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Flushing Integrity

Put on your helmets people…. It’s gonna be a rough ride!

Picture this: Someone contacts you, having become aware of your work. Impressed, they would like to hire you to do a job. You put together a presentation, travel a considerable distance, provide a quote that you believe accurately reflects the time, energy, and experience that will be involved in the effort and the client says, “Let’s do it!”

You are happy that, after a period away from this work, the investment you’ve made in learning the technology that is necessary to be successful in this day and age is beginning to show some results. In anticipation of beginning this job, you go out and further invest in the clothing, materials, even childcare, that will allow you to get started.

Imagine, then, the night before you are to show up for work, the employer calls and says, “Someone just walked in, sight unseen, and offered to do the same job for half the price. Are you willing to do the job for that? I’d still rather have you do it but not if I can get someone else to do it for less.”

So what do you do? Nothing has been signed and only a smile and a handshake have sealed the deal.

In good faith I agree to the terms. Who am I to complain in an economy that is leaving people homeless? I’m  lucky to have the opportunity, I rationalize to myself.

The next morning, I walk into the building and see a toilet sitting in the middle of the entryway. Bad sign. No plumbing. Brown paper on the windows attempts to shade the heat of the Florida sun to little effect. No electricity means fumes will not be circulating. I set up anyway.

I stare at the wall and all I can see is betrayal. I roll gray, lifeless, stinky primer onto the wall. I climb to a precarious height to cover up mistakes left by a careless contractor. I have no vision for this one. It looks dead to me.

I start thinking about that toilet. I once remodeled a bathroom using a book of instructions and all the right tools and fixtures. Someone with more experience might have done a better job but nothing leaked and the room looked much better than it had before. It hadn’t taken much to become proficient at that skill.

Now, here I am about to create a 150 sq.ft. work of art that will be seen by thousands and hopefully add incentive for them to return again and again to enjoy the ambience, yet I have agreed to be paid less to do so than the young fellow listening to head banging rap music and yelling over to his contractor buddy that he has “20 beers in the fridge so the game’s at my house tonight!” for installing a sink, toilet, and mirror for the comfort of customers as required by law for such an establishment. My contribution has no such requirement.

I did not become an artist to make money. I did it because I needed to share my imagination and soul with others. Deep inside, exchanging those for money feels dirty to me, yet it is how our society has agreed to acknowledge value. In asking for an amount of money that reflected my efforts in a commercial setting, a money-making establishment, my intent had less to do with receiving compensation for myself than with attempting to assign a fair monetary value to something whose worth cannot easily be measured in dollars. I did it to assign value to the work of all artists who are willing to invest their time and souls in such a way.

As I packed up my equipment this morning and declared the birth of this project aborted, I realized that the only difference between throwing money down the toilet that would soon be in the building’s bathroom and the one that would have been my project is the fact that the literal one could actually flush…at least until it backed up from choking on all that money…

I would have signed a guarantee that the only overflowing mine would ever do would be with the light of my soul….

Technology Breakthrough

I’ve learned an important lesson about media technology lately that makes my Interactive Design degree make some sense.

If I wait around long enough and don’t touch the software, I will eventually understand how it works. It’s like the “think system” from The Music Man — if you just think about playing a musical instrument you’ll be able to!

So in addition to having created a brochure with Adobe Indesign, a logo with Adobe Illustrator, and a YouTube profile, I have now mastered the art of putting a bunch of pictures together in Apple iPhoto and hitting the button that says “slideshow” and the button that says “add music”, I can now produce a pretty cool video complete with the Ken Burns effect! VOILA!!!

I decided to try this with pictures taken during the painting of a mural in North Carolina several years ago. Having taken many pictures of the surrounding area, it makes a neat presentation about where we got our ideas from. In just 3 days, Nancy and I (and Murphy the dog!) managed to tie together a fresh light green, a deep coral, and a bold teal to create a Carolina marsh scene in keeping with the local area.

I was able to put it on Facebook — now let’s see if I can do it here. Pretty soon I’ll be working as a Genius at the Apple store….

Without further ado, check out my first foray into the world of YouTube with accompaniment from Fred Benedetti & Peter Pupping playing an instrumental version of James Taylor’s “Carolina In My Mind”….

Palliative Care for a Perception

The stench hit me the minute I opened the door. I knew that odor well.

The big yellow Labrador Retriever walked toward me with his head down, which was unusual for him. Usually he was a wacky, jumping, slobbery maniac but I think he knew that he’d messed up.

And boy, did he ever. Often when a dog has diarrhea in the house it’s fairly well confined. Not this time. It looked like old Chopper had been trying to run away from what was coming out of his butt. Several hours and many cans of Spot Shot later, the evidence was still there on the beige carpeting but the smell was better.

Such are the perils of my job as a professional pet sitter. You never know what you’ll walk in on.

Several months after this incident alerted the owners to his returning stomach cancer, I was watching the same dog but this time the owner’s father was staying at the house. Harry (known as Butch to his friends) had also been struggling with cancer for a while and was getting closer to the end, but he had insisted that the family take their planned vacation. With great trepidation they agreed, knowing that I would be there several times a day and would be able to keep and eye on him.

One night I walked in and Harry said, “I’m really sorry, but I need some help with the bathroom. I didn’t quite make it.” I told him it was no problem, telling him about the time I’d made a deal with a co-worker at the petting farm where we worked that I would clean the outhouses every day if he would deal with the chicken house. I hated working with those nasty peckers enough to be willing to haul huge buckets of human feces up the hill and dump them in a holding tank.

Harry’s mess was nothing like Chopper’s had been but the real challenge was to help without further compromising his dignity. Harry had been a proud man, a blue collar worker from upstate New York who’d worked hard all his life. That night, with his head down he sat shivering on the couch, bundled in blankets, shrunken and shriveled.

I sat down on the floor and rubbed Chopper’s belly and asked Harry about his life. He’d sat there for weeks, unable to even go to the store for cigarettes and Pepsi, humbled by his disease, so he had been taking stock of his life. His wife had died 10 years earlier and he was looking forward to seeing her again. He spoke of his son and daughter-in-law, expressing his gratitude for their generosity and his happiness that his son had found such a wonderful wife who had given birth to two beautiful children. He was beginning to let go of the things that he’d held true that really hadn’t been important, resentments and misguided ideals that had kept him separate from people. Suddenly, those things just didn’t matter anymore.

I stayed for a little while, got him some more Pepsi and prepared the coffee maker for morning, but I didn’t plug it in — Harry’s fireman buddy had once told him that the #1 cause of house fires was appliances. I carried the teeming bag of adult diapers out as I left.

About a month later, I got a call inviting me to join in a memorial service for Harry out in the family’s back yard by the lake. When I arrived there, his son was distracting himself by throwing a giant chunk of firewood for crazy Chopper to chase. Harry had raised a kind, strong son, a real bear of a man. It was hard to believe that the tiny fellow I’d met could have been his father.

A display of pictures sat on a table and I looked for Harry. Because I hadn’t known him before he was sick, I didn’t recognize him at first. When I realized which one he was, I saw that he had been a huge, virile man like his son.

In the pictures I realized how extraordinary that last conversation had been. This was not a contrite looking man. That expression did not suffer fools easily. This was a “man’s man” in every sense of the word. But his last words with me were like a flower opening. A level of love and appreciation that I don’t think he had an easy time sharing with those closest to him flowed from his heart. I felt privileged to have borne witness.

In the aftermath of this experience, I got thinking about volunteering for Hospice, but as is my track record with carrying out such ideas, I have yet to do it. But as I remember this story I realize that in a sense, I am already a Hospice volunteer. I am working to ease the transition of a way of thinking that is in its final stages, trying to listen to people as they thrash with fear at the idea of their perceptions dying. I’m trying to be patient.

Our country is changing in such a way that as new life emerges, another has to end. We’re working through the stages of grief:

Denial — this is the way things are, this is how they’ve always been and they’ll never change…

Anger — what do you mean, things are changing? I refuse to let them change!

Bargaining – if I stand up and shake my fist, will you make sure things don’t change?

Depression – everything I thought I knew is different now. I don’t recognize anything.

Acceptance – things have changed, but they’re okay. I don’t feel any different, and now I have nothing more to fear.

In less than 250 years, our country has grown and multiplied many times over with a population that gets less recognizable to many every day. New languages, new religions, new philosophies “threaten” to change the fabric that many of our citizens believe our nation to be woven from.

But the broadcloths of our founders have over the years been replaced by any number of textiles as we take advantage of the amazing freedoms of opportunity and experimentation that America has to offer those who represent its threads. We have woven entirely new communities made up of a myriad of constituents only to discover that we’ve created amazing new garments, techni-colored dreamcoats!

Still, there are those who prefer the unwieldy broadcloth, the stiff materials that impede their movements and confine their spirits.

I had watched as Harry, nested deep inside the soft synthetic comforter on the couch, shed the rigid garments of his life and laid his soul bare before me. A spirit that had been so firmly bound for so many years was finally becoming free as he found in me a gentle willingness to listen as he let go of his burdens.

In my memories of that night I found a compassion not just for the literally dying, but a tenderness for the symbolically dying — those among us who are struggling to let go of a life that no longer serves them or others.

Old Chopper, the yellow lab, finally surrendered his willful exuberance for life soon after Harry did. Evidence of his “explosion” lingered for months afterward in the fibers of the carpet, almost as a coarse reminder of the indelible spirit in all of us that refuses to be permanently eradicated from the fabric that has made our country what it is, but it offered also a pungent reminder of the less pleasant parts of our history that we have managed to mostly scrub away.

Harry and Chopper, you’ll probably never know the impact you had in those last days of your lives, but in sharing and letting go of your greatest vulnerabilities, your spirits continue to make the world a stronger place.

Inertia and the Hell of Being a Man

Help me out here, people.

I’m finding my mind whirling as I try to figure out the best direction for our country.

You too? Imagine that…

I’m really starting to understand the adage about not talking about politics or religion because it’s a no-win proposition. You either find people who agree with you, hang out with them and preach to each other’s choir, or you turn blue in frustration trying to convince someone else that your ideas are valid. Eventually you reach an impasse and everything comes to a halt.

But the one thing I try to do when I disagree with or don’t quite understand someone is to step into their shoes for a time and see the world through their eyes.

Lately, I’ve been trying to understand what it is to be a man in our society right now. I read a disturbing statistic recently that the rate of suicide for men between the ages of 45 and 54 has risen substantially in the past few years. I’ve seen it played out in my own life with two old high school classmates taking their own lives in the past 3 months.

Before I was 12, I was convinced that I’d grow up to be a man. At that time it seemed that everything good in the world was only available to men. I was disappointed when I found out I was ineligible, but now I feel like I was given a get-out-of-jail-free card. Being a man is not an easy ride these days, and our society, like men’s biology, hasn’t done a very good job of equipping them emotionally for a crash.

I chose to leave the corporate working world about 7 years ago because I could. My needs were few and I felt that I could make up for it in more creative ways. So far, I have. But as I watch what is happening to those who did not make that same choice but are experiencing the same outcome makes me wonder how I can help them.

There is a powerful force in the universe called “inertia” — the principle that “an object in motion will stay in motion”, which makes its inverse also true.

As men lose their jobs in the workforce, sometimes for years at a time, their internal engines grind to a stop. I have experienced this phenomenon for myself, by choice, and I understand how hard it is to get moving again. What seems so simple when you are already in motion is exponentially harder when the wheels have yet to find their momentum. For many men, the only velocity is “full speed ahead” so a dead stop can be devastating.

You work your butt off for years to fulfill all the responsibilities you thought were expected of you, raising a family by selling the best part of your life force to someone who one day calls you in and says, “I’m sorry. Through no fault of your own, we have to let you go.” Just like that. The most powerful years of your life dissipate in a puff of smoke, your contributions soon forgotten by everyone you knew.

After the initial devastation subsides and you scramble for your footing, you think, “Hey, maybe now I can pursue that dream I thought I’d never have a chance to explore” even though you put it aside so long ago you have to think hard to remember what it was. Grandiosely you imagine that maybe this is God’s timing and you’re being told to pursue it, so you get started.

But you’re tired now. Middle-age has doused the fire in your engine and you’re lucky if it still has some burning embers capable of igniting this new fuel you’ve stumbled on. You wonder if your dream was a calling or if it was merely the incendiary energy of youth. You grow desperate as you try to figure out what to do and each passing day puts you further behind. Your mind blurs as you try to accomplish even the simplest tasks of taking care of your household (often a foreign concept) or sending out a resume that you know will probably be lost in a stack with thousands of others.

It seems as if nobody wants or needs you. Maybe your kids are grown, your wife has established her own rhythm in your absence or in her own career. She probably gets to keep her job as that “what-goes-around-comes-around” backlash hits because she makes less money for doing the same job. The one thing that made you feel worthy in the world — your work — doesn’t even need you anymore and you’re lucky if you’ve prepared for this time financially.

You…are…DESPERATE!!!

And then it finally happens… You fall to your knees, crying, begging for relief from this pain. Maybe you think you’d be more valuable to your family if you just weren’t here anymore, that maybe you can figure out a way to cash in on your life insurance so they won’t be left with nothing. You rationalize that having money is more valuable to them than having you.

You feel relief. You have a plan! Everything seems great because your inertia has broken and you can move forward! That fire in your belly starts to ignite and you feel alive again!

Oh, the irony…. that the “promise” of hell can be so seductive. I’m not a big believer in hell as a place in eternity. I believe it is right here and we live it now. But what we don’t realize is that hell is not the painful part of our existence. Rather, it’s in the premature release; the thought that a simple action can end our suffering forever. It’s the very hell our country finds itself confronting as it deals with having fallen prey to the seduction of the “easy way out”.

At the risk of sounding spiritually trite, maybe there is something to being driven to our knees in desperation. Maybe it’s God’s way of saying, “I’ve taken away your legs so that I can teach you to walk again, on my terms, not yours…” If we stop struggling and stay there long enough to muster the courage to dry our tears and look around from that vantage point, we may find that the view down there is completely different, that maybe we are seeing a world that most people won’t humble themselves enough to look at.

Maybe THIS is a glimpse into the heaven in our own life knowing that we can learn to walk again one step at a time as our new, stronger legs form.

Dear, sweet men…. we ask so much of you…. that you be strong and courageous, that you never show us your defeat. Have we asked too much, or have we simply asked of you the wrong things? The rest of us have won our right, at your expense, to change and to fulfill our own longings…. but in doing so, have we denied you yours?

Day of Atonement

Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year for religious Jews. It is the big finale of the High Holy Days and is observed by a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer.

I can report this only because I Googled it. In my search, I realized how incredibly ignorant I am about Judaism.

I say this with some dismay because when I was a little tyke, I lived in a predominantly Jewish area on Long Island, NY, so many of my elementary school classmates were Jewish.

One of my first memories of Judaism was that most of my classmates got to miss school on the High Holy Days while three or four of us attended class and got to do “independent study”. Needless to say, I was resentful.

Then came Hannukah and the eight days of presents my friends would show up with at school. With eight kids in my family, I was lucky to get one….ON Christmas day.

So here I am, some 30-40 years later realizing that I’ve never really taken the time to learn about Judaism. Heck, I’ve barely tried to learn about Christianity, so I guess that’s not saying much. But as I peeked around on the Google site, I realized I really know BUPKIS about anything Hebrew!

I do know that it is bad form for a non-Jew to display a menorah during the holidays (those other days around the Christian celebration of You-Know-Who’s birth), but I am baffled about how we are supposed to acknowledge (or not) the High Holy Days.

So if I say that this is my Day of Atonement to my Jewish friends for not having taken the time to understand the significance of this day to them, I hope I am not stepping on any toes.

Shalom, and have an easy fast….

Marion Loguidice

“Transcendental girl” (pictured at left) hasn’t had much to say lately. I guess it’s time to call her out again…..

I got “friended” on Facebook the other day by a woman who took advantage of our mutual connection to Caroline Myss as a way to promote her music. At first I thought, how brazen of her to use this as a means of self-promotion, but then I thought, how clever! And I realized that I, in fact, have done the same thing in the past.

Marion Loguidice wrote in her message that Caroline had given her the push she needed to get out there and share herself and her music with the world. I had once received a similar shove , so I could appreciate the significance and it gave me a different sense of Marion’s motivations.

So without further ado, check out this gorgeous bit of singing and songwriting. Congratulations, Marion, and I wish you the best of success in sharing your soul with the world!

Do I Suck at Being an American or Am I Just Like Everyone Else?

I’m thinking about having a Tea Party. Not the kind that has become so popular lately, where rage-filled people gather to protest and metaphorically “throw the tea overboard” like the days of old in Boston Harbor….

I’m talking about a real tea party with little china cups, tea of all varieties, and a group of people from all walks of American life simply sitting down on comfortable chairs and pillows and talking about our various perceptions of what’s going on and trying to find our connections again.

My psyche feels overwhelmed by the hostility in our country. Even if not expressed openly, it feels like it’s hiding just below the surface ready to burst open like a pus-filled infection. Sorry for the gross simile, but it seems to be getting worse with each passing day and our health care system has mysteriously mutated into this psychic maze that we can’t seem find our way through to get an antibiotic to treat it. It feels like a self-induced anxiety nightmare.

And I have no idea where I stand. Am I alone in feeling this?

An old friend and I had a slightly heated exchange over an ostensibly patriotic email she sent a while back that just rubbed me the wrong way. The most difficult part for me was that I didn’t disagree with the intent, but rather, the presentation. Basically, “if you’re not with us, you’re against us…” It made patriotism a partisan concept.

My friend responded, telling me that she grew up with strong work values, and though she is not a church-goer, she was raised with “Christian” principles. I already knew this about her, yet these days the rhetoric that goes along with such admirable ethics clangs like a gong in my brain and drowns out what I know to be good and pure and gracious about my fellow countrypeople.

This morning when I received my application to become a part of the:

DISADVANTAGED MINORITY/DISADVANTAGED WOMEN
BUSINESS ENTERPRISE PROGRAM

I found myself in a different consciousness: that of my more conservative self.

This program would qualify me to bid on mural painting jobs within the local school system but with an unfair advantage. Even though I am only one person (sometimes two, if Nancy helps) I qualify as a woman-owned business and that gives me minority status.

WHAT?? How does the fact that I am a woman put me at a disadvantage as an artist? Why should anything but my merits count toward my qualifications? Why don’t you look at my portfolio and see what I’ve done and THEN decide whether you want to give me the job or not instead of letting me cut in line?

But then, doesn’t that logic put me in line with the liberal feminists? Equal pay for equal work?

And then there’s the paperwork. In order for me to doodle on the walls of an elementary school hallway, I must provide reams of bureaucratic information in order for the government to investigate whether I am worthy.

Doesn’t that put me in line with the conservatives who want less government interference?

I am reminded of the time I walked into my local bank in Vermont where I’d been personally depositing my paychecks every week for years. I enjoyed going in and chatting up the tellers on a Friday afternoon. They had just built a big new bank building and decided they now needed to start checking IDs every time someone came in to make a transaction. Tellers who’d waited on me forever suddenly claimed not to recognize me when I failed to produce my license, which I rarely carried with me. I was LIVID and fired off a 3-page letter to the bank president.

Maybe that’s what’s going on here. Maybe, like me, people are starting to feel cut off from a society that once recognized them, that slapped them on the back and gave a big handshake when they showed up in the bank lobby to contribute to the local lending institution so their neighbors could build their lives and find reason to get up each day in order to honor their debts. A small town where everybody knew who the plumber was, the veterinarian, the pharmacist… They didn’t really know anybody’s background and didn’t really care. They simply trusted each other’s integrity.

That’s why I’m having a tea party. The world has become too big and unmanageable for my mind to comprehend. I need to reconnect with the strong values I know to be so deeply held by my friends and neighbors.

Mostly, I need to rediscover my own. Chamomile, anyone?

Living Outside of the Box

I sometimes wonder how I have all that I do.

I’ve done nothing to deserve it, little to earn it, yet I am wealthy beyond my wildest dreams and always have been.

And I dare to wonder why…. I ought to have my ass kicked by the powers that be, in the same way that my dad used to glare at me when I asked a question that pushed a button….”Don’t ever ask me that!”

I live a charmed life. I still haven’t quite taken advantage of my calling (assuming that I’ve found it) yet I have a considerable roof over my head, friends and family who profess to love me, money enough in the bank to take care of my few wants and needs, and I still have the audacity to ask why.

When I was a kid, I used to joke that I wanted to be a bag lady someday. That was a euphemism at the time to describe someone who spent her days on a park bench surrounded by pigeons and occasionally covered with newspapers or a big box when the temperature dropped. She filled her days by watching the comings and goings of passersby, muttering to herself just enough to keep people at a distance, but taking in all that happens in her world.

I have yet to sleep on a park bench, but I do spend my days watching the comings and goings of those around me. I’ve slept on hay bales in a barn and even lived out of my car a couple of times. These days, I have a choice of several beds and couches, plus a screened-in lanai where I could lie comfortably awake and listen to the chorus of frogs in the pond out in back if I chose, free from bugs and snakes and squirrels. It seems someone has intervened on my behalf…

But really, I have a freakishly comfortable life. I even have health insurance and a 3-car garage — with 3 cars in it.

Even so, I still get to wondering why I’m so lucky when others seem not to be. All my life I’ve been told that only hard work will get you to the top. I don’t feel like I’ve worked terribly hard, yet it seems like I’ve already reached the top… Are my standards too low or is the top a relative place?

In hindsight I consider one of the best things that ever happened to me to be the circumstances that required my family to relocate to New Hampshire from wealthy suburban Long Island when I was a kid.

I would never have chosen for my father to have a nearly life-ending heart attack, nor would I have wanted to leave behind my budding career as a concert cellist, nor my future as the first female professional baseball player. Nothing that happened to me at age 11-ish was on my list of what I wanted when I grew up.

Instead, we moved to a farm, and in addition to being necessary, barn cleaning became a form of entertainment for me. My olfactory system still holds as its #1 most disgusting smell the odor of an indoor pig sty in the several weeks after a new litter of piglets was birthed. I scooped and scraped and sprayed and sawdusted the 8′ by 8′ space that housed the swine, then the calves, then whatever group of young the farm produced that would eventually provide our sustenance. I’ve never worked harder in my life at providing for my survival.

I think that’s where it happened. I think that’s where my standards and expectations were formed: Any of us could lose everything in a misplaced heartbeat, and any day that wasn’t “shin-deep-in-shit” had to be pretty good.

Without my years in New Hampshire I wouldn’t have learned the sense of self-reliance I have now. I’m definitely not street-smart — more like, dirt-road-smart — but I could feed myself from the earth if I had to. I’d be willing to give up what I have for the sake of someone who has less, knowing that they will find a reason to carry on till the day when they can repay the favor. I can sleep on any surface, especially after a long day of providing for myself.

So, the ease of my life today, while it may seem “comfortable” to some, solidly middle-class, to me is palatial. I’d lived in nice houses in my early years, usually provided by the church in lieu of cash for my dad’s pay, but I shared them with many, many family members.

The house I live in now, though fairly modest by current Florida standards, is so much more than the park bench I’d imagined, and far roomier than the refrigerator box I thought would be sufficient. Ten people could probably share this home comfortably, safe from the world outside, yet it houses only two. ONLY two…

I have it all…. so why do I feel like my spirit is still living “inside of the box”?

The Day I Wore Black

That morning I dressed in black jeans and a black long-sleeved top.

I’d never worn that combination to work before and I felt strangely self-conscious sitting there at our morning meeting at Omega Optical in Brattleboro, VT. I joked that I felt like I’d dressed as though I’d come to church for a funeral. The fact that we were meeting up in the founder/owner’s “office” was stranger still, since we’d never done that before either. The view from up there was quite something.

The founder’s office: Picture a man with a flowing white beard, more of a mad scientist than a God-like figure, perched up in the balcony of an old stone church overlooking a pewless sanctuary, now divided up into cubicles with computer monitors that glowed in the darkness. Bright stained glass windows depicting the saints scattered a spectrum of color throughout the space and dark dusty wood made this sort of a schizophrenic holy place. The odd dichotomy of a lunch room on the altar with a microwave sitting on the pulpit created an endlessly fascinating cross-section of religion and science.

That was where I worked with a group of scientists and engineers creating optical filters for use in microscopes and telescopes. We’d made it possible to discover the human genome sequence as well as correct the defective mirror in the Hubble Space Telescope. No matter how scientific our work was, there never seemed to be a clear separation from God in this place.

But on this Tuesday morning in 2001, the saints in the windows tore at their colorful garments in agony and their eyes went wide in horror.

“Oh… my…. GOD!!!!” someone yelled from down below. The sound rang through the church as we all peered over the edge of the balcony to see what was going on.

“The World Trade Center has been hit by a plane!” The voice was then followed by a news report on someone’s desk radio. Complete stillness clutched the sanctuary.

My head felt as though it were melting as my brain went cold and radiated outward. Ice water pumped in my veins. My first thought was: my sister, Cheryl, works just 12 blocks from there !

We began to move downstairs, retreating to our respective stations to try to find out what was happening. The silence had been broken and now there was a steady din of chatter vibrating throughout the building.

I got on the phone and immediately dialed Cheryl. The ice in my veins began to thaw when I heard her voice.

“Everything’s okay. We’re trying to figure out what happened. You can see the building from our conference room so I’ll call you back if I find anything out.”

I was so relieved. I sat back in my chair and called my partner. “Did you hear?” I asked her.

Just then, another cry went up in the room. “Noooo!!!!” a woman’s voice screamed. “They’ve hit the other tower too!”

I dialed Cheryl’s number again. No answer this time! I kept dialing. I tried her cell phone, left a message. My skin felt clammy. My heart pounded.

My partner called back. “They’ve crashed into the Pentagon — we’re under attack! And I heard something about the Hoover Dam, too!” Hysteria had begun to take over the Internet and airwaves.

I tried Cheryl again. This time I got her on her cell. “They’re evacuating us,” she said. “I have to leave. I’ll call you later.” I looked up at the stained glass window beside my desk. GOD! Where ARE you???

The only calls anyone made that day were to loved ones. Our overseas clients in Germany, Australia, and Japan emailed us and asked if we were okay. The world suddenly felt very small.

Our lives changed forever that day. What had been a simple and idyllic little Vermont town was instantly catapulted into a reality that others all over the world have experienced over and over again.

But our experience didn’t compare to what was going on in New York and Washington. Even when a small plane buzzed the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant that night after all planes had been officially grounded and two fighter jets screeched over our house from Burlington in pursuit, we could not imagine the feeling of those whose friends and neighbors were under immediate attack.

I finally got a call from Cheryl. She had walked 70 blocks with a mass of others who were migrating uptown, away from the financial district. Her building on Wall Street had been unaffected, but the dust from the collapse of the building had traveled all the way over there. She arrived at her youngest son’s school and rode the rest of the way up to 215th street with him on the bus, worrying about her other two sons, one of whom was at school all the way over in Brooklyn and the other in the Bronx. Her husband left from his job in midtown and they all eventually reunited at home, hours into the night.

It’s now eight years later and like so many others who experienced the horrors of 9/11 directly, Cheryl has moved her family out of the city and taken a job farther uptown. A honeymoon period of collective mourning brought our country together for a while after the event, as people from all corners of the globe expressed their sympathy. Daily, weekly, those who had lost loved ones buried them, and impromptu memorials popped up everywhere. We were grieving together for our friends and co-workers, but mostly for the loss of innocence our country had so long taken for granted. Our nation was no longer a “child”.

But compassion can be fleeting and peace, tenuous. The response to such an event had the potential to draw us together for mutual empowerment, but we humans aren’t always so virtuous in the face of disaster. When the tears were dried, our global humiliation inspired revenge, a payback we are still paying for.

I haven’t worn all black since that day, not even for a funeral. A part of me feels that I unwittingly added to a collective consciousness that inspired the events of September 11, 2001 and I don’t ever want to take part in that again.

From now on, if not literally on my body, I will always try to wear white in my mind.

What Color Shoes Are You Wearing?

AGAIN ???

I got another one of those bloody email “just for fun” questionnaires today and like a mindless idiot I filled it out AGAIN!!!

What’s wrong with me???

The most ridiculous part is that it’s usually between the same group of people whose ice cream preferences I am now MORE than well aware of !

What I want to know is, why do people always answer these questions so literally? I use these surveys to jiggle my friends’ giggle reflexes by answering in as absurd a way as possible. Today’s responses were as follows:

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?	Nope, other than my middle name, Christine, in tribute to Jesus Christ, lord and savior of all the universe and galaxies beyond including Alpha Centauri.
2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?	BAH! Last Tuesday night after Bunco. I had such a wonderful time with all of you that it just makes my heart melt. (See question about “sarcasm” below)
3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?	Only when it’s on the bathroom wall. Michell, I especially like what I wrote about you at Chili’s in stall #3 on the left.
4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?	Sauteed cat lips
5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?	Not yet. Not my fault. Nancy is sterile. Too many years of wearing tighty whities…
6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?	Are you asking if I’m schizophrenic? Or are you asking my friend here?
7. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT?	No comment
8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS	Not after yelling at Jack last night
9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?	Only once. Without a cord. I believe in unassisted suicide.
10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?	Any kind whose texture reminds me of chicken feed. Excellent fiber. Provided there’s a bathroom nearby.
11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?	I don’t wear shoes with laces. I was absent that day in kindergarten. I am shoe-tying illiterate but was afraid to admit it. Thank goodness for slip-ons. They’ve allowed me to hide my disability.
12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG?	Please discuss amongst yourselves.
13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?	Anything Nancy doesn’t like (which is, like, any flavor but vanilla) And since I refuse to buy vanilla, I usually get to eat all the ice cream!
14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?	How they look at my filthy clothes and unshaven legs. I need to hang out with more blind people.
BLACK OR PINK?	Pink. Black often implies necrosis, depending on what we’re talking about.
16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?	Let me get back to you on that. There are simply too many options to make a choice right now. Maybe I’ll do a poll of my multiple personalities and see what they think.
17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?	George Washington
18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU?	God, no!
19. WHAT COLOR SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?	Pink (feet). They are not yet necrotic.
20. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?	Salmon & rice left over from Michell’s (she doesn’t know it yet — she’s planning to have it for lunch).
21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?	Murphy farting and snoring. It’s great having an older dog.
22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?	All of ‘em, mashed up, which I guess would actually end up being black.
23. FAVORITE SMELLS?	See # 21.
24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?	Miss Tina. In case anyone is wondering, we have actually solved all the problems of the world, but nobody ever seems to believe us.
25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?	Define “like”.
26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?	The crying little kid across the street being chased by Murphy. Go Murph!
27. HAIR COLOR?	I’m not telling. And I’m not showing either so don’t ask. I dye that part too.
28. FAVORITE PET?	Nancy
29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?	Once, about 20 years ago. I think they might still be in there.
30. FAVORITE FOOD?	Whatever leftovers Michell has in her fridge
31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?	Happy movies with scary endings.
32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?	“Reality Bites and So Does My Dog”. It’s my own screenplay inspired by my neighbors across the street — I previewed it on my computer.
33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?	Pale pink. Not actually wearing a shirt.
34. SUMMER OR WINTER?	Summer. Don’t have to wear clothes. Except for filthy ones if necessary.
35. HUGS OR KISSES?	Depends. Who are we talking about here?
36. FAVORITE DESSERT?	Ice cream that Nancy doesn’t like.
37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?	The police
38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND	Child protective services
39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?	Reading? See question #11. That was the same day they taught reading. I barfed up apples & milk on my buckle-up shoes so they sent me home. I think I should write a story about that.
40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?	Let me check my underwear. Hopefully nothing. I should be done by now, thanks to my recent D&C.
41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?	“Mr. Obama Goes To Washington”, followed by the sequel: “Mr. Obama Gets His Ass Kicked By Conservative Third-Graders”
42. FAVORITE SOUND?	Jack chewing asphalt.
43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?	Beatles being crushed by Rolling Stones. That would sound cool — playing both simultaneously — backwards. You could probably hear Paul McCartney saying “I… buried… Mick”
44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME???	Alpha Centauri. See question #1. That’s how I know about J.C. I’m thinking about becoming an evangelist in outer space if things keep getting any creepier here on Earth. There’s gotta be hope somewhere in the universe…
45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?	Nothing I can discuss on a public forum. I don’t want to set off any alarms with the spiderbots.
46. DO YOU BELIEVE IN ANGELS?	Only Ahmy….
47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK?	Nobody’s. If I hear back from anyone, it will probably be at my front door by someone bearing handcuffs or a straitjacket.

I mean no offense to the senders of these ludicrous quizzes, but I’m sure I’ll get another one soon enough and I’ll be impelled and inspired to answer at least as obnoxiously.

I hope it wasn’t a matter of life or death for any of them to know what color my shoes really are….