tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31433565882300417212024-03-20T18:36:45.191-06:00GertrudeA blog of exploration in the darklisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-13521992929652825972013-10-28T09:42:00.001-06:002017-03-24T11:06:15.642-06:00Getrude's Last DayIt was four months since I'd last gone to see my friend.<br />
<br />
I went to Gertrude's place. The door was hanging open a little bit.<br />
<br />
The place had been ransacked. Gertrude was lying on the floor in her bedroom and had been dead for at least a few days or more.<br />
<br />
I stepped back and I almost fainted. It looked like someone had played a joke with a dummy dressed in her housecoat and slippers. The skin on her ankles was mottled purple. I ran out of air to breathe and my heart went into shock and I stumbled out her front door and called 911 to tell them I'd found the body. They patched me through to the county coroner. They carried her out on a gurney with a sheet over her.<br />
<br />
I looked around her place. Stuff was missing. Her metal nest with the colored stones in it, her ruby necklace, the prescription medications on her nightstand. People had come into her house and taken stuff. Why was I noticing this?<br />
<br />
Because I wanted to grab something too! I'm ashamed of this and I'm weeping. Am I crying for her, or for myself?<br />
<br />
People stepped around her and got her stuff and did nothing. They didn't care. They got into her kitchen cupboards, opened the stale crackers and dumped them out on the kitchen floor. They took some books by the covers and flung pages everywhere. They threw her sheet music all over the player piano. They took the velvet throw from off her couch, and they smoked cigarettes and left them to make burn marks on the top of the coffee table.<br />
<br />
The whole place stunk of rotten flesh, cigarettes and rotten food from the fridge, natural gas, mothballs and lily of the valley perfume that got sprayed all over. Did Gertrude let them in?<br />
<br />
I took Gertrude's address book. It was on her desk. Most of the names in it, so carefully written, are crossed out. I'm keeping it.<br />
<br />
My heart is a vacuum. She deserved to have me or somebody there holding her hand and blessing her, seeing to it that she got a proper farewell, and buying her flowers. I will take the ashes they bring me in a plain, brown box, and I will probably put them in an urn sometime as soon as I find a nice one. Goodbye, my friend. I'll never forget what she showed me. She helped me with my disappointment. She helped prepare me for middle age and beyond. She told me stories. Goodbye, Gertrude.<br />
<br />lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-42908771687130391492013-10-23T09:48:00.002-06:002013-10-23T09:48:21.909-06:00So I took a journey, threw my world into the sea...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
I can take the bus to Gertrude's place, or I can walk, or drive. Today I've decided to walk to her place, but just right now I need to sit down and write this on my tablet.<br />
<br />
I'm in one of those little neighborhood parks where there's a small play area for the kids, a small fountain and a couple of saggy, paint-peeling benches, surrounding a historical monument for someone who achieved...something. I can hear the traffic all around me. Somebody missed the trash can with their crumbled McDonald's bag.<br />
<br />
But I'm in a state of near-ecstasy. The sky above is full of clouds, and it reflects from a little puddle in the concrete below my feet. The clouds look as if the wind shredded a cumulus cloud and painted it shades of soot and wool. The sunlight is hidden but what comes through is a side-lit glow. The greenery is also lit from the side, and so there's a lot of dark green but the tops of the bushes are shining with translucent, glassy green. And there are scrub rose bushes with pink blossoms, also lit.<br />
<br />
I've got my earphones in, and my music is playing Jethro Tull, and the song is Teacher.<br />
<br />
I feel a little cold on my face and hands from the wind gently whipping its way through every crevice, twig, and finger.<br />
<br />
I haven't written this blog for a long time because I injured my shoulder. The pain has all but gone completely away. I just have some nerve-sensation in my index finger, but still a lot of weakness. My shoulder still reminds me that it isn't whole or strong anymore. But the good thing is, it's taught me the value of exercising my body. I used to be so strong, I thought I'd stay that way. But I'm going to be fifty years old in just over a year. The strength and energy ebb like the ocean. Injury can bring pain like a tsunami into my carelessly-built life.<br />
<br />
I might be able to find what Gertrude found out decades ago: the identity of the human being I am.<br />
<br />
I think of her, the way she's kind of perfectly imperfect. The thing is, she knows it. She's so beyond that. Not me--I still think I should be something other.<br />
<br />
So, on my way to visit her place, I hope to get a little more of that completeness you find when you visit there.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-59072507949356708942013-05-09T13:39:00.000-06:002013-05-09T13:39:13.212-06:00Who is Mother God and Where Might I Find Her?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGUb-9D99ckaBcKS8y-6VQ0D8zPqTaDkifFShxUo78zrjdaK7F1hqcLhOhBiOThH4yTZSQdQbsEBUQqy3lKHh4__X3_-HIJUFuFsvjjaffenKzSL1uU_m-5zQ8kLBEkHg8SKnogH0AnA0c/s1600/erin+eye+4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGUb-9D99ckaBcKS8y-6VQ0D8zPqTaDkifFShxUo78zrjdaK7F1hqcLhOhBiOThH4yTZSQdQbsEBUQqy3lKHh4__X3_-HIJUFuFsvjjaffenKzSL1uU_m-5zQ8kLBEkHg8SKnogH0AnA0c/s320/erin+eye+4.JPG" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
The day felt like a sheet of blank paper and I was a broken pen. And it wasn't just one day--there were three of them in a row. I didn't ask Gertrude to come over to sit with me as I lay there alone in my bedroom, because...I don't know why. I'm just not like that.<br />
<br />
Pain has a way of drawing out the person you really are. I hate asking for help because in the past when I had ailing people in my life I used to judge them. Why weren't they healthy like me? They must have brought it on themselves. How foolish.<br />
<br />
Now I'm the aging, weak woman lying there in bed with my shoulder streaked with pain. It's been coming and going for so long it's changing my personality.<br />
<br />
Today I had another attack of shoulder pain. I've been getting therapy for it but sometimes it's not enough. I've learned to get around and get on with important tasks.<br />
<br />
So anyway, finally I felt well enough to go over to Gertrude's place again and lay on her couch with a hot water bottle and a cup of tea on the table. I was saying,<br />
<br />
"Gertrude, I've been having this condition since January or February. It's starting to wear me down. I will change my life if maybe I can trust that I have a Father that is God. I have rejected any particular thoughts about what God might look like. Instead I just want the honesty, the Truth, the guidance, the teaching. I would let go of my sense of my own ego protection, my innocence, to open up all my wrongs to my Father and let any kind of peace come to me. That way, even if my shoulder never feels fine again, I can have faith."<br />
<br />
She winced.<br />
<br />
"You're no good at maintaining any kind of order, or even faith. You're a wanderer."<br />
<br />
My heart sank.<br />
<br />
"Well, what about you? What's your faith?"<br />
<br />
"Well, I guess you could say I do have faith but I've found it unhelpful," she said, scratching her gray curls and taking a sip of her tea. "Instead I have faith that I just can't see all I'd like to. I just carry on the day."<br />
<br />
I silently thought about my relationship with God, and with my own dad. My dad is my hero, except for the smoking and the alcohol. He's been there at times that made a big difference for me. The same with my mom. I will never forget being held on her lap and loving her. Now I don't want to be nurtured by my parents. But...<br />
<br />
I am in pain. I want my Mama. I guess I want to learn what I need to learn from my Father. But I want Mother, so badly!<br />
<br />
"Where is Mother God?" I asked out loud, rhetorically. But Gertrude said,<br />
<br />
"Mothers are like extensions of us when we're infants. They sacrifice. They feed. They clean up. They don't dress like teenagers anymore. If you ask me, Mother God is here and we pay no attention, and she works anyway. She gives us consideration and comfort. Warmth. Cleanliness. Release. But you don't ever look at her."<br />
<br />
Yes.<br />
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lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-69863575853088289792013-01-25T10:44:00.001-07:002013-01-25T10:44:26.718-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Someday when I'm old, will anybody view me the way I do Gertrude? Or is she the only one of her kind, and am I the only one who knows her?<br />
<br />
I know a girl, Androgyne, who looks at me like I'm a fool most of the time. To her I seem irrelevant and outmoded because I question myself and I move slowly, hesitating where she would leap. When I look at Gertrude and how slowly she moves and how little she seems to do, I sometimes feel sorry for her too. I'm middle aged; I can still do so much, almost anything except sit on the floor and hug my knees.<br />
<br />
Androgyne doesn't know a lot about love, and I can't tell her anything because I never learned how to love even someone like Petrus until I passed through that period of time in my life when my self absorption and inability to love deliberately came to a head and I felt my ego crashing to the point where all of my emotions had turned into one big psychic bruise. Afterward I saw that love isn't from above. It's not like water, something you can go and get and share. It is the stuff I'm made of that flows from me with warmth or held back with coldness, is clean or polluted, is generous or miserly.<br />
<br />
It seems to me like Androgyne feels as if love is a happy accident that might come crashing in one day and the stars will align, rendering a stable and mostly gratifying situation, knitting together most of life's contingencies with the life of the other.<br />
<br />
I can only hope she finds a situation that starts out like that, but which can make that difficult transition to the point where it's not easy anymore but it's worthwhile, and you have to lose something of what you started with, to trade for something you never knew existed until you reached your hand out into the fertile darkness of what lay beyond your vision.<br />
<br />
Gertrude is on the other side of me from where Androgyne dances. She is maybe more fully human than I am. She enjoys simply being alive. I drink more of the blackberry tea at her table.<br />
<br />
<br />lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-23437515796149435302012-11-30T11:01:00.001-07:002013-01-07T21:23:22.026-07:00Travel into your own life can be the strangest trip<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
When I can't sleep and my heart is pounding and my thoughts are racing, sometimes I get up from my bed and put on my beat up shearling slippers and my fleecy bathrobe, and I'll get in my car and drive past Gertrude's townhouse to see if her light is on. When it is, I go and knock softly on her front door. And if she's awake, she'll hear me and let me in and talk to me.<br />
<br />
Except, last night I don't remember getting dressed and driving. I just remember being aware I was at her house and we were sitting on the couch, each with our own comforter keeping our feet warm. Cars swished past. I leaned my head back and fell asleep on the worn out burgundy couch where I usually have some tea.<br />
<br />
I asked her, "Gert, what am I doing here on earth, now that my children are almost grown and independent, when I spent twenty years focusing on them? I just don't know."<br />
<br />
Suddenly part of me came unlaminated and it rose up into the air. It felt the way you feel when you're a passenger in a jet that is taking off and it accelerates very fast, except I wasn't moving forward. My consciousness drifted upward and left my sleeping body and my brain down there on the couch. <br />
<br />
Gertrude was there with me, only now she looked young, like about thirty years old. Her huge, dark eyes lost some of their dark circles but she had those hooded lids, like a gypsy. Her hair was long and curly and held back by something invisible. And it looked as if she wasn't 3D. She was all front and the sides of her head disappeared into the darkness around us. She was looking at me and speaking but not moving her mouth. <br />
<br />
I started to want to get back into my body but Gertrude's mind suggested to my mind, a very strong phrase: Look at your life from above and outside.<br />
<br />
I didn't want to--I wanted to get back to seeing things through my own eyes and my own filters. But she had a way of not permitting me to do it.<br />
<br />
I started fearing her. "You're a demon!" I shouted in my mind.<br />
<br />
"Demons try to get you away from light, goodness and happiness. I am trying to help you find it! Listen to me!" <br />
<br />
She reached out her hands from the darkness and grasped the sides of my head and turned it to what lay below. <br />
<br />
"Open your eyes," she demanded. <br />
<br />
I fought her. <br />
<br />
"No!"<br />
<br />
"Why won't you look at yourself? If you won't look at yourself, who will?"<br />
<br />
I shook myself loose from her grasp.<br />
<br />
"I'll do it later, when my mind feels more settled and clear."<br />
<br />
"No you won't. So do it now. Look--at--your--life. What you see is what your life is. What you're doing is what you're making your life be about."<br />
<br />
"You're being mean!" <br />
<br />
She slapped me. I didn't hurt because we weren't in physical states. Only her mean lashing out made contact with my cowardice.<br />
<br />
I looked at my life and took a moral inventory, looking at everything from how I treat people to things I've done in the past--painful memories, and good ones as well. I had a hard time determining which things hadn't been necessary or what other choices I had.<br />
<br />
I looked at Gertrude's spirit form and I said I was afraid. She said, "Now you're on your way to becoming whole. You were never meant to always feel comfortable and happy."<br />
<br />lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-38165967534430843192012-11-28T12:05:00.000-07:002012-11-28T12:05:19.302-07:00Solo, Solitary, Alone, Lonely, Life!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Gertrude seems to be the epitome of someone whose life is all behind her now. I get so full of pity for her! She's got old pictures fading on her parlor wall; fading pictures on top of fading wallpaper. Her velvet sofa needs vacuuming. I did it once but it was a hopeless gesture. And whenever I come to her house, she has no music or TV going. She's just listening to her Thomas clock ticking.<br />
<br />
I cleaned her bathroom for her, and it really improved things even though her enamel is stained and those black and white tiles are cracked. The fixtures in there are antique, but not nice. The copper pipes have verdigris but not the pretty kind. But I like it in there and often when I use her bathroom I spend more time than necessary, enjoying the heat of the radiator and the way it warms up the back edge of the tub and the toilet seat. I make soap and I brought her some, but somehow the pink bars she usually gets seem right somehow. And the bright green Prell shampoo. Her towels are raggedy but when I brought her new ones she gave them to a needy neighbor with young children, saying that her towels still did the job.<br />
<br />
Her house is quiet except for the clocks, the pipes in the radiator, the old fridge motor that turns on and off, and the birds in the trees, the passing traffic, and the sounds of people walking by.<br />
<br />
When I look at it that way it seems like she doesn't need a radio.<br />
<br />
But I wonder if she isn't terribly lonely sometimes. I drank some of her blackberry tea and talked with her about it.<br />
<br />
She said,<br />
<br />
"I do get a lonesome feeling sometimes. I suffer from it and I feel that if I only had people around, I'd be happy. But then, it's strange how, other times the situation is exactly the same but I don't feel loneliness. I feel solitude and peace. Especially when I let the presence of greatness dwell in my heart."<br />
<br />
"I get lonely," I said. "I feel very sorry for you being here and lonely. That's why I came here today."<br />
<br />
"Oh! Well, you shouldn't let it stop you from doing what you know you should do, even when you don't feel completely at ease, joyful, or whatever. There's a different kind of happiness in suffering. It's good because you know for sure you've earned it well."<br />
<br />
I sat there and suffered and felt love and felt that kind of happiness that is really a few millimeters from where we are right now.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-79312558417632906852012-11-22T11:01:00.000-07:002012-11-22T11:01:06.746-07:00What choice do you have but to be thankful?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I feel sorry for Gertrude a little bit because she seems so alone. Who does she have to eat Thanksgiving dinner with? I asked her to come and eat with me and Petrus but when I did, she didn't say anything--she just shrunk down momentarily and turned her eyes away. My husband doesn't ever see her but she stays away from him too, like they're both positive poles and I'm a negative one. I dunno.<br />
<br />
I went to Gertrude's once when she made a special meal. It wasn't for any predetermined reason, nothing like "okay we're all going to sit down and be thankful today," nothing like that. She wanted to celebrate a full moon on the birthday of someone who meant a lot to her, who is no longer on this earth.<br />
<br />
She put a beautiful silk runner on her cleaned-off dining room table, and lit every candle she owned. We drank goblets of dark and musty wine as we tasted some rich, well-marbled cheese and very crusty bread. She told me the story of her old friend and teacher, Leonard Neibaur, who spoke four languages and knew of many things too complicated to teach. He introduced her to philosophers and told her of the real-life implications that grew out of each philosophical basis. When he did, he told it all in the form of storytelling. He'd known many people and many situations, because of the network of friends and colleagues he'd built up all of his life. I asked Gertrude, what was the nature of their relationship--just friends? She shut her eyes for a moment and smiled, and that was all the information I could get.<br />
<br />
After we finished the wine we went out and sat on a bench, looking at the clouds drift across the moon. It was cold and I started to shiver, but I felt so enchanted I didn't want to go in. We scooted together on the bench and huddled with our arms across one another's shoulders. We finally went in when the street sweeping machines went grumbling loudly past.<br />
<br />
I don't know what Gertrude does when I'm not there. I think she reads a lot, and makes soup. I'm grateful for her. Maybe I'll bake her a pound cake and take it over to her.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-87501042374384841432012-11-16T14:09:00.003-07:002012-11-16T14:14:30.842-07:00Does this swimsuit show my bitterness?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The dark, heated water of the hot tub had steam clouds lifting off its surface, with the smell of the chemicals filling my nose. The hyper beat of the exercise class going on up stairs was quiet enough to ignore it, so mostly what we could hear was droplets of condensation from the ceiling plopping into the bath. Gertrude had both of her arms held out across the tiled edge. When I felt overheated I sat myself on a higher step so most of me was out of the water.<br />
<br />
She said, "Well, I'm about soft-boiled and ready to get out of the water."<br />
<br />
She moves so slow. I had to stand there and firmly hold her hand to give her some extra balance.<br />
<br />
Neither of us tried to look at ourselves in the full-length mirrors on the walls of the dressing room and we make small talk, trying to find our socks and shoes.<br />
<br />
In the car on the way to her house she listens to the "forties" channel on satellite radio, and sings along to songs I've never even heard before. She acts young, like a bizarre Shirley Temple.<br />
<br />
I am bored by this stretch of street that I travel sometimes two or three times a day. There's nothing interesting. But Gertrude points out the royal blue velvet of the sky and the cigar-shaped gray cloud, lit up by the moon.<br />
<br />
We are each seeing the world as we are.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-84918435427662911702012-11-14T12:33:00.000-07:002012-11-14T12:33:23.912-07:00Blessed are the defeated and lost.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
This ongoing post-election psychological breakdown has started to wear at me and give me physical pain. So I went and got Gertrude and took her to the gym, where we went down in the basement with our swimsuits on, and sat in the not-quite-hot-enough hot tub to soothe our ills--her old bones and my neck that got bent out of shape.<br />
<br />
I asked her, "Do you pray? And if you do, what do you get out of it?"<br />
<br />
There was a time when I felt so sorry for her physical aging. The skin on her arms hangs down and the wrinkles on her face are so deep that if I think of smooth, dewy tautness as the only kind of beauty, she is very un-beautiful indeed. But when I think of people in themselves, beautiful for being human and not for being young, she's all right and so am I, with my fat midsection.<br />
<br />
She frustrates me so much. She never answers a question directly. She said,<br />
<br />
"Is prayer supposed to be done so you can get something out of it? Like, you offer prayer and there is an exchange and you get a blessing?"<br />
<br />
"Hrrrrrrrmmmmmph" I groused.<br />
<br />
"Why, Liz? (She calls me Liz) have you started praying?"<br />
<br />
"Yes. This morning I read the poetry of Rumi and it gave me comfort. And then I knelt down on the floor and started praying. But I didn't ask for a blessing in payback, no. Not really. I don't think--I'm not sure. I really just wanted help in understanding, however it might come to me. I wasn't even sure if God was there or there is anything like that."<br />
<br />
"Well I guess you can always try it, why not."<br />
<br />
"I try to define who God is for myself..."<br />
<br />
Gertrude's eyebrows raised at that and it told me everything I needed to know at that point.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-68701996393398935432012-11-13T09:35:00.001-07:002012-11-13T09:35:58.302-07:00Mostly dead, and lovin' it!"Gertrude, what am I going to do now that the world I was born in has ended?"<br />
<br />
"You just get up the next day in the new one."<br />
<br />
"Have you ever had that happen to you?"<br />
<br />
"Oh yes. A few times. Those of us born in the 1800's went from a way of life where we thought God was watching our every move, to a world where there was no God in mind. It was devastating to our lives and we just had to learn to embrace it."<br />
<br />
"Do you mean you stopped believing in God?"<br />
<br />
"Well, at first I blocked it out and insisted I would never stop believing in Him. But then the common assumptions and the expressions we used changed a lot, until I found myself not caring what God might think, and eventually I was alone in my individuality."<br />
<br />
"Jeez. That is sad because it seems like such a beautiful thing to feel as if God is watching over you all the time, keeping you safe, telling you what is right. Sounds so secure and sweet."<br />
<br />
Gertrude winced and nodded in such a way as to leave room for doubt.<br />
<br />
"It was devastating to our old way of life. The new way of life also had its good points. You didn't have to feel embarrassed to show your ankles, and you could cut your hair and didn't have to keep it in long, heavy plaits and buns. After awhile women could dress like men, in pants. Now that's not even considered dressing like a man anymore. Now a woman who considers herself normal and innocent might dress like an old-time prostitute as if that could underscore how normal she is."<br />
<br />
"I know, right? It's horrible."<br />
<br />
"Oh, we don't have to make it like that. Life is short and times do change. People have to live their time out doing what they will. It's both a gift and a curse at the same time."<br />
<br />
"I can't live my life as I did before. I came from a world where I thought I owned everything, and when someone lived up to my standards I would let them in to be a part of it. But that world is dead now. Each person is supposed to be a bundle of their own standards and nobody can assume to understand anything about each other, and it's exhausting and sad. But it's done with and I'm trying to let go."<br />
<br />
"Well, do you know who you are?"<br />
<br />
"Not really."<br />
<br />
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"That would be the thing to know now."lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-23858335060159599752012-11-10T10:07:00.001-07:002012-11-10T10:07:41.223-07:00Have I been wrong? Was I unwise to shut my eyes and play along?I've been talking to people who, like me, feel shafted by the election. We know we failed and we have a lot of ideas how and why, and yet the worst thing is the loss of a sense of control.<br />
<br />
But I know damned well that most of this world offers only an illusion of control. We truly have control over a fraction of a second after any piece of input we receive, whether to answer with a 0 or a 1. I know this in my head. My primitive heart keeps searching for magic.<br />
<br />
She called me and asked me to come over and help her dig some old dishes out of the top shelves of her kitchen, ones she hasn't used in decades. I took them down, and some of them were just chemically-broken-down Tupperware that is now cracked and sticky and discolored. But some of those dishes we got down to look at were fine, painted by hands that had the patience to work in a sweet, even pattern of ornamentation.<br />
<br />
"Should I get rid of that soup tureen?" she asked me. I picked it up in my hands, and it felt weighty.<br />
<br />
"Why not make soup to put in it one more time?" I asked her. She hesitated and then said all right.<br />
<br />
We chopped onions, celery, carrots, garlic. I said don't use parsnips--yuck. She said okay. We browned the aromatics and then we put in lamb. The soup cooked all day and the broth concentrated nicely, and while it cooked we got the whole top shelf of the kitchen emptied, wiped, and decluttered. When you open the cupboard now, you see just a few nice things lined up with a lot of air space between them.<br />
<br />
I don't know if Gertrude is a progressive or a conservative. This bothered me a little bit. I had to get over this need to label her like I label myself. Still sometimes I will ask leading questions to try and get her in one box or the other. Today I started doing it again and she tilted her head to the side and frowned and blew air out her nose and scratched her arm. Then she said,<br />
<br />
"Here's something from the Blueprint that applies. As the world gets created and sustained, there <u>is</u> justice. It never deviates. Human beings just don't understand that Justice. We think of justice as us getting something that satisfies us, either in thoughts or in materials. Justice is a metaphysical reality that always displeases one person or the other. Like my husband Oswald, back when we thought world wars were over with. He got in a business deal with another man...what was his name? Anyway, the situation never panned out and there was only enough money left in the kitty for one man to get repaid, or both men to take a hit. Oswald didn't get the money--he took the role of the nice guy and let the other man have the last of the money. And Oswald never felt good about it. He wished he'd insisted he get that money himself."<br />
<br />
"Uh..." my attention span was waning and she saw that.<br />
<br />
"One more second. Okay now, Oswald could not see the justice in himself doing the decent thing. But it was there. What a good man-if only he'd accepted that about himself."<br />
<br />
That soup was good and it felt great to get rid of bad old plastic.<br />
<br />lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-35081905799908040152012-11-09T12:52:00.000-07:002012-11-09T13:06:23.929-07:00Sucking up bitterness, spitting out honey<strong>A boring sort of alchemy</strong><br />
<br />
It's days later and I'm still sick with disappointment. It doesn't help that I keep searching the same old media sources for some kind of hope. The best idea I've read out there is that we can keep our ideas out in the culture. <br />
<br />
In my great grandparents' time, they were so damn happy to come to the US, they learned English, kept their Dutch to themselves, went to work in the silk mills in New Jersey, and voted Republican. I think that might be because they hated the Catholics. <br />
<br />
And on my Mom's side, they were jack-Mormons who went to Idaho and Northern Utah. They were Scots-Irish too. Relatives of the hillbillies. They were Republicans too, probably because Republicans weren't prohibitionists and they liked their alcohol.<br />
<br />
I feel it inside me how great my ancestors were in the grand total of things, and their ways were good. Not joyful, not triumphant, but decent.The lovely picture of television families going on picnics was just not what it was like. Love wasn't pretty.<br />
<br />
<strong>The blueprint</strong><br />
<br />
Gertrude has been every religion, and she's told me hair raising stories about things people did to each other under the protection of religion and culture. <br />
<br />
Everyone is human and religion doesn't stop that. She says, in her view, there is only a sum of small things that makes the difference between a good system and the lack of one. <br />
<br />
The first tenet of the blueprint, Gertrude says, is that <em>all the power that ever was, or will be, is the one right here, right now</em>. Everyone has an imperfect realization, of what's good, and everyone has just <u>this</u> moment to tap into what little bit of power there is behind what we see and what we choose. It's not much but it really adds up. <br />
<br />
Alchemy is lots of small steps, most of which don't exactly make you feel comfortable. Things get crushed, burned, mixed with caustic chemicals, set on fire, pulverized, compressed and thus purified.<br />
<br />
This is happening all the time, and probably if I use this suffering to accept what life forces upon me, I will be doing what is supposed to be done. I and my people got too comfortable and we lost our ability to work hard for things we wanted. We will get it back only when we are forced to.<br />
<br />
But... Life was not supposed to be a picnic. <br />
<br />
What I was born to be and do, I have to accept and work with.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-40129584048037330092012-11-07T08:23:00.001-07:002012-11-09T12:35:18.676-07:00Ghosts of Dead America<b>Sometimes Friendship, Sometimes Something Else.</b>
<br />
<br />
I've considered myself a conservative. Now the US has elected a socialist for a second term as president, and I'm disconsolate right now. I have an ache in my gut and a sore heart, and I'm angry, and I'm grieving the loss of the man I wanted to be president, because he had qualifications that I felt were missing from the top of US politics. <br />
<br />
I no longer want to be friends with some of the people I used to like. I'm burnt out on the media. I'm lonely and isolated, and I am in need of some kind of alchemical transformation.
<br />
<br />
So I went to Gertrude's house for a little while before I ran errands that would take me to new places. Namely, I want to join an artists' collective. I will get the application today and then start to look at what I'm capable of, and ignore the negative voices, paying attention only to the practicalities but not letting a fake practicality that is really a wimp-out, take hold.
<br />
<br />
I lay down on Gertrude's lap and I cried out my sadness. I feel my country has been lost to Saul Alinsky's acolytes, and I hate them, and they're rejoicing. I can hear the demonic keening and gloating.
<br />
<br />
I'd hit the bottom and was in danger of making myself sick if something of my capacity didn't give way.
Gertrude said, sit up and let's have some tea, if you can swallow. I'm going to start you in on something I feel you're ready for.
<br />
<br />
<b>The Blueprint on the Drafting Table</b>
<br />
<br />
Gertrude sat with me and told me about something I'd been starting to suspect: we are all in a pattern, or a laminated series of truths and tendencies, which when combined, compose us.
<br />
<br />
But just to say it's a pattern is not to imply that it's perfection. Patterns are good but the rendered product can always use improvement. Or in other words, we are a mesh of patterns that came together at one point of a pulse of energy caught in time.
It's not the only way to look at us, but it's one way.
<br />
<br />
Gertrude read me the pattern, which is what this blog will now be all about, but I won't just rattle off the whole thing. If you want to google it, I got it from the curriculum of Builders of the Adytum, of which I was a member for about fifteen years. I memorized it. I don't think it's proprietary. It's one of those things like the Emerald Tablet of Hermes. It's called the Pattern on the Trestleboard. But Gertrude described it as the Blueprint on the Drafting Table. I can see it in my head and feel it in my bones.
She had listened to how messed up I am right now, and this is what she said:
<br />
<br />
<b>Your Born Connections</b>
<br />
<br />
Gertrude said, "We are working for the Realization of the Eternal." <br />
<br />
I hadn't been paying close attention but I as she spoke, the black of her eyes was like polished obsidian. The hazel of them was like citrine, and the white was like ivory. I stared at them, searching for where her transformation had come from. It seemed to surge from somewhere within her.
<br />
<br />
"That's so...far away and high above and esoteric. I don't even think I can get near that. Can you give me something closer to shoot for than realization of the eternal?"
<br />
<br />
She gave a dry laugh and shook her head. Then she looked at me and tried again.
"You are going to realize it, one way or another. In this lifetime or another. It's the nature of things. It's why you have this difficult life to live--all of it will beat you into shape and you will be perfecting your realization of it all."
<br />
<br />
"Oh! right now I am in the throes of an imperfect realization. That's like saying I'm all screwed up, isn't it?"
<br />
<br />
"No, Lisa. You are talking about your disappointment. From one point of view it's a noble sadness. From another point of view, it's "nanny boo boo, you didn't get what you wanted and now you're whining." But it's really just what it means to be human.
<br />
<br />
I turned away from her and emptied my tea mug into the sink. I'd had enough and I was leaving. I felt I was being diminished. <br />
<br />
She called to me, "wait a minute."
"What I was talking about was something different, Lisa. You've put your disappointment into a small little box of right now. <br />
<br />
What I'm talking about is your eternal soul, more than just your life right now. You've got to let go of what you can't keep, and your presidential preference is something you can't keep."
<br />
<br />
I will trade my current ego crisis for perfecting my realization of the internal. I never did have control over any of that presidential, political stuff. No telling how it's going to turn out. <br />
<br />
Maybe I was wrong. I doubt it, but if I was wrong I might feel better.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-20541107251645336492012-02-20T13:09:00.003-07:002012-02-20T13:29:57.247-07:00Gertrude finally shows me something usefulGertrude is real. I thought for awhile that I was just imagining her, creating an image of what I wished for and then trying hard to believe it. Others could not see what I saw, and silly me, I believed their certainty more than I believed myself!<br /><br />I think it's just that I ignored some of the realities others were not ignoring. Where I could see her and others could not, they could see what surrounded her and couldn't see this old woman I thought was so marvelous.<br /><br />Gertrude lives in a cluttered, messy, dirty place. There's handwriting on the wall. There's dirt in the cracks. There are skeletons hiding. All that. Maybe I'm lucky I couldn't see it at first. I saw the velvet upholstery but not the cigarette stains. Gertrude hides herself. Why would she do that? If I knew what she knew, I'd come out and try to teach others. She does not offer schooling.<br /><br />Why not try to say something to the world, Gertrude? That's what I asked. She shrugged and looked down at the ground. I stood there for a long time waiting for words to come out of her mouth. <br /><br />"It's... They... Everybody..." <br /><br />In a flash I understood. I think so, anyway. If you put something into words, it isn't the same as the real, the true, the actual. It just doesn't work to try and teach it. <br /><br />I threw out words after that. I started to spend some time eschewing verbalization of my thoughts. I began to ignore the words of everyone I saw or met or heard on the radio, and then something new came to me. Words really don't mean much. They're just colors coming off a paint brush. The artist is what matters. The intention of the one saying words is all I really need to know. <br /><br />Some people are just lonely souls like me, seeking companions on this life journey. Other people do have spirit and wisdom to offer but they only know one way to get through, and that is with words. And hell... some people use words because they love talkin'. They get paid. They take up a position and start chewing on it. <br /><br />I looked back at Gertrude and she had her eyes on me. They are grey eyes, kind of rheumy and the whites of her eyes are a little yellow. But I love her eyes. She was using her eyes to see if I understood her. When she saw that I'd gotten a glimpse of her meaning, the one she wasn't about to try to spit out as words, she smiled a little and relaxed. <br /><br />Gertrude of the week: Dame Judy Dench. She is beautiful! Her eyes have a serious condition but she, a British dame, is no soft cookie and she can deal with it.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-56648600719270939022011-05-07T23:14:00.003-06:002012-11-10T18:05:03.475-07:00Where were you?I got home from Gertrude feeling like a washed up piece of styrofoam on the scummy shore of a lake. And my closest earthly companion, whom I shall call Petrus, looked me over and said, "You look like crap. What's up with that?"<br />
<br />
"I spent the night at Gertrude's house. Leave me alone. I need a shower," <br />
<br />
"Wait--where were you?"<br />
<br />
"At Gertrude's. Over on 4th Avenue."<br />
<br />
"Nobody lives there anymore. Did you sleep in an abandoned house or something?"<br />
<br />
"NO! Gertrude's house is there." I watched him he looked perplexed, and worried about me. He wasn't kidding.<br />
<br />
"I don't get it."lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-53294201085566778272011-02-09T15:54:00.005-07:002011-02-09T16:30:28.880-07:00Gertrude asks, what kind of story are you?I walked all the way to Gertrude's house in the middle of the night. I saw her there in the open door, in her saggy bathrobe and old slippers. I'd meant to make her new slippers for Christmas but hadn't ever gotten around to it.<br /><br />She squinted because she didn't have her glasses on, and then I saw her forehead furrow, her eyes grown round with concern. She didn't look like she was in the mood to have a wreck like me wash up on her doorstep, but she had to let me through out of human decency. But I needed her--that was all I could think of at the moment. <br /><br />She let me hug her and then she bade me sit down. She sat by my on the big, worn velvet couch but then I was so beaten down I lay with my head on her lap. She patted my hair and it felt very cool and nice on my fevered head.<br /><br />"Tell me what's in your heart," she said.<br /><br />"It's just, I feel like a loser. It seems like I've been lazy in my life, and now I have nothing. While others persevered and won, I gave up and now I'm getting older, I'm washing out, and those just starting now will get far ahead, leaving me behind. I don't inspire anyone to take me along, and I feel like giving up completely."<br /><br />"Well, dear. Maybe you're not the success story you thought you should be. Maybe you're a tragedy. But, tragedy is still a story worth telling. Shakespeare did well with tragedies."<br /><br />"But I'm useless! If I were a movie I'd be one nobody remembers, I feel like a mildewed rag that fell in back of the washer. You didn't even want to let me in, did you? I'm a bother--yes or no?"<br /><br />She paused to decide what words to use, then leaned over and looked at my face.<br /><br />"You and I always speak completely honestly to one another, right?"<br /><br />Now I paused. I was supposed to say yes, that's true, I'm always honest. But then, that would not be true. There are many ways I haven't been completely honest. The truth is, sometimes I've looked at her and felt sorry for her. She can be so dingey and messy, even kind of stale smelling sometimes. My silence probably told her everything.<br /><br />I just don't think I can take that much honesty. Just now I'd prefer it if I could say anything and believe it. I'd say I'm okay, I'm great. I'd snap to my feet and make a plan for future success. I'd name something I'm supposed to want and I'd go for it, by golly. Because, everybody knows success means you are not a waste of oxygen. Be a winner! Tell a happy story and people will want to hear it.<br /><br />"Okay, you asked for the truth," she said. <br /><br />"I didn't like you knocking at my door. You woke me up from a very good dream I was having. I feel put out by it. But what can I do? I'm your friend."<br /><br />I started sniffling and wiping my eyes on my sleeves.<br /><br />"I'm sorry," I said, sitting up. <br /><br />"Lay back down," she said, and pulled the afghan from the back of the sofa and reached to throw it over me. "Listen."<br /><br />"I'm old now. I've had many nights of rest. I've slept in a hammock on a beach in Mexico with the sea breeze washing over me. I've slept in a cabin in the Alps under an eiderdown quilt. But I've also had many nights I couldn't sleep.<br /><br />I've lived through the blitzkrieg, where my home and my neighbors' homes were getting destroyed by bombs. I've stayed awake through epidemics and a couple of earthquakes. In my marriage I had many nights I couldn't sleep because we were fighting. I've spent nights eaten up with worry over my own children. I am not worried about you. You're fine, you just get caught in your thoughts."<br /><br />"Oh, great," I said. I'm just not that much in the scheme of things, and here I am so full of myself..."<br /><br />"...Shhh...shhh..." she said. "Here, stretch out on the couch and think about where you are."<br /><br />I fell into a heavy, uncomfortable sleep. When I woke up in the morning I felt all sweaty and my hair was dirty, my clothes baggy, stretched out and wrinkled. Gertrude's whistling teapot woke me up with its screaming. She turned the burner off and poured me a cup of that good jasmine tea she keeps in her tin.<br /><br />The tea smelled like a little hint of heaven--flowers and summer winds, berries and sky. <br /><br />"Thank you, Gertrude," I said.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-1952233932676875802010-12-31T14:46:00.002-07:002010-12-31T15:20:55.704-07:00How I made it through the HolidaysGertrude has a very nice kitchen table but it isn't often seen because there's a reservoir of clutter covering it and leaving just enough space for people to put a plate on when they visit her table. I look at the stuff she's collected there: Pill bottles, opened rolls of throat lozenges, bowls of beads, a can of old pens and pencils, the puzzle page of a weeks-old newspaper, a Reader's Digest, a box of paper clips. <br /><br />When I visited today the table had been cleared off and the stuff that was there, now swept into a cardboard box. Instead she'd spread out a jigsaw puzzle and was sitting there flipping the pieces over--little pieces, thousands of them. <br /><br />All right, I said and I sat down and we worked on the puzzle. She'd done it at least two other times. She had quite a few puzzles in boxes on the top shelf of her coat closet, all with scratched up, tattered pictures on the sides. I marveled that she wasn't bored by doing the same ones over and over. But since I'd never seen it, this puzzle was actually interesting to me. The image in it looked like a natural still-life scene until you looked closer and everything was made of little items like thread spools, combs and graham crackers and yarns and stuff like that.<br /><br />I said, This stuff that makes up the picture in the puzzle is a lot of the same stuff you had on your table before, only now it's a pretty arrangement. <br /><br />I think of my house that way sometimes, she said. I use everything I've got eventually. Why make a fetish of neatness? <br /><br />Well, I feel better when my stuff is neat, I replied. I feel...virtuous.<br /><br />You have the fetish.<br /><br />That's what she said, and I knew for sure that she was wrong. She can be so annoying sometimes. She thinks the way she does things is the best. She's stubborn about it. She won't listen to anyone else's ideas. How selfish, how boring.<br /><br />Puny, negative feelings crept into me and I was hating her. <br /><br />Now, one thing I have learned about Gertrude over the years is, she's sensitive. Psychic. She isn't afraid of what other people think or feel, but she's well aware of it. She has a way of turning your feelings back on you if you try to blame her. I know it but I tried anyway.<br /><br />To each his own, I said pointedly. <br /><br />You say that, but what you mean by it isn't what the words say. Pardon me if I'm wrong... She frowned at me and her eyes glared slightly, taking me aback. <br /><br />You used that phrase like a tool. You used it to poke at me. You didn't mean you accept that everyone does things differently. What you meant was the opposite, it seems to me. You're judging, using a nonjudgmental phrase. What good did you do? <br /><br />I let out a deep breath. <br /><br />I guess the things I pay attention to and let bother me are also a kind of clutter. <br /><br />Finally Gertrude sat back and smiled. She said, <br /><br />I bet you thought you were being sane and rational, right? Thinking that neatness was more virtuous and that clutter on my table meant something important. Maybe you will have to let go of some sanity, if it's like that.<br /><br />After our visit was over, I thought about what Gertrude had said. I lay in bed, my mind whirling and pressure building within me. And finally I felt so miserable with all my fumings, I just had to let them go. I felt slippage in my sense of caring about reality. It made me nervous but I let it happen. <br /><br />The next day I started laughing more. I saw messed-up things happening and I just went, Okay! --giggle giggle. Nothing bad happened. <br /><br />Somebody got annoyed at me? <br />Okay, sorry. Hee hee. <br /><br />Ignorant driver in the left lane on the highway?<br />Whatever. Hee hee. <br /><br />Mean person judging a weak person unkindly? <br />Oops. Ha ha. <br /><br />So now when I go visit Gertrude, I try to slip into that new dimension and just enjoy her. She is shaped like bread dough rising, and when she wears red lipstick she looks batty. She's not.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-88475615579506060542010-11-10T22:20:00.002-07:002010-11-10T22:36:37.592-07:00Where do I go, what do I do now?I say to her, Gertrude, I read the Bible every day. I read David R. Hawkins on consciousness. I think back and recall metaphysical things I've studied. I ask questions. I ask to be broken of my errors so I can grow. I ask if my Creator loves me and I look at the beauty around me and I think yes. I even read the Book of Mormon to try and appreciate what it was I loved but left behind. I do all that and I think I ought to be at peace with that. But "ought to" is not real is it?<br /><br />In my dream, Gertrude fills back up with life and air and juice, and she begins to inflate like a balloon with a red light illuminating it, and she takes on the shape of a Hindu goddess with nine arms. The arms point in all directions and at all times. She is beautiful, then awesome, then fierce, then terrifying. Flames shoot from her palms and her eyes, and she burns me with them. I feel burning pain but then what was burning burns away and still I am standing there. After the wooden parts of me burn away I am free to go and do anything I want, but what's left of me is still standing there, right in front of her, waiting for some indication of what to do. <br /><br />Then I come back to the room we're in and she's there with her messy gray hair, wearing her green sweater, polishing a spoon with its sleeve. <br /><br />"You will never know where to go or what to do. It's just never going to happen. You're going to spend your whole life in this same state of mind, because you've built up this mental habit of never grasping onto anything."<br /><br />Her words hurt me. They sounded so indifferent, like she'd stuck me up on a bulletin board with a tack and just left me there. <br /><br />Gertrude, I wondered, Do you love me anyway?<br /><br />Yes, I do, she said. I'd just like to invite you to hold onto me. You help me stay steady when I'm walking, and I'll suggest directions we could go. I've been a lot of places. I just need you to say yes when I want to take you somewhere. I don't think you're lazy, but I think you let your fears control you and you take too much pleasure in safety for your own good.<br /><br />I said, Gertrude, I don't really want to go anywhere.<br /><br />Well, okay, stay there, then! she said, throwing her hands up in the air. We sat there with not much to say until I finished my tea. <br /><br />I love you, Gert, I said, and I gave her a hug, smelled her skin smell and felt the coolness of her hair against my cheek. She hugged me extra long.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-77306244666521166072010-10-10T12:50:00.006-06:002010-10-10T13:27:40.059-06:00Avoiding me<blockquote>I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.</blockquote> <br />Gertrude Stein <br /><br />I haven't visited with my Gertrude in awhile, and I can't really fathom why I've been staying away from her place. <br /><br />It's not that I haven't wanted to see her--I have. I think there started to be barriers--little snarls in the flow of emotional connection. Maybe it's the way she smiled at me weirdly or didn't smile. Maybe there was just a little gap in what one of us said and how it was understood. Or maybe my ego was not flattered as it was before--we lost our charms.<br /><br />Or maybe one of us got "needy," to where just a hello was not enough. Maybe one of us was seeking validation from the other beyond what can really be expected, like the cat that won't let you push her off your lap when you're tired of her.<br /><br />It's not that I have stopped loving Gertrude. I always do love her. She's just this funny, unique, gray-haired person with her own proclivities. She doesn't fit into any stereotype. Maybe the closest thing I could compare her to is Maude, in that old movie, <em>Harold and Maude</em>. Maude liked to find what was unusual and she found beauty in all of her senses, but she was too destructive! If ever there was a stereotype for a nutty old lady, that's Maude. Gertrude, on the other hand, is over that sensibility and she just wants to do what's giving and meaningful. I appreciate that, and yet I had to hold back.<br /><br />Well, today I felt lonely for her and I went and saw her. She still had the dry leaves on the rug beneath her plant stand that have been there for a long time. And there were still the shoe marks where we'd gone looking for something. There were still the candles burning in the colored glass holders, and as always a cup of tea--jasmine. I looked into her face, and she looked into mine too. And I could tell in a heartbeat that it was okay, and that when one of us could finally put our feelings into simple words, we'd be free to say anything that might clarify the muddle. <br /><br />Communication is always better than avoidance. Always? Probably always. There we were, two flawed individuals, caught up in realities we couldn't fully explain. But it was nice to go and visit her just the same. I did get lazy and maybe she did too. We ought to think of something we could do together, such as go on a sailboat ride or to a museum when we've got the energy and the will. Or we could cook a meal together. And most of all we could appreciate that we were together visiting again, as if there would never be another visit, not saving the expensive china for some other occasion but appreciating it right now. <br /><br /><strong>guest Gertrude of the Day:</strong><br /><br />Her name is Harriot. In her family she had a sister who was "the pretty one" and she dealt with that by going out and doing great things. She joined the women's auxiliary of the military during WWII and learned leadership. Met a great guy and married him, raised a family of ordinary kids who have done some great things, had a career in cosmetic sales and always kept a really nice home. Now her health is a struggle and yet people still come to see her and help her, thanks to her personal capital built up over the years. And she's still refined--except when she gets a little angry you hear it come out as steely firmness but otherwise politely. There's nobody else like her.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ4TA7GC7_W0pmyvC3l67b6lfjozguCmv9uRDiQtlewCGN7vanLLAEKhcOcATzsem1ZwPfRdPu1WhOvhszK0J3PVTFUsF1PUYUatgjJdT_-q6_RKzRHXb79iLWm08ggPwCS0tSiXuytAzV/s1600/Grannies+and+Andy+011.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 177px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ4TA7GC7_W0pmyvC3l67b6lfjozguCmv9uRDiQtlewCGN7vanLLAEKhcOcATzsem1ZwPfRdPu1WhOvhszK0J3PVTFUsF1PUYUatgjJdT_-q6_RKzRHXb79iLWm08ggPwCS0tSiXuytAzV/s200/Grannies+and+Andy+011.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526500583798697330" /></a>lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-41472980359120032052010-07-26T14:47:00.002-06:002010-07-26T16:15:52.149-06:00That knowing raise of the eyebrow<blockquote>Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.</blockquote> <br />Gertrude Stein <br /><br />I sometimes talk with Gertrude about things I wish I could do, like go to Europe or art school. <br /><br />"Why don't you, then?" she says, "If you really wanted to, you would."<br /><br />"Ouch," I think, but she's right. It's a philosophical truth that the way you act every moment reveals what you want. Sure, it's true, but it's hard to believe. The things you choose to do are really the only evidence of what you want. <br /><br />It's like what we say about politicians, something like "believe what they do, not what they say." And in the Bible, Jesus says you know a tree by its fruits. <br /><br />Gertrude's philosophical statement made me feel a little angry. It's so easy for her to say, just save your money and make a plan, and you can do it. Well, I say, I don't earn any money and so why make a plan? <br /><br />If what you choose is evidence of what you want, then I must really be wanting comfort and safety above all else. Now, I know I need to accept that about myself. Apparently, my desire for an interesting trek is secondary to my desire for stasis and rest. If I continue to see it as though I'd "be okay" if only I did something great like that, then it's self-loathing. Maybe one of my desires in life is to be loathed by myself and not accepted for who I am. And that's sad. Maybe one of my desires is to feel sad, as I do choose it after all.<br /><br />I expressed my frustration to Gertrude and she just listened patiently, knitting all the while. That woman has created some beautiful, rich sweaters, hats and stockings. I told her sometimes in my eyes she looks disrespectful, the way I will say something and she'll just have a private thought in reaction to it, and then an expression passes over her face, like, "I've seen that before..." I swear, sometimes I want to use my superior youthful energy to just put her down somehow. <br /><br />But I need her. And I know she's benign. I know she has wisdom to offer. It's just, sometimes my troubles seem so big, and she's above them, and then she laughs. I swear I'm going to leave her someday when I don't need her. <br /><br />I'd miss her pretty old apartment with all its plants and handiwork, its old fashioned atmosphere, its quiet serenity. I do love to visit with Gertrude, and I hope I can overcome this childish will of mine to make her as miserable as I feel. <br /><br />She's just so happy to have a good meal and listen to good music or read a good book. But then, the struggles she's had to go through make me certain that my struggles are necessary to shape me too. <br /><br />Gertrude got married when she was seventeen years old, because her family was poor and her little brothers and sisters needed so much. The times were awful, so the solution they found was to get her married to a thirty year old man. Can you imagine a family doing that today?<br /><br />She made the best of it, but he made a life for them that she didn't like. She had to wait until she got a little older, but she left him and got herself a job, and she broke free. That freedom was hard-won, and she didn't come out of it in a healthy state, or she might have made a better decision in a second husband. But she doesn't like to talk too much about it. She says it's taken her years to get to this good place she's in now.<br /><br />Which returns me to my original thought: The things we want the most are the prime infuences of our choices of behavior every day. I recently bought a new bicycle. I want to take a trip back home but I'm not sure what I want out of it. I wish I could more consciously choose, but then, maybe I like being mentally weak. Saves me from trouble.<br /><br /><strong>Gertrudism</strong><br /><br />She does not put any thought into any kind of coming global catastrophe, nor end times a la the return of the 12th Imam or the Son of Man. If we mess up the earth, we have to live with it. With regards to pollution, she says all of us do things that pollute the earth and assuming we are strong enough to kill of the earth -arguable- then if we are really serious we will act in better ways. We will xeriscape. We will bicycle instead of driving. If we truly believe it, and we value a cleaner world, we will simply consume less of our own free will, and be happier in the process.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-8474402458068434512010-06-13T11:50:00.004-06:002010-06-13T11:54:42.923-06:00Janey Cutler singing No Regrethttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAwOZvvGsRs<br /><br />This is a woman in her early eighties who went on a talent show to sing a song. <br /><br />And she blew 'em all away!<br /><br />What this teaches me is, no matter what your stereotypical role in life may be, it's not what you are, but the song you choose to sing. Both Gertrude and I are in need of this kind of learning in life. Though she's miles ahead of me in the way she lives her life, she can still use the reaffirmation that there is always a great choice of song to sing.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-57891665593340010652010-06-09T16:11:00.005-06:002010-06-09T17:16:25.621-06:00Lost and found<blockquote>It is so friendly so simply friendly and though inevitable not a sadness and though occurring not a shock.</blockquote><br /><strong>Gertrude Stein</strong><br /><br /><em><strong>Sensations get complicated</strong></em><br /><br />Gertrude lost a gold bracelet and she asked me to come and help her find it. My heart sank because looking for lost items is about third from the bottom of my favorite things to do, right above getting a root canal and cleaning up vomit.<br /><br />I don't know why I hate it so when I have to try and find something that's been misplaced. I get a desperate feeling inside. I'll give a lost item the normal amount of attention but when someone bugs me about it, or when it gets obsessive, I'd rather lose the item. <br /><br />But this gold bracelet of Gertrude's, being lost, really had her upset. She wasn't crying or anything, but she kept walking around her house randomly reaching out her hand and pushing aside her geranium pot, rearranging the canisters on her kitchen counter, then going to the front door and fishing around in a little basket where she throws match books, bobby pins and perfume sample bottles that are too good to throw away. She clearly had no idea where to look. I didn't either, but at least I could be systematic. Plus my eyesight is better than hers.<br /><br />I didn't want to do it, but then it became almost like a mission. It didn't matter whether I had fun or not. I was going to either find the gold bracelet or eliminate all the places it wasn't.<br /><br />She described the bracelet. It was made of links like a necklace, but bigger. Oh great, I thought. It was a little dinky bit of chain that could collapse upon itself and contort itself into any nook or cranny. Ugh!<br /><br />Who knows where or when she first realized it was missing. I could do nothing but start at the front door of her house and work to the right. At first it was easy because her little nicknack basket sits on the edge of her old upright piano. I set aside the basket of no gold bracelet. We pulled the piano out from the wall, where inches of dust billowed out from beneath it.<br /><br />"I'll vacuum," I said, but Gertrude wouldn't let me because if the bracelet was on the floor there, I might vacuum it up. She helped me pull harder on the piano and she gathered up the herd of dust bunnies with her hands. That left only the sand and pebbles and dried old flower petals, which I had to ignore. I visually followed the ribs of the back of the piano, without the sense that a bracelet would end up there at all.<br /><br />We hunted through the front of the piano, and no bracelet.<br /><br />"You better dust," I said, and she must have had her mind lost in finding the bracelet because she just said, "Yes, I really must." We pushed the piano back up against the wall and checked in the dusty silk flower arrangement, no bracelet. Next was her couch, an old red velvet one with dark wood flourishes. I pressed hard to push the cushion down and we hunted through the cracks, pulling up breadcrumbs and coins and an old, old piece of crayon with the paper on it soaked in wax. I found an M&M and a cigarette butt, showing it to her with amazed consternation.<br /><br />"Hmm?" I said, and she shrugged. "I had a friend once, for awhile, and he wasn't too careful with butts." The vacant look had already returned to her face, so I didn't get to ask her what was the nature of that friendship. We felt everywhere in and around that couch. I thought it might be snagged in the old shawl she kept draped over the red velvet arm, but my hope was dashed.<br /><br />"He died from a house fire," Gertrude said. Another one of her non-sequiteurs? "He?" I asked her. "My guy friend, Hank." I said, "Ohhh." That time I was the distracted one. "He dropped a cigarette butt after he fell asleep on his vinyl couch. It went down in the crack of it and smouldered all afternoon, and then when it finally flared he stayed and tried to fight the fire but he died of smoke inhalation." She shook her head. "He died with his photo album in his arms."<br /><br />You know, getting older I notice that my mind is slow. Once I could've kept three things going on at once, and kept track of each item. Now I just can't do that. My daughter is the sharp one now, and the contempt I hear in her voice at the times I let something slip, I remember oh so well using against my Mom. But now, not only do I not have much speed in my brain, I don't quite care about as many things as I once did. So it's not so bad, but the contempt stings a little bit. I tell myself it's my turn to be judged the stupid one. Karma is undeviating justice personnified. Getrude's friend Hank may not have been able to think clearly, and that's very sad that he went that way.<br /><br />Karma is linear. Events and my responses to them all seem to work out the justice that is coming due. I hope I have chosen enough kind and decent responses in this world that my karma eases up when I'm old, when my non-linear, eternal spirit rises out of my body.<br /><br />And, as bad as I feel that I seem so mentally sluggish now, I even still now feel sorry for Gertrude, because my mental fuzziness, in her, is a haze.<br /><br />We moved across her front room to the TV stand, the arm chairs across from the sofa, the little side table with the stained glass lamp, the doily her mom had once had in her front room. We checked her big windowsill all festooned with cobwebs and dead flower petals, and even located her lost coin purse.<br /><br />Finally I needed a break. It was time for tea.<br /><br />We found the gold bracelet wrapped around the back of the base of her tea tin. she'd moved the tin out, somehow dropped the bracelet, then pushed the tin back. We made a bigger deal of finding it than the situation truly merited. But I remembered how much that bracelet meant to her. Just for no good reason it disappeared and she felt the loss of it more than she could think of what she'd done earlier.<br /><br />I try very, very hard to have a positive view of the things Gertrude does and thinks, because right there, that's me in a few short years, and if I ridicule her it really means I can't tolerate myself. And how is that okay?<br /><br /><strong>Guest Gertrude of the Day:</strong> Jamie Lee Curtis<br /><br />She has played the cute kid in the neiborhood, the smokin' hot babe, the con artist, the great mom and is an author. I love her. I love her because she showed us something about the common images we see in magazines being faked, thus making credible people think of their own bodies as inadequate. She combated that. She is a mature lady now but the expression in her eyes, and in her smile, are still wonderful. And she married one of the band Spinal Tap, so she really did good in the marriage department too.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxo1UzPER9wJLo4_t2Ai7va3GA0vftz-M6g3kTq9A4kopO4Ddt4bTH6_5FsOH4OqfIDayzhrjk6sil5dHTEBE2q7hw3PRww30ZnNfBtUdMRM08ebCs_cY_1RSZjC-PP212UXRBvE7ATImx/s1600/thumbnail%5B2%5D.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 125px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxo1UzPER9wJLo4_t2Ai7va3GA0vftz-M6g3kTq9A4kopO4Ddt4bTH6_5FsOH4OqfIDayzhrjk6sil5dHTEBE2q7hw3PRww30ZnNfBtUdMRM08ebCs_cY_1RSZjC-PP212UXRBvE7ATImx/s320/thumbnail%5B2%5D.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480914584659581874" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTgIxQyZ3mXLpidbYJydteLqgLVV8GG_WphvV5R9SUcAELHrzSVbUMVybEgaAc-iZyGnuiaNgQlThZ3wjKPnQ_eBsWKB1DAvUjk4aHLNLLhbP1-w3Pa-oFRR0b9NIC7UhFWSo-oNOGCF-B/s1600/thumbnail%5B7%5D.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 128px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTgIxQyZ3mXLpidbYJydteLqgLVV8GG_WphvV5R9SUcAELHrzSVbUMVybEgaAc-iZyGnuiaNgQlThZ3wjKPnQ_eBsWKB1DAvUjk4aHLNLLhbP1-w3Pa-oFRR0b9NIC7UhFWSo-oNOGCF-B/s320/thumbnail%5B7%5D.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480914594245431522" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjptouieGejnE0vmsZyVw4yLcYA0gEnJZQBI0bnTB51cSkWAkFRtslwEvTcaifua9wLMULWMwdN5woA68ANPxRZdYhgnV0jWF4pGLtBbrsQoGp1rr6ZuMUWAkhdU6anRkYb08q3a8xtxszW/s1600/thumbnailCAS4HC3V.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 108px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjptouieGejnE0vmsZyVw4yLcYA0gEnJZQBI0bnTB51cSkWAkFRtslwEvTcaifua9wLMULWMwdN5woA68ANPxRZdYhgnV0jWF4pGLtBbrsQoGp1rr6ZuMUWAkhdU6anRkYb08q3a8xtxszW/s320/thumbnailCAS4HC3V.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480914597210912370" /></a>lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-64725651198324494212010-05-07T12:41:00.004-06:002010-05-07T13:05:41.749-06:00Gertrude is Funny<blockquote>When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.</blockquote> Gertrude Stein<br /><br />I hung out at my friend Gertrude's house one evening. She lives in a little tiny bungalow in a decent but old neighborhood. I had just been to the cheese importer's place and brought back some really nice brie, Stilton and goats' milk stuff with some good crackers. She knew what kind of wine would go with them, so she brought it out and also some fruit. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the wine, but when you had the taste of the cheese in your mouth and then you sipped the wine, they blended. To me, that is like magic. You can't tell me it's wrong to have wine with the perfect food accompaniment. I wouldn't give that up. We sat at the table together, sharing a feeling of contentment and friendship. <br /><br />And then after we did that, I watched her make tea. Here's what she did that was funny: She had on a maroon, cotton cardigan sweater that had seen better years a long time ago. From the pockets of it she pulled out a spoon and a couple of packets of tea. When the water was hot she pulled the cuffs of the sleeves down over her hands to use instead of hot pads. And when she spilled a little hot water on her wooden cutting board she used a corner of the sweater to wipe it up with instead of a towel. Then when she got a sniffle she used her sleeve instead of a kleenex. <br /><br />I hoped that sweater had been washed recently. I didn't say anything about it, though. Judging by its condition I was sure she threw it in the laundry quite frequently. Plus, where I come from we didn't put too much stock in always being proper and tidy, so if I had misgivings about where those sweater cuffs might have been, I was able to ignore them. And I was glad to keep her company there in her kitchen. Sometimes I've been afraid she gets lonely. But then, a famous author said this once: Loneliness is the poverty of self. Solitude is the richness of self. I had to trust that what my friend Gertrude has is the latter. <br /><br />Toward the end of the visit, Gertrude had that look about her, as if expectant that I was going to leave soon. I took the hint and drove home. It's nice to visit, and nice to have the visit end at the right time too. I admire how Gertrude has a sense of boundaries and is nice about how she communicates them. That is just another way I want to be like her.<br /><br />Guest Gertrude of the Day: Laura Bush. She listens to Bob Marley music and appears on Oprah Winfrey. What I like about this is, she stands for what she stands for, but then doesn't expect everyone to agree with her position or be just like her. That's poise.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-2200469999749183982010-04-19T08:39:00.004-06:002010-04-19T09:11:23.239-06:00Floating at one's level<blockquote>Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.</blockquote> <strong>Gertrude Stein</strong> <br /><br />I hadn't visited Gertrude in awhile. There were some ostensible reasons such as things to do, etc. But the real reason was this: When I visited her before, the things I'd said seem to have put her to sleep. And though if I asked her about it she'd probably apologize, the truth was it was my own fault somehow but I couldn't put a finger on it. <br /><br />There's a haze of blended air in my life that I have to walk through sometimes, where vision is clouded not by a cloud but from an area that is out of focus. It hovers at mostly eye level but can go over my head or as low as my legs. One thing in that cloud of blur is the question of why I isolate myself more and more, just on the tiniest of influences such as someone not responding to things I say as I hoped they would respond. I feel the dead air and I stay away from it. <br /><br />I mean, what am I supposed to do, change my way of thinking, figuring out what to say based on what I think will get a response? I choose instead to be by myself with my thoughts more often than not.<br /><br />The problem with <em>that</em> is, I don't want to lose Gertrude. I value her to the utmost. She is peaceful and kind, but she remembers so many of her struggles and dramas and she doesn't mind talking about them. True, her house is old and tattered, but her worn out things are still comfortable to sit on. And if you made a hand gesture that hit a cup of tea and made it splash onto the arm of her divan, she wouldn't care. <br /><br />Beyond all the words we share, the connection we have is what really means something. Maybe I ought to remember that for other people I know. The invisible thread may be a strong rope or just a little piece of string or even a spiderweb--it really matters. If I must isolate myself at least let me maintain the regard I have for others in some way.<br /><br /><strong>Gertrude of the Day:</strong> <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMrMbjUL6O2E0KiibaBTvZjRFh0NvT_1WaGfML52QlL_E_PAFVtM8qMHt78pDxeg_VyFN6tLEmdHK4scSUqGM0WeqfFyXsJMihbf19TMZ0zEgoWN5JryRrAoJbpWZXIi38tSrYscUfgCp/s1600/sharon_osbourne%5B1%5D.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 145px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIMrMbjUL6O2E0KiibaBTvZjRFh0NvT_1WaGfML52QlL_E_PAFVtM8qMHt78pDxeg_VyFN6tLEmdHK4scSUqGM0WeqfFyXsJMihbf19TMZ0zEgoWN5JryRrAoJbpWZXIi38tSrYscUfgCp/s320/sharon_osbourne%5B1%5D.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461864495923066578" /></a><br /><br />Sharon Osbourne (photo from Woman's Day Entertainment, 10/8/07<br /><br />We've seen her up and down, supporting her husband, carrying her husband, coping with ordeals, slapping down people who needed it, being slapped down, and still coming up strong. We've seen her fat, we've seen her thin. Her hair's been this way and that way, but she's not about her hair--she's about having a set of huevos anyone would envy.<br /><br />My Gertrude is not unlike our Gertrude of the Day, even though there's a lot of outward difference. Both of them fought with their best skills and took hits on their worst achilles heels. I look up to them both.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3143356588230041721.post-7324413556606286582010-03-28T10:27:00.002-06:002010-03-28T10:56:50.307-06:00Striding Atop Uncertainty<blockquote><strong>Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.</strong></blockquote> Gertrude Stein<br /><br />I tried and tried to join Christian churches and to belong in the groups. I also tried atheism but during that month or so I felt miserable and had to keep talking myself into it,and then one day admitted I'm not an atheist and felt better.<br /><br />I had a long talk with Gertrude over some nice little glasses of sherry and some good cheese and bread, and I was feeling all warm and safe there in her drawing room with the dust motes dancing around in the air. That woman does not have a 5:00 rule at all!<br /><br />I told Gertrude I feel like the ugly duckling sometimes, and I'm ugly inside if you think of everyone else as having found a group identity they can live with. Gertrude said, "Well, the ugly duckling wasn't a duck at all." She looked at me with those liquid eyes of hers and it dawned on me what she was pointing out. Then I ruined it by wondering if I'd applied a self-flattering analogy to myself. I shook my head, and put it down on my list of things to ponder, if I'm really vain but don't want to admit it. <br /><br />She said, "Well, maybe what you are is Post-Christian. You believe in Christ, or so you've said, and yet you don't give Christianity the ownership of that particular concept. You told me you believed that Christ was an archetypal structure where someone so pure has such an evolved ego, he let others play out their sickness to the point where he let himself be publicly destroyed, and thus showed there's more meaning to life than what human beings understand."<br /><br />I felt humbled that someone had actually listened to things I'd said, and thought about them. I felt awful that I often didn't listen to things she said quite as well. <br /><br />"Yes," I said. "If Jesus Christ was the answer, then it seems like the world would be a better place by now. God knows there are many good Christians and all they get out of it is peace of mind. Is that the best we could hope for? And Jesus only taught for 3 years. He said to be humble and to not think so much of yourself, so you'd give to the poor and you'd forgive your brother even though that can be sooo hard to do. I think just doing those things would make you a spiritual success. Then the epistles were written and I think that's when it turned into a religion. I just can't join a religion."<br /><br />"That's too bad," she said. "You seem to need <em>something.</em> <br /><br />I've taken to believing that life is just a mess. It's a series of situations you have to face. It's a challenge to your ability to stand up and love others and let yourself get beaten into shape and tempered. Nobody's got the answer and yet we spend whole lifetimes trying to get someone to give us one. I guess I <em>am</em> post-Christian. I think the apocalypse is every year, and judgment day is every day. And heaven is a nanosecond away at all times. And hell is people. <br /><br />But that's just not very useful. I want, like, a pill to take that will last me for hours, to give me the sensation that I don't need to worry. I mean, when was anybody ever in control of anything? Sometimes I just haven't worried and nothing bad happened...<br /><br />I looked up, and Gertrude was sitting in her velveteen armchair with her head tilted back and her eyes closed. I'd put her to sleep!<br /><br /><strong>Guest Gertrude of the Day</strong><br /><br />All the women who ever married Tom Cruise: Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes. <br /><br />These women grabbed that big brass ring, got themselves the best lookin' husband in the world (or used to be) and found themselves in a hell of a mess. I do not know Tom Cruise but I think being a scientologist means he's got some weird, weird, weirdness. What a pickle! Well, Katie hasn't gotten away yet but I think he picked her because she's a genetic match-up extraordinaire and he can try to manage her inner life as long as she'll let him. In order to know how crooked a stick is, lay a straight one beside it.lisacoloradohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00866755207829269366noreply@blogger.com0