The Sky is Falling

It has been more than a month since my last post.  In the meantime, my mundane world has altered.  Although the details are important to me, the fact is, only change is interesting and meaningful, stasis is about nothing.  So why do we so resist change?  Why, even when someone forces upon us the very change we seek, do we recoil against it?

These are the questions I have asked repeatedly, since I was told that my job of the last 29 years is about to be eliminated.   It happened suddenly and nonsensically, surprising and angering.  And even though my job has many positives, it has also been very frustrating and repetitive over the years.  Yet fear of the unknown has kept me here, year after year.

So now I am thrust into the next phase of my life, and yet, I cannot help but grasp at the straws of remaining the same.  There is a chance the downsize may happen some different way, so I focus on that possibility for awhile longer.  There is a chance a different position may be offered, so I hope for that.  However, the better part of me knows I should move over into the new realm of "Life After Legal Aid," and leave the what-ifs behind.  I think I had to write this to make my way over here.

So much of my job is about helping people find palatable solutions to serious problems.  Usually I assist them in getting to the next phase of their lives, and they thank me.  Why then, have I learned so little about making transitions in my own life?  I guess I will try and become my own client for the change that will come.  Here we go.

Thoughts Over A Bowl A Polenta

This post starts with nothing in mind whatsoever.  Can I make something out of nothing? 

This week has been spent alone, not counting going to work and a music rehearsal.  By which I mean, my partner, Robert, has been off to the coast pursuing his livelihood and I have been left in the house by myself.  This happens so rarely, that I am both euphoric and at loose ends.  Euphoria has been expressed through the unrestrained oddity of my diet.  Finally, I get to eat anything I want.  Which means I simply scrounge for whatever is there, no matter how various.  Tonight, I made pudding with half, half-and-half, and half, rice milk.  It was weird but I couldn't tell if it was the rice milk or the fact that I burned the bottom of the pan.  Of course, I ate some anyway.  My food goal is to prove that I can eat happily on whatever the cupboard and fridge provide.  Like most Americans, we tend to stockpile food., even though we are always going to the grocery store.  The other part of dinner was polenta, to use up the carton of chicken stock I opened for my quinoa vegetable stew two nights before, that included every vegetable in the fridge except the lettuce.  I call it practicing for poverty.

If I get nothing else out of my career of taking care of the legal problems of the poor,  at least I have a clue how to survive on the bottom rungs of society, should I ever fall down the pinnacle of success I have managed to achieve.  I also know not to fear such a fall from grace, as I have learned that only addiction or mental illness or illegality of status could send you to the streets. Despite the tales of woe that are touted as proof of our terrible economy, our country is not yet at the point of letting people starve or freeze to death.  I say this only to remember that our version of misfortune is quite a bit better than many parts of the world.

The one thing that marks my poor clients as different from my friends and acquaintances, is the raw emotion they readily express.  Although I thrill to the slogan of the "Occupy" movement that "We are the 99%,"  there is a big difference between the bottom 10%  and the 90th percentile.   The thing about this country is that we have a good idea of how the rich live, and we are damn mad we don't have some of that.  The poorer you are, the madder and sadder you are about it.  So I hear a lot of emotions and I like that part of my job.  This may be a twisted appreciation, but I admire those who are in touch with and express their feelings.  It is so straightforward.  But I'm also glad that I don't have all those strong feelings myself, at least not over the same things. 

Spending the week alone has also led to more talking to myself, which then finally, has led to this little bit of writing, which is all good.   But I'm ready for company

(Random photos from today)

Everywhere Looks Good From Here

Whenever I go out in the country I imagine how nice it would be to live there.  I stare intently at the landscape and wish I could look at the view from the window of a house right here, or over there.  This leads to  perpetual house hunting of the vaguest nature.  I am lucky to have a friend who is a realtor and  tolerates my temporary enthusiasms, because inevitably when she talks about getting pre-approved for a loan, or checking with the planning department about whether there are building restrictions, my dream house starts looking less like heaven on earth and more like a series of decisions that depend on comparing facts and figures.  Then my interest wanes until the next trip out of town.

It has been suggested that my behavior means that I don't want to live in the city and I am desperate to relocate anywhere that doesn't involve so many sidewalks, stoplights and coffee shops.  But I actually like the busy metropolis with all the possibilities for amusement.  It's just that when I see real land stripped and bare of human accoutrements, I just want to lie down and be absorbed into the scenery.   I think I sang 'This Land Is Your Land" one too many times as a child.

Luckily, we do find ways to get out where nature predominates.  Last weekend we went hiking along Siouxon Creek in Washington, about sixty miles from Portland.  The forest was covered with thick moss and popping mushrooms everywhere, and it embodied everything the northwest climate is famous for.  I looked at that moss and wanted to bed down in its softness.  What a place this earth is!

 
Here's a poem I wrote about this place, more than ten years ago.  Luckily, it hasn't changed.

Siouxon Creek

Down in hemlock, cedar, fern
everything is green, even air is algal,
the creek a punch of moss
champagne and liquor of leaf.
Mist swags treetops, a wreath of droplets
glazing needles, dripping into
effervescing waterfalls.
Tall snags carve totem poles
to gods of decay, before toppling
into bryophytic carpet.

I drive a gauntlet of clearcuts and hunters
to get here, and grumble over mountain
bike prints I tamp down on the trail,
but bathed in emerald light
discontent spills away,
within this narrow watershed of life.

Accomplishments

When I was a budding feminist, I researched and wrote a paper about female education in the old old days.  I think I read one book and summarized the major tenets; which were that in the 1800's (and possibly 1700's), girls' education needn't go further than the basics of reading and writing and a little math, as long as they also gather a few "accomplishments" to show off to suitors.   These seemed to center around music and needlework, and maybe a little riding.

This book must have been instrumental in my formation, because even though I managed to complete a fair number of years of serious education, I have also tried to keep up on a flurry of hobbies and talents to impress the judges.  Way after the competition is over, I am still practicing my music, art, and sundry athletic pursuits, as if I might audition at any time in a competition for the best all-round girl.

Thus, I have a strange combination of goal directed behavior, sabotaged by a simultaneous need to cover all bases.  The goal fixation was apparent in our recent trip to Kings Canyon National Park.  Planning from afar, we mapped a five day backpack trip that would take us into the High Sierras.  However, before we even arrived, the weather report was forecasting a serious chance of snow in the middle of the trip's timeline.  Despite this chill, I refused to accept that the weather report would turn out correct so we went ahead with our plans.  Unfortunately, the predictions came to pass and we were forced to beat a hasty retreat, hiking out sixteen miles in one day to beat the snow.  From then on we sheltered in the fancy lodge at Sequoia and contented ourselves with day hikes.  But still, I regret we didn't complete our journey as planned.  I hate to give up, even as I hedge all my bets. 

Dark Clouds

 
Although the internet gives us the ability to know virtually anything we want,  I stay away from specific areas where I don't think I can handle the information.  I am afraid that if I knew the true state of certain things, I couldn't go on making my little plans, celebrating my little successes.  Instead,  I would be paralyzed with depression or consumed by anger.  Those unknown facts are sensed to be things that I have very little chance of changing, yet are horrible.  One of those subject areas for me is "fracking."

 Fracking is not a clever way of writing the other "f-word."  It is shorthand for a terrible way we are tearing up this country in a gold rush for natural gas.  Seduced by good reviews, I watched the movie "Gasland," a documentary about this topic.  Although a well-made movie,  I am now consumed with rage over our political indifference to the plight of citizens and the land itself, against the thuggery of corporations.  But I'm not even going to get into it.  If you are interested see the movie or google fracking.  Enough said.

In another sad tale, I must report that I once again have gone around the block of dissatisfaction with the organization that employs me.  It seems like businesses are exactly like families in the way they can repeat the same argument over and over, without anything new being said.  If there were not outside forces pulling us this way and that, we wouldn't be able to change at all.  I only have myself to blame of course, for not finding either a way out or another way through the points of contention.  But like the topic above, it seems like something I have little control over, and hence the unhappiness it causes.

Perhaps it is just the weather affecting me.  Today was the first real rain in about two months.  This signals the end of summer and the beginning of our very wet winter.  You would think I would have found peace with the changing seasons, but I hate to see the warm weather go.

       

Beachy

I grew up on the beach and if sand isn't in my veins, it is at least metaphorically in my hair.  So I was happy to score a beach house for Labor Day weekend, and hopeful that the Oregon coast would come through with at least a couple of sunny days while we were there.  Amazingly, the sun was out most of the time, and on Saturday a hot east wind made it reasonable to immerse briefly in the ice cold ocean and then lay out on the sand, soaking up the heat.

Oregon actually has a relatively high rate of skin cancer, because of moments like this.  With so many cloudy days this summer, an opportunity to bare skin is a religious moment for some of us.  I lay down on a towel and dug my fingers into the warm silky sand, remembering all the childhood days when I did the same thing, loving the surf filling up my ears with sound.  I actually fell asleep for a little while, which is rare indeed. Later I took a walk after sunset and engaged in another childhood pleasure-- walking with my eyes closed.  As far as I know, the beach is the only safe place to do this.  

Walking on the beach always gives me a chance to think expansively.  Perhaps the ocean stretching to the horizon pulls thoughts out and strings them together in long sentences that can be grasped better than when they run around the little tracks in my cranium.  But I came out of that weekend with a firm intention to focus my efforts on one interest at a time, instead of a dozen all at once.  Hence, I have gone back to an old project--getting all my poems in one virtual place, even if I have to type them all again, into this computer.  This task has been about two thirds done for about five years.  But until I have it all the way done, I can't decide what can be done with them, and what can be done next.   Tonight I opened up the box with all the pieces of paper with poems on them, sorting which are digitally preserved and which are not.  I still am filled with intention, and here is a poem from the collection.

Meditation

Air slips over sand, surf thumps
applauding each wave lipping the beach.

gulls butcher sandcrabs with a crunch
and garnish of seaweed

quartz runs fine like bathwater
through my fingers,

light stretches elastic across the sky
saturating sea and the dome behind my iris

each angle unbends toward the horizon
until I know nothing more.

The Limits of Being a Parent

  There comes a time in the life of every parent-child relationship, where you let go.   I have been accused of hovering, worrying and directing the life of my son way past any appropriate age.  Well, last night I think we finally passed a mutual test.  He called out for help, I wasn't there and he found another solution.   We are both proud and sad for each other.  So much so that he didn't even eat the pancake I made for him today, and I felt okay about eating it instead.  No hard feelings.

I realize the words above could have been written about any age after a child starts to eat real food.  The process of becoming an adult has so many transitions.  But the younger milestones are the stuff of children's books and parenting books galore.  Once you get over the first day you drop your kid at daycare, the first day of school, the first bike ride, the first time behind the wheel, you would think there would be easy sailing ahead.  The rest will just be a wonderful adult relationship with your begotten one, talking over interesting readings, joining me for concerts, hikes and vacations.  Well, of course not.  It is a constant pushing away, that takes decades.  Although he still  wants to be fed, we don't share any other common interests.  Even though somehow he has absorbed my political perspectives, he is loathe to admit any similarities.  Ah well, at least a paucity of employment has kept him around the home.

Yesterday evening Robert and I went to a community supper, put on by a local church. Although we had no connection to the religious aspect, I am happy to participate in any neighborhood gathering. I tried to convince my son to come along, but he refused and instead went off to water the vegetable garden at his father's house, several miles away.  Dad was gone traveling for a week and in the meantime his house was being reconstructed by a team of workmen.

After setting up the sprinklers, my son went into the house to see what might be offered by the contents of the refrigerator.  The house had new interior walls and would soon have new doors.  For now, they were all stacked up, leaning against the refrigerator, which was in the middle of the soon to be kitchen.  Somehow, the act of opening the refrigerator undid the delicate balance between the weight of the doors and opposing weight of the fridge.  As soon as Evan opened the door, the refrigerator started to fall, along with the wood doors leaning against it.  Although he was able to close the door, he was not able to right the fridge and doors.  If he managed to extract himself everything would crash to the ground, which would at least damage the new fridge and possibly trap some body part as he tried to get away.

So holding the fridge and doors against his back, Evan took out his phone and called his mother.  No answer.  This was not surprising since I rarely carry my cell phone on my body, and certainly didn't think to have it as I strolled two blocks to the church supper.  Then he tried Robert's phone.  Robert has a "smart phone' which is always with him, but he had turned the volume off in deference to the social occasion.  He did not notice the call.  So then Evan started calling his friends.  He found one close enough to come over and help.  But by the time we got back to the house and called Evan, his friend still had not arrived.  Evan had been applying his weight against the refrigerator for about 45 minutes.

So we called the friend and helped him find the house, but I could do nothing more than wait to find out whether my 21 year son would be crushed by a refrigerator or saved by his friend.   After about ten more minutes, we did find out that of course, he was saved.  My son who hates to ask for help, managed to reach out to his peers and and get what he needed, just in time.  I learned that I truly can't be there for him  every time he might need me, but I did promise myself I would learn to carry my cell phone.