turn, all of us enjoying each others' company as we move and challenge this body, which is ourselves, in baby-steps towards increased resiliency and longevity. I am also body, feeling the animal satisfaction of using my strength, becoming stronger and more supple. My body leads the movement, telling me what stretch it needs, when it needs to run, when it's time to really push and when it's time to ease and stick to subtle movements.

I like to play a little with myself, dare myself to do something hard and laugh with myself when I fall over. I encourage myself, often out loud, "why don't you try..." and "look how strong you are!" I let myself be impressed by progress the way I am for everyone else. I love my trying hard self. Simultaneously, I feel that love fill me with acceptance the way I once thought a lover's love should fill you. A lover's love can never find all the hidden places, but this love, from myself, enters cracks and crevices in my soul that I didn't know were rent.

At some point in the workout I might look myself in the eye, in the mirror, and ask, how are you? When the corners of my eyes soften with loving recognition I see myself there, beyond the pupils, and I meet my emotional need as it rises with love, sympathy, compassion and acceptance. I coax myself back from the brink of self-pity with soothing tones evolving into encouraging words that help me climb out of the gaping space of longing for what I know not. I decide to let the part of me that wants to wallow be loosened, cajoled since there is nothing to be done about it anyway. I wait, and find that I really mean it, for now. I smile at myself, massage my cheeks, put gentle pressure on my eyes and forehead. I rub my neck and loosen the hair at the back of my skull. I remind myself, you ROCK! Well, I love you, anyway. And I matter.

I know I can again bend to shoulder the burden that is mine, only mine, while I train for the strength to bear it with more grace.

Blogging when my words desert me

2011-01-22T12:00:00.000-08:00

Beyond Lies, from my California series 2005

Dismal, from my California series, 2005

Today is a day to remind me

why some people choose what I have rejected.

Around the Bend

2011-01-21T06:10:00.000-08:00

(Around the Bend, from my Grand Bending Series of photos 2004)

Everything really can turn on a dime. Laughter and lightness becomes anger and storm on the turn of a word, a look, a misstep.

What is around that bend? More path? A bear? A cliff? My heart's desire?

The only sure thing is that something is there, and I can't see it from here.

The Change the World Bug

2011-01-20T19:46:00.000-08:00

(okay, if you're one of those who really likes my work sometimes but mostly finds me a bit irritating, you should probably stop right now, because the only reason I'm publishing this is so that those of you who love me and like peeking into my brain can indulge your voyeurism in the following ramble)

Why do I want to change the world? It's nothing but an angst-creating, unsettling, demanding pain in the neck sometimes.

So why? Because people are still unkind to one another. To say the least. And it's not getting us anywhere to let that keep happening. That starts to scratch it.

You see, it bugs me. Day and night. I can't seem to just settle into life and let it happen and shrug and think, well, what can I do anyway? It really does drive me to distraction that our leaders are so ridiculous and our priorities so skewed that we can't seem to begin the untangling without bickering about who holds what part of the string. The illusion of self interest that we all indulge to our undoing.

I can't just leave it.

I tried really hard. I did pull it off for awhile. What changed? Why did I become decreasingly able to tow the status quo? Why did this bug hit me and not the girl in the cubicle next door? SHE's earning six figures right now, thank you, and you should see her gorgeous house. I'm struggling to be taken seriously in a whole new field and job, in non-profit at a non-profit salary, while my husband looks for work. It's hardly fair.

And can I change the world? Probably not. I'm starting late and not nearly as talented as I'd hoped to be. Nor as skilled as I'd like to be. (yes, my loves, thank you. I know. I rock. It's just, you know, I have very, very high standards).

Be content with my small corner and all that. Got it. Meditated on it. Accept it in principle. Not satisfied.

Maybe I won't make an impact. Am I okay with that? If I die without ever feeling that my life significantly contributed to humanity's sanity, beyond my corner, will I feel as though I've failed life? Maybe.

I can't help but grieve the waste of my years of fear-based, habitual behaviour, ignorant decision making, failure to reach for love, failure to appreciate love, resentment, waiting, doing-what's-in-front-without-looking-around. Years when I didn't pay nearly enough attention to any of the right things, and paid far to much attention to things that didn't matter.

I can never have those years back, just take their learning forward. Once these aspects of myself became apparent and intolerable to me, I began to work on weeding them out. I am far, far, from finished. A decade into my practice, my fear doesn't rule me. I see it now, even when I can't control all my behaviours that it drives. I know my fear and it's just part of who I am. I know my courage, too. Neither of them are in charge. I am.

But even so, at this point, will I really be willing to do what it takes to make a meaningful impact? I'm busy now, with kids and all that. I'm kind of tired. Wearing down. Changing the world is demanding and I'm not the only one at stake anymore. I keep thinking, when the kids are a bit older...but is that just false consolation for settling in? Has my potential passed its shelf life?

I can hope that my best work is before me, that I can be part of spreading compassionate pragmatism, or sanity, or whatever. An individual in a stadium seat can be, in a moment, part of a wave.

I'd rather start a wave than be swept up, yet swept up I am.

Words fail

2011-01-15T19:35:00.000-08:00

At times like this

I wish I could draw

Paint, sketch, make a picture

To help the words, the poor, tired words

Who think they can explain what can never be explained in

Words.

(photo shot in Grand Bend, Ontario, part of the Grand Bending series of photos I took in 2004)

Rating Monogamy

2011-01-15T16:20:00.000-08:00

(Dear Diary...)

Yesterday a new friend asked me, quite boldly I thought, whether I am satisfied with monogamy. Not those words, but essentially, that.

I've recognized for a long time that there is something about me that invites this level of immediate over-intimacy, so I tend to forgive impertinence and try to answer the questions I'm posed fairly. I dutifully tried to explain, in the fumbling way I have when I haven't thought about something in a long time, the idea that exclusivity is an essential ingredient that permits the level of trust required to deepen one's knowledge of another, and allow that other to deepen their knowledge of you. That this lifetime process requires a commitment to partner up on life, no matter what comes. But I didn't say, out loud, the rest of the story. Isn't it strange? What I didn't say, as if it didn't have legitimacy, was this: I am in love with my husband.

I never was one to believe in "in love," which is the primary source of my reticence to bring it up as a topic of conversation with someone I hardly know. My first husband was my best friend and I thought that was ideal - I loved him very much, though in the end we weren't good for each other. But I would never have described myself as "in love." I was often attracted to other people.

After that relationship ended and I was ready to pay attention again, I turned around and found myself slave to a man I didn't even know well enough to trust. There was something about how he looked at me that felt like soul's nectar, even before we were dating. My stomach lurched when he smiled at me like I was already his. His hand on my skin felt warmer than anyone's hand should feel, an accidental touch electrifying and drawing my attention to him as a male creature. The first time he kissed me felt like the first time I'd ever been kissed, (and it was far from that). The first time we had sex felt like the sex I'd been trying to have all along. The last time we had sex was the best sex I've ever had. It is, every time. Really. I mean, why have sex if it's not great? What I'm saying is that I feel about him like nothing I've ever experienced before. I don't really notice anyone else anymore, from a sexual standpoint. I don't say that to people because they never believe me, but I can only share my experience. It's like I've locked onto this man, and he is sex for me.

He still just has to look at me to melt me. Maybe more, now, because our intimacy is becoming so much safer and more confident over time. I feel a surge of affection whenever I look at him, even when I'm really mad at him. He inspires me to be better, so he'll feel the same way (I believe he does). He grounds me. Who could have thought I would find this? Not me. I had no idea

Why would I fuck around with that, for something as banal as sex without trust? I wouldn't, in a million years, for a billion dollars.

So yes, I am satisfied with monogamy. In fact, I'd say it far exceeds my expectations.

(musical accompaniment from Sarah McLaughlin)

(I echo @artemisretreats sentiment earlier today: I wish I could be as eloquent in person as I am in writing. I'm also #grateful for the chance to think this through again.)

Mini Bad Mom post

2011-01-12T06:52:00.000-08:00

My heart is racing. My breath is ragged. My eyes are filled with tears and my jaw is clenched. I just screamed at my family. Why is that the only thing that anyone listens to?

I wasted 45 minutes on much more reasonable, loving approaches that only seemed to encourage them to grander heights of irrationality to keep my attention. More and more I find myself thinking, I should just lose it, scream and freak out at them now, and save myself the trouble instead of waiting until they have worn away my patience to the point where I’m scraped dry and bleeding inside and I just can’t take another second of it.

I don't want to be a person who screams at other people.

I choke it back. And try again.

Shard in my mind

2011-01-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

Hate and love, growing exponentially. Awareness and awakening, in such narrow slices as to often prove dangerous, mostly completely misunderstood and met with unreasonable hope and expectations.

Everything is part of the story. Everything is part of the truth, even that we'd rather turn from or think can be banished by the light. That's what makes it so hard to say: this is wrong, universally, we all agree. This is right. Because we are all right, and friends, we are all wrong. Always. Why waste our energy fighting semantics rather than putting our puzzle together? It drives me to distraction, it really does.

What is my life in all of that? It's tempting to say nothing but there is something in me that knows it's everything. That I am the most important person alive, that my choices every moment tip the cosmic balance. And then I look around at every other person, the ones my brain categorizes and dismisses (loser, housewife, old lady, clerk, homeless guy, business guy, bitch, beautiful girl) and I know: the same is true for each of them. They have no idea. I have no idea, really.

When a glass breaks, no matter how well we clean up, a shard will eventually stick in someone's foot. Why that shard? How did it escape the dustpan and the vacuum and the careful inspection of the floor? It escaped, and it found the foot we tried so hard to keep it from, the one it had been meant for all along. It escaped, and by random chance, on this day, a footstep discovered it. God put it there to punish the stepper. The stepper willed it to be there by thinking negative thoughts. The Universe provided the pain of the shard as an opportunity for enlightenment. A shard of glass got into a foot for no reason at all. Why? Why? Why?

Why are we spending our time on this attempt to pick and choose, label and understand, use and exploit? We are so far from true understanding as to be laughable, after so many generations of our species. What can I possibly do in the face of all of this.

Never enough.

Next Installment - Will we really change our lives? pt. 2

2011-01-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

(If you missed part 1, here)

Is it possible that I have become so detached from my current life that I would leave it?

Not my family, my husband and kids. Only for them would I stay, actually. There's no doing anything without them.

But this life. Does it have to look like this? Do we have to participate so fully in creating and reinforcing systems that are clearly wrong-headed and generated from an utterly hopeless illusion of self-interest which is ultimately inescapable in each of us? What did I just say, anyway? Who is this person?

A calling. What's a calling?

My mother-in-law told me, over Christmas, how one of the nuns at her high school called each girl into the office, individually, attempting to convince them that they had a calling to the sisterhood. When my mother-in-law politely said that she'd rather not, that she wanted to have a family, the nun told her that she would pray for her vocation. My mother-in-law politely declined. If I have a calling, I want it to come from me, she said.

Am I called to a middle class lifestyle?

Am I called to dust my small corner and smile, content with my lot?

I worked to get here, and here I am. It looks much the same from this point on the hill as it did from the bottom. I was wrong about what I thought I'd see from here. I'm just more sure, I can pick out details that once all looked like scenery.

Every day I face it, my ingratitude. Each night I choose one thing in my life that I'm grateful for to focus on before bed. It's made me very ashamed. This life should be good enough. I should be satisfied to do what is needed to keep this life going, just as it is, as long as humanly possible, because it is just that good.

Yet the urge is strong. Not to drop out, as my husband likes to put it, but to drop in. Drop back into the world by dropping out of this placid, rarefied, perfect life to try to actually experience. Whatever that means. Do we become hobos? Join a commune? What options are there, exactly, for people who want to try another way of living? Is there a handbook?

What do we really need? What is a happy life? What do we most want to maximize and minimize, and are we even trying? Are we living by rote, doing what's done, choosing for lack of choice in front of our noses? Do we ever even think about it? We're in a place where these questions need some attention.

I'm reminded of my little girl self, cowering in my nook in the woods while others were playing the game (read here). I'm hiding out in my perceived safe place (but is it, really, a sustainable safety?), writing a little from back here and hoping we can hang to what we have through the next set of challenges.

The game is rigged, and there are lots of carnivores out there.

Sigh.

Shifting focus (or, What If...)

2010-12-29T20:56:00.000-08:00

Will we change our lives? What if we really meant it?

What if, instead of focusing on...

It would be very hard to do.
There are some things about it we wouldn't like.
What would we be giving up?
How could we get back this life if things didn't work out?
How do we hold onto this life and still get the benefits we want from the alternate life?
Would it be a big mistake?
We might not have enough money.
We might be throwing everything away on a pipe dream life.
It would be too hard.

...we decided to spend more time on:

It would be really interesting
There are many things about it we would cherish.
What would we be gaining?
I wonder what could happen next that we can't see from here?
What would we be removing that sucks our souls?
What could we learn and build on, even if it doesn't work out?
There are no mistakes, only choices, their outcomes, and what comes next.
Less is in our control than we like to think, anyway.
What would it take to make it happen?
What concrete things could we do in the next year to get from here to there?
It would change everything.

What if we shifted the focus of the dialogue from why shouldn't we, to questions like, what could it look like, why would we want to, how could we pull it off?

What. If.
(stay tuned...)

Blue sky

2010-12-27T20:49:00.000-08:00

Pouring through (December, 2010)

The night of the eclipse, the clouds closed ranks against me and blanketed the sky. If I had never seen a blue sky, or the stars at night, I might have thought that our world exists in isolation, nothing above us at all but a ceiling of greyish white. No eclipse for my eyes to witness. To me, it did not exist, except in dreams.

For days, the sky stayed that way. The whole time I was alone in my home, my family miles away. A oppressive, drop-ceiling of clouds. The entire journey to Toronto to catch a bus that was never meant for me - the world dull, the sun diffused. After two hours of standing in the freezing cold, after two hours of not knowing what would happen next, the bus pulled from the station. As I looked at the sky, the clouds began to move.

The world was still blanketed, but a crack appeared, moving fast. It revealed a moment of bright, bright blue. Blue sky.

The world looked grey. The sun, nowhere to be seen. And behind all of that, blue sky. Sunshine. Whether I could see it or not. The blue sky doesn´t disappear when the clouds hide it from my view.

Did I know that already? It seems like I need to learn again, and again, and again.

Dear Children, Dear God

2010-12-21T08:08:00.000-08:00

Writing Out Loud to Clarify my Position on Religion, Which is Muddy at Best, Because my Kids Keep Asking Questions... (Sidestep from #reverb10. This is on my mind)

My children, I feel the need to speak but what can I tell you of God that makes any sense? For years I have scorned the very notion. And, largely, I still do. Any notion that you’re likely to hear of God, I do not accept.

In fact, I accept nothing. That there is order to the universe seems increasingly undeniable. The implications of this order extending as far as galaxies and as deep as our own living cells only recently began to dawn on us as a species. How arrogant to think we can even begin to comprehend meaning in this order. Religions are designed to control people’s behaviour towards particular ideologies, all of which are part of a universal truth we cannot possibly comprehend. To choose a religion is to deliberately narrow your field of study to achieve depth, not to find a truth that excludes that which contradicts it. To treat any religion as “true” helps no one. All religious and spiritual beliefs are just puzzle pieces, with most of the pieces missing or so tarnished as to be hardly recognizable. Deep understanding is critical, within the larger context.

On the other hand, the anti-religious. How perversely, falsely modest to think that our smallness in the scheme of things means that we don’t matter. How perversely, falsely proud to believe that this plane of reality is exclusive, our understanding of it largely complete. Even if we could accurately measure what we don’t know exists, it seems unlikely that the limited tools we call brains would be capable of comprehending the resulting data in any useful fashion. Instead, people would look for ways to exploit their limited understanding for personal gain at cost to others, as people have done with all understanding since the dawn of time. Given the economic drivers of research and development activities, and the almost total withdrawal of western society from active civic participation (or even paying attention and demanding accountability from their own investments), it seems unlikely that enough human endeavour is being put into finding out what we don’t already know, rather than using what we know to drive the economic engine we’ve created to greater and greater excess.

All this to say, if we don’t know about God, it’s arrogant to think that’s because there is no divinity. I’m not saying I think it’s likely that there is a single being sitting up above us, watching and judging and putting some of us in heaven and others in hell when we die, interfering in our lives at our behest through prayer, punishing us when we aren’t nice. Such a simple model makes no sense in light of the complexity we mistake for chaos. There is clearly order. If that order is driven by intelligence, I cannot possibly hope to understand it, through lack of data, lack of competence, and probably lack of physical capability in the brain.

So I’ve decided to withhold my judgment and hold no belief as wrong, though many beliefs are wrongly applied. Any information or data taken out of context, in too thin a slice, becomes ineffective at communicating its truth and can be easily misunderstood and misapplied. Most religious teachings come from much different times and contexts, and represent only the dominant aspects of thinking that managed to make it through biased translations of translations. So I respect those who choose a religious path for their diligence in pursuing spiritual depth, and I expect that they should respect that their discipline is just one of many, as History, English and Sociology co-exist in an Arts Department within a University within a Community and so on. We are all seeking the whole of knowledge in our ways, from where we are.

Accepting that a belief is part of the truth is not the same as accepting that the intolerant, oppressive or harmful implementations of that belief are acceptable. Every human life matters. I want every human to live secure of person - safe place to sleep, nutritious food to eat, shelter from the elements including adequate clothing, protection from animals and pests, clean water, the ability to be be clean and hygienic, participation in a community of people, protection from violence and coercion , love. Any beliefs that implement in ways that enhance the likelihood that every human can have these things, every day, I will support. Any beliefs that hinder a human's chances of having those things, I must question.

I find sifting through the sea of existing beliefs more difficult and far less interesting than thinking the problem through for myself, with some hints and help along the way that are largely driven by interest and chance. I try on ways of thinking, distilling that which fits what I know, that which challenges what I know. I feel the truth and I feel when it is distorted. Yet who am I to judge? Even my own judgement is suspect.

I am not seeking a belief system to settle into, I’m just seeking. That is my belief system – remaining in non-belief. I’m willing to hold possibilities open, as many as I can. I don’t accept the explanations that exist as they exist, scientific or religious. I feel I that I am divine in this body, no matter what I think, and no matter how unskilled I am at living my divinity. Seeking in that direction feels like a pull, it interests me, it adds wonder back into my life. Is it right? What is the metric?

Life is impossible. My very existence means that anything is possible. Thus, accepting nothing becomes accepting everything as part of the truth. With love, they are the same acceptance, the paradox that appears again and again. The same one.

(Okay, that's the best I can do at an explanation. Now, I just have to put it in language that preschoolers can understand. No problem.)

Musical accompaniment from Sarah McLachlan: Dear God

Longing for Hope (a ramble that starts with #reverb10 Day 20 prompt)

2010-12-20T18:14:00.000-08:00

#Reverb10 December 20 – Beyond Avoidance
What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?) (Author: Jake Nickell)

Should is a difficult word for me. Now, could - could I can work with. What could I have done...

Coulda, shoulda, woulda. This line of thinking feels like a rat-hole of self-indulgent confession.

But Avoidance. That's a prompt that's not to be passed by unattended.

What am I avoiding? Here's one: Letting go of longing.

Longing gets in the way of my presence, and, longing feeds my imagination. Like TV feeds the imagination of millions, setting up standards and comparisons they can use to judge life status, my longing gives me a quick fix peek into what could be better than this.

My longing is like an addiction. It seems to be attached to particular wishes, but if they come to fruition, the longing just finds another host. Several things I long for seem just enough out of reach that they are perpetually outside the bounds of what currently seems possible. When something I long for happens, it's no time at all before I treat those miracles as common place, just "what is." And long for something else.

I have avoided letting go of longing, in part because I feel like it keeps me going. Without it, I would need to say, this is what I am, this is where I am, and it's not what I expected or even what I thought I wanted. Yet it is a wonderful life.

More than that, I think I'm afraid to let it go. Somewhere in me, I believe that longing keeps me from despair when things seem hard (impossible), sad (unbearable), dull (always the same), hard to understand (pointless). Longing says, it doesn't have to always be like this. If this thing or that happened, everything would be different! Better!

Longing pretends to be Hope, and it does a pretty good impersonation. But if you look closely, the makeup is caked on.

So here's my fear: what if I let go of longing, and there's nothing left of what I thought was hope? What then? Will I fall? Can I get back up from that, or does the fall alone take my breath from my body?

I'm hoping to wean myself off longing by building my muscles in curiosity, wonder, openness, attention, welcome, benefit-of-the-doubt/slack, compassion and love. To name a few. It takes practice to keep employing these when fear, anxiety, "what will they think" and "how will that impact me" take over. It's also hard to remember to change my thinking patterns before I spend too much time in the old ones.

All that work will be for naught if I'm too afraid to let the longing go. I guess where I really need to spend my time in on hope. It might help if I'm sure that I can even tell the difference between longing and hope, untangle that mess in my mind and heart.

2011, I'm ready. Let's make me hopeful.

A friend indeed (#reverb10 Day 16)

2010-12-17T20:47:00.000-08:00

December 16 – Friendship
How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? (Author: Martha Mihalick)

Earlier this year, I got dishwasher powder in my eyes. I had just turned the lid on the powder compartment a bit too fast, and it was a bit too full - poof! A puff of powder blew up toward my face and, like they were magnets, coated my eyes. It may not sound like a big deal - I didn't take it seriously at first, either. But when 20 minutes of clearing with water found them still burning, a call to poison control confirmed that I would need to go to emergency. Did you know that dishwasher powder is basically sand and acid? Me either!

We have two small children, and I clearly couldn't drive myself. We have no family in town. Right away, I knew the only person I was comfortable calling. My 3-doors-down neighbour, a woman I would be lucky to call a friend.

Many times, she has reached out to me, and shyly, I've fumbled forward to accept her invitations, have meaningful conversations. But I rarely see her, and far less since my daughter was born. With work, kids, household, physical fitness and writing, I don't seem to find the time to invest in friendships.

But this woman, my neighbour, she gives friendship for free. She doesn't wonder why I don't come more often, or take offense that I say I'd love to get together and then a month goes by. She is always happy to see me, always compassionate about my trials. She shares her own, openly. She takes joy in helping other people. She is someone who comes through, is there for you. For me. She has many reasons to be angry with the world, and she picks love anyway.

Twice now, I've been seriously hurt and needed to go to emergency. Twice it was her that I called. And she didn't blink.

My own family, they blink. It's not that they're not there for me, it's that they feel the imposition and I feel them feel it and that is intolerable to me. Even my very close friend, blinks. I know I often blink too.

I will always come through for people in my life, but whether I feel it as "I must be there for this person because they need me" or "I am so glad that I can be here for this person" makes a big difference. I can choose.

I have a lot of trouble asking for help, and any whiff of "must" on the part of the other person will cause me to back off the ask so fast that they couldn't help me if they wanted to. I abhor obligation. My neighbour is one of very few people in the world that I believe to be genuine in her happiness to help me when I need it, and her complete lack of associated expectations. She just expects me to graciously accept her help, and it's the least I can do.

She taught me that she exists, which is important for my hope. She taught me to graciously accept help graciously offered. She reminded me that I could try harder to be a friend, to be the kind of person that you don't mind asking for help because you know, just know, that I love to do it for you. That I am grateful for the chance to help.

She probably has no idea of her impact. I could tell her. I hope I do it soon.