All posts by X Teri

Mental Health, Opinion, Personal, Social Rules, Whimsical

A Peek Behind The Curtains

03/21/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

The hubris of life, of majestic leaps atop a mountain, of impractical love. That’s why I made the picture of the woman leaping with apparent joy. I hope she is happy and that the moment was magical for her.

Once you’ve peeked behind the curtains of someone’s life, both warts and happiness, seeing the frailty you share in common minimizes the feelings of your inadequacy. There’s something to be said about knowing that the person who seems impenetrable is as uncertain or more so than you are.

For every boring life or person walking the sidewalks with a wide smile, there is another person who wears the smile and frenetic cloak of being busy as a shield. It’s often unknowable whether each person is truly happy. People are adept at concealment.

If we could hear the tone of people’s thoughts, especially those who seem to have it all together, I think most of our feelings of inadequacy would disappear.

We window shop when we are in the world or when we use these electronic portals to peek into other’s lives.

There is joy, laughter, and fulfillment.

There’s also pain, remorse, regret, and loss.

For every bite of anguish I experience, I know that the toll for others, though often invisible, burns them privately. I regret that our lives don’t allow us to drop the pretense.

We don’t know what rivers flow behind someone else’s eyes, nor do we really understand what ignites them. Some people craft an ornate and expansive wall around them, on to which they project the facade they want us to see. This is truer when the disparity of their daylight life grows distant from who they are at their center, in the shadows, in private, or in whispers.

It’s exciting to peek behind the facade and share that protected self. It’s sublime and affirming.

But the shriek and tenor that results when some do not want to acknowledge that you’ve seen their secret self? Though you’ve not wronged them, they flail and pivot with the agony of your having shared their inner monologue.

It often gets masked as anger.

It’s not.

Anger is the symptom. It’s really sublimated fear.

It doesn’t have to be.

It’s okay.

Some of us can be glad we experienced another facet of life, even if the ending was a surprise plot twist.

It is a gift to hold the truth of someone else in your own heart. Even if it lodges there like a dart.

Of that, I’m certain, even as certainty eclipses my grasp.

The foolishness of my own certainty came back to punch me in the gut. In time, I will forget the lesson, just as I did with the lesson of life’s urgency; it’s a lesson that can’t be explained. It must be experienced.

Allegory, Biographical, Personal, Social Rules, Story, Whimsical

A Mixed Post Of Story and Trivia

03/20/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

1/4 of all your bones are in your feet.

“Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.” – Internet quote.

He stopped and stared at the long rectangular Target sign at the front of the parking lot. Though the sun shone brightly, the chill of winter still clung to him. His life had become one continuous transition. His heart felt the pull of softness and also the duality of the hardness needed to live a good life. Making choices always cut one’s life into disparate columns; a choice made inevitably rendered another to be toothless. Most people found themselves unable to keep regrets from spoiling their minds; restless minds fill with regrets of things both done and undone, attempting an impossible balance.

The horn behind him startled him. He laughed as he jumped, waving to let the other driver know he was sorry. It had bleeped a long, consistent tone. “Forward now!” it said.

Just like that, he did.

He left the indecision behind him.

“Be happy,” he said, to no one and to everyone. Like his car, his life lurched forward.

I want you to feel this sentence in your head, to experience the soft agony of a fleeting moment accelerating past. Words are knives, yet sharp edges have utility. The smell of wood smoke in December, hovering above a blanket of quiet snow. The smell of Saturday morning bacon or salt pork, your grandmother’s loving fingers artfully guiding the pieces in the hot pan, her mind focused on the utility of feeding those she loves. The smile of a September bride, her eyes opened to only possibilities and love, miles distant from those tragedies that always befall us. The tap of a piano beginning its melody in the background as someone lifts a cold beer from the family table. A raucous laugh bursting from an amused mouth. The sharp involuntary intake of breath when beauty is within reach. The rush of saliva in one’s mouth with the first bite of fried chicken, a grilled hamburger, or bell peppers slightly charred on a grill. Words are knives, but they are also caresses, ones crafted for delighted eyes and open hearts, to be whispered into attentive ears and crafty mind. Everything is a moment to an observant mind.

“When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.” Cathy Guisewite

Did you know that a truel is a duel except that three participants are involved instead of two? Most people don’t. Invariably, if I use the word without context, most people don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. (It’s the same when I use the word “antepenultimate,” which means “next to next to last,” or “third from last.” It’s a handy word. P.S. “X” is the antepenultimate letter of the English alphabet.)

He sat motionless at the window, his mind trapped in an alternate universe, another timeline, one in which he was essentially himself, yet immersed in the consequences of other choices. This day would have been substantially distinct, its eddies and currents carrying him far afield from his comfort zone. Tom Wingo echoed in his head. He knew that most people wouldn’t understand the complexities of a complicated life. The invisible and hidden worlds contained inside our own minds are within reach of us all; seldom do people share them, for fear of their essential selves becoming unraveled. It is precisely inside these private compartments of our minds that we reside.

If I tell you, “J is the only capital letter that faces the left,” you might immediately recognize that it is true. Despite this recognition, most people will stop and take a moment to inventory the alignment of their own alphabet. And if your mind is wired like mine, you will undoubtedly assign another moment to inquire as to why this small fact is true. Surely, there must be a reason.

Someone wrote me and offered this unsolicited advice. I rewrote it to this: “The best partner is both critic and fan, unafraid to alternate between the extremes of correction and adoration.” Can you imagine if this were to be true in your own life?

Can someone tell me why “Leave by example” isn’t a better cliché than “Lead by example?”

Curiosity has its limits. For instance, I often see a picture of a beautiful person and wonder how many minutes have passed since they REALLY let one rip.

About 1 in 10 people regrow at least some part of their tonsils back after removal. This fact has always stuck in my head, no pun intended.

I am 19,717 days old today. Yay!

Bananas are still the most popular item sold at Walmart.

People don’t sneeze while they are sleeping. If you sneeze, you will wake up before doing so.

A couple of the rooms here are flooded with rainbows emanating from the prisms I have in the windows. It’s the first day of Spring here in the United States. The day brought a lot of sunshine, some of which reached my heart today. That is a welcome change.

Mental Health, New Word, Opinion, Personal, Social Rules

The Malefactor Realization

03/19/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

“You are a villain in someone else’s story.“

I’ve written about this before.

It is an uncomfortable truth.

The realization hurts worse when you understand that you had to be made into one for the other person to get to a narrative he or she can live with. I think we are all guilty of this in some form.

It’s a rare thing for people to look at one another, nod in acknowledgment, and go on with their lives. We are wired to evaluate, judge, and appraise.

None of us like to imagine we acted badly. Sometimes, we have. And sometimes, not that often, we are outmatched by a superior intellect or a harder heart, both of which contribute to the likelihood that you’re going to be the rapacious villain when the words “The End” appear.

It will burn your heart and sense of fairness to be at the epicenter of such attention. Flailing won’t help – and neither will rebuke.

Sometimes, we’ve been assigned motives that don’t reflect what is in our head or heart. People need those motives to protect themselves from introspection or scrutiny.

It’s okay that it’s that way.

It is possible to act with the purest form of love and still stumble so badly that someone labels you as the villain.

It’s hard to change that label because so often there is no observable trail, no defense to be made, and no fair reckoning of facts or forces.

Yes, even in love, especially so; if vulnerability is invoked, it amplifies the rawness and center of people.

Consequences often overshadow intentions.

There are times when there is no real lesson, no moment of clarity or closure.

Only of acceptance.

Anthony Marra said it well: “You remain the hero of your own story even when you become the villain of someone else’s.”

Yesterday, I reached my moment of clarity and gave myself closure. In so doing, I ruptured some unseen line of acceptance. And I realized that the villain was me.

And I accept that, even though the label fails to align with the truth of my life. But such statements are given to an audience of no one. Fighting your labels is seldom rewarded.

I want everyone to be fulfilled and happy and to have people in their lives who love and appreciate them.

I say none of these words as villainous. But perception and personal filters assign motive for anyone reading this.

I had nothing but love in my heart.

I hope we all find our way back to it.

All of us.

Love, X

Music, Personal, Spanish

Listen (Escucha)

03/18/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

Ricardo Arjona has always touched me and if I could speak as eloquently in Spanish as he sings, I would be proud.

This song is an anchor in my heart, and its epicenter swings like a pendulum in my head.

Health, Mental Health, Personal, Weight Loss

Thin, With Blues

03/17/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

This picture is of me today, in a place that does not put me at ease like it once did. It was was supposed to have rained and stormed by the time I took the picture. Hours later, and it still hasn’t.

For reasons of my own, I’ve started counseling. Doing the comprehensive assessments yielded some surprises. Because of the pandemic and the bureaucracy of anything related to mental health or healthcare, I’ve only done distance counseling so far. My first face-to-face talk therapy session isn’t until next week. I haven’t done such navel-gazing since I was much younger and struggling to understand the demons that some of my family members dealt with.

Oddly, I’ve convinced so many other people to get counseling or at least seriously consider it, especially at work. Talking things out can’t hurt. Knowing your truths isn’t something to shirk away from, even if the conclusions aren’t what you expected or wanted to hear.

One of the things that caused issues on my assessments was my sixty-five lbs. of weight loss in the same time period that coincides with my life issues. Absent some pathology, it’s rare for someone to do something so successfully and simultaneously fail on a personal level. But that is precisely what I’ve done. The vision I had in October propelled me toward success. I’m grateful. That I crashed and burned on a personal level is still a shock and sadness that prevails. I’m struggling to “pull up” meaningfully. As hard as it is to accept, I’ve got an anxiety problem that is keeping me up at night.

In the future, maybe I can share those surprises and defeats here. Part of the story doesn’t belong to me, even though it’s mine to tell. Hurting people isn’t part of my natural repertoire. Time and distance either gives us grace or the ability to revise our narrative despite the path that we took. Most of us can’t tell our story without revision, especially if we know we didn’t treat everyone as we would like to be treated.

The part I can tell is that I was so confident of the outcome and that my path was one of ascendancy and fulfillment. I got crushed in that confidence.

Today, I stood next to one of the men’s display tables at Sam’s. On the one hand, I was a little chagrined. On the other, it pleased me to know that the perfect size of that pants style wasn’t available to me. Because I was too small. If anyone had told me last September that I would encounter the problem of being too small, I might have laughed. Wearing such pants wasn’t possible for me before. Now that I realized that I love the fabric and fit, I’m a fan. This brand and fit aren’t available in 30″ waists. For the record, I’m a 32″ waist for the brands I used to wear.

A man saw the displays of pants and walked up. Almost immediately, I realized he had no clue what his exact size might be. He began to fumble and hide his attempt to ‘see’ his pant size. Because I was only a few feet away, he looked at me and laughed. “Hey, can you read the tag?” he asked me as he turned the back seam of his pants down. “Don’t make it awkward,” I told him jokingly as I leaned in and looked. “34 X 30,” I said. He replied, “What brand?” I didn’t have to look. “Eddie Bauer,” I said. I had a moment of surprise as I realized that my waist was smaller than his.

Because I knew Sam’s had no Eddie Bauer on display, I gave him a twenty-second presentation of why he should buy the pants I had on. And because he was listening, I sold him on the same style of shorts. He picked out four pairs of pants and four pairs of shorts. I should have asked for a commission.

When I got back to the house after Sam’s, I grabbed five pairs of pants and discarded them. The 36″ ones float on me. Because I’m still overly confident that I’m never going to the size I once was, I don’t begrudge the money I spent on these pants. As my size reduced, it has been a comfort to ritualize me throwing out the old.

Love, X

Story, Writing

A Random Death

03/16/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

Serendipity, chance, and luck constantly and invisibly ricochet through our minutes. Is this something to be observed with reverence or with gratitude? If our eyes were capable of seeing the criss-cross and intricate paths of danger, we might never relax. The universe is a complex machine of moving parts, any of which can derail our plans without regard to us.

Each of us sits in our homes, confident that our experience will guide us in unforeseen circumstances. Because life seems so mundane most of the time, we seldom see past the veneer of randomness surrounding us. Anyone who doubts this probably didn’t see the recent story of the four-year-old boy killed by a plane crashing on him and his mother as they drove down a small road in Florida.

Two minutes before the owner snapped the picture of her adopted cat, two men ran through the snow-covered yard, their feet slipping on the hill’s incline. The owner came outside to see if her neighbor Earl was out with his rifle again. She was a bit too late to witness the random events that had unfolded around her.

One of the two running men held his left hand to his side to slow the flow of blood from the bullet hole he acquired near the road. The other man pursued him, aiming his silenced gun at random intervals and firing. A few trees noted their passing as they ran, having been on the receiving end of the bullets intended for the bleeding man.

The chase started half of a mile from the impassive cat. The fleeing man jumped out of his sedan as it slowly continued to roll past him. He knew that the slight rise against the road would give him a few seconds of concealment. When he stood up to run in a sprint across the snow, he was surprised to feel a stabbing pain in his side. Without turning to look, he knew that his pursuer had shot him, evidently expecting him to run precisely as he had. Acknowledging that he would undoubtedly be killed, he decided to make his pursuer earn the right. He didn’t begrudge the man; he had been in the same situation a dozen times. He had been lucky enough to be the survivor. Today was not his day.

As the two men ran up the hill, the cat turned its head to look in their direction. Though neither men noted the cat along the deck railing, Assassin noted their passing. The men would have been shocked to know that the cat hailed from Detroit and that its previous owner was a notorious killer himself.

As the men cleared the top of the hill, the pursuer stopped and aimed carefully at his victim. It would end here, in the impersonal cold. He watched his fleeing victim also stop, waiting for the bullet that was to come.

As his finger tightened on the trigger, he felt a sharp pain in his temple. He didn’t feel the side of his head exploding outwardly as a single bullet entered his head. He fell in a heap on the snow and leaves.

As the fleeing man stopped, his breath came in huge gasps. His hand pressed hard against his side. He heard the echo of a hunting rifle but felt no impact. He turned slowly, puzzled to see his pursuer dead on the snowy ground.

He turned a bit more. An older man stood on his back deck about thirty yards away, a rifle in his hands. As the pursued man looked, the old man nodded toward the road. “Leave your gun right there and go,” he said. His voice was raspy and carried surprisingly well across the stillness.

The pursued man dropped his gun on the ground and walked toward the road. Whether the old man would shoot him too was beyond his control. He focused on placing one foot in front of the other. Doing so had saved his life several times over the years. Don’t think, just move. There would be time later to wonder how the old man decided who to shoot.

Earl, the old man in question, took out a cigarette and lit it.

“Honey, I got another one,” Earl shouted toward the sliding glass doors along his deck.

In a minute, he’d get his four-wheeler and retrieve the body. The neighbors were no longer surprised by a rifle shot coming from Earl’s direction. There was no hurry. He was going to finish his cigarette first.

As Earl continued to smoke, the cat Assassin sat perched on the railing. Both peered out at the same snowy ground. Both waited, though neither knew for what. Around them, the universe continued.

Customer Service, Personal

I Am Witness

03/16/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

Joyce Street in the day is a hideous mass of vehicles; people are hurried and tempestuous. In the early hours, deer often scurry past, often oblivious to my passage. Sometimes, like this morning, they stop in the road and look at me. I slowed to a stop, turning down the radio. The world at that moment contained only us. After a few seconds, the spell was broken and they scampered away. Later, as a I return, I’ll slow down a bit and try to imagine that such a corridor of traffic is another world before the sun makes its visit. Then again, so am I.

Though you wouldn’t think so, when the deer greeted me, “Let Go” by Brothers Phelp played on my usb. If you haven’t listened to the song in a while, give it a listen. I needed its advice this morning.

Personal, Uncategorized

A Day’s Bite

03/15/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

It’s almost time for Springdale’s Demolition Derby. I know I comment or joke about it each year. This year, I emailed all the government officials and asked why we couldn’t simply use ALL of Springdale and its roads to have the derby, instead of confining it to Parsons Stadium. I’m not sure many of us would even notice the difference.

Here, the entire room is awash in rainbows from a single prism, hundreds of them. On the floor, in long swaths across the walls, and everywhere. I can’t tell if the universe is taunting me or reminding me. The above picture is a small section of the floor by my desk.

At the store, I encountered someone who was taken aback by how much of me was missing. It probably seemed more intense, given that I shaved too much the other day. He told me that his wife was still unwell, which saddened me a bit. His son kept us entertained by his constant demands for attention and insistence on scoring an animal from the bin with the impossible claw machine. I didn’t have any cash; otherwise, I would have supplied him with one hundred chances to beat the machine.

Doing the self-assessments online yielded some surprises. I’m not sure why I would be surprised. To be so actualized in some respects, and afloat in others!

The picture below was on the front page of Reddit today.

Biographical, Humor

Humor In The Turmoil

03/14/2021 X Teri Leave a comment

Note to self: MOVING a treadmill without assistance is a hell of a lot more exercise than walking on one. So if you get bored walking on one, shove it from room to room for an hour, and let’s talk.
*
Additional lesson learned: quitting halfway through isn’t an option, even if you have to navigate it through two narrow doors. And climb over it like a jungle gym a dozen times.