Boundaries. Latecomers are a b*tch.

"It is our choices that define us, far more than our abilities."
- J.K. Rowling

You're born to a family that puts the fun in dysfuntional. Let's face it: we all are.

You learn not to need. You learn to please. You succeed to please.

Fast forward decades and you learn at a professional workshop that your key conflict resolution methods are avoidance and accommodation. You are not surprised.

You spend years in a relationship with the kindest person you've ever met. You have needs, but are schooled to subvert them. He has needs, but is schooled to not voice them. You part.

You date. You meet compelling people. You learn. What you want. What you don't. What is compatible. What isn't. That it's a triple-punch of intellectual, physical, and emotional attraction (for you, in that order) that resonates with Clive Staples Lewis' idea: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one."

You get distracted. The intellectual attraction is the bite. The physical attraction is the hook. But the emotional attraction? Continues to elude.

You get lost in the first two at the expense of the last. But the cost of the loss of that kindest person is the reminder you need. That if the collapse of that emotional attraction boundary was worth it, for anyone, it would have been for that kindest person.

You have intellectual and emotional chemistry with your peeps. You just don't want to jump their bones. You hope. That finding the attraction trif*ckta is possible. Until then, solace. With the peeps. Whose bones may not be jumpable, but whose hearts are unyieldingly authentic.

"There is good. And there is evil. Right, and wrong. Heroes, and villains. And if we're blessed with wisdom, then there are glimpses between the cracks of each, where light streams through. We wait in silence for these times, when sense can be made; when meaningless existence comes into focus, and our purpose presents itself.

And if we have the strength to be honest, then what we find there, staring back at us, is our own reflection bearing witness to the duality of life. That each one of us is capable of both the dark and the light - good, and evil - of either; of all.

And destiny, while marching ever in our direction, can be re-routed by the choices we make; by the love we hold on to; and the promises we keep." - Heroes, 15-Dec-2008

Starting off a New Year

Whitenoise keeps pestering for nekkid snaps. Does this one of my New Year's toes in FloridaDad's TajMahTub count?


Found a ridiculous calendar that tickles me silly: "Veggies Gone Wild! Produce Behaving Badly". Here's January:

Not Politically Correct

marriedtothesea.com

A Summer of Sundays

It's not been a secret, my un-love affair with summer. I've made some pretty harsh, judgmental statements. But summer did its best to win me over at the beginning of September. I think she even forgave my brash, rude, petulance.

Visiting FloridaDad and SWEJudy the other week, each afternoon found us taking cover from the daily Central Florida summer storm. Only instead of abating after an hour or so, the rain kept coming. And coming.

But on my last night, a reprieve. Post-dinner cleanup found me grabbing my iPod and heading a block away to the beach as the sun was setting. I hit play on my "Summer of Sundays" playlist and set to strolling.

"& its you and me in the summertime
We'll be hand in hand down in the park
With a squeeze & a sigh & that twinkle in your eye
& all the sunshine banishes the dark"
- The Sundays, "Summertime"

The song ended as I kicked my flops under the sea grapes and set towards the water. Not many walkers that late. A few blokes casting. The lights of cruise boats twinkling off shore.

"well the heat was enormous
it fell like a gorgeous
blanket of indian clay
time drifting over us, stagnant like thunderclouds
pregnant and heavy with rain"
- Eddie From Ohio, "This My Town"

The breeze reminded me that the morning's showers had chased away the languor of humidity and stickiness of heat. My toes hit the edge of the perfect water, same temperature as the air. My cadence slowed to a surf strut.

"Maybe sometimes, we've got it wrong, but it's alright
The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same
Oh, don't you hesitate . . .
You're gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow."
- Corinne Bailey Rae, "Put Your Records On"

The lights inside the condos loomed brighter as I moseyed south. My pace quickened to a jaunt - almost a dance - as the next tune bubbled up.

"If everything is nothing, then are we anything?
Is it better to be better than to be anything?"
- Counting Crows, "Einstein On the Beach"

At least three times, I jumped up and down in the surf, once landing on a sand crab. Ouch! Out of breath, a respite as Herbie Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island" chilled me out.

I couldn't have timed the scoring better. As I saw the last glimpse of sun to the west, The Sundays returned with words to bid the day's glow adieu:

"The thought of heaven couldn't drag me from the path
When I'm wandering here alone
I climb higher move towards the fire.... so blaze sun
Watch until it dies slow falling from the sky
Pale fading sun"
- The Sundays, "Folk Song"

Have you ever cha cha'd to XTC in the surf? I recommend it.

"You play hard to get
'Cause you're teacher's pet
But when the boats have gone
We'll take a tumble excuse for a fumble"
- XTC, Grass

My only picnic of the summer was dining with PJamaMama on the lawn at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for the Indigo Girls show. What a fine evening that was!

"and my family takes picnics to the park
on warm weather holidays
and we ask all the neighbors, and they invite all their friends in kind
and we all bring side dishes, and we form one big holiday buffet line"
- Eddie From Ohio, "I Don't Think I Know Me"

"Nightswimming, remembering that night
September's coming soon
I'm pining for the moon"
- R.E.M. "Nightswimming"



It struck me during this tune that I had not skinnydipped before. I turned around and realized the sun had fully set. I was halfway through my playlist, so I about faced and headed for home.

T.B.C.

Getting Pruny

One of my favorite things to do when visiting FloridaDad and SWEJudy is bubblelicious lollygagging in the TajMahTub. FloridaDad carefully selected a bathing venue that would accommodate his 6'4" frame, and it handily fits my 34" legspan.

Filling the tub drains every drop in their hot water heater. I've enough bubble source for one more offering before heading home tomorrow. Summer's heat be damned, I don't pass up the TajMahTub!

Being Present

James, by Mark Tonra

Being present is a tough row to hoe for me. Knowing that giving anyone or anything my singular, focused attention is an unusal feat, I've been trying to accomplish it more often. And have been looking for ways to enable better success.

“Everyday living is too fast, too busy, too complicated. More than at any time in history, it’s important to have good information on just about every aspect of life. And, there is more information available than ever before. Too much in fact. There is simply no time for people to gather and absorb the information they need.”
- Britton Hadden, Time Magazine co-founder, quoted in 1929.

And he thought THEY had it bad!

Hugh MacLeod had a great post a couple weeks back on Gaping Void entitled "Human attention does not obey Moore's Law".

If you aren't like me and gifted with natural ADD, you've received the gift 4400-style thanks to technology. HP did a whitepaper a couple years back on InfoMania detailing results from a study by the London School of Psychiatry. That study found that the attention of a computer-using knowledge worker shifted every 3 minutes.

EVERY 3 MINUTES.

Go ahead. Respond to that IM. Answer that phone. Read that e-mail. View that YouTube vid. This post will be waiting for you to continue reading.

The HP study found that addiction to e-mail and other "always on" mediums can lower a person's IQ by 10 points - more than twice the amount of the effects of smoking pot, and more than going without a night's sleep. Trade pubs wrote about the study under the headline "Stoned On E-mail". (HP's Guide to Avoiding InfoMania seems to be archived from their site, but I can send you a copy if you're curious.)

A fantastic thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I arrived on St. George Island to discover zilch cell phone coverage and wireless internet access for Mac use was inconsistent and piss-poor, at best. Initially vexed at the lack of connection to the wankosphere, each day found me happily unthwarted at being forced to be present in my vacation.

I had three great assistants in my digital dismemberment, in the form of two 3-year olds and one 14-month old. Playing in the sand, sun, surf and pool with them and their mommies found me sharing in their wonder and insouciance. They took me out of my own pointy head and brought me into the moment. Their moments. Their now. Our shared occupations were simple: what will we eat? how will we play? what will we drink? when will we sleep? how will we play some more? where is the sunscreen?

I spend too much time looking backward, looking forward, and not enough time enjoying where I'm at. Where I’m at ain’t bad. I'm going to endeavor to embrace this “present” stuff post-beach bliss. With myself. With others. In life. In work. It won’t be easy or intuitive for me – but I think I’ll be more content. Will be a powerful strong gift from those young urchins and the sea. And it is not unrelated to my new year's resolution.

"The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gifts from the Sea

The Judybats, "Being Simple"

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Get Fuzzy, By Darby Conley

For whitenoise upon the occasion of his entering a sleep clinic:

I've employed a few things since college that have greatly improved my ability to fall, and stay, asleep.

1. Do not clock watch.
If you must keep a traditional alarm clock, turn it around to the wall and make sure you can't reach it in the middle of the night. Trust that the alarm will work. Setup a backup alarm if you're untrusting. In school I switched to using a kitchen timer, setting it for the number of hours I wanted to sleep. Worked like a freakin' charm.

2. Get a sound machine and use it at home AND away.
Its consistent noise cancelling will mask the odd sounds of strange and familiar places and be your personal serenity device. The clock I use now has 6 different sounds, and I use the one that sounds oddly enough like riding on an airplane at 30,000 feet. My Mom has the same clock and uses the waterfall sound, and when I sleep at her place I have to get up to pee in the middle of the night. Suggestable, am I.

3. Play Solitaire on a PDA.
Numbers 1 and 2 helped me stay asleep, but it used to take me an hour plus to fall sleep. A few years back I started playing solitaire on my PDA as I lay in bed, and in a few weeks something good happened. Playing it required enough brain power to concentrate on the game that my pointy head began to let go of the thoughts that would keep me going as I tried to fall asleep. And the brightness of the screen had the same mind numbing, soporific effect as a TV does in a dark room. I could then play just 5 to 10 minutes and I'd find my eyes getting droopy - sleep would come within minutes of turning off the PDA. Somehow in the past year or so, I stopped even needing the PDA, as I seem to have trained my pointy head to simply relax, listen to the airplane noise, and fall asleep.

I've recommended each of these to several friends with best results from the sound machine action. People have a hard time giving up clock watching - but trust me, it REALLY works. And sleeping leads to dreaming. Yum.

Gaping Void by Hugh MacLeod.

Opening Doors

"when one door of happiness closes, another opens;
but often we look so long at the closed door
that we do not see the one which has been
opened for us" - Helen Keller

For CountryMouse.

A Time of Cleansing

Sunday as CarolinaMom and I sat gabbing, the first blooms opened on the fuschia azaleas outside the dining room window. 5 days later, they're in full bloom under a slender dogwood, as spied from Cheek's bedroom:


Many changes wrought in Cheekdom since the trees bared themselves just months ago. The season's blooms unfolding echo my own stretch to the warming light and clearing skies. Lazy Geisha put it in such fine prose, I can't compete. Enjoy it here, accompanied by pink azalea bloomage from my back yard:


"I have loved many; sometimes too much if such a thing is possible. I opened myself and gave myself freely and without question, and perhaps where I fell was in expecting that my love would be returned, and for a while it was, but it is the memory of that love which sustains me and now allows me to let it go, forever.

Spring for me is a time of cleansing. The death and quiet still of winter passes us by, and we rejoice in the celebration of life; and we remember those which we have loved, as we kiss them goodbye and turn away towards tomorrow."