A Touch of Madness

In 21^st century America, land of the free and the brave, why do have gym bathroom signs for things like, “Please do not put paper towels into the urinals”?  Just what kind of IQ have they put onto the payroll?  Are they serious?  If so, they ought to preface it with, “Hey You Big Stupid Dummy, how would you like it if I came to your house …”

While we’re being good gym rats, I figured out why I never feel like I’m in good shape.  It has something to do with the color-coordinated women in the gym who are sweat-impaired.  They act like they’re getting a good workout, I guess, but they rarely go outside where I’m at, and certainly cover up any perspiration somehow without us figuring out how we can do it too. 

OMG, women are smarter than guys!  Damn, now I finally figure this one out?  Ignorance was bliss.

Menopause—Time for a Change

Yes, dear reader, you're reading the title correctly and I can only imagine the quips I'll hear [sigh]...

Part of public service is helping out other over-worked public servants who strive to do the right thing but often with limited time and no funding/publicity.  In that vein, my friend RN Deb the public health nurse, occassionally develops outreach presentations on important health topics.  So here's some important info she encouraged me to share with mom's, sisters, friends, etc.

Deb says she believes that good nutrition, regular exercise, and daily relaxation can help a lot with the challenging symptoms, and the booklet “Menopause: Time for a Change” mentions similar strategies.  Here are two file she recommends:

Menopause: Time for a Change

http://www.nia.nih.gov/sites/default/files/menopause_time_for_a_change.pdf.

Women’s Mental Health (Deb's presentation slides are in this large 6Mb file)

http://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content//OWH09-CONSUMER/OWH09-CONSUMER.pdf

Blue Gel Shoes

That’s the modern version of Elvis’ ditty about living large (my new running shoes have neat blue gel mid-soles).  I’m stretching in today’s blog, spit-balling to come up with something meaningful to share with you.  I parked my next creation, a poem about [hah – do you really think I’m gonna tell you?!] because too much sappiness brings out the Calvin and Hobbes reaction in me!  Gag!

Back to talking about ‘faking it,’ there are places and times, gentle reader, where pretending to be Real while living large could get you in a whole world ‘o trouble (ye who date, beware).  We all should live meaningful lives, but that’s impossible to do 24x7.  But lilting through the morning’s bus ride to Led Zeppelin, with Robert Anthony talking about “hearing words but I could not relate,” now that resonates, that sparks something meaningful about living small. 

In the dissonance of our lives, led in a cacophony of competing imperatives to do this/that/the other, I find living creatively may just be the best approach.  My friend, Mountain Man of MT, lives as he speaks, as he dreams and bounces between his business travails and among relationships with the unique personalities in his orbits.  Living nuttily would be his take on the trick of the tail his life has become!

Signposts might be a better analogy to my life than my new running shoes (talk around living slowly).  We often see signs telling us things but we’re living rapidly, we miss them and go on into the future.  It’s time to end this pointless languid rumination about ways to live, and get on with my late May work week.  Au revoir and live smartly this week.

The Quiet Beating of Wings

Editor’s Note:  this post is a delayed reflection on a departed friend, serious but hopefully not somber nor reflecting the anger I feel at her early loss at just age 50.  Please wait for another day’s post if my reflections on our mortality aren’t your cup of tea.  Thanks.

So … I take no pride in saying my first long-crafted essay on our friend Beth was lost when my laptop’s hard drive got corrupted.  And I’d just polished it to where it shoulda-oughta-have been.  But as my wise friend Arkansawyer would say, “Sir, that’s the problem.”  Yes, I knew/know/will know where the story should go, but life doesn’t work that way, does it now?

Beth was a kind person beyond measure, taken from us far too soon.  Yet, I was only one of many who knew her and wasn’t even in her nearest orbit.   That’s why her leadership in our ‘community group’ made her contribution to my life that much more amazing.  I won’t tread where I ought not, railing in anger:  “Why, God, did You choose her to go so soon?  We weren’t ready yet.”  So many other feelings loom on the clouded horizon, but as I see from the books of Matthew and Daniel, the answers will come only with faith in He who brings us that truth.  Yeah, that’s deep but so is our collective spirituality and dealing with our inevitable own journeys into the here-after.

Diagnosed with stage 4 skin cancer, she immediately knew the odds weren’t in her favor.  No matter, no bother, no complaints (to us!), no sorrow.  She took a year-long journey on the spiritual high road her near and extended families paved with love.  So much goodness in that last interlude before she left us.  I remember her now as I saw her then, at her best when picking on us to think, to ask questions, and at the end simply asking us to help her smile.  Her spirit shone on, even the week prior to the end, when I visited and saw not pain/pity me, but just Beth as I’d known her.

The ache her man, and her children, feel is far more keen because it reflects how she sparkled her family’s way through a tough world.  Ted also has taken that bite of the same faith and come out comforted and strengthened, a real lighthouse for us all. 

So, here I finish, not far from where I started:  we had a friend and we still have a friend.  Some of you are Beth & Ted’s friends, so walk across those stones of tears, and of need, and let’s help the light-keeper and his family remember the best of the past as they journey on.

Or, as Arkansawyer would say, “Yep, something like that. You only can do what you can do.”  OK then, let’s get on with it.  And, thank you, Beth …

Signposts and Smiles (a poem)

Darkness falls, the moon spills her sighs

Lost was I, and I didn’t know it at the time.

Sun sparkled my eye, a twinkled sound -

then I blinked and found myself on The Road.

All the pressure left behind as the sun flared,

that fiery azure-eyed One Way sign.

I was picked up and pitched away

so why hide, why try,

‘cause I’ve lost my mind, beautifully so,

on our own 27 Road.

Silence between the Notes (a poem)

Where to run, what to hum

when darkness falls?

There’s a lady who knows

about stairways and a dance.

Did she take the chance

to make sense of it all?

Can she ever be more

than she was born to be?

Will the call free her at last,

when darkness falls?

Have you come to be my Friend?

Funny what happens when you turn over those proverbial rocks. Some friends glitter. Some confuse you, so you polish the stone and find it’s, well, a stone.

Some amaze. More so with acquaintances that you don’t often talk to. Like DH: “Hey, where have you been? Did you run out of things to say?”

Hah. But, like Alice in Wonderland, I sometimes stay quiet and just stare, afraid of the wrong word/thought/impulse at the wrong juncture/moment/snare. Like her, I’m afraid not all things appear as they are (aka, man, he’s weird).

How do we come to be each other’s friends? Rarely a weeky goes awry when I don’t wonder about these types of things. Maybe because it’s gratifying to bring extra stuff to ‘the game,’ being a better friend than the other person would have expected.

I count myself so lucky to have seen so many friends ‘from the inside’ and be amazed and humbled by what you do. You paint pictures that dance in my head, ones that color-in the world around me….

Florida in all its Flavors

We, the TMM Family, spent over a holiday week in Florida and I just returned from another week there. Yeah, it’s almost all it’s cracked up to be: vast and varied, endless sunshine and salty breezes, with the promise of something fun down every boulevard. The malls fascinate me with their palms that line the parking lanes, and scrub grass somehow befits the terrain and calms the spirit.

It’s also full of unexpected cold mornings, too much traffic at times, and other nit-noidy things I could complain endlessly about. I mean, hey, we lived in St. Pete for two years just before this Maryland gig. Talk is cheap when one endlessly gripes and does nothing about it, so I’ll downplay the downsides of Florida and focus on the good stuff:

· Parents (and my cousin & family) who warmly welcome you into their homes

· Warm breezes that carry your concerns away

· Duct tape emblazoned with the Univ. of Florida Gators logo

· Restaurants everywhere – you’d never need to eat at home, just fatten up out on the town

· BBQ grills everywhere

· Boats in the driveways and other toys, like campers and jet skis, out back

· A more relaxed attitude toward life which doesn’t need watches nor as many deadlines

If you’ve not been there, try Florida on for size. And, so as to not slight the Deep South itself, we’ve also lived in Georgia and Alabama, and they each have their own charms!

8 hours to Durango

(Federal budget season is winding down, so TMM winds back up, though maybe just a couple times a week this go-'round)

I guess

no one wants to see them

Ghost towns

in tidal pools of dreams

Empty eyes

see only their reflection

Roll, tide

spangling the daylight anew

We see

both what we need, what we want

MahN Madness

At the risk of offending my audience, I won’t spell-out “MahN” so suffice it to say the perceived madness is about how some guys tackle the challenges of life, be it work, home or the open range. In my life, it’s the road under my running shoes. Shoes I’m told move faster than I thought and, stopwatch says, yeah verily do hit 10.3 minutes per mile! Not lightning fast but good enough to avoid cars.

I wonder if it’s just guys who get the itch to do something crazy, like running when light snowflakes kiss my face and tatter along my legs, cold ones since I don’t do running pants. The point isn’t the destination, since I’m not self-competitive enough to care much about running faster.

I guess the point has to do with manning-up to something and walking away head-held-up, ready to grab an air guitar and solo the rest of the day away. That life were that simple! Bottom line is there’s sense to the goofiness some of us weave into our days, it just takes perception to understand the colors of those threads.