It's a surprise to hear so many lawnmowers buzzing in the background! The grass everywhere is wet, indeed sodden, drooping under the jeweled weight of water gleaming on each blade; those blades sharp enough to slice unwary fingers pulling at them while the water will make the clippings clog the blades whirling through to tame nature down to manicured lawns again.
The sun is gleaming, adding shimmer to the air just above the pavement turning soft under the heated strokes of light. Wind is almost a mirage, mere ruffle of leaves, quick dance of branches, and then all is still.
Today I start an experiment in health. I fast. They take my blood, my spit and other fluids and put me to the test. Turning me to numbers and equations to see if I add up to the $1.98 of chemicals plus water a human is meant to be.
Although today the salts and minerals that make the solid center of a person would probably cost more. No matter, I have always liked the fact that when someone asks what do you think you are worth I can grin and say about a $1.98, the same as you.
After this fine addition and subtraction amid much learned scratching of heads and wrinkling or expressions there will come a list, accompanied by stratospheric prices, of those elements I need to have to bring me back to balance.
I will be told no meat, no juices, no caffeine; these fruit, these grains, these nuts not those - this yes and no that I will be expected to dance with for at least three months and at the end, TA DA !,the great restoration of everything but my pocket book.
Can they turn my hair back to its glossy black shot through with chestnut highlights in the sun? Will the sharp edged crystals in my joints all melt away so I can dance all night unfettered by gravity, by time, by pain?
Do I sound the skeptic? Because I am. Oh, I have done my research and will argue, politely, for this instead of that and show where myths have been created and debunked and I will choose this path because i have lived within this casket, this temple of flesh, for more than half a century and know it well.
Four weeks ago I listened as the traditional medical community told me they can find nothing wrong. Cannot explain the chills, the hoarseness in my voice, the frenzied flutters of the muscle in my chest that pumps the life around me. I left the change behind me ten years back, an early onset quickly passed, completed with mere moments of interest and sudden heats and sweats so I know what it is not.
I also know that I am not willing to fade into the shadows of a half life and will explore, with informed reservations those alternatives available to me. Ultimately this body was entrusted to my care and I am responsible for its maintenance now moved beyond my personal resources. I have found alternative therapies and medicine of huge benefit in the past, so now I fast. Soon I will leave and go so they can draw my blood.
Years ago I overheard someone say 'Whenever you point a finger at someone there are three fingers pointing back at you!'
I immediately pointed (of course) and it was perfectly true. After spending some time wondering who had first become aware of this phenomenon and then used it to create an object lesson, I started to watch to see how many times I 'pointed the finger'. How many times a day, a minute, did I assign blame rather than take responsibility? How many different ways did I seek to be right?
It took me about ten to fifteen minutes to become very ashamed of myself and acknowledge that my mental chatter was continually blaming and making others the cause of all the pain in my life. Phrases like 'I had no choice', 'They left me no other options', 'I only did it because...' 'the whole situation says more about them than it does about me...' and on and on. All the self delusions, the lies we tell ourselves so we can look in the mirror and say 'Hey, hey, you're okay!' . What unmitigated BS!
I have never been entirely convinced that the observer in my head has my best interests at heart. It is a dispassionate voice that cuts me no slack at all. And loud, at times! The problem is, once I turn my inner eye on some element of my behaviour, old observer takes it as an invitation to talk about it. Each thought, each action, is analysed and stripped down to the bare bones of conception. I am not allowed to sugar coat it, make excuses, look down and draw patterns in the dirt with my toe, I am expected to dig it up and throw it out. I am expected to CHANGE!
And change is tough. The year I stopped smoking,1997, I took my first actions towards that end in July. I put down the cigarettes on December 31st. Ritual appeals to me at times, especially if the stroke of midnight is involved. Oh wow! I just realised I have stopped counting the years since I stopped smoking, I was still thinking 8. Maybe I am finally a non-smoker!
It is hard to look inward, to assess honestly what part of any interaction is mine to own. It is very hard sometimes to keep my attention on the garbage on my side of the street when everyone else has garbage strewn every which way...they haven't even bothered to bag it! And the voice says:'Think of the White Elephant stall at the fair, think about garage sales. Other peoples' garbage is someone's treasure. How do you get to decide and label what is around?
Does this make me neutral? I think not. I have strong opinions on most things. I no longer find (after listening to the voice for so many years) that I need to have all my opinions heard. I don't care if you know what I think. It is only my opinion and not very important in the greater scheme of things. Some things I will take a stand on and make my position clear. There are times when silence allows the unthinkable to grow and flourish until it has a shape and form and takes lives.
At times, because voice or no I remain all too human and consequently imperfect, anger will slip the leash and manifest. If I must vent, I shape the feelings into words without a target and send them forth, a testament to feeling and to pain.
And if there is a pointing finger in the shadow of those words I know they all apply to me.
let it die! If you dislike an OP starve their thread by not posting. Let them make fools of themselves continually bumping themselves to the forefront displaying to us all their desperate need for attention. Then maybe we can find some compassion in our souls instead of turning into a ravening pack, slobbering drool and insults everywhere while any attempts at peacemaking or neutrality are dismissed as moral lack.
There are topics that address things of moment that flare like a match, mere seconds in the limelight and sink slowly into the dead file of the day's musings. Newcomers ignored, pleas for information and advice unanswered in the rush to be up front and nasty with the new and improved enemy.
I come to play, to string my words in shapes that please me, try the drape and fall of them, the rhythms that maybe echo heart, or breathing, the click of high heels on a pavement. I come to play, to read, to learn to share a moment outside the confines of my own insular soul, and keep falling on my face in bullshit, open graves all filled with rotting garbage, and when I think it's done I find another set of caltrops in my path to rip unwary feet to shreds.
Whose fault is it? It's our fault! We are building our own apple pie beds here and ripping our own sheets. Shooting with our eyes closed so we cannot see the face across the way and own our petulant self importance. It really isn't hard to send an email when offended or perplexed by someone's actions. Not pick a fight or start a war.
And I could stay away. Pack up my words and take them home...but there was a playgound here! I saw the invitation and came in. It was a pretty place with smiling people who read my words and sometimes liked them.
I cannot fix it by myself. I will not join the wars over territory that is not even real.
I was having so much fun. Not any more.
There is something eminently satisfying about a good, strong cup of tea. Part of it, for me, is the ritual. Warming the pot, measuring the leaves, pouring the hissing frothing water over them; and then the wait. Anticipation, while the leaves steep and the water undergoes a change that reaches far beyond a shift in colour.
Fragrances released by the heat waft up to fill the senses and start the process of refreshment. At last the lips approach and cling to the smooth warmth of the cup's rim, part slightly to inhale then, with a quick tilt, the heat, the slightly bitter taste, both swirl across the tongue.
Too eager means too hot and leaves a tongue that will taste nothing, subtle or broad until the scald heals. Just right is bliss that fills the mouth, caresses down the throat, and warms the stomach while caffeine feeds the minor craving hopping foot to foot somewhere in the background; headache recedes, unnoticed till it's gone.
I used to drink coffee which has its own layers of ritual and pleasure, and there is no restaurant in New York that can make a decent cup of tea. Well, perhaps the Russian Tea Room, but that is not a place I would trek to daily when good coffee flowed in every diner. Here, in Barbados, the light astringence of tea seems more satisfying, less heavy in the throat. Perhaps imagination. Perhaps not. I drink more tea than coffee now.
Sky lightens and turns to shades of lavender and blue with pink flushed clouds long before the sunrise. Across the heaving bosom of the sea a brazen path extends , a royal carpet laid down by the sun. The east winds fling salt in your face and rattle palm trees till they drop, the fronds all brown and brittle, fallen feathers from some wilted bird just scattered on the rocks.
Water hisses on approach and exit, climbing toward the wall, tide swirling fast and full. Coming in. Rounded rocks gleam and shift with subtle shades and hues of grey and pink, some blue and orange glowing in a watercoloured world, wet and dripping; now all covered, then naked once again beneath the sky.
Sky echoes sea, each mirror to the other, the dark of space turned blue by Helios' touch, the clouds angelic loungers in the dawn of Saturn's day.
I have always wanted to do a late night radio show and now I am. Midnight till morning every Friday and it is both the most exciting and most frustrating thing I have ever done. Exciting because the challenge of filling five and a half to six hours of airtime with content and music that is continually fresh and appealing is ongoing. Frustrating because right now I am starting out with nothing stock piled, and trying to produce bridges, stingers and promos while tracking down artist's for the art form section, even the simple fact that we don't have a proper production studio, well it's all stretching me a little thin at the moment.
And it will get better. I've ordered a broadcast quality digital recorder and directional mic for field work, I've got my basic "it happens Friday" promos produced and the bridgrers and stingers will come, I'm auditioning music and effects libraries which will make that simpler. And after last week's show I know what to do when the server goes down and takes the station off the air (well at the time I slammed on a CD and went back to the old fashioned way until I got tech on the phone to talk me through a reboot so we only had about 35 seconds "dead air")so as long as we don't have total power failure I can keep us running!
This week I need to work out the marketing campaign for the print guys so we can let people know we are going live at night on Fridays and next week I head to NY to pick up music and any equipment that will make things more efficient. And shoes. I want to buy a pair of sexy shoes, at least pretty summer sandals because they are so hard to come by in barbados and i am so tired of flip flops!
Anyway, for this week I have some poetry lined up, a commentary on the pottery course I will finish this Wednesday and people seem to like the snapshot reviews of the new DVD's in the rental shops so I will make that a permanent (!) feature. Just have to find about 100 different songs to play, old & new happy and blue. Jeez i am stressed! Times like this I don't like being single 'cause there's no one to stroke my head and say 'honey, I know you can do this'. Heck, I know I can do this, but even if I wrap my arms around myself it just doesn't match the incredible support a good man can give you when you are feeling little and helpless inside.
The 'bajan' dialect has a flavour of the Belfast accent to it and a cadence and rhythm all its own. I don't often write in dialect although in speech I can switch back and forth between standard and bajan english at will. And even in everyday speech I will sometimes use bajan terms which are the only way to get the point across with the correct emphasis.
An' iffen yuh doan like it, too bad; doan say nuffin to me cos ah might pelt a rock-stone at yuh.
look muh here, luv,
hidin' in de trees
look muh here... so close,so close,
yuh can touch
yuh can feel de breaf
pon yuh face, if yuh stop;
Ah waitin for yuh, yuh know
why yuh ain' see me?
Ah here, big and bol'
han' out reach
strivin' chile
strivin' to touch
to hold yuh
to bring yuh close
look muh here jes waitin', slidin'
in de light dat sprinkle down
wid de rain like peas
likkin' down de grass, de leaves
mekkin tears 'pon yuh
cheeks 'cos yuh be lonly
but ah here! Arms wide
waitin' fuh yuh.
Jes look girl...
jes look, you gon see me
open up yuh eyes
an' look.
Ah does always be here.
Ahhhh! Bliss! The magic of massage and physical therapy is tangible. Or at least can be sensed and felt in the body and mind. For the first time in weeks my knees, which I have abused of late by running up and down stairs and then dancing the night away without a rest break at the wedding two weeks ago, have stopped screaming.
Not that I realised they were screaming until silence fell. I thought they were whining a little, a sub voce counterpoint to all the other things going on in my life.
After ice, ultra sound and some very gentle manipulation I can walk without holding my breath. Although coming up the stairs was not without discomfort, I made it to the top without once touching the handrail or needing to stop. The physiotherapist, who has soothing hands, says they are pretty beat up but she has seen worse.
She sees no need to alert the orthopedic surgeon ( I didn't bother to tell her that pigs will probably fly before anyone else gets near me with a scalpel) and I am to do no exercise and put on ice packs twice a day and go for more ultrasound on Thursday.
Then a deep massage over my back and shoulders unkinking kinks that had their own kinks forming! As I said, bliss!
So now it's dinner for me and soon off to bed and dreams of liniment and pressure points undone. Sheer paradise!
I don't want to go to work this morning. At nine I have an appointment. One more interview and audition to conduct and I don't feel like doing it. Why? Because I know already from the telephone conversations we had that this person is not what I am looking for. And that is so unreasonable of me. She was probably nervous and excited so she came off sounding arrogant and rude.
Or maybe she is arrogant and rude. The part of me that sits and observes what I do, pinning little labels on my thoughts and feelings is just sitting there. Judgmental. Impatient. Unreasonable. Irritable. In pain. What's that? Pain? oh no we can't have that! This is non negotiable! Pain is self indulgent, buckle up or down and grin and bear it. All the voices from the past that are not mine. Years of practising not feeling physical discomfort because stoicism was the preferred attitude through my childhood.
So perhaps I'll do this interview with an open mind, bearing in mind that a kneecap, wrenched off its normal track, will hurt. And pain of that level usually signals the need for outside intervention and I need to get past my 'I can take it stage' to calling for help. To hell with what I was trained to do. I am no longer a child, and the things that happened then can never happen to me again. I do not need to perpetuate the patterns I was raised in.
So many things going through my head it is more like Grand Central than my brain! I conducted two interviews/auditions today. Both men. One who is eminently suitable as is. The right type of voice, a good feel for the type of programming that I am working to develop, the right fit on many levels.
The other man is younger and the voice is not good but could be worked with ( I gave him the name of a speech therapist and gave him some of the exercises my drama coach gave me).
The thing is, he has a passion for the job. I can feel it , see it in the way his eyes shine, the way his hands fly, I can hear the chime of gold when he answered mny questions and reacted to the very unfair challenge I give everyone, asking them to give me a concept for a one hour show right now, right off the bat. I know what I need in the team I am building.
I have limited resources so everyone has to be able to generate and produce to some extent. I am a good producer but I am just one voice, two at a push and a good radio station must have more than that to truly shine. This young man has what I need and I can give him the environment to grow in. I just need to find a way to 'sell' him over the more obvious attributes of the other candidate.
There is also a tropical storm on its way here expected to be upgraded to a hurricane by tomorrow, and although it will probably just give Barbados some rough weather it will probably clip St. Lucia where my sister and niece live quite hard. My mother is very worried, and she is already tense because it is her 76th birthday this week.
So of course this is the day when, for the first time in a long time, I am wondering why I am on my own again? At the wedding I went to last Saturday the father and mother of the bride could not bring themselves to sit at a table together . All of my exes (except the dead ones ) are on speaking terms with me. My former husband was going to invite me to his next wedding and didn't really understand why it wasn't such a cool idea. That's one of the reasons he is a former husband.
I am always taken by surprise when a relationship ends - even when I am the one that ends it. I remember quite clearly the internal feeling of 'what the #%$@& are you doing?' when I heard myself say "Good, now I can leave you." and walked out of a restaurant in the middle of a lunch date. I didn't even close my knife and fork! I had no idea I was going to do that.
Not that I am unaware when all is not glowing in the garden. Not that I am a particularly easy person to live with either. If you say you will take me to the circus I expect that at some point you will do what you said and take me to the circus. I will remind you twice. Then I start to be disappointed and I will tell you so, and tell you why. And it is the death knell when you say to me 'why would you get bent out of shape over that?' You see I always keep my promises or I won't make them.
I killed one relationship very quickly, he asked if I would love him forever and I said truthfully - I don't know. I was going to add that it feels as if I will, but he didn't wait to hear that bit. So it is my own doing that I am alone. I expect people to mean what they say, I am scrupulously truthful and I like to be alone sometimes. I need my own space. And right now I wish I was not alone. That there was someone here to tell me I can do this, it's going to fall into place, and just to give me a real arms-around-me hug.
Well, my head definitely feels emptier now...why do so many people spell 'definitely' incorrectly? It cannot just be typos because 'a' and 'i' are quite widely separated on the keyboards I have seen. Another of life's little mysteries. I have a second DVD to watch and review just watched Fracture with Anthony Hopkins,
good story and I feel like having a snack perhaps frozen yoghurt smothered in mango sorbet. Not as good as a hug from a deliciously sexy man, but not bad as an also ran!
So Dean has been upgraded to hurricane status and as of 5:00 a.m. local time Warnings were issued for St. Lucia, where my sister lives.
Years ago during Hurricane Allen (or perhaps it was David) I pulled storm duty at the radio station I worked for at the time. Actually I volunteered. And I was on air for twelve hours straight except for those times that I was aquaplaning up the corridor, blown for about fifty feet by the winds coming through the open work on the building. Well, you had to to do something to stay awake! And it was fun.
The supermarkets will be utter chaos today. So will the gas stations and the banks. I have actually followed the advice of all the hurricane hints I have been broadcasting and writing since the beginning of hurricane season. Annoying little pops saying 'Are you ready? You should be!' and giving suggestions on how to prepare for and ride out the storm.
My mood is still displaced and unsettled. I realised while watching the night's mares that galloped back and forth like destriers, destroying rest as their great hoofs ripped up the virtual fields within my head, that part of it is the atmosphere of animosity back in the forums again.
There are threads I have never swung on, some I have passed through briefly and left, others I have paused long enough to make a comment, maybe two if I thought they were of interest. There are some where something has caught my eye and inspired me to add what knowledge I might have for balance and/or accuracy as misinformation has great potential to do harm in some cases, or may just put someone at a disadvantage if they try to use it.
I know this first hand as I have been, in my time, responsible for bands of roving gnomes, an over-eggcited Humpty Dumpty and a duodecapod (a non existent twelve footed creature). April Fool's day and a show on radio can lead to sheer havoc if one is not careful. And there are always those who miss the disclaimers. So presenting information as fact puts a huge responsibility on the presenter.
Over the last couple of days the number of threads I have been willing to enter has shrunk although in one at least I was talkative enough to generate an email in comment. There are times when I will speak up for what I believe is right. No one has to agree with me, and I am not going to argue as to whether I am right or wrong because it actually doesn't matter a hill of beans, but there are times when NOT speaking would be the bigger crime. Silence condones ill-doing. And there is ill being done in the forums.
So Nature's storm and the human storm we create and foment and perpetuate ourselves both flourish. Nature does not make excuses or justify herself, she blows on into town and tears it down to its foundations, not offering putdowns in the form of guidance, not claiming self defense, just simply blows or shakes it all away.
My I Ching reading says not to waste time trying to bring peace between incompatible people, so I won't. I have a radio station to run, a mother to soothe and a sister to worry about. I also have friends who are in a place of suffering to pray for.
It is a fact that in the next twenty four hours people will die. From a storm, by human agency, in war or from disease as well as just from the simple fact that their time is done. Others will suffer and hurt and feel despair.
And some will dispense labels like 'stupid' and 'idiot' and worse to strangers because there is no lasting or serious consequence to throwing insults on the net, and others will throw insults right back, creating a toxic atmosphere where entertainment and connection is meant to be the goal.
Human nature really sucks the big one sometimes!
I stood beside the sea this evening, a pewter platter all wrinkled like a careless counterpane or the pleated skin of the really old. Not a wave. Just a curving heave like breathing, in and out; no space at the horizon to separate sea from sky where all the clouds were gathered; sprayed from a can of grey whipped cream, a panoramic Tuesday with no cherry. The ice cream truck outside appropriately playing row row row your boat as it braves the puddles, sometimes more like ponds, the rain has left behind. No, not left because the rain is breathing across the landscape in gusty sweeps every few minutes; a wheezy spatter on windows, all around, my patio two inches deep...enough to aquaplane upon if I run and jump. And if I miss the railing at the end I'll go headlong down the stairs. Might not be fun.
So I stood beside the sea and watched it heave metallic flanks like some great beast gathering itself to pounce. It never did. Just shifted in a sullen not quite tide that didn't reach the rock I stood on. Then I came home; and now I am eating Twiglets, all crunchy with the spicy bite of marmite elusive on my tongue reminding me of pepper kisses from the days back when I had a lover. I must get me one again.
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