Feeling Better Already

Here is today's Peace Quote:

Everything in the universe is connected, everything is osmosis. You cannot separate any part from the whole; interdependence rules the cosmic order.- Taisen Deshimaru

I could easily find a dozen more quotes that support this contention. Can all of these wise ones be wrong?

Peace Be With You, too.

Lost

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but the means by which we arrive at that goal.

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

(As I read this post now, I find some formatting issues that I am unable to resolve. Sorry, you're on your own.)

I have the blues. This is unusual for me and it makes me want to figure out why it's happening so I can make it go away. Is it the rain, and the 45-degree temperature, and the bare Minnesota trees (just when Spring was really showing herself so gloriously in Memphis)?

Rita has left on a family trip to New York City so yesterday I drove her car to all the places I lived from 1991-1997, including a house I owned and lived in with my teen-aged daughter, a huge house that Rita and I shared with 3 other women, and the duplex she and I shared after that, right before we moved to Asheville. It made me sad, and upon examination, all I can come up with to explain the sadness (which even now is bringing tears to my eyes) is:

--I am longing for good times past

--I am regretting bad times past

--I want to return to a time of connectedness with another that felt good

--I remember a time of connectedness with another that felt bad

--I'm lonely

--It's just the weather and I'll feel great as soon as the sun returns

I hear Eckhart telling me that I can stop all of this bad feeling if I stop thinking about it and just breathe. But I don't want to. What is this need to wallow in sadness? It's sick. Or just human, I suppose.

Here's a funny story that happened yesterday, maybe telling it will help me feel better. I drove to Hopkins, a suburb of Minneapolis where I owned a home and where my daughter and I had some really good times. She was in 8th or 9th grade, old enough to be good company, and we used to have dinner at the restaurant connected to a locally-owned grocery store called Lund's. One of my favorite dishes was their Chicken Chili, which has a cream-soup base rather than the usual tomato base. We both liked their popovers, which you could get as a bread choice with any meal.

After driving by my house, I was looking forward to a late lunch at Lund's, and hoping that they still had some of the old menus choices available. I parked my car, and as I approached the restaurant I could tell that it was closed. The sign said "New Hours: Monday-Sunday, 6 a.m. - 2 p.m." It was 3:00. Yet another disappointment to add to my melancholy.

I decided to check out the grocery store for something from the deli, and while I was getting my Death by Chocolate Brownie, the woman who waited on me said the restaurant had had to shorten their hours because of the economy. (I am just realizing as I write this that not getting chicken chili and a popover has been the single most personally identifiable effect of the worldwide economic crisis. Poor me.)

On the way to the checkout, I remembered how much I used to like the wild rice soup with ham made by another local grocery chain and sold frozen, so I asked a passing employee if he could direct me to the Byerly's frozen soups. He seemed a little confused so I repeated my request, "You know, the frozen Byerly's soups?"

"Oh," he said. "I thought you said barley soup."

I had to laugh when I realized, as I followed him to the frozen foods, that it was my North Carolina accent that had confused him. How ironic, since my Memphis brother had chided me not two weeks earlier for using the Minnesota long "o" when saying the word "you."

Okay, that didn't help.

Perhaps this melancholy stems from the same kind of disappointment that I experienced while in Houston: there's so much of this place that I don't remember. It's like I never lived here. (Here come the tears again; this must be it.) What is this about? Fear of change? Fear of forgetfulness? Fear of anonymity? Longing for connection to place and then disappointment when the place doesn't live up to expectations?

I had a dream last night that is typical for me; I've had it for years. I am in a familiar place but when I turn the corner, or enter a building, or look for whatever it is that I know to be in a certain place, it isn't there. The familiar has become totally unfamiliar and I search in vain for whatever it is that I expect to see.

I had expected that being in my old haunts would be a great homecoming experience. Instead, I feel alienated. Like I don't belong anymore. Anywhere. Perhaps these tears just need to come and I need to let them flow. After that, I'm going to let it all go.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a Right Spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy Presence. And take not thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the Joy of thy Salvation and uphold me with thy Free Spirit. Amen. Or something like that...

Catching Up

Today I finished the post I started on April 10 (see below). Damn but the days do fly by! I had to look at the pictures I've taken to remind myself of what happened on which days. Here's a synopsis in photos:

Big fun around sister Marcia's dining table.

More fun at the Pink Palace Museum where we saw the traveling exhibit The Scoop on Poop. Here we are pretending to be dung (that's a dung beetle above our heads).

My nephew Austin pretending to...well...you know.

At the world-famous Rendezvous Restaurant, #1 in the country for ribs, where they have just recently started hiring white men (still no women) as waiters: southern traditions die hard.

Iowa out the right side of the motorhome.

Iowa out the left side of the motorhome.

This is pretty much what Iowa looks like October thru May. Later there will be corn. Just corn.

Right now I'm in Minneapolis, where I lived 1990-97. I'm sitting in the living room of my former partner, Rita, who is at school, where she still teaches high school English, mainly creative writing. We had a pretty bad breakup in 2000, after 6 1/2 years of struggle, and didn't have any contact at all for about four years, so this reunion has been fraught with nervous anticipation on both sides. Fortunately, we are both wise enough to know, without having to mention it, that it is best not to unpack any of that old baggage, so the visit has been wonderfully pleasant and satsifying for me, and I think for her as well. We are enjoying all the things about each other that we used to enjoy, without any of the rancor. I've missed her more than I would have admitted (although I really did know because she showed up regularly in my dreams).

Today is Rita's birthday, so in honor of the occasion, a birthday poem:

For Rita at Sixty-Five

Girl, you are really old now
Like, Medicare-old
Like, get reduced-price-tickets-old
Like, wise-crone-old
Old enough to know better
Old enough to just sit in the sun
And relax
Take it easy
No excuses required
Girl, you are one fine
Old lady
My heart welcomes you home
Be still, my beating heart.

Fear Not

If you no longer believe what fear tells you, you will live and it will not. - Cheri Huber


The view from my bunk window this morning was like a kaleidoscope, the colors shifting as a strong gusting wind blew the clouds around: now dark, now light, the trees green to yellow to gray, almost black against a bright white sky that also changed to gray with occasional patches of blue. I was mesmerized. The wind was blowing when I went to bed last night around 10:30 and the temperature hovered around 70 degrees. This morning I heard there had been stormy weather all around us, including a very destructive tornado somewhere in Arkansas, just across the Mississippi.

Living in Asheville, NC, has made me rather complacent about bad weather. I can recall only one tornado watch/warning in the 11 years I lived there. We endured some flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan (I think) in 2005: lost power and everything in my fridge; but that's about it for really bad weather. Sure enough, as soon as I ventured east out of the NC mountains toward the coast during this past hurricane season, I had to run back inland when Hanna threatened the coast. Now I'm on the outskirts of "Tornado Alley" and I'm starting to think about what I would do if there were a watch alert.

It's good to have a plan, I suppose, but I refuse to worry about something I can't control, just as I don't worry about living alone in a camper. A friend whom I will be visiting in Rochester, MN, as I make my way to Minneapolis next week called today to confirm my arrival date and, as many friends have before her, she told me how brave I am to travel alone. Then I opened the Peace Quote for today, found the opening quote above and decided that the muse wants me to talk about fear today. But Cheri Huber says it all and so I'll just shut up now.

What Day Is It?

Is it Day 11? Day 12? Yesterday I rolled out of bed at 5:15 to accompany my sister Marcia as a volunteer for The Food Bank of Memphis. We drove to Amory, Mississippi, to interview 12 people at a food pantry as part of the Hunger in America survey. We were home by 1 p.m. but I was a slug the rest of the day: watched movies, etc.

Today we drove to Oxford, MS, to do the same. But instead of vegging out when we got home, I put on my walking shoes and took Trixie and myself for a walk. It was so beautiful I just had to share it with you. I hope that wherever you are, it is this beautiful, and that you are really looking at it, and thinking of nothing at all. I am. And I'm hooked into the collective conscousness of the Universe. Peace.