Archive for June, 2010

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Bliss: The Highest Degree of Happiness


2010
06.12

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The Creative Every Day challenge for June is Bliss. (To learn more about this challenge click on the button on the sidebar.) Leah, who runs this blog, tells participants to completely ignore the theme, touch on the theme, adhere to the theme – lots of possibilities.  I frequently ignore the theme, but it’s a good mental exercise to think about these things once in a while.

I started thinking about bliss.  My first thought was it’s a scary word.  BLISS implies something big, something huge.  I think of Buddha, in the highest state of being, unruffled and untroubled, in a state of bliss.  The highest degree of happiness.  But in that happiness, you are so serene that you don’t need to define your state as bliss.  And it’s a constant state.  If you are always at that high, sustained level, the need to define the concept at all is irrelevant.  You are.

I know bliss as a small word, a lower-case word.  I don’t want to worry about achieving this elevated state of being; I just want to live with CSI – something I talked about in the post on courage.  And no, it’s not the crime show – for me, CSI is continuous self-improvement.  Maybe with enough of it, I’ll be in a state of BLISS, but now, my bliss is simpler,  composed of moments.

Being in a state of bliss may be akin to a state of grace.  I felt I was in a state of grace a few times, and I’m quite sure I can’t describe it.  I just knew it. It’s a sustained high level.  Maybe my bliss is just moments of happiness.

I pulled a few photos out of recent albums to illustrate what bliss is, at least for me.  Part of my bliss is being able to take photos.  Pictures tell the story.

Going outside today to take a look at the pond (I think I look for frogs as much as the cats do), I saw our first water lily.  It was incredibly exciting – a very small but very blissful moment.  You can dig deeper into it, however, extracting the pure bliss in seeing the wonders of nature – the complexity of flowers – shells – trees; the intrigue of the forest; the stillness of the desert.  Sometimes, when I’m in the mountains or at the beach and see something of extraordinary beauty, it’s too much to contain and I well up inside, shedding perhaps a tear or two.  Or more.  My dad understands this – it happens to him also.

My daughter sent this the other day.  Finally, in Colorado, it’s warm enough to bring out the wading pool.  Just seeing my beautiful, innocent, happy granddaughter is blissful.  The innocence hurts, but I know she’ll be ok when the day comes – that day that she discovers all is not well in the world.  But for now, what more can you ask for? Family, children, the blossoming of hope and love – it’s just doggone blissful.

This grainy cell-phone photo is on the top of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles.  The bar revolves.  That’s me, two of my grandkids, and my dear friend Michael.  That’s bliss – being able to have friends like Michael, share experiences (we’d all been at the Black Eyed Peas concert).  Out of everyone I know, Michael is the closest to reaching the state of BLISS.  He truly is one with the universe, and I’ve learned much from him.  It’s also amazing and a little surreal that we can do things like stay at the Bonaventure, go to concerts, head out to Las Vegas for soccer tournaments, and order seven desserts for five people at a Japanese restaurant.  Food IS bliss.

The big sky days we’ve had in abundance this year in Bakersfield leave me in a state of pure, unadulterated bliss.  In fact, I’m thinking how to describe the feeling and I can’t – it approaches BlIsS.

This is a moment of bliss.  It’s my youngest daughter and her children with Jose, her ex-husband.  Lots of unpleasantness led up to their divorce, but it’s nothing less than blissful to me that they can come together as a family for Dax’s graduation, all smiles for the photo.

I gave a graduation party for Daxton.  The surprise guest was her eighth-grade language arts teacher, who had to stop teaching for medical reasons and couldn’t finish the year.  Pat and I have been friends forever.  Look at Dax – if that isn’t bliss, we’ll have to redefine the word.

This is my oldest daughter and her husband.  She earned her Master’s Degree last week.  But the smile isn’t just for that.  She and Matt are so in love that it’s almost painful.  He’s so tender with her and she with him, as they attend endless soccer games and raise great kids, that they are in a state of bliss – whether they know it or not  Which makes me feel overwhelmed with happiness.  Bliss.

Here’s some of the grandkids and friends in the casita, their little hide-out at our new house.  It astounds me that they all get along all the time and actually have fun together.  I think this makes me happiest of all – having the family love and like each other, through hardship and happiness.  It’s bliss.

More bliss – Jennifer’s graduation party.  How amazing is it to have a house like we do, be able to have abundant food, abundant laughter, fun, friends and family.  Bliss.

My parents at our house.  Mom’s 87, Dad’s 92.  Mom may repeat the same thing five times in a row, and laugh when she can’t remember the name of something (not realizing she can’t remember the name of almost anything), and Dad naps more than he’s awake.  But they are alive, healthy more or less, happy, and in love.  Married I think 68 years, they love each other more than ever.  This, to me, qualifies as bliss.

It’s total bliss to see something unexpected that takes your breath away – like this moon.  It’s blissful to not lose the sense of wonder.

That’s Jennifer, me and my friend Wendy. Wendy’s more than a friend, really – she and her husband and kids are family. We almost lost Wendy.  A couple of years ago she developed non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and our world collapsed.  Life without Wendy was inconceivable to all of us.  She calls her experience with lymphoma and a stem-cell transplant her journey to the 8th continent.  The bliss in this story overflows into gratitude, happiness, thankfulness – for Wendy, for medical care, for the sheer will to live.

This is bliss – four generations: three on the couch and the fourth behind the camera.

This, too is bliss.  Not just the visit from my wonderful friend William, but just being able to have a friend like William.  There’s 43 years difference in our ages.  But because of Michael, who taught me to be open to what crosses my path, and Ray Bradbury, who told me he didn’t consider it odd at all to have a friend so much younger, and because of my family who understand and don’t draw borders and boundaries to fence people in or out, I can have a friend like William.  All of the above are reasons for bliss.

Bliss.  Blissful and happy that we can afford vacations, bliss induced by the ocean, sand and sky, and bliss that we’ve been married 42 years.  We were laughing tonight, watching an ad for eHarmony.  I said we should register and see if we came up as matches for each other.  Mark said we probably wouldn’t, and he’s right.  But – we share the same values, and they are what keep us together.  Commitment, trust, respect, caring, and truthfulness.  That’s what love becomes, after all.  With both sets of parents as examples, I think we were destined to stay together as a couple, and it hasn’t been hard.  Hasn’t always been easy -we’ve had bumps and it hasn’t been pure bliss, but the concept is – the concept of a committed marriage.  With love.

I suppose my idea of bliss comes from family, friends, and nature.  If I can have this many moments in just the last four months or so, I may be closer to BLISS than I thought.  For now, I’ll take it in the lower case.

One last source of bliss – art.  Tonight I did a couple of still lifes – set them up and photographed them.  They came together quickly – by all appearances – but so much of the preparation is mental, running in the background, figuring it out, thinking, contemplating, that just the doing of the piece is almost incidental.  In fact, I was reading an article in the tub (I always read in the bath tub) about a retrospective of the artist Yves Klein.  Klein believed the idea behind the work was more important than the execution, according to TIME art critic Richard Lacayo.  Klein said, “My paintings are the ashes of my art.”

I had done the collage in the background but wasn’t entirely satisfied.  So today I put this rooster in front of it and photographed it.  This I like.  It’s called Rooster.  For now, anyway.

I jumped up to make this still life because of a beautiful purple turnip.  The turnip may not be evident in the finished product, but it was the catalyst.  You’ll all be glad to know that all the produce in this photo is organic and local.

So that’s it -moments of bliss that are compounded by the abundance of it all.  Little bites of bliss.  And now, I am in a state of blissful fatigue, and I’m going to bed.


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Courage


2010
06.09

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Posted in Essays about Life, General | 3 Comments »


Links of Courage by Larry Poncho

Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue,

he has no security for preserving any other.  ~Samuel Johnson

I’m exploring the topic of courage on Coach Dian’s blog challenge. Everyone has been invited to discuss in any way at all one of the twelve subjects this particular art installation addresses, plus a thirteenth added by Dian. The art installation itself is from a Burning Man festival, and asks us to what do we pledge allegiance, learning to see with new eyes and act with new vision in the web of life.

Courage encompasses so much.

For many people, seniors and those with debilitating conditions especially, courage is getting up every day, getting dressed, and meeting the day.  I feel that the day one or both of my parents doesn’t get dressed, we’ll have crossed a threshold.

Courage for people in the armed forces, both past and present, seems to me to happen as much at home as on the battlefield;  returning home and having the courage to work through issues caused by war, and then lead what passes for a normal life.  My dad fought and painted as an artist correspondent in the Fifth Army during World War II. He endured what many think is the most brutal confrontation of that war: the Battle for Monte Cassino. To come home from that, start up a life with his bride, have children, work, and do all the things that a family man would do – that, to me, is exceptional courage. Not just for Dad, but for all the servicemen and women in all conflicts and wars.

During many hisorical movements that led to social change, courage was vital.  In the United States during the civil rights era, men and women, young and old alike, risked their lives to fight for the ability to exercise their rights – rights that already were theirs in law, just not in reality.  When asked if she wasn’t worried about being killed, voting rights activist and former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer said she reckoned they’d been trying to kill her all her life anyway. To honor this brave woman, click here and make a donation, large or small, to the statue committee.  We building a work of art, a visual reminder of courage. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, donated $10,000.  The Color Purple itself is a story of courage. You can watch a 10-minute video about Fannie Lou Hamer here - my granddaughter  and a friend made it when they were in seventh grade.

Addicts, alcoholics, those who fight every day to conquer their problems show courage.  It takes tremendous strength to decide to quit an addiction, and courageous determination every day to stay clean.  Those who move forward in the face of abuse and then try to help others are courageous.

I could go on and on because courage comes in all shapes and sizes; it’s not simply saving someone from a fire, or all the “big” things we think about.  Now, I know there is nothing simple about saving someone from a fire, so don’t get that wrong.  It’s just an example.

Because for me, personally, courage can be something as small as taking hold of oneself and moving forward – something no one else ever knows about.  Personal courage. It can be saying to someone, “I’m Jewish, and I wish you wouldn’t use the expression ‘Jew them down.  It’s offensive.’ “  Which I’ve had to do.  It’s publicly sticking up for someone getting bullied at school, not worrying about retaliation or how you will look to others. It’s doing what’s right.

Maybe that’s what courage amounts to – in the macro-situations like war, rescue or defense to the micro-situations like getting up and getting dressed each day when you’re 92 and just plain tired, or standing up for others.

So that’s what I think courage is – now, how do I use it to expand my view of the world, see with new eyes, act with new vision, and pledge my allegiance to this quality? This is tricky.  I’ve always tried to exercise personal courage and in many instances have, I think, and we talked about it a lot in the leadership class I taught in 8th grade.  I’ve never had to exercise courage on a large scale, however.  Now I wonder.  When you’re young, you are ready to put yourself in harm’s way for the sake of something larger than yourself.  When you’re older and retired, you wonder if you would have the energy to do the same.  So I pledge myself to the smaller gestures – to not letting an insult or slur pass me by, to stopping at the accident or picking up a stray animal even if it’s inconvenient, giving a cordial and civil greeting to the homeless person I pass on the street, even if it seems scary.  Doing what’s right, not what’s easy.

Mark Twain had something to say about this.  Mark Twain had something to say about almost everything, all from sharply observing the world.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.  ~Mark Twain

A wonderful vision of the world, of our country, would be to see everyone doing these small things, everyday acts of personal courage, that could result in a whole new world, dare I say a brave new world.  My vision of  courage would be to know everyone is working on what I call CSI – continuous self-improvement.  From that alone, the internal courage to face yourself, like yourself while working on what you don’t like, the external small acts of courage would result.  A new  vision of the web of life would be that with enough external small acts of courage, many of the large ones wouldn’t be needed anymore.  Maybe that would be called peace, with yourself and the world, in the world.

Tomorrow: Leah’s Creative Everyday Day theme of Bliss.


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Looking for hair in all the wrong places… (and a couple of odds and ends)


2010
06.07

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Posted in Art, Photography | 2 Comments »

I wanna talk about me

Wanna talk about I

Wanna talk about number one

What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want , what I see

Wanna talk about hair.

(So Toby Keith doesn’t say the hair part.  Sorry, Toby.)

Let’s talk about ME first: the odds and ends, before I get into the distressing subject of hair.

Odds and Ends One: the Kaiser Show

Kaiser Permanente asked the Arts Council of Kern to hold a juried show, and from the works accepted, Kaiser would purchase some to hang in their new building in downtown, Bakersfield.  I almost didn’t enter, then thought photographs printed on canvas would be a winning combo.  And it was!  They purchased all three of my works- hip, hip, hooray!  Gosh it feels good to sell something, even if I barely recouped my costs.  I think this was fantastic of Kaiser to do for the community.

I did a triptych of poppies:


I cropped this poppy into a square and then flipped it.  So each end had a poppy leaning out of the triptych, and in the center there was a similar poppy but straight up.  They looked phenomenal printed on canvas.

Then I submitted two that were about 18×30:



Odds and Ends Two: Etsy

I don’t know about Etsy.  With so many wonderful hand-crafted articles out there, it seems awfully hard to carve out a market share.  I’ve sold a few photos, which is nutty because they look gorgeous printed on Velvet Fine Art paper, especially for the price.  So I’m trying something new – note cards.  I had some made for a trial run and they’re quite nice, so if they don’t sell, I’ll have some note cards.  If you want to take a look, there’s a link on the sidebar.  If you have any Etsy advice and are willing to share, please do!

And now, for the main event:  Wanna talk about HAIR

And I’m not talking about the musical.  I’m talking about us, in particular, women of a certain age. I’m talking gray. This is a vexing issue.  First, let’s just dispense with the dye question.  Without whatever color it is my stylist puts on my hair (it gets a lot of compliments), I’m quite sure I’d be gray.  I don’t think I’m ready to be gray yet, BUT…I’m starting to wonder what it would look like instead of rejecting the idea out of hand.  That must mean something.  I’d save so much money ($85 every four weeks), and I wouldn’t be putting chemicals on my head, close to my brain, so often.  Chemicals can’t be good.

Looking for hair in all the wrong places: Cue music (and apologies to Waylan Jennings)

I was looking for hair in all the wrong places
Looking for hair, on my head, not my face
Searching with my eyes, looking for traces
Of what…. I used to have on my head.
Hopin’ to find some growth and some color
God bless the day I discover
A thick head of hair…on my head. (end song)

Yes, the hair on our heads gets thinner as we age.  Can’t just pull it into a ponytail without artfully arranging it, or else bald spots will show.  Best to just wear it down.  BUT the ultimate insult is, while we are straining to fine enough hair on our head for some sort of style, it’s growing everywhere else! In all the wrong places.

This was demonstrated to me the last time I had my eyebrows waxed.  I mostly keep them up myself, but once in a while a wax is in order.  So I’m lying there, and the esthetician approaches me with scissors! While my head of hair is thinning, my brows are growing longer.  Great. I suppose men with bushy eyebrows are acceptable, but I can’t have them sticking up all over the place.

So now I have to trim my EYEBROWS.  And buy eyebrow wax to smooth them down.

Magnifying mirrors are a must.  Now and then, a stray hair will grow on my chin, under my chin, or at the side of what I suppose I need to call a moustache.  Sometimes it’s white, sometimes gray, always bristly.  Every morning I inspect my face for stray long hairs where they oughtn’t be.  Those suckers grow fast.

Finally, oh my, the esthetician waxed my moustache AND my NASAL hair.  It gets longer too.

This is some kind of perverse joke on us.  Hair growth goes haywire.  Hairs Gone Wild might be a popular video for the over 60 crowd.

There you have it.  Hair. In all the wrong places.




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It’s a cat’s life: more notes on the move


2010
06.06

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The move is winding down.  Or up.  Since we’re renting out the lake house starting June 25, it’s kicked us into high gear.

The book problem: Most of the books, it turns out are mine.  I had to separate into get rid of, keep but can sit in boxes for a while, and need now.  A bookcase needs to be built. The Harry Potter books, inexplicably since I just reread them all, are in the must have now pile.  All 11 of them.  Yes, I know it’s a seven-book series.

The bird feather problem: I find feathers here and there throughout the house.  Feathers scattered in the yard.  So far, only two birds (that I’m aware of) have made it into the house, but we have a feather problem.  Every new finding , even the smallest feather, requires searches under beds and in corners.

The frog problem: We found a frog floating at the bottom of the pond yesterday.  Dead.  Mark looked it over and it didn’t seem to be damaged.  The cats are highly interested in the pond, however.

Lily is up there on the rocks, Tiger below.  This is what they’re interested in.

The frogs.  The cats know they are alive and potential prey.  But while intensely interested, they can’t decide what to do.  I’ve caught both Tiger and Lily batting a frog lightly with their paws, claws retracted, trying to figure out what’s to be done about it.

They poke their noses into crevasses, and Tiger is especially interested in the spaces near the water filter.

I bought a water iris and a water lily, but those are for our pleasure, not the cat’s.

When not tracking frogs, Tiger and Lily lie in wait for birds.  It doesn’t matter if they’re in the house and the birds out.

The tension is palpable, especially when they go into the “bird alert” position: body tensed up, starting to twitch, and then the bird sound – the “eh eh eh eh eh” funny little excited sound cats make.

It’s a cat’s life, all right.  And when not stalking frogs or birds, they can be found in various stages of sleep, or CATatonic awakening.

The sleeping-in problem

In Tiger’s world, I should awaken and get up no later than 8:00 am.  She makes sure I know it, too, with an escalating series of warnings.  The first are minor.  I may open my eyes a fraction and see an orange cat staring, inches from my face.  I may feel a few gentle thuds on the bed, which would be Tiger leaping around.  Then, she might walk lightly over my body.  If these measures don’t work by 8:00, she lands smack on my chest, none too gently.  She’s an effective trainer.

The going-to-sleep problem

It seems a competition has developed: which cat can get on my bed first when I go to sleep?  We’re having some jealousy.  Tiger resents Lily getting attention – not always, but sometimes.  So if Lily makes it onto the bed and settles in first, Tiger gets up, pokes around near Lily, trying to dislodge her – which she can’t because I have my hand reassuringly on Lily.  Sometimes they both end up on the bed, in which case I sleep in a contorted position so as not to disturb the cats.

The shower problem

Lily is a water-lover.  When I turn on the sink, she’s there.  When I start the tub, she’s there.  In fact, the other night I couldn’t get her inside on time, so I took my bath thinking, gosh, Lily’s missing the bath.  I have three daughters, sons-in-law, nine grandkids, and a tenth on the way.  It’s not like I have to turn the cats into my kids.  Yet I find myself thinking about stuff like Lily missing the bath.  Sheesh.  Now, however, the morning shower has become a contest: can I get out before Lily gets in?  And if she gets in, should I shut the shower door? Or let the water from the door drip onto the floor.

The other problems

There really aren’t any.  Mark is constructing a pantry in garage and he’s almost done.  It’s like a little room, really.  He’s finally conceded that I need some of the garage – not a lot, but enough for the freezer, my bicycle and some storage.  He can have all the rest.  I’ve got my closet arranged and rearranged, and will do a final rearrangement tomorrow.  If I have time – getting ready for a graduation party for my oldest daughter.  She’s just completed her master’s degree.

A final note

I was watering plants this morning, dead-heading flowers, pulling weeds.  I leave a little trail behind me for Mark to clean up.  Today I told him it was customary for wives to do that – I’d read where Katherine, or Jeanne, or someone does that also.  So is that right? Do most of you leave weeds and trimmings for your husbands to pick up?  Or do most of you guys have to pick up after your wives?

I think it’s bed time.  Tiger has gotten into her little bed and Lily is alseep, fondly dreaming, on my desk chair.  So I’m going to bed also.

Disclaimer: Google has started putting some political ads on the blog.  I am not endorsing or not endorsing anything that’s advertised.  Want to make sure y’all know that.  I put adsense on so I can earn money.  I get paid when my earnings reach $100.  So far, in a year, I’m almost at $7.00, so this is a money-maker for sure.


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Do I know myself? Sometimes. Do you know who I am?


2010
06.02

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Posted in Essays about Life | 1 Comment »


One of my Twitter friends, whollyjeanne (you’ll find her at the barefoot heart on my links on the sidebar), included me in a tweet from Coach Dian. It’s one of those challenge things.  Dian came across this installation from a Burning Man festival, and the moment I clicked on the link and saw this piece, I knew I was in.  Without even reading about it, you sense the mission statement.

The challenge is to take the twelve topics the installation explores, with a thirteenth added by Dian, and write about them during the month of June.  So you know what? I’m going to.  And I’m going to start with self-awareness.

Sounds so obvious – self-awareness.  We’re with ourselves 24/7.  But I’ve been feeling a little lost lately as to who I am, and since I’m 63 years old, you’d think I’d have a handle on this by now.  But I’m retired – I’m not anchored by a job or a routine, and I’ve done several lifetimes of community and volunteer work and I don’t want to do that anymore.  I’ve been in charge of enough  people and jobs  and I don’t want to go to one more committee meeting or be in charge of anything other than a dinner party ever again. I’ve become schedule-averse.  I’ve become an artist.

Solving this whole conundrum of why I lose myself  started with a realization about my mother.  Regular readers know my mom is in and out of dementia in various stages, which seem to be tied to my father’s level of alertness.  That doesn’t surprise me.  They’ve been married over 65 years and they are so intricately intertwined that one can’t exist without the other.  (Do you know, my sister went over there the other day and our parents were on the coach holding hands?  They do that frequently.)

Family is the obvious place to begin to define self-awareness – who we are.  Frida Kahlo’s painting My Grandparents, My Parents, and I is a good start on the journey. Knowing where you came from helps you know who you are, and artists are ever looking inward.

I don’t think I really know who my mom is deep down.  I used to tell her what a mystery she was to me.  Now I understand, and the explanation is the same as to why visitors say, “There’s nothing wrong with your mom.  She seems fine to me.”  It’s because my mom’s public self was the only self we saw.  Years and years of good manners and routine actions have enabled her to appear normal.  She knows the questions you should ask visitors, what kinds of greetings to give, how to comment generally on the weather, how to inquire as to health and family.  As a mother, she was outwardly-focused in giving us stability so we didn’t see what was inside her.

This question of self-awareness is timely because just days ago, I understood that I do what my mom did – in groups, at events, with friends even, I jump into a public self and I disappear.  I carry an inner tension that I’ve not actually recognized before now. There are very few people with whom I am completely relaxed.  Well, maybe that’s not true.  Perhaps “relaxed” is the wrong word.  Because it’s the social situations, the groups, in which I disappear.  For whatever reason, it’s with young people that I feel most like myself.  (I guess that’s one reason I was a good seventh-grade teacher.)

Somehow, getting older and I hope wiser, I’ve become passive.  Things don’t bother me, I don’t get all fussed at other people, I just try to understand.  I find it hard to imagine why anyone would be interested in me, yet I write reams of my deepest self on this blog for the whole world to read.  And you know what?  Proving my theory a bit about not knowing a parent, I printed out six months of my blog and gave it to my dad to read. He needs things to do; his 92-year-old body doesn’t cooperate in allowing him to be as physically active as he was.  His reaction? He told me he’s learning a whole lot he didn’t know about his daughter.  So maybe I’ve been my public self with my family even.

Getting back to the passivity, while it’s nice to move forward on an even keel, something needs to fill the places that used to be jammed with everyday, garden-variety tensions, turmoil, and trivial matters.  I fear I am becoming, or perhaps have already become, boring.  I don’t want to be boring.  But the reflective me has disappeared also.  That is not a good thing, according to Plato (amazing how Plato pops up all the time), who says the unexamined life is not worth living.

Pushing myself to explore self-awareness will help my real, authentic self to re-emerge, but only if I keep the door unlocked. To do that, I have to remain self-aware.  It’s just a giant circle after all, like the tee pee in the art installation.  I think I know who I am; I just have to be me.  That’s what I’m going to work on.  Just being me.  I may find, just be being myself, that I don’t know myself so well after all.

What a hornet’s nest this self-awareness has stirred up!  Then again, I could just go with Oscar Wilde, who said “Only the shallow know themselves,” and “The final mystery is oneself.”

Note: I’m unable to attribute the image of the eye – I found it on an autism blog with no identifying information.


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