It is true my apartment, absent my presence and decorations, has the ambiance of a Yugoslavian prison camp.
However, I don’t remember riches being a prerequisite for great ideas. My grandma Nellie had very little education and never a lot of money. Yet some of the wisest words and kindest gestures of affection came from her and spoke to my heart and mind. It’s true she often threatened to box my jaws or get a switch after me. Unlike others in my life, she didn’t do so unless it was one of those rare occasions I wasn’t listening to her. It was an amazing example and juxtaposition to experience her brand of loving discipline in comparison to my mercurial and unpredictably violent parents. Grandma was always poor. But the place and home I hold dearest in my heart throughout my entire life was a shotgun house built with tar paper and tin roof.
To discount someone or insult them based on the condition of their living space is to negate any possibility of being open to learning from any source. To do so is to inadvertently reveal an understandable but also snobby attitude. I’m living proof that profound things can come from the dumbest person. Besides, if you don’t have someone like me to roll your eyes at, it is tantamount to being iron-deficient.
My place is better for my presence. Weirder, too. Improved, though, simply because I don’t believe that one’s current living situation is necessarily a reflection of their personality or character. It’s true I sometimes forget this and catch myself making presumptions about those who live in such places.
Any of us can lose everything at any moment. Or have to start over.
Given that I’m poor, it’s a good thing that I live so much in my own head.
Love, X
PS The picture wasn’t originally in color. It’s of my maternal grandparents. They aren’t happy in this picture. Though I don’t trust my memory, I believe it was taken at the house near White Cemetery, the one that preceded the happy place that I recall with love and fondness… .
I’ve written personal stories about my dad Bobby Dean. He was violent and loved alcohol. He went through at least a few years smoking marijuana, too. As did mom, who would be mortified to see me write this. For people with multiple DWIs and violence issues, it’s still odd to me that they were worried about something like that. As I’ve aged, a lot of the hardness I had toward dad dissipated, in part because of the human overlap I share with him. Including base emotions. He was responsible for a lot of carnage. Paradoxically, he infected me with a sense of humor that I like about myself. There were times he genuinely helped people. The same is true for mom. It’s a struggle to separate the dichotomy of that realization.
Especially because of my multiple and ongoing surprises with both DNA and genealogy, my belief that it’s stupid to fight the disclosure that history drags with it. It doesn’t change history; it merely mirrors it. Talking openly about someone or what they did or didn’t do doesn’t change history. Revelation should not be shunned because of the possible ramifications of needing to adjust your viewpoint or opinion. Truth is truth. You can turn away from it, but it remains, whether to illuminate or to tarnish.
No matter what personal mistakes a person makes, they might otherwise have monumental or mundane accomplishments. Dumb people sometimes say intelligent things. Someone might surprise us with their dedication toward a social or religious cause. Smart people? They are the worst about careening into the abyss in their personal lives.
Behind it is a human being. They have vices, anger, sexual issues, or be terrible spouses and parents. When we get to know someone, we go beyond the easy socialization and familiarity we have with people. There’s a lot hidden behind most people’s curtains.
Martin Luther King, Jr. changed the world in so many ways. Yet, as history peels back like an onion, we discover that he had numerous affairs. He was with another woman the night before, and the day he was assassinated. He smoked and didn’t like the image it portrayed, so he kept it a secret. Times were different back then, and though the FBI violently tried to tarnish his reputation and mitigate King’s accomplishment, news outlets didn’t take the bait. Because he was also a minister, it adds a level of incredulity to most people’s heads when they dive into everything hidden behind his public persona.
JFK followed the same trajectory. He was a political visionary but also had a torrid personal life.
Gandhi? He had some wildly racist views. History indicates that he had some strange views on sexuality and was undoubtedly bisexual. You can find reputable sources and look them up yourself. When you read these words, please remember that I’m a liberal. If people are consenting and wish to live their lives the way they choose, I am without criticism. Gandhi didn’t always express his life with consenting people.
Mother Theresa? It’s almost sacrilege for most people to hear reminders that she had so much baggage that I don’t even know where to start.
I wrote earlier in the week about Dr. Seuss, a writer who gave the world a love of words and fundamental poetry. He was not his public persona.
We all write our biographies each day with the choices we make, the words we say, even the things that we believe to be hidden.
I don’t have a premise, theory, or moral to this post either.
Earlier this week, at a very early hour, I had a human moment, one which I will write about cautiously, against my nature.
Just a couple of nights earlier, I listened as a neighbor sat outside. His mind was at high elevation, so to speak. He had his phone in front of him, singing loudly and with an absent melody. His voice carried, even against the strident insistence of insects. I couldn’t help but laugh at the content of the song he sang. I wasn’t laughing at him per se; but his delivery and vocal content were so amusing that I couldn’t help but laugh involuntarily. So much so that even days later, I find myself singing a certain segment of what he sang.
On the morning in question, I stood on the balcony. The neighbor sat below. Something about his demeanor signaled that something was amiss. His mind was clear – and that surprised me. “I just need to talk to someone.” So, even though I needed to leave for work, I did. And he told me a story about dear friends, ones who’d moved away. Betrayal had struck them like it does so many. As we talked, his mood lifted, and I gave him a practical distraction about the absurdities of human behavior and its consequences.
It’s the terrain I know too well. I suspect most of us find familiarity in the map of mixed emotions.
I went inside, petted the cat, and headed out again. As I sat in my car, way before sunrise, I looked at him again, still sitting in silence in front of his apartment.
I ignored my inner voice and exited the car, walked over to him, and hugged him. He sobbed for a bit and then thanked me.
Presence.
It’s overlooked and sometimes feared.
But who among us doesn’t want it and need it like the oxygen we breathe?
Each of us will have a turn in our own flooded boat. Perhaps it will be invisible to those around us.
The rain falls on all of us.
I don’t have a moral to the story or a tidy bow to crown it.
My sister posted an affirmational meme, and it reminded me of something I wrote a few years ago in response to people’s addictive or destructive behavior. Including my own.
“Fill your life with people who reflect who you are and who you want to be, not with those who are a reflection of who you once were and no longer wish to be.
If you’re a fuse, don’t stand near dynamite, as the results are inevitable. You start to believe it’s your purpose and inalterable. Abnormality begins to normalize patterns that aren’t ones you’d otherwise choose.
And if you are a fuse, choose to stand elsewhere. Proximity to undesirable people and behaviors infects you incrementally.
You end up with a life you didn’t choose and don’t want, and you wrongly assume, “Well, I am a fuse, after all.” That’s garbage thinking.
Every change commences with a choice.
Stay away from the fire and those who need or want you to be a fuse.
There are a lot of bad men out in the world, whether they physically dominate or mentally degrade their wives and children. The smart ones are fiendishly clever in concealment; their masks in public are often adorned with a suit and tie, a quick smile, or an engaging personality. Growing up, I had to endure abuse. A lot of people knew it was happening. Few ever attempted to intervene. I understand the complicated issues at play for their failure. That kind of abuse, however, leaves most people with a shaky faith in their parents, their god, and of their ability to leave such trauma behind.
With that in mind, even though I am a liberal, I have always been drawn to the concept of southern justice. When someone does the right thing, even when the right thing is also terrible. It’s not revenge. It’s taking the light back from someone who isn’t worthy of its possession.
I’m not advocating violence.
I’m advocating action.
Sometimes action yields a terrible consequence yet remains the lesser evil.
Someone I know whose life suffered due to the presence of a human monster sent me this song.
Preface: I wrote what follows this morning…almost as a coda, on the way to the apartment after work, a black Camaro zoomed impatiently into its left lane approaching me from the opposite direction. The driver was going too fast and over-corrected, sending him into my lane and luckily swerving wildly into the far lane next to me. I had no time to react, not even to stomp my brakes, which would have certainly resulted in a multiple-car pileup. As I passed without time to feel my heart accelerate, squeals, honks, and braking behind me filled the air. The driver of the Camaro managed to gain control without being hit. He stopped in the right lane facing oncoming traffic. The capricious and erratic symmetry of just living reared its head and whispered to me. . . .
All of these are true none inscribed to change your hue
An undiagnosed cough ended on the kitchen floor her love and life abruptly no more
Expert pilot fell to the ground his loving sister to conjure the sound
A cluster of cells aligned with malignant intent those around her yearning more time had been spent
The unbearable yet unbeatable beckon of alcohol those who loved him clutching and watching his fall
A 92-year-old beloved woman took her last breath a life well lived, met with welcomed death
An aneurysm unseen and unfelt and then all rendered past tense no warning no reason no sense
Careless driver through the sign leaving one with an unfaithful spine her arc of life flattened to a baseline
You worry about how you sound or look how you sing, how you dance, how you might be mistook any given moment, the universe can close your book
You have this moment to scribble your notes to construct and imagine needless moats
Kind heart, clear eyes, and curious mind make sure that you leave something meaningful behind
We are all preterit
This can both energize and immobilize, this insight into truth beauty and love are in the eye of the beholder
May you live your life just a little bit bolder no guarantee of life or that you’ll become older
Seize the day, come what may otherwise, it will seize you even if you do everything to perfection these words are no mere early morning reflection affection, expression, introspection of these words, there is no question
I went outside in the afternoon to sweep the parking lot below my apartment. I do this frequently to ensure that anything that blows off my landing doesn’t become someone else’s problem. If everyone did this, it would solve a lot of the messes that accumulate in the world.
I talked to one of my newer neighbors quite a bit. He was convinced I am gay. I think he thinks his gaydar is broken now! Everything from my car color choice to my art projects, to my glasses, and the way I dress. He also took the time to complain that he hates that I took my massive fence project down. He said that it reveals a lot about the person who tried to complain, something that was coincidental, given that someone else told me the same thing today about an entirely different situation. I told him the landlord tried to take back the request a couple of hours after asking me to do so.
Just because I like to be personal, I’ve never had a gay experience or been the least bit interested in the same sex. I am so glad I came out of my violent, racist, and prejudiced childhood without those attitudes of judgment toward people who are gay. Even when the same sex hit on me, I just smiled and explained and went about my day. Anyone brave enough to express their interest, much less in this seemingly growing era of backlash prejudice, deserves grace for being who they are. Sexuality is complicated enough without the added burden of falling outside the alleged norm. Almost everyone I know is trapped in their own personal cocoon of concealment and worry about their perceived sexuality and behavior. I’ve never understood why some people are so obsessed with other people’s sexuality. Except to gossip! Gossip is the exception – one that everyone claims they don’t do.
Although it’s not directly related, if you find someone you like, tell them. It doesn’t have to be awkward. It probably will be, though, because rejection is about as welcome as a spider in one’s shoe in the morning. From experience, I learned the hard way that you should NOT use a bullhorn to tell them. Or shout it out in church.
While talking to my neighbor, I was reminded of how small the world is and how interconnected we are. Because he knows a few people I know. And some of them have secrets, secrets that belong to them to keep private or to live openly. But I wish the world were filled with grace. Not acceptance… because that belies that people different from us must be accepted. They don’t need to be accepted. They need to be who they are without our individual judgments or perceptions affecting how they live their lives. Unless we’re having a laugh about the absurdity of individuals and their choices. I love it when people snark about me, as long as they are creative.
So if you see me driving around in my little blue cotton candy car, I’m not going to give you my number. I won’t go to Applebee’s with you either for a cocktail and hot wings. Unless you’re buying, of course.
Love, X
PS That’s a crescent wrench above my thumb. I keep one magnetized on each side of my metal door. It looks like a floating key. The “Sadboy” t-shirt I’m wearing, the one I splotched deliberately with paint, it’s the most comfortable shirt I’ve ever owned. .
This is a piece of motivation. Nadine, if you’re reading this, imagine that I’m an expert and not the goofball you know.
Stress will never disappear from your life. Neither will the obstacles that frequently jump up and surprise you. You’ll always be tired at times and not want to prepare delicious food that feeds your body. You’ll always be tempted to stop at some place quick and delicious on the way home. Given the certainty of those variables, you’ll have to come up with incremental changes. They won’t feel natural at the beginning. Nothing does. Continuity and comfort work for us. But they also work against us when we’re motivated to do something different.
If you want to eat less or eat more healthy so that you’ll look better, embrace it. Anyone who tries to discount the vanity and self-esteem aspect of looking better is fighting human nature. If you think you look better, you will almost always feel better. It will translate to energy and optimism. If you want to eat differently just to be more healthy, that can be amazing too. We all know that the food we eat is the fuel that helps our body protect itself. It’s equally important to know that you can do everything perfectly and still have illnesses and unexpected calamity. As we get older, all of us are forced to confront that.
Everyone who tries something new eventually hits the wall of the reluctance curve. You won’t see as much progress as you would like. Or you will have days where you fail. It will feel like those days of failure far outweigh any progress you’ve made. It’s not true. You have to exercise that muscle of habit. If you do things incrementally, over time, even with days of failure, you’re improving yourself and your habits. There will be days when you will drink an entire bottle of wine and probably eat half a cheesecake too. But over time, you will see that there are simple ways to eat a whole lot of food and be happy with them. It does require you think and plan ahead so that you’re not creating obstacles. Chances are if you’re smart enough and motivated enough to make such a change, you will be able to do it. It will be easy to point the finger at the people around you, because Lord knows they’re going to be eating entire pepperoni pizzas and ice cream while you are choosing better options. At the same time, there are times when you should go crazy and a pizza with them. Because life is short and food is delicious.
Try not to start habits that you cannot do for the rest of your life. Because once you start them and have some success, if those habits fall to the wayside, you’ll start eating unhealthy and put the weight back on. Diet and nutrition is pure mathematics. You have to eat fewer calories than you burn long term. It’s not so much about the individual days as it is the arc of your progress. It’s one of the reasons I advise people to not weigh themselves more than once a week or once a month.
For most of us, if you don’t have underlying medical conditions, no matter how bitter the truth is, most of us can hit an ideal weight simply by changing what we eat. Our bodies have developed over thousands of years to survive. Exercise has its own benefits, ones that overlap into other areas of your life. But you do not have to do any exercise changes to achieve your goal weight. You have to swallow the truth that your weight is nothing more than putting more calories in your body then you are burning. No matter how many calories you burn through exercise, the physical truth is that the overwhelming majority of your weight is diet and daily activity. I can’t stress enough that I am not saying don’t exercise or go to the gym if that benefits you. I am saying that we only have a certain number of hours in a day. If you can achieve your goal without using those precious hours in ways you don’t enjoy, then try to wrap your head around the fact that you can do it without activity that doesn’t bring you joy.
If you don’t have any medical conditions, you can be the way you want to be.
Read the last sentence as many times as it takes to believe it.
Will it be hard for you to eat differently? That depends on how you use your intelligence to learn new ways of eating and stick with them.
Choose your hard.
When we don’t choose, we are pushing the consequences to our future. We still have to deal with them.
You can do it. But everything hinges on you making the decision to invest in yourself.
If you’re happy with the way you look and especially so if you’re mostly healthy, embrace it. Don’t try to lose what you see as extra pounds. You can be happy with that if you have a happy outlook. If it is about your appearance, find someone who loves you. That kind of adoration is transformative for your self-esteem. It becomes easier to see yourself as they do, even if you are plagued by self-doubt.
Whatever your goal is, do not attempt to go from 0 to 60. Incremental changes are best. You can experiment as you go and find the things that work for you and skip the ones you don’t. That is what we’re supposed to do in life. We often skip the second half and forget to remove the things from our life that detracts from it.
Don’t bother with spending money on supplements or anything you have to pay for. It can all be done with delicious food that you like. In this modern age, we have more variety than we ever have. Take advantage of it and use your intelligence.
People ask me what the secret is. The secret is… There is no secret. Simplicity in your life and simplicity in your diet. Eat fewer calories than you burn and live a good life.
It doesn’t matter how old you are or where you’re starting. No one changes until they do. No matter how you got to where you are or the way you are, it took a lot of years of habits to get there. If we thought things could not be changed, it would be a horrible cynical world.
I’ve learned that people who isolate invariably have an addiction or a trauma. Quite often, it’s one they bury; like the ghosts of a cemetery, they emerge and travel capriciously in that person’s mind. Loop after endless loop. No one else bears witness. And because angst or depth wildly varies between different people, no one really understands the profundity of what afflicts them. Some people relentlessly look ahead, leaving behind the most heinous offenses. Others get trapped in the vortex over things we judge as minor. Though the loop may be nascent and small in circumference, each cycle takes the person closer and closer to calamity. We all see it coming and are mostly powerless to stall its progress.
Cognition seldom helps. You’re not rationalizing with the individual. You’re attempting to overpower something that is both tenuous and tentacled inside someone’s kidnapped mind.
You can try to get close out of love or concern. They often rebuff you. Isolation becomes its own self-fulfilling reward. The phantom loop constantly whispers to the person trapped in a behavior; its voice is not only proximal but deafening.
Don’t fault yourself if you’ve tried to pierce that bubble and can’t. It does not mean you shouldn’t try, even if it’s futile. Because the uncaring alternative is much worse. Even if the story ends badly. Most of us will return to that wall and vainly attempt to chisel away at it, even though we fluctuate between helplessness, anger, or realization.
This is the thesis of my Bystander’s Prayer.
And despite our varying cynicism, our hope for a dramatic change sometimes happens. The alchemy of why or how is beyond calculation. If this were never the case, our behavior would automatically adjust to just accept the unacceptable before we even tried. When it does come, the change, it brings joy. Everyone loves an underdog or someone who has overcome.
If it does end badly, we promise to try something different the next time. Likely, we won’t. There will always be a next time, as this world is full of trauma and unseen damage. Most of us believe that love or some fruitful variation will be enough to convince someone that it’s time to pull up into the high clouds instead of plummeting.
When one person plummets, we all do because that person carries a piece of us with them, even if they are blind to it. It’s how friends, family, and tribe work.
If you can, keep your hammer in hand, your chisel sharp, and your optimism high. If life gets you down, you might be in the hotseat. You’ll need us to pull up, just as we need you when we’re in the loop. The horseshoe finds its way onto every hoof, no matter who you are.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 