finally…the results of several research projects are in and scientists have found that the use of positive mantras, phrases and thinking (such as ‘I am good’ etc) makes the majority of people feel worse than before.
Thank god.
It’s about time someone spelled that out in black and white.
The only people who benefit from positive thinking are those that are already positive about themselves. Repeating a phrase such as “I am a good person” over and over when you do not feel like you are a good person does nothing but confirm and re-inforce the contradiction deep within your emotional being and essentially destroys you. Paralyzes your ability to act on change because you have amplified the very evidence of your unworth (which is the contrast – whether it be founded in reality or not).
Now, repeat that phrase 20 times a day and you have driven your self esteem into the ground.
It’s one of the reasons that I have been a long time complainer about such ridiculous proposals as “the secret”. All that crap is, as Sweeney Todd would say, is a bit of piss in a bottle with some food coloring. People buy it because we want, when we feel bad, to feel better…immediately. Feeling bad, emotionally or physically is the great “reverter’ in life – no matter where we are or how far we have come, pain brings out the desire of a child to have something made “all better”.
In an instant. Magically.
The majority of self-help plays on this. Offering be-all-and-end-all solutions to a process (life) that has no solution because it is an individual and unique experience.
One of the best things I read last night was from “Chang and Eng” and it was a description of the effect of drinking on someone’s life. That in seeking escape from pain they lose the ability to learn from grief and suffering. Too often we lose sight of the fact that escapism is not restricted to alcohol and drugs. It comes in jobs, relationships, sports, hobbies, books, movies, music…anything we use beyond momentary relief and depend upon to change how we feel also trains us to never experience what we feel and we remain emotionally stunted.
At the root of all this is the demand that has arisen that life be “beautiful and pleasant”. Suffering and grief are restricted to small moments – an “important death” or a random tragedy but even then, time limits are assigned and we try to rush ourselves through suffering as if it were an imposition rather than just one of the many flowers of life.
The human brain is a remarkable thing, we can temporarily convince ourselves of just about anything – from the brilliance of an idiot decision to the depths of a relationship where none exists, to even believing that we are “getting” better when all we are really doing is experiencing things (briefly) in a new package. But eventually, and this is a gift, the deception of the mind cannot last under the weight of reality. Fad diets fail, self help trends don’t fix the core ache, relationships are revealed to be empty rather than full and we seek the next thing.
And seek it fast.
Crying out “god save me from the pain!”
Unless we learn to become able to breathe and being able to breathe to sit through our pain and discover that it ends on its own.
Life is…many things.
In the ghazal the terrible pain of loss and separation is also a part, a chorus of what is a recognition of the depth of the love. For in love lies one of the greatest griefs of all that comes about with no tragedy, no loss, no break up or illness.
It is a grief that will come and sit down beside you on the bench some sunny day as you bask in the beauty of life and that grief is the acknowledgement that all life passes and the love you feel for someone will someday have to hold their passing or they, yours..
In life, all things are balanced.
All things give and take.
All things are in constant change and flux.
The constancy comes from our willingness to be present.
And to quote Chang and Eng again…
“the good fisherman is the one who is aware of constant change and does what needs to be done in order to diminish the influence of fate…”
I have…one nostril today…so life is good…maybe tomorrow I will be able to breathe through two.
The ghazal is an ancient form of poetry that while originally found in the mystical poets of Persia, has crossed cultural and geographic boundaries to become a form of poem that is utilize by many.
A minimum of five couplets that maintain the same meter and abide by a strict form of endings and refrains…the purpose of the ghazal is to speak of loss of love, or separation, while celebrating the love that still remains.
They are odd things to read.
Often, the poet’s name is mentioned within the ghazal in the last line. Hafiz is a fine example of that, his poems often end with “Hafiz knows.”
The ghazal is the expression of the complexity of love and life. That within pain there is beauty, within loss there is always life. That love transcends the moments of separation.
I feel so god damn ill.
But…given enough caffeine, I am barely functional.
What would it be like to live ones life like a ghazal?
To speak in rhythmic cadence of the realities of the heart and at the end, to place your own name among the words so that you own them, belong with them and are recognized within them.
When I wrote about Nadja Anjuman that was my first exposure to the ghazal (or so I thought), only later, in exploring the history of the form have I discovered that I have been drawn to it increasingly over the years. Hafiz, Rumi, Anjuman – all the Persians and Middle Eastern poems that draw me because they are not simple laments about life, but contain the bittersweet reality of what it means to live. In all things we lose, in all things we gain. In all things there is a cycle of life – from birth to death, and in between – the life expands and intertwines with what is around it and becomes – greater than its own limited existence.
Had I a brain that was not drowning in my sinuses, I would be starting some of the work I have planned which revolves heavily around learning the form of the ghazal.
As it is…I am steeped in fever and caffeine and I watch the play of my thoughts like they were a movie on someone else’s screen.
And all I keep thinking is…how is it I have never noticed before that the Mad Kitten is so very soft?
I am so sick it is unbelievable, I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Sweats and just trying to stay awake.
But one of the things I wanted to comment on so I do not lose the train of thought that is coming from some of the comments are:
not all laws are just, not all laws are made for the good of the community
and morality and ethics (I’ll delve into the definition of those that I use since there is an absolute spectrum of definition for their terms) do not exist as single sets of rules or ideas, but like reality – there are three or four of them that build upon each other.
But the morality we choose to govern our personal life with effects the ethical actions and decisions we perform in regards to our own lives. This then must be adjust as we increase the circle of lives in which we are interacting.
A community’s morals and the basis for their ethical laws are merely a broad whitewash treatment of the very specific and specialized morals and ethics of the individual.
However…given that few laws are ethical and just (and most are reactionary and politically formed) where does the requirement come into play that one must weigh ones morals and ethics before breaking (or enforcing a law)?
Because a law…no matter how injust or inappropriate is most often an attempt at serving the survival of the community. One must weigh if one’s minority individualism, in that moment, is worth more than ones relationship to the common. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. One must also weigh the implications of individual action against a combined effort.
Laws can be very distracting. Laws are a means to provide morality and ethics through negative modeling and that, is rarely successful. The more you strive to be law abiding the more you model your life through what it is not and the further you get from living a life that is generated from a desire to follow a moral and ethical code. The reward of a moral and ethical life is always the assurance that one is “good” (and take that as you may). One chooses morals and ethics because one has become able to make a judgment that divides the world (on at least some levels) into the concepts of good and bad.
I think the example given was “to steal a car because you want it is wrong but to take it inorder to drive to a hospital to save a life makes it right” misses the fundamental flaw in that sequence.
It assumes a kind of solitary presence in the world in which the life and choices of the individual is the be all and end all in making decisions.
If I steal food because I am hungry, I am right in having fed myself or am I wrong in that I have taken food from someone else that is now going hungry?
The issue, for me, is not so much the right or wrong of these choices but the lack of awareness of the interconnectedness of our lives. Why am I hungry if my neighbor knows I am hungry and has food they can share? Why am I having to steal a car and drive myself to a hospital and not considering asking a neighbor for help?
oh my god…I am just a pool of sweat..its like torture…here it is so cool and rainy at last and I am just…melting in a fever
You never really appreciate how much the individual parts of your body do for you until one of them is working overtime to either make you work or recover. I am far too aware of my nose and the fact that it is trying to process and adjust everything here and I am left stumbling around barely able to move or think.
And in the middle of the night, one of my friends got up and started translating all the portugese on the bottles of cold medicine to see if we could find something to help me sleep. And we did, thank god.
And I got up, went outside with my coffee and seagulls were flying overhead crying.
How do you decide when a law or rule is so ridiculous, or just wrong that it is appropriate to ignore or break it? Like with Ling and Lee and the laws of a dictatorship, or even in America with all its various laws that promote discrimination and are not placed in a position to be challenged until enough people choose to willfully break it – how do you decide to break a law?
And what is the difference between choosing to break a law because it is unjust and choosing to break a law because you just simply want something (like stealing a car)? While the answer to that may seem easy, one is unjust and one is not, who’s morals are we using to judge the just/unjust properties of a law.
The difficulty with law is that it must somehow bridge several different sets of cultural morals. Ideally, the larger culture or community has an “umbrella” set of morals to provide for governing but there will always be a point at which either the law offends or, the law was created through a political push of a minority.
But what right do we have to decide that a certain law is “not for us?’
It is a very thin line between being revolutionary and being a criminal. Yet, as most of us know, working to change something from within its existing structure is not very effective at all. Yet trying to change something from completely outside of its structure creates such a conflict that things can quickly become either/or.
In the house where I am staying there is an enormous cat named “DoDo”. He was rescued and has never quite adapted. He must weigh 30 pounds and is the size of a small pig. He will only let you pet him if you sit in a certain chair. Who is sitting in the chair does not matter to him but that you are sitting in the “petting chair.”
Oddly enough, he let’s the mad kitten roam around at will except for in the living room, which he protects as his own. One of my jobs while I am staying here is to try and make DoDo more…normal.
Anyway…there are no easy answers in all this, the only point that is hard and fast is that you cannot willfully choose to break a law without having a clear understanding of your own moral code. To break a law without a moral code makes one a criminal and deviant. To choose to break a law because of its injustice as defined by your moral code can make you revolutionary or simply misguided, but it gives to your actions a framework that can be understood, fought or supported.
But the caveat is that in clearly understanding your moral code and choosing to break a law because of it means you also have the understanding that you are performing a criminal act and bear the responsibility for the punishment for it. You moral code, your ethics demand that not obeying this injust law is worth the suffering because you will suffer with the freedom of consciousness and choice. Your choice may reveal the law for what it is and create change. Your choice may also change nothing (except the freedom of your circumstances).
It is one of the reasons that riots et al rarely change anything. Riots tend to emerge as emotional waves in response to something, a simple cry of “it’s wrong” but with no balance of understanding of “what is right” to temper the action.
But…I would say, randomly choosing to break laws as a “statement” doesn’t work because it sets you up as an enemy of the people, of comfort and normalacy. Laws are a lot like…beer. In the right hands they do little harm, but in the wrong ones they become a symptom of a much more insidious disease, the way that an alcoholic drinks beer to mask what is driving that kind of escapist behavior, sometimes we become obsessed with what our laws do or do not do as an avoidance tactic to not see what the real depth of the problem is. Remember, a law is black and white, it is created to try and impose surety and expectation and that is not really how life goes and that is why laws are continuously challenged.
Where the hell did all this come from? Oy, portuge cough syrup…
so…I am sort of rolling with the punches here, although they are not so much punches but a gentle pushing in directions and most of it seems to be centering on where I am going to live. I have an opportunity that the more I think about it, the more appealing it is becoming to gain a little bit larger space than I originally imagined and in doing so, be able to unravel a few of my larger projects and just…dive…into it all.
It makes me feel a little heady…dizzy…or maybe that is the unbelievable slow and painful combo jet lag/altitude sickness I am suffering from .
But we will see, I will go look at it by the end of the week. And I landed home and have been promptly swamped by the end of the month of my bread and butter and they have just extended all their deadlines so it places me in this odd position. I sit and work. Constantly. Roaming around with my little computer and doing my thing and letting things develop rather than my normal habit of launching myself in new places.
And I might actually be sticking my head out the door and featuring here. I am not sure…I have a certain someone who seems to connect me with these things and it is kindof nice. It is definitely nice to have opportunities handed to you.
But swear to god I feel like I am on Mars, my head is so whacked from dropping down to 500 feet above sea level and it being humid.
The mad kitten has discovered the closet full of shoes where I am staying and has become a Buddhist.
I was missing her (since we are usually joined at the hip) and she made an appearance and loved on me, treated me like a piece of furniture and went back to her valley of soles and that was good enough for me.
I am actually contemplating leaving my little retreat tomorrow and venturing out into the city. Going to the gym or something, but it is funny how content I am to just be here.
It feels so right.
So write.
The car calls, baby needs her breathing tubes attached now that we are back down to earth. Unfortunately, the driveway is kindof long and I am pulled all the way in and wonder if half of my contentedness is coming from avoidance of pushing her all the damn way out of the driveway and half is coming from being home.
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” - Soren Kierkegaard
I really have to get back to crossposting and twittering, I have been in deep recovery from the trip and then got absolutely slammed with my end of the month bread and butter. But, to my shock and surprise and according to a logic that obviously I do not participate in, the Mad Kitten has emerged from her room as if there was nothing odd at all about where we are and no memory of the past three days of shaking and hiding. Go figure. She is back to parading all over me like I am some kind of piece of furniture conveniently placed so she may reach things.
Its strange how, even if you know better, there are certain milestones in life that as you pass them you realize that in the eyes of the culture at large - you have become less than. Once you are past 30, you are now old and fat. Or at least, your life needs to be dedicated to the avoidance of being old and fat. And while that may be a relatively simple thing to do physically (eat right and exercise, no matter how you try to avoid it – that is the way it is done) not much is mentioned about what to do to avoid becoming mentally and emotionally “old and fat”. And by that I mean, perceiving oneself as worthless in the eyes of the world for no other reason then your age and appearance.
Growing older is an interesting thing. There are elements of it that are wonderful, but tied to it all is the unavoidable reality that as your body ages it changes. You can (as is highly promoted) seek ways to prolong youth, but what is not acknowledged is that these are nothing more than window dressings. I could have all the plastic surgery in the world that I want so I may appear 30 when I am 60 but it will not change the fact that unlike when I was 30, now that I am 60 I cannot eat green peppers because they give me gas.
The pop culture of youth is so prevalent that even if you live a life devoid of its influence you cannot escape it.
I know people who spend more time and money investing in things that promise to at least delay aging that they miss any chance of growing into their age. Where one chooses to put one’s focus in developing oneself shows more and more the older one gets. The sheer ignorance of aging is astounding to me. The black and white of either “youth is everything” or “purple hats” is pretty much the spectrum we are allowed in western culture.
But aging is such a complicated process.
I also know people that having spent all that time and money trying to avoid aging inevitably reach the point in which the fact that they have aged slams up against them and the emotional devastation is just heartbreaking to watch. Heartbreaking and yet, you want to smack ‘em on the side of the head and go “whats a matta with you? What the hell did you think was going on?” On the flip side, I know people who age before their time. Where at 35 they embrace that they are no longer part of the youth culture and they begin to shuffle, by 40 they begin to define their lives by what they perceive they cannot do.
And in all of this, defining all of this, the expression of all of this – is our bodies. Our reflections of ourselves and also our ability to see and be seen by others on a purely physical level.
And the strange thing is, for something so very real and very unavoidable, I think there are very few people who are capable of perceiving their bodies or others in their reality. Our vision is distorted by our desires and fears and cultural/social expectations. We see immensely fat thighs were there is muscle, pendulous stomachs where there is just a little late day bloating, faces brutalized by outbreak when there is a little zit the size of a pin. Worse still, we cannot even see another person. We deem people fat who are at the right bodyweight, old who simply choose not to be trendy and then we assign perceptions of intelligence to them based on appearance. We are unwilling to explore the potential of emotional bonds with people we do not deem attractive (and yet tout our desire to get to know people).
It is amazing how body dysmorphia is so prevalent.
But it is also a kind of age dysmorphia. I think if I hear either “I am 44 years old but I don’t act my age” or “I am 50 years young” I will puke. Why is it so important and such a selling point to try and deny our experience in life. And, as well, it is truly revelatory at how we treat (and are trained) to treat ourselves as commodities. Our worth is defined only by our eventual acceptance by another, and if we are in a projecting mode, we will provide the devastation of rejection of crowds in the privacy of our own rooms and literally destroy our self esteem before we even open the door.
There is nothing in our modern culture that teaches us how to age and how to accept our bodies. Everything is in extremes. Either we are told to absolutely accept our bodies and in accepting them chose to become ignorant and unmindful of our bodies (by thinking their condition unimportant); or, that we must pursue an unrealistic ideal promoted by images of bodies that are computer generated and unattainable; or we take a reactive stance to the culture of youth by declaring being overweight perfectly fine and choosing to ignore how dangerous it is to one’s health (in the same way that the culture of youth ignores the harm of being too thin).
Bodies are tools and symbols. Our bodies are all we really have. They are our original houses and homes for everything inside of us. We dress them up, surround them with things in an effort to control and shape ourselves and it will always come back to the body you have holds who you are. And unless you are willing and able to recognize the reality of your body and to treat it as a home, to take care of it, to choose not to slap new paint on it to cover needed repairs – you place yourself at risk of living a fantasy that inevitably will explode in your face, even if only in the final awareness of your mortality that leaves you painfully aware of the things you have chosen not to do that leave your life “undone” and “unfulfilled”.
My mind wanders back to “Daisy of Love” and the equating of physical attraction with emotional connection. Jesus…when are people going to get that the two don’t go hand in hand? If they do…wonderful, but come on….
ok…back to the bread and butter. I woke up this morning and full altitude adjustment has hit me and it is just…too disgusting to describe
I opened up the paper this morning (in the cool and rain which felt like a blessing) and started laughing as I read how the very same voices that trashed Michael Jackson as trying to deny his race as a black man are now lauding him and calling for a celebration of “this great and talented black man.” Do people think that the rest of us forget so quickly?
And I am not quite up to cross-posting yet, but Heathermoon (of course and always) brought up a really good thread about how Body Dysmorphia played into all this. Not just the obvious involvement in Mr. Jackson’s life, but in our own – individually and culturally.
We suffer from a cultural inability to accept ourselves on any level with diving into extremes. We either go to mortification in which we declare that nothing matters and the only way to live is without any recognition of the importance of our health or environments; or we demand that such a recognition of one or the other take precedence over all else.
Body Dysmorphia is not just about the inability to see your body in its reality (seeing oneself as too fat, too thin, out of shape when you are not) but it is also an emotional inability to accept the reality of your body as being integral to your presence.
We place upon our body, often, the same unrealistic demands that we place on love and money. That having it “a certain way” is proof and protection against pain and uncertainty.
It is why aging is so unpopular. When you become aware of the process of aging and how it changes your body, you become aware of the reality of your life and of your mortality. You can no longer preserve the illusion of eternal youth and when you are moved into that awareness one of to things happen – either you become even more self-absorbed – defining life be your imminent demise (and adopting the “wisdom of age” as a defense), or you begin to flower in your awareness that life goes on beyond your lifespan and yet you are an integral part of the future.
But again, we cycle back to the social/cultural/individual problem we have with perceiving the future. For one, the reality of the future is that it is not centered on us, on the individual. For two, the future cannot be known or predicted – it is rife with uncertainty and in a world where we are full of such dis-ease, uncertainty becomes truly frightening.
Because we are not comfortable in our own skins. Because it is rare that any of us begin to develop the ability to see ourselves in the present and in our reality, we seek comfort through surety in outside things. We strive to believe myths that youth and beauty, wealth and ownership will somehow protect and shield us from the potential pains in life. We seek to avoid vulnerability at the same time that we tout it as the goal.
Yet look closely at the kinds of “vulnerability” we promote. Sharing one’s feelings can easily become a wall to hide behind. As long as I am just reporting my feelings to you I never have to explore what it all means to me in the context of my life and experience. We think intimacy is reporting. Having conversations with phrases that are carefully chosen to convey a meaning without our ever having to discover what that meaning truly feels like and how it effects us and how we relate to the world.
It’s like…relationship patterns. It is not an easy thing to grow and change and become the kind of person who is capable of intimacy and vulnerability, but it can be done. However, if the action of it all is still rooted in picking the same damn type of person as before then what we are doing is insulating ourselves from having to be intimate and vulnerable by never learning how to pick someone who is also capable of doing it. We pick the old and then complain how rotten they are and laud ourselves for not putting up with that behavior any more when in actuality, while the person may not “be there”, it is not their fault really for treating us without intimacy or vulnerability or respect, it is ours for not also going through the learning process of discovering how to pick someone who just may be capably of truly being there.
Because if you have only just learned how to be capable of intimacy and vulnerability oneself, that is miles from knowing what it will be like to be in a relationship with someone who also knows how to do that. It is a scary thing because there are so many unknown qualities to it.
And our extremes become more subtly worded. “I will never do this.” “I do not want to do that.” “I will not accept this into my life.”
Extremes are only another form of self defense.
Like when we talked about Jane and Jim and boundaries, a part of intimacy is learning that there are several levels of boundaries and they are not static but their place develops as you begin to know the behaviors and boundaries of someone else.
Ugh…second pot of coffee already, I am almost caught up (that is such a lie), but I found my boxing gym and am going to go check it out today. I think I need something with a physical kind of expression and skill again to get me through my next round of projects which are just so complicated and intense, the unraveling of their process just gives me a headache.
I think I have spent the entire day eating and sleeping while trying to also get caught up with my work. The Mad Kitten is completely overwhelmed…grass is a novel idea and just the sights and sounds are too much. I carry her around for about 15 minutes and expose her to things and then put her back in her hidey hole and she just sleeps for hours as well.
We really pushed it on the trip out and I realize now that because of the heat I was also barely eating.
Her too.
I remember, way back when in my first year of college...actually no, before that, when I came up for the summer session at what was going to be my college that there was this woman, Juanita, an artist and she had built a kit car. And she loved that car and it was just the bizarrest thing. Half dune buggy, half race car, all 70s orange speckle flecked fiberglass. And the funny thing is…I have never forgotten Juanita and her car and now I get it.
Its funny the changes that have been going on in the world. Michael Jackson, who everyone was all too happy vilifying when he was alive, died suddenly and now the world is morning the loss of his tremendous talent and genius. I wonder what his life would have been like if there had been a little more focus on that and not his weirdness. I wonder how much of his weirdness came from his feeling completely isolated from normal human life. It is odd what we do to genius, we crave it, and then once it is found – we try to find a reason to make it less then; we put things on genius as if there is something in it that renders the person who bears it uniquely capable of withstanding the stress of judgment and examination and completely deny them the range of human needs and emotions. And then when genius is lost, we mourn it as if all along we were there being supportive.
It is hard to even say anything about the whole child molestation charges. Unfortunately, the way the system works, when you reach a certain level of fame it is preferable to settle out of court to keep something from becoming a rumour mill rather than pursue the legality of the charges. Our justice system, is not in the courts but in the newspapers. People who know this are more willing to settle to prevent giving the media food then to wait out the process of legal justice.
And Laura Ling and Euna Lee received a sentence of 12 years hard labor. Such a tragedy, and then, the evidence of their crossing over into North Korea was shown and it was all questionable except for the…rock. One of them had picked up a rock to commemorate the trip and that was so human and so believable. It does not justify a 12 year sentence, but it does kind of change the manner in which all this is approached. It is difficult because Ling and Lee have gone from two people unjustly imprisoned and accused, to two people who did exactly what they were accused of and are still, what we would interpret as unjustly imprisoned.
Says the country that puts drug addicts in prison for 10 + years. Are we not the bastion of temperate justice ourselves?
I still think they should be freed, hands down, but it must be done so in a way in which it acknowledges the fact that they willfully violated a countries borders. Whether or not I think that country is good or not, nobody has the right to just sort of run over rules and borders willy nilly just because they want to get something.
Its like “Daisy of Love”, that was the show I was watching in the motel room and was just shocked at the very clear portrayal of the social sense of entitlement and the confusion of sexual attraction with actual emotional connectedness.
I am rambling.
I am still tired but I need to stay up more and finish up my work.
There was only one moment yesterday when I almost gave into fanciful thinking, that the “gods” were taunting me and that was when I sat under an overpass at the edge of the George Washington Bridge in New York City looking at the toll booth a 100 yards away and realizing that having already driven 250 miles that morning that my Little Champ was not going to make sitting in line for 45 minutes. I had already come dangerously close to overheating trying it twice.
I felt like, the toll booth was the gate to home and here I was, unable to pass through.
Then I got a grip and realized I could take the Tappan Zee Bridge and took off.
Champ was…unhappy. The car is designed to either go fast over long distances or simple city driving but not really a combination of the two. The main part of its cooling design is movement and this I will change.
I ran out of gas twice (being a bit over excited about being so near), overheated the transmission twice. Screamed profanities out the window from Connecticut to the border of Rhode Island and the second I saw the sign for “Providence” I just started laughing and feeling tired all at the same time.
When we talk about home and a sense of home everyone jumps on the band wagon that “home is within yourself” and that is true. That is the first part of it. But ‘home’ is also made up of the people we love and the places that call us.
It is…a trinity. You must have all three and then all things sort of become this kind of…anchoring base that will hold you and ground you, let you withstand anything and also be able to extend yourself to others without losing your rootedness.
This city…from the first moment I saw it when I was 14 or 15 has spoken to me in ways I still don’t understand. It has held some of my best moments and my worst and it remains my source for inspiration and love.
We only get in trouble when we decide that geographical places will do something specific for us rather than give us strength to draw from. Like thinking a new job with a better paycheque will smooth out life’s pains; or that being involved in a relationship will make one feel less lonely. Jobs and places and relationships are all part of what we have to work with to make the life that we want. Its just so damn easy to get distracted and let one of them get blown out of proportion in our lives and take away from the importance that the others have.
I drove 2500 miles in under 6 days through 115 degree heat in a car 41 years old that hadn’t moved in 16 years and had only been up and running for 2 weeks. All my incidences on the road had more to do with my own errors and the car. The Mad Kitten has proven to be an incredible traveler and very adaptable. And I? In between Albuquerque and Providence, I have rediscovered my sense of humor and that…had gone missing for three years. Looking back on the intensity and drama of my New Mexico experience I cannot help but both shudder and be thankful. While I was there, I think I faced and got through so many things about myself that had been really standing in my way and yet, I kept doing them because there was always some little easy way out, or distraction to choose, so I never really had to deal with them.
And now…after all of that. I am here again. In my beloved city. And you know what? It feels like that dream I have been chasing…the one about the horse in the sky…that feeling, is in side me and it is good.
Last night, I rolled in and sat outside catching up and then…saw what looked like a cat, but it wasn’t a cat, it was a family of 6 skunks. The funny thing was, I had no idea that skunks move altogether, like this bizarre and undulating fur coat. Then there was the runt who was always getting left behind.
the electricity went out in the middle of the night, so no cool refreshing morning in the darkness I mentioned earlier
but…I was out of the heat wave and we flew along
100 200 then gas…and impressing the local mechanics who walked over to check little champ out and then, thank god (for ego’s sake) I got up the hill and around the corner out of sight when the car shit the bed again on a really busy highway.
I tried this, I tried that, this driver’s ed guy pulled (with his student in a panic) to offer to help..all and I said “yes, if you can tell me how high we are” and he said was “I do Fiats, isn’t that a Solex?” and we were off. Somehow he managed to ditch his student and came back and we both looked at the car and scratched our heads and admitted we had no idea what was going on.
Next thing I know…all my shit is once again on the side of the road…we are trying this and trying that and shooting the bull about the damn solex and alitude,
we try that and we try this we try this and we try that
and I unpack even more
in the meantime the Mad Kitten is hopping around madly, hissing at him and freaking out, so every third word I am turning around and plucking her off the highway and tossing her back in the car..
and then…he holds up the gas line and I go “oh no, I know what the problem is now.” and run around to the driver’s side and look and see where the mad kitten unplug the fuel pump just enough when we stopped and she was hopping about that the car wouldn’t go.
Repack. He says he’ll follow me to the highway and I gun the engine and go to take off and the car drags like its got bricks tied to it and I look in my mirror and see him killing himself laughing and I realize I left the chock in place. Jump out, move it (good to know that those little plastic things work) hop back in, hop back in and go around to the passenger door and open it to make sure MK is there, almost close the door on her, now she is hissing at me, jump in and race away.
God…no really, I don’t some strange fetish about piling all my belongings on the side of the highway.
I had a nasty dream featuring a horrible sound and then I woke up to the alarm in the motel going off.
Then I tried to turn on the light and nothing…I stumbled to the window and pulled back the curtains to reveal absolute darkness, the power is out, it has rained. Which is a good thing because it means it will not rain today.
And today, I am pushing home.
It’s a long way and I think I can make it by 7 or 8 oclock.
Thank god I have all my camping equipment because otherwise there would be no coffee this morning.
And yesterday was just hot and long and revealed that my battery was just no good anymore so that involved hours of hunting for an autozone. Then by the time I had it, the car was just too hot and misbehaving and it was late and I pulled in.
Strange…I am making coffee by light of the laptop with a propane camping stove. This odd mix of technology and old school.
And I noticed that I have driven the whole way without music. I put on the XM once and it just didn’t fit.
I drive and listen to the car or maybe I sing or rehearse.
Which is different, different because usually when I am leaving a place I am just obsessing over something and I lose the first few days to ruminating. I think the heat has helped to just keep my mind clear.
And I have just been amazed at the sheer adaptability of the Mad Kitten. Granted, she has been behaving like a bad dog in a Halloween costume though, hanging out on her leash and growling at people. It amazes me how fast she adapts to the motels or even the grassy spots I find to stop at.
And Michael Jackson, all the twitter started coming through while I was dealing with a bad battery.
What was funny was how deeply shocking the news was. I wouldn’t have expected that I would react like that to the news.
I got such a late start today, right in the middle of the “extreme” heat warning and by 3 o’clock, the cat and I were just dying. She hs gotten comfortable enough to bitch and climb on me when she gets so hot she can’t stand it.
I tried the old “pour water” over her trick and it did not help today at all. At all.
And then this idea struck, I went into the gas station and bought a bag of ice. Then I dumped out one of my Tupperware bins, filled the bottom with ice, put a towel over it then plopped her in. You should have seen the look on her face. She stayed right there for 20 mins then got out and started grooming herself and looking around.
So I adapted it as a car seat.
The Mad Kitten is using the latest in hot weather technology. Her travel carrier I a sleek and see through polymer that allows her to look out the windshield while retaining her feeling of safety. A layer of imported ice chips made from the purest Iceleandic Fjord forms the bottom layer of her carrier, she is cushioned from direct contact with the ice by a 300 count Egyptian cotton hand towel in a olive bronze that brings out her eyes.
Backing two sides of her polymer carrier are 6 inch thick pad of ice, sealed in the latest cooling transfer retaining bags that also serve to hold water in and let the cold out.
Covering half the box is an additional layer of pure ice. Combining sensations of cool and security, the Mad Kitten has discovered how much she like highway travel after all.
But granted…I got a few strange looks when I plopped the cat in the box and started covering her with ice.
I am hot and tired.
I swear to god I am staying at the bates motel.
My alternator is still not charging enough, but conveniently, the battery did not poop out till after I registered in the motel. So I simply pushed it into its parking space and hooked up the charger.
I managed to get about 2 hours sleep last night…the reality of having left sunk in and I was wired and tired and then…I turned on the TV and that was it…everything turned into “just 15 more minutes, oh no, after this then” ping ponging through hundreds of channels and finding nothing interesting and everything fascinating.
It reminded me of a hotel room I stayed in just before I left my former job and I turned on the TV and there was a documentary about my car.
Got some work done and then we were off…into heat that fluctuated between 105 and 115. The car kept on going like a champ, all my weirdness about heat shields sent me sailing passed over heated new cars in my 41 year old wonder.
It was the mad kitten and I who had problems. I swear, there is no shade in Kansas. I finally took to pulling into towns and roaming up and down the streets until I found a tree and would park under it, put the leash on the MK and sit her in the shade and grass.
I have learned quickly that what I have to do is pick her up, dip my fingers in water and wipe them all over her mouth so she licks the wet and then and only then will she make the connection to drink water.
At one point, I took a liter of water and just poured it all over her while she rolled on the ground. It made her feel so much better that she then jumped on my white car and covered the hood in muddy pawprints and cat hair. She is so adaptable it is amazing.
But I noticed that when I stopped for gas today, nobody much talked to me, they did in the morning but not as the day went on and I thought it was just the heat. Then, at some point I noticed that between getting dressed yesterday and driving today, the seat of my pant had disintegrated – I had been wearing a long shirt but took it off in the sun.
I tied the shirt around my waist and people started talking to me again.
I am so hot and fried. I have 200 more miles to go and I am out of the heat zone…sleep, sleep…
so I left today…and first I thought I was going to have this nuclear meltdown trying to drive across town but then it all got better, and I opted to take the back way to sante fe which was a really good thing because I had no idea how damn finicky that car would be. I feel like I am in some kind of aircraft and flying by instruments. I have to match the tach to the speed to the heat to the pressure or it makes a god awful racket and will stop the charging system in a fit of pique.
By the time I got to Sante Fe I had it more or less figured out and as I got gas, decided that I would take the highway next, filled up, got on the on ramp and the car promptly died before I made it to the highway.
I was all set to break out the big tools and went around to the passenger side and saw…gasoline gushing from the bottom of the car.
It took me all day to lovingly pack the car yesterday and I had that car unpacked on the side of the road and the back seat out in about 5 minutes flat.
The damn hose fitting on the new fuel pump wasn’t tight enough and it had come off.
Small repair.
Repack the car.
The mad kitten is in high drama mode, I got this harness for her and I move her around like a little bowling ball, she is all stiff and foetal and wedges herself in unusual places.
I drive and drive…my confidence in the car builds.
I drive some more and then I hear this sound…this squeaking…and I realize, at the same moment that I see the bicycle start to slide down the back window that the mad kitten is squeaking and I am so glad she is being vocal and determined to give her more air that I begin moving things away from where I know she is wedged and…
the car craps out
and I glide to a stop at high noon in the middle of nowhere.
I am, though, ultra capable…I grab the cat, drag her out, stuff her face in water turn the fan on for her and am out, swiftly unlatching hoods and unpacking the car again on the side of the highway, getting out my tools when I reach for the meter my neighbor gave me and…
I see it…one of the things I moved when I was trying to give MK air was a 5 gallon jug of water and didn’t I move it right on top of the rubber fuel hose and squish that sucker flat so no gas could get through.
I put the water jug in the back seat. Threw everything back into the car with a lot less care and took off again.
High winds…open windows…my Balinese dragon suddenly takes flight in the back window plastering itself up against the glass like it was looking at freedom and I am fishing in the box next to me and grabbing shoes and throwing them over my shoulder, guided by the rear view mirror, to try and bang the dragon back down as I sail at a brisk 70 down the road.
The car is fine, it is definitely the driver that is having issued.
I am in Oklahoma and splurged for a motel room to woo the MK and do an altitude adjustment on the car.
I am tired but feel so very light.
and oh yes, I let the mad kitten ball and hide in the bathtub for 20 minutes and then took her out and just held her and it is like she is slowly flowering and is obviously going to be a pain the ass tonight.
now, mind you, I pulled this out of the weeds in Santa Fe for $300 and only temporarily believed the fantasy that it only needed a new master clutch cylinder. I am exhausted. I leave tomorrow am. In my little champ.
and of course, the Mad Kitten has taken up her post with the Balinese Dragon Kite in the rear window.
haircut, shower, finish the last of the packing...no wonder MK likes me so much, there is a rucksack devoted to nothing but her toys and it could barely hold them all.
His old meter, a meter I could not even touch, and he gave it to me.
My god, I am going to miss him, The one thing that makes me feel better is he is doing a “bucket list” and it will take him to Rhode Island too, just for a short bit. Does it make sense, that in the manner our relationship has developed I have found both a friend and a kind of…father…that is so odd for me. I do not want to lose him and will move heaven and earth to be there for him as we both go on.
I am going to hardwire a connection for the meter to the charging system and drive by it. Staying one more day to try for the speedometer and pack.
I am actually leaving.
And it is…a strange thing.
When I came here, it was for all the wrong reasons. I was running from a commitment to myself. Only at…like…speed. Every time I started to commit to my life as a writer, I would back off, find some kind of distraction. I could not, would not believe that what I could do was…valuable. I mean, I would do things and get like...good reviews and respect and then tear it all down and not do anything for years. But it was like a fever…I could only go so long and then it would call me back.
So I came to New Mexico at the end of my run of not being able to face what I was doing – both the commitment and the distraction from it.
I also came here very ill, but was unaware of it at the time.
I also came here in an old ’76 RV with engine issues and a motorcycle dismantled and piled in my kitchen. A beautiful 72 Honda 4 over 4.
And then life got difficult.
They say that New Mexico is the land of Entrapment. That the spirits, if they can, will entangle you and keep you here. What the spirits are doing is not trying to trap you, but force you to make a choice.
Shall you live? Or shall you choose a kind of living death in which you just get by?
I have had cancer, stalkers, the return of extremely upsetting original family members, men die on me on the job, near misses, multi million dollars snafus and…I have faced the worst thing of all, which is the way in which I choose to undo myself. I have known for years that I do such things, but never before have I been faced with such extremes. Such obvious choices. I have made friends. I have made enemies. I have learned boundaries. I have learned that unless I come first I have absolutely no ability to be there for someone else because I have no point at which to choose to step away from myself.
I have become aware of love, powerful love, and my inability at this point in time to pursue it because I have so much work to do with myself. I have come close…close to being there but recognize that the people I choose are still “back there”.
I have a car now that I now like the back of my hand and still has issues, but nothing that I cannot deal with.
More importantly, I have a better understanding of my talent and how it plays into my purpose in life. I am so much more aware of the fact that in all things there is good and bad.
Good and bad in everything. Nothing is either/or.
So I prepare to leave, with neither extreme happiness or grief. It just is.
It just is.
That is what this experience has taught me. All things just are. But we can make them anything we want them to be.
so I had this interesting conversation with this man at the gas station as I stopped to show off little champ, about the 12th time he asked me whether my boyfriend or husband had helped me rebuild it I was ready to smack him.
She goes good and I am chasing down the last small bits, tomorrow is cleaning and speedometer cables either trying to figure out if the damn voltage regulator is working or just traveling by extension cord, so to speak.
But I had her out in the heat of the day, 10 – ¼ mile laps with stops turns all different speeds, out on the 50 road, in traffic and it works. Even my “slap – on - the - hazards and give a hand signal for a left turn” works…I’ll figure out that lighting problem later.
and…and…in having to run the new fuel line through the car I had to take out my rear seat again and got a real good look at it…I mean, contemplated.
I have lived in a 21 foot sail boat, a 21 foot Class C RV, A 8 X8 travel trailer and squatted in a garage. Mind you I have also had lovely traditional homes. I have lived with storage units to manage the overflow of my things and I spent 4 years living out of a kit bag because that was all I was allowed to have with me. I have become…a master of space.
And…I began repacking the car utilizing the space under the rear seat and have increased what I can put into the trunk. Removed the passenger seat and discovered if I fold it over and bungee it down…voila! Wind foil for the bike and garment bags to be packed on top of the car.
And I am absolutely stunned, but my genius neighbor (who I have really discovered with this car is the nature of genius is to admit you have no clue and then start trying things based on what you know, not working only from what you know as a solution) is making me some kind of manual as a going away present. That is like…the perfect gift for me, it will look like I have chewed on it in no time.
I am…going to miss him. We have had this odd perfect fit relationship that literally came out of nowhere. Originally, he thought I was a meth dealer and my little tin box was my stash because I would leave and arrive at such odd hours with this shiny new truck. Little did he know…now he thinks I am whacked but perfectly alright.
When I bought the car ‘round the gas station to show the other shift, I think the concept of my leaving and driving it across the country became real. The one woman just looked stunned and asked, “Aren’t you scared?”
Scared of what?
I have driven old vehicles cross country in worse condition and with less skill before and they have broken down, blown up and dropped transmissions (usually on major holidays) and every time I have been moved by the absolute openness of strangers (and I would live where my repairs were being made until I had enough money). My little white antenna will allow me to maintain and continue no matter what incident happens.
And…I have no time frame.
There is nothing to be frightened of when you sit down and think about it…except of course…that litter box.
The Mad Kitten has been signing onto the internet and running up my broadband. I could not figure out how she was doing it and then I noticed today that sometimes when I sign off I leave the little cursor over the “connect” button. She steps on the keyboard and voila! She is surfing and I am just lucky that she cannot order things on line.
She knows we are packing to leave and is very involved in the process. In fact, she is sitting in the trunk right now to make sure that I do not leave her.
How could I leave my muse and arch nemesis?
Which btw, an example of why my neighbors think I am anal about the car is I will drive it, park it, place a white towel under it, lay down and stay motionless for 15 minutes until I find the drip that no one else would worry about. But I know what drips can turn into. Christmas 2003, Texas, 3 weeks living in a salvage yard while the transmission was rebuilt.
granted, my fuel lines are currently running over the front seat, out the window and under the hood…but tomorrow is make pretty day and the little champ could and did and we flew down the street in our ever widening and brave circles until we zipped along just like all the other cars.
Then of course, I took it to the gas station to show it off and just happened to park over someone else’s leak and had a fit…but all is well.
This show is getting ready to go on the road.
And I have decided that once we are all cleaned up, I will post a picture.
I am just so…content.
No reverse, no speedometer, no fuel gauge or left hand turn signal but who knows what another day or two could bring?
Right now, I admit…it is also a rolling ecological disaster but know that I have it running I can start doing things about fumes and vents.
Oh…and I am thinking of putting its name on the back…something above my jerry rigged brake lights that say “I’m Little Champ and these are my brake lights”
Delerious, stupendous, I need a shower and the car needs a bath.
Thank god for my neighbor and his wonder meter, I drove around with it hooked up and discovered my fuel pump (which sounded fine) was not working. In replacing it I stuck my hands into what can only be described as “goop” and discovered a small section of original hosing that literally melted in my hands.
I find that this focus on the car is acting like medicine for me, slowly I am seeing things shape and come to life and it is taking a kind of focus and physical effort that is absolutely…cleansing.
I am rethinking the next year that comes and looking at what I was seeking balance through. It is hard because I am still trying to separate out what decisions and choices are from “before” and what are from “after”. Actually, the “after” ones are not hard to spot at all, because they make sense. The “before” ones always come with these caveats of explanations of how “complicated” they are. Funny, I am beginning to follow and live my own theory.
And the world, I said this before and got a few comments back from people who have noticed it too, has been oddly quiet and yet, hasn’t felt right at all.
In the way that Heathermoon commented that she feels like I am teetering on the brink of something big, I feel like there is this big shift coming for all of us. Maybe not big and dramatic, but we have had enough time in a recession, enough time talking about the problems, highs and lows with singers and hostages and the model of a President who is going around and taking risks and coming through.
Comes a point where you kind of withdraw and re-evaluate.
Which, I think, is better then finding some new thing to claim is a “fix”.
My neighbor saw my typewriter yesterday, the one in the video. He laughed until he found out that not only does it work but that I can get ribbon for it.
For me, part of the shift comes from going from working on one idea at a time to seeing how one idea feeds several things and I am trying to figure out how to structure and organize how I create.
Now…never in my life would I have thought I would have written that last sentence, but there it is.
Life is such an incredibly huge thing that when you finally get to the point where it is no longer the isolated events making things happen but the ideas, the passion and purpose driving the whole life…it is this huge paradigm shift. Everything is now possible, it is just figuring out what to choose and how to do it so it all works together and everything moves forward.
I was bitching and complaining about that piece of original fuel line and the instructions that I had to remove the back seat to get at it and that I could not find the instructions to do that when on a whim I crawled in the back and just “lifted” and the sucker came out.
Mind you this was after spending two hours trying to avoid all this by jerry-rigging something that worked, and then gave out.
But…yesterday, while spending 4 hours retrofitting an alternator…I started singing “on the road again”
I also decided to take out the passenger seat and strap it to the top for the trip so I have a bit more room what with the litter box and all.
And, my mind started wondering back to “bondage” and how it is, in my mind, slowly sucking in several other pieces I had been working on and seeing bits and pieces of the video being shot in Providence.
And…honestly I have been blog and twitter lite but I miss it. However, the level of concentration involved with the car right now is so immense, particular since everything I am touching right now has these itty bitty parts. Which has amazed my neighbor, that he can drop any ¼ inch piece into the depths of the engine and I can fish it back out.
Almost there.
I am so glad I decided to wait. I am so glad I decided to do what I did with the car because if I had listened to some suggestions, I would gone for the easiest repair first and not noticed these larger ones until on the road. So much for the $300 car who only need a new master clutch cylinder.
I have my wash and wax at the ready though…today, I think, will be the day that I end by lovingly polishing my little champ.
I took the carb in for a rebuild because I cannot even find a rebuild kit on ebay and the guy said “no problem” he could make it go again. When I picked it up I asked him how bad the accelerator pump had been and he said that it was fine, old but fine and he replaced it. The problem was, whoever had rebuilt it eons ago had not put back all the pieces and half of the ones that they did, they put in backwards.
On my way home I stopped at the gas station and held the carburetor in front of me and drive around the store making car sounds and told them I was only going to show them the car one piece at a time so they are not overwhelmed. They said they thought I was losing my mind.
I bought a new alternator rather then go through another rebuild and while we spent hours matching the posts, we forgot to look at the front pulley and it wouldn’t work. Who knew that autozone had an impact wrench under their counter. The guy said no problem and we swapped the pulleys. I went back, went to put it in the car and discovered that the bolt housing was too long.
The park manager came by to tell me that until he heard the car the other day (versus) the first time, he didn’t think it would happen but now he thinks I am going to make it. I am hearing that a lot lately. Then he asked what I was doing and I explained how I was trying to flip the holders to see if I could fit the alternator in and he said no worries, come up tomorrow and go into the RV shop and use all their power tools to shape and mold my new alternator into what it needs to be.
Even I am beginning to believe all this is going to happen.
And today was a …hard day. I have these moments when I am just overwhelmed by my emotional response to all the bad shit that has gone on for the past few months. Every so often it just rises up and I go down. And I just drag myself through the day, doing the next thing and then doing the next thing.
It is just an odd place to be where I am. I have pretty much lost my contradictions and my illusions all in one fell swoop and am kindof flapping in the breeze but trying to be so careful not to latch onto anything as the new illusion that will make things better.
It is just odd how so much of my life has been effected by the randomness of other.
Maybe it is because I live in such a delicate balance that any careless movement, still at this point, upsets the apple cart.
I was dismayed to read about the “admission” of those two women that they had crossed into North Korea. Right…
The world is oddly quiet now, quiet and yet definitely not all right.
Its funny how, in not knowing what comes next, I find I am less stressed. I have my moments but it is almost like since I have lost my expectations of anything but myself, that I am less dependent on things “going a certain way”.
And I am just amazed that even I think the little car is going to make it. I am already having fantasies of redoing the transmission in the winter and finding reverse. I think part of the problem is I have a “three on a tree” steering column on a car that should have a “four on a tree”, which may mean that reverse is there, it is just not accepting any visitors.
And…(I have been out in the sun all day thinking about blogging but not wanting to lose daylight hours) the thing that is so very interesting to me is how many people have also commented that they can’t believe that I haven’t just given up. I mean…what does that say about people? Part of why all this has been so hard is I have been learning. I have done a lot on cars but never, ever this much…and it is not a matter of whether or not I can do it, but am I willing to learn.
It is just striking that so many people a) have noticed the work I am putting into it, and b) how expected it is to give up on something after a few problems.
I find it funny that I am actually getting more and more help with the car from people in the know, like they were waiting to see if I would stick with it.
The cat is hot. I am hot.
I am contemplating a return to my original idea about stopping by the sea when I leave for a few days…just throw a tent down and rest and write.
and write and rest…
the other odd thing is that while I am having some incredibly dark moments, there is also this constant…buoyancy…how on earth I have learned to manage all this is beyond me..
I was asked today that “if someone were to write about an emotion that no one has ever written before, what would it be?”
And I said, “integration.”
We really don’t have a word for the emotion or set of emotions that one begins to experience when you begin to discover yourself and step fully into your being. Happiness really, is only a part of it, what would you call it when all the parts of your life, and all your emotions are suddenly there with you? What would you call the experience of being in a total and full awareness of life?
I have been out in the hot sun all day with piles of aluminum foil. In the 50s, stock car racers used it to wrap all their hoses and tubes to reflect the engines heat.
I have special wraps on the manifold to keep the heat in, special wraps on the hoses to keep heat out, and had to take the wheels off to completely insulate the fuel system to prevent vapor lock and decided…what the hell…since they are off I might as well paint the rims. Fire engine red, I think it’s the dressiest looking part of the car.
It has been a slow hot day.
I keep thinking about that question from this morning and trying to explain it from the jumble of words in my head. This emotion that is so much larger than anything else, that encompasses all the big ones – love, happiness, fear, contentment…
I am hoping to get on the road by Friday and take a more leisurely toot out to the east coast. I am trying to plan and organize my new projects. It is amazing how, when you finally step into what you have been wanting to do for so long that the reality of it really opens your eyes to what can be and you realized what you were imaging before was far too small.
The mad kitten does not like the heat at all. She stays in, sleeping in the first bed of choice, up near the ceiling and then comes out after dark and just “hangs out” till about 11.
So…I fixed all my things…and took off on another test drive and beautiful…my next door neighbor is amazing, he even went and stood at the fence, texted me where he was so I could blast by him and he could hear and analyze the engine. Beautiful.
And then…I ran out of gas…maybe a touch of vapor lock.
And I decided, I am supposed to be on the east coast Friday but…all of that came about from before. And I have already had to reschedule the interview and the push to make it there is kindof…counterproductive to the whole thing about moving and rebuilding the car and living.
So I stay in New Mexico another week and drive the crap out of the car. Double check fuel issues, have the alternator checked again because I think it may have been damaged in the fire. And generally, rather than run around like a chicken with my head cut off…do it right.
But it also means I am losing out on an opportunity that I worked very hard to create. But, I created that opportunity when I was imaging living the life I am now and while there are elements of it that are a draw to me still, if I were planning the class now it would be different.
Pause, reflect, regroup.
Easiest when one is pulled up in some one’s back yard with no gas.
And I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off me.
And my car is back and purring madly away.
Except for this rattle that has driven me crazy. It is obvious and loud and I have crawled over the engine and transmission with a stethescope and determined that it is most likely something, someone’s tool probably that now lives between my transmission and the steel plate enclosing the car.
Much much happier…and you know what? Absolutely exhausted…
One of my favourtie quotes is “do not grieve what does not happen, it may be that which prevents a disaster.”
I put in my new, fabulous starter. Hooked thinkgs back up and fired up the engine and it started instantly.
Adjusted the idle to bring it down to a purr.
Then I went out to make the idle fabulous and had preceded to turn the wrong screw and then another and then panic and then shut off the engine (which kept running because I forgot I bypassed the pump to an auxiliary) had an immediate nuclear breakdown and messed with all the screws of the carburetor…big time.
Mind you…I am not that good with carbs in the first place and this one has to handle an altitude setting and if it is not right will not start at all…nada…nothing
and…
it turned out to be an incredible gift.
Because in trying to fix the carb settings, all day babying them through 1/8 turns it suddenly occurred to me that the ignition coil was too hot to touch. In fact, the car had been off, not running and the day was cloudy and I could not touch that coil or I would get burned.
I borrowed the meter and my neighbor came over and we looked and looked and looked and it turns out there was something wrong with the replacement ignition switch I had bought and it was constantly powering the coil…which in plain English means…I would have had a serious car fire in the engine compartment by the time I hit Oklahoma.
Funny how things happen.
I took apart several old saab ignitions I had and spent time with the schematics reworking and cobbling together a new switch and fixed that.
My neighbor was convinced that the carb couldn’t prevent it from starting so we wound up redoing the timing and I learned how to do something called static timing, which is so incredibly simple when you know what it is. Me, and a wrench…that is all it took. The timing was very close but know it is perfect.
I found one of the trouble shooting manuals for the carb online and yes, my neighbor and I looked at each other and called Ramon, who will come tomorrow after one to do the altitude adjustment because Saabs were built by aerospace engineers and everything in them is precise and that carb will not start even with starter fluid because it does not like the mix.
So we sat…and went through the engine and the book and tried to decide what we hadn’t looked at and decided, at this point, there was nothing left to be redone.
And we argued about some of my last minute errands and talked about his online dating life. Then he was off to repair a refrigerator.
I had a moment today…the carburetor fit… and I think, all in all, I have weathered all this quite well. But carburetors frustrate me like no bodies business. I try to avoid them like the plague and will willingly learn how to do the electrical and spend two days doing it in order to afford to hire Ramon to turn three screws.
Priorities, no?
But I fit my whole life almost in the trunk of the Saab. They always have amazing storage.
The mad kitten looked absolutely appalled when my neighbor said hello to her.
I look exhausted, or so I am told, and I am grateful to this community, some of whom I did a sort of “conference” chat with on Skype last night and they helped me with something I thought I was alone with. Helped me and then we all moved on.
Learning and doing, doing and learning…lord I am tired. I will make it but, no ocean for me till I get where I am going. I am designing, with two of my neighbors a driving plan that will baby the car and get me where I am going even if I cannot leave until Monday.
God…how can I explain this? Everything bad with the car that has happened, everything unforeseen…has been such a blessing, and not even in disguise. If any of this had happened on the road, I would have been lost. Instead I seem to be getting a speed degree in automotive electrics. My neighbor is pushing me to start taking on a car every three or four months because he says nobody has the patience for this with old cars, as a side line.
I don’t know if I ever want to see another wire in my life.
The fact is, I love learning because it comes out in all these other areas of my life and even though I have a solid bout of tunnel vision right now, I can also see what doors this will open.
Even in poetry and performing, electrical wiring comes into play. Every wire makes something work but they all originate from the same source, the theme. It is making me go back and rework some of my new pieces because now I am seeing that if I construct them right, I can make things that live and breathe and work on so many levels and yet appear to do so with the greatest of ease. Sometimes I get timid in my writing about carrying themes and subthemes, I think I am losing that.
And I told my Zia friend yesterday that the greatest thing I have learned in the past few months has been what it means to let go. I made a lot of plans based upon what I thought life would be like, and as life happens, opportunities I never imagined have come up, and obstacles and I realized that my plans were made from the stand point of someone wanting to live their dream, not from the point of doing it. So I have learned to let go of old plans from “before” as I begin to get past my ankles in the waters of what is now…and I can not wait to slip beneath the cool waters and fell…weightless…
This is the music of the day. It is “house/rhumba” and amazing…it just gets me through and I love to rhumba…now, that is a fun dance
The polka dot bunny in the platform shoes just makes my day
Laura Lollar was 33 when someone else decided to use her life in the service of their desires. But that instant did not destroy 33 years of life, friendship, or love. I am posting this along with a straight posting of the comments from the John Wayne Gacy post, the way Brightfire brings Laura to the light is the way these things should be handled. Life is fragile for many reasons, which is why me must strive to protect and honor it, to learn balance and boundaries and to be capable of reaching beyond our selves.
(comment by Brightfire Woman)
(comment by Cassandra Tribe)
what I truly respect is that I know who the perp was and endlessly admire her not using that name
(comment by heathermoon)
I'm so sorry Brightfire! That's all I can say, really. I can't find any other words.
(comment by Cassandra Tribe)
oh darlin' I am so sorry...I will work this into a cross post or a blog tomorrow and would love if you would write something about her life, let's let people see how her life was and make her living just a bit more important than the end...who she was and why she was your friend need to be remebered because it will help all of us find her in others
(comment by Brightfire Woman)
I read this late last night. About 4 years ago I lost a new friend to a serial killer. She lived just down the street in the next block and I just adored her. She was vibrant and doe eyed. Sweetly funny and so very...well, I once saw a man at a stopsign drive up (literally) the back end of a police car, cause he was watching her walk by. She was "hollaring" at me walking the opposite direction the other side of the street. She was headed to her mom's and was telling me so, she had just crossed the street in front of them, and we both were laughing so hard -it was priceless. She had that cute shyness like Woopie in 'The Color Purple', she would cover her mouth when she laughed and she had the longest most graceful hands and a heart of gold.
So I went last night and looked it all up and read things that broke my heart in how she died and how she was the one that he most remembered and bothered him the most. His name -fuck him, call him worthless piece of white trash shit. Her name was Laura Lollar, she was 33, and she was someone that made the day brighter. She once told me that she did not believe that racism was real, that people who seemed like racists...just hadn't had a chance to get to know her yet and then she flashed this blinding smile with dimples...I still miss her.
Barbara Williams, 36 Sabrina Payne, 36 Tamara Walls, 29 Linda Kay Neal, 40 Brenda I(E)rving, 41 Shirley Ann Trapp, 45 Shaconda Thomas, 32 Laura Lollar, 33
And those he did not confess to that many still suspect were slain by him, Wanda Jackson, Frederickia Brown. And cases out of state, where he was known to spend time. There may also have been a woman from Canton that was outside of his profile, of African- American.
(comment by Cassandra Tribe)
every human being is born with the ability to kill or save...but we are also hard wired with a voice that speaks of the morality of human experience...it is something that is easy to ignore if you remain self-absorbed and takes an effort to move beyond. We have studied...pardon the pun...why people commit crimes to death, we also make movies and music and art that examine the killer more than the victim. I am thinking that we need to learn to understand that which must be created through effort and not what comes about through the far more easy emotional process of denial...
(comment by heathermoon)
You know, I sat and thought about this some more today. I think our fascination/repulsion with these killers is the fact that every human is capable of killing. We look at them to look for signs of them in us. We look for any answers we can, as usually, they survive the victims. Perhaps people lose interest in the victims because they were innocent and they can no longer speak. We grieve for them, but most often, we want to know "how could this happen? How does one become a person who does this kind of thing?" I don't think every person WOULD cross that line and do something like that, or that even every person thinks about doing it, but humans are animals and it is in our wiring. Take the guy that wouldn't do what Gacy did but would happily flip the switch on Gacy. I think it's truly about transcendance to rise above your base wiring and truly be a full human. I don't agree with glorifying the crimes people commit, but I do think studying WHY is valuable to help us all evolve as humans.
(comment by Cassandra Tribe)
mind you my diet has suffered because of the work on the car
(comment by Just Trust Me)
cassandra That list you added at the end of this piece was the most powerful part of it. Maybe I should send Sufjan Stevens (who I admire as an artist of integrity) this list and see if he'd write a song about one of them. Actually the victims are mentioned quite a bit in the song. just not by name. Harmlessness (ahimsa) is not ,sad to say, a valued virtue to many in our culture who feel compelled to live the "dog eat dog" life often out of fear of being the eaten dog. And congratulations on rewiring your car. I'm lucky if I can fix a sandwich. Be well. marK
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