empty and meaningless

OK, just take a moment and ponder this: what if life is, in its essence, empty and meaningless.


Had enough time? Take a moment more.

So, what if, just like a possibility, life is, deep down, empty and meaningless?

If you haven't run screaming from your computer at this point, let me point out what a liberating thing that would be. What if one of my favorite bumper stickers--"SHIT HAPPENS"--is on target and correct?

Know what that means? It means that the 'meaning' of life doesn't exist in any way in the stuff that happens. Meaning--such as it is--doesn't come from the world or from the passage of time or from the events of life...'meaning' is what we say it is.

Can you begin to see how liberating that could be?

I used to be terrified of flying. One night, before I was to fly the next day, I was telling my friend, Tom, how scared I was already, knowing that in 15 hours I'd be getting on an airplane.

Tom asked, "what does it feel like?"

And I said, "I'm terrified, scared to death, horrified!!!"

And Tom said, calmly, "no, that's not what I mean. I mean, tell me about the actual feelings in your body, not what you call time."

So I went through the litany: tight butt, racing heart, dizziness, muscle tension. The whole thing.

And Tom said, calmly (as Tom said all things), "ok, why don't we call those feelings excitement?"

It was one of the biggest breakthroughs of my life. From that moment on, my feelings were transformed. They didn't 'change'--oh, no, whenever I get on a plane my butt is tight, my heart is racing and I'm a tad dizzy with tension in my muscles. All that has happened is that I came to understand that the 'meaning' about those feelings is mine to assign and name.

So, I name it "excitement" and I love to fly.

It is really liberating and transforming to realize that the 'meaning' of what happens comes, not from 'what happens' but from what we say about it.

"Meaning" comes from us and we are free to re-name it and embrace it differently in a way that makes a difference for the better.

So, you could either call it 'anger' or 'whimsy'. You could either call it 'envy' or 'appreciation'. You could either call it 'fear' or 'astonishment'. It IS what you name it.

Just something to ponder. That's all....

OK, enough about "Frozen"....

It's enough that every little girl in America knows all the words to "Let it Go". My granddaughters even have the arm and hand movements down!

First it was the Christian Fundamentalist Pastors who claimed it encouraged lesbianism in little girls!

After thinking long and hard about that accusation, it occurred to me that one of the last songs celebrates the love between two girls--but they're sisters, pastors! God, you guys spend to long looking for LGBT 'recruitment'. Lesbians and Gay Men have enough lesbians and gay men to choose from...they aren't 'recruiting' anybody!

Now a woman in Japan is divorcing her husband because (she says) "there is something not right about you as a human being"...because he didn't like Frozen. She saw it half-a-dozen times before nagging him into going with her and his comment was "it's an OK film, it just doesn't appeal to me." She moved back into her parents' house and started divorce proceedings....

Look, everybody calm down...deep breaths.

Let me let you in on something: It's a MOVIE, for God's sake.

And a kids movie at that....(though I did enjoy it a lot....)

Quit trying to make it more than that....Just enjoy the little girls singing "Let it Go" and let everything else go. OK?

Cat

OK, my favorite singer ever was Cat Stevens. I wore out a couple of his albums and was devastated when he converted to Islam, changed his name to Yusaf Islam and stopped recording. He disappeared into his life of prayer and devotion and left me deeply respecting his life choice and yet begrudging his leaving me.

Bern and I were watching the Thunder/Spurs game and she kept flipping back to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions because Cat Stevens was to be one of the inductees. Neither of us believed he would be there--Linda Ronstat wasn't, after all. But after Kiss was inducted (Josh's favorite band when he was a young child--Bern used to paint his face like their's) there was Art Garfunkle, of all people, introducing Cat Stevens.

Not only was he there, dressed as you expect middle-class Arabs to be--a coat, a collar-less shirt, a vest and comfortable pants--and he sang three songs.

I had almost forgotten how wondrous his music and lyrics were. The third, and last song was Peace Train. Amazing....

God (Allah) bless him in his new life. He, as a gray  haired man, can still sing the shit out of a song......

In full bloom

The Rhododendron around our house is in full bloom. We have three plants that hang around the edge of our deck and three in front of our front porch and one on the side yard that I transplanted from the deck area and is 12 feet high and about to collapse under the weight of the blooms.

Rhododendron, which my spell check underlines in red but won't give me an option to for spelling, is the state flower of West Virginia. Some call it Mountain Laural, but I prefer the long name.

In early May, when I was a kid, would load me in the car and we'd go Rhododendron looking the way people in New England go 'leafing' in the fall.

A thousand shades of green would be interrupted all across Peal Chestnut Mountain and down through the little towns along RT. 52 until we went up Elkhorn Mountain and back home.

Our Mountain Laural is pale purple, but back home there were pink and deep red variates as well. It was wondrous, all the color among the endless shades of green.

Green is a color with endless shades, if you ponder 'green' for a while.

My baby girl's getting married...

I've known it for a long time. I've longed for it much longer. But today it hit me for the first time that my baby girl is getting married in October.

I couldn't be happier for her and for Tim. Tim and Mimi have been a couple for over a decade. They've lived together for most of that time. I was used to that and it seemed right. Then, six months or so ago (my problem with linear time and all!) they got engaged.

Delighted as I was, it seemed perfectly normal and I settled into that.

Then, for the last few days, we've been making reservations for the hotel in Brooklyn and it hit me between the eyes--my baby girl is getting married....

Even while I was getting permission from the Diocese of Long Island (Brooklyn is part of that Diocese, go figure...) and the City Clerk of New York City to officiate at their wedding, it didn't totally sink in. Mimi's getting married.....

Tim is one of the best guys ever. He's a computer guru (works for Linked In) and a talented musician. He went to Bennington with Mimi, a year ahead and just friends. And when both of them were in NYC, they found each other in a real way.

For the last five years or so (somewhere between 3 and 6--linear time and all that...) Tim and Mimi have gone to Oak Island, North Carolina with us for a week in September, just after Labor Day when no one with kids are there. We went to Oak Island for almost 20 years (until the kids didn't want to be in such an isolated place for several weeks). The first time was after my first year at Virginia Seminary, with three other couples from my class, two of whom were from North Carolina and had known the place. The second summer, Bern was pregnant with Josh. Every year after that until Josh (in high school) didn't even want to go if he took a friend. Then, over a decade later, Mimi called and asked where it was we used to go so she and Tim could go. After that she insisted we needed to go together and we have, along with John and Sherry, two old friends. It's always a blast and Tim is an integral part of it all.

We love him. I introduced him, even before this marriage thing, as "almost my son-in-law".

I couldn't be more delighted.

But she's my baby girl--certainly not a baby or a girl anymore--a full grown woman who makes more money than I ever did as a Development Officer for Jacob's Pillow, a dance place in the Berkshires. She has two apartments...one in Brooklyn and the other in Stockbridge, MA. She is frighteningly smart, remarkably kind and beautiful as can be.

I've been looking at the pictures of her scattered about our house. Three of them are my favorites. First, she's 3 in a tank top and shorts, running recklessly down a hill in my father's yard, face as serious and intense as only a 3 year old can have running recklessly. The second is in a door way in the suite Bern and I stayed in when Josh was graduating from Law School. Her arms are thrown out like a character in a Broadway Musical and she is smiling to beat the band. And my favorite of all is one time took of the side of her face when she was smiling and her dimple looks like a hole in her face. (My second cousin, Kim, who is maybe ten years younger than Mimi, took me aside when she was 5 and Mimi was 15 and said, in a whisper, "Mimi has holes in her cheeks!" That's how pronounced Mimi's dimples are when she smiles.

She was the worst baby ever for the first six months--crying, arching her back when you tried to hold her, never sleeping. Then, at six months, something in her brain flipped and she became the most charming, wondrous, engaging child ever. And as an adult, none of that has changed.

Sometimes, she calls me 'Baba', what she called me as a small child. I have a photo of her taken in Australia when she was there, tan and lovely and holding a post-it note that says, "Hi, Baba"...how did I leave that out of my favorite pictures of her...?

And she's getting married. Be still my heart....

Memorial Day

We went to Baltimore Saturday morning and came back Tuesday. I meant to write something last night but was too worn out from driving and three days with little girls!

While we were there we went to Fort McKinley, where the Star Spangled Banner was written by Francis Scott Keys after one of the battles of the War of 1812. I'm not a big fan of visiting historic places, but Fort McKinley was really great. A video about the battle in the visitor's center was great and ended with everyone singing the SSB. And the Fort is pristine and well restored. The girls' favorite spot was a barracks because there was an old fashioned broom there. They took turns sweeping, over and over. Anytime there was a lull they'd run back there to sweep! (If only they got that focused about picking up toys and clothes....)

It was there that I witnessed an example of what I call: It's A Wonder Our Children Don't Kill Us the First Chance They Get.

A man wanted to take his toddler's picture. The little boy, for whatever reason (probably just because he was sick of having his picture taken!) wanted no part of it and kept walking away until he came to a wall--his father pleading for him to turn around all the way. The boy put his head down on the wall, hoping that would put an end to the whole picture taking thing. Then his father said, "Look, candy!" The boy turned around for candy and got his picture taken instead. Immediately, he burst into tears....

We went to a sea food restaurant with Cathy's parents and had a crab fest. There was wrapping paper on the tables and the waitress just dumped the crabs out. We used to eat crabs a lot when the kids were little and we'd go to North Carolina for three weeks every summer. I caught most of them--a nasty bit of work involving a piece of twine, a rotten chicken back, a sinker and a net. Crabbing was guaranteed to give you sunburn, fly bites and ankles bitten by shrimp. But I loved it.

But it's been years since I'd eaten crabs and, though it's sort of like riding a bike, the process comes back to you, my hands were a lot younger back then. Tearing the crabs apart started giving me cramps in my hands after a while. Tegan and Morgan ate as much as anyone would pick for them but Emma wanted no part of it! Between us, we ate 18 medium and a dozen large crabs. Messy business but oh, so good....

On the way back, we started listening to 880 AM to see how the traffic was. When we got on the Jersey Turnpike we were told there was at least a 2 hour delay on the GW Bridge. By the time we got there it was more like 10 minutes and I thanked the Baby Jesus that I didn't go through the Holland Tunnel like I thought about doing. All my travel in New York is by subway so I wasn't even sure where the Holland Tunnel came out but thought I could find the West Side Highway.

I went to pick  up the Puli at the Kennel and he was much better in the car than usual. For one think I had on the classical music station and I think that suited him better than NPR talk...the half a baggie of treats I fed him bit by bit when  he didn't bark may have contributed as well!

Going away

We're taking the dog in the morning to Holiday Hills in Wallingford and then driving to Baltimore until Tuesday.

I'll take my lap top and try to post something--but three grand-daughters take up a lot of time! Joyfully.

See you then or on Tuesday.....

Be well and stay well, my friends.....