Just Like Life

life imitates criminal minds

the tv show

sometimes I can watch

sometimes I can’t

my daughter says

mom its just a tv show

but often the images

hang on too long in my brain

playing out in the middle of the day

or when I walk alone

life imitates art

headlines

bombs blood guns

i drive to owatonna

sleepy owatonna

home of bullies at schools

meth

that kind of typical 

american pain and

violence

i drive into town on bridge street

cars pull over obediently to 

the sound of sirens

a cop car

another

then dark suv’s just like the fbi

just like criminal minds

just like this week

all over the news

i get to my daughter’s home

oh yeah, she says, 

they’re after some guy from faribault

neighboring town

15 miles north

he stabbed his girlfriend

and torched a car

sure enough

they find him in a field

a little after one

in owatonna east off of bridge

we passed law enforcement

driving into town 

at one on a sunday

afternoon

sleepy little town wakes up

to more violence

just like tv 

no one says

mom its just a tv show

The Terrible Truth

Can I Be Free & Happy and Still Eat? 

This is the question that is constantly floating at the back of my head. We are told, life is hard, you work and then you die. We are jealous of the rich bastards that get to relax and travel. We try to make up lies about them to console ourselves. We are told that play is the reward of work, not the necessary part of life that it is. We are told that we don’t deserve our happiness if we are white and privileged, we are told that we are going to lose whatever small prosperity we have if we are too generous. We are told that people are so greedy they will only love us for our money, if we are lucky enough to get some. We subtly believe that lazy people don’t deserve to live, let alone have food and health care, right? Why should I work and break my back so someone else can just goof off and still, still, just exist? And we also are told that we are responsible for the lives and happiness of those across the globe, responsible to feed them (the food unfinished from our plates, a guilty reminder), to educate them, to religiousize them, to free them, to give them all ipads and make them just like us. And these are just some of the ideologies that swarm around me on my path. 

I want to only care about me and my family, really, and if I breathe a word of this, I am looked on with disdain. I know, I have said such terrible things before. People seem to assume that if we carry all the guilty burdens of these ideologies, we somehow help move the planet forward. As if I let go of caring for the whole f------ universe, it will fall apart. Well, I’m letting go, I’m going to leave the developed countries with their violence, dominance and privilege, the developing countries with their financial and political crises, and the undeveloped countries, towns, parcels and peoples everywhere to their own devices. I’m going to turn off the news, I’m going to turn on Pandora to Ella Fitzgerald, I’m going to listen closely to those around me, I’m going to enjoy what I can in life, be grateful and believe that the world doesn’t need me to care about everyone else, but to choose to care about those around me, those I pass on the street who need a smile, this I can give, but I just can’t give up my whole life to passing ideologies, anymore. I want to eat and not feel guilty, I want to be free (enough) and be grateful, and I want to make so much money that I can be generous and not worry that those around me are greedy, but just enjoying my abundance. I don't want play to be my reward, but my life. 

Contraband Cake (redux)

Okay, here is the contraband cake entry, with an amusing back story. I struggle with fear and anxiety sometimes, (really? you noticed?). Part of this fear and anxiety is around success, some is around just keeping things from falling apart, which is the pretty common fear we have which makes most of us try to keep things the same. We hear over and over that people fear change, and I don't entirely buy into that, because, well, we change all the time, and often we crave change, we delight in change, but we say we fear change, because we don't know how to say how much we have internalized rules that rule and well, scare us. So, part of my fear in being part of an organization is the unspoken rules, that wonky part of the cultre that we all feel, but don't know how to put our finger on, and so this, this at time scares me, intimidates me. And so when I first posted this post, I got scared, and I took it down. But then, someone I work with came up to me and said, "Hey I loved your contraband cake post." And I was taken aback, wow, within that maybe short hour that I left it up, someone had seen and read it. And when I told her I had taken it down, she seemed surprised at my fear, or perhaps reticence, to leave it up. Yet when I talked with someone else about it, he confirmed the cultural contraints that made me take it down. So, I was stuck, I want to be brave, I want to be vulnerable and I want to live and work in such a way that we can all have the hard conversations, where some things might not be exactly appropriate, but where most things aren't taboo. Where I'm not dictated to by the rules of dominance and hierarchy, but of love and listening and curiosity. So, here, I cast aside my fear and repost, Contraband Cake:

Where I work (my day job), word came down recently that there were to be no more celebratory cakes paid for with organizational funds. I wouldn’t say this was a crack down, in that rampant cake eating parties were happening daily, weekly, or even monthly, but it had become custom to say goodbye to those moving on to either more expansive opportunities, or say the chance to rest (retirement); with a gathering of colleagues around cake and coffee. A far cry from the going away gift I’d gotten at another University job (a leather briefcase), but at least it was a send off, a chance to say thank you and goodbye, and well, eat cake. 

So, recently when a couple of people retired, there was cake, however, it was jokingly referred to as contraband cake. And as I got to thinking about it, I’ve wondered, really, if this is the place for me anymore, where the most wildly creative, and rule-breaking thing we could do is eat cake? This is an organization that sells knowledge and leadership skills, and doesn’t recognize human capital, and the importance of ritual and celebration. An organization that is cutting back on cake. What gives? There are many many little signs in our lives that signal when it is time to move on, strangely, mine is cake. I wonder, is it possible for a cake without anything un-cake like, baked into it, an inexpensive grocery store cake, for Pete’s sake; to be contraband, really? When I leave, I will still most likely be deeply in debt, I will not have taken in millions like this organization, but I will buy my own cake, and it will be sweet. 

Moving Back from Mommy to Me

This morning as I meditated, my adult daughter popped her head in to ask a question, realized I was meditating and popped out. Her response, “oh” to my non-response. In my meditative state, I was still a bit torn, torn between her and me; my mama instinct to drop all for my own child. But she is grown now, all my children are grown, and I have no spouse to “return” to, no plans to make for our retirement years, so where do I go now? Back to me; and once again, I’m on the move, as I’ve noted before, change doesn’t just happen seasonally, or every year, or even in linear, measurable chunks, change is continuous, fluid, and it requires a sort of dance with ourselves, with others, with time itself. 

So how do I remain connected to that mama life source energy, how do I parent adult children? I’ve strayed from the typical developmental timeline for both myself and my children, sharing power instead of yielding it, encouraging curiosity instead of dogmatic compliance in my children and it is paying off in spades. I have read the literature, poked it full of holes and thrown away the manifesto of left brain dominance. How I ask now, do I live whole in a half brain dominated world? How do I move fluidly into a future which is full of possibility that I can only partly imagine? How do I allow my integrated hemispheres to burst forth a fertile and imagined future? Part of this imagining is having to take place also, outside of gender constructs, for if I look to the past of what women could have or are accomplishing, much of it is with denouncing their right hemisphere for the traditionally masculine left, which only leaves them once again with half a brain, half their power, disconnected from their whole, and especially their right, innate mama wisdom. 

I have focused so much of my energies on parenting, on preparing, on providing and even on cleaning up that this shift is happening slowly. Some of the shift that I’ve already created was to educate myself, to fill my head in some ways and to empty my head in others. This in-out, process, sort-through information has had the effect of a physical work out; my brain, I believe is a mean, lean, understanding machine. Now I need to get back to work on my body. The sun is out, the treacherous ice is melting and I need to walk, I need to shake out the fear, I need to connect my feet to solid ground, while I walk, getting out of my own way. Finding my future in myself, still mom, still me, still yet to be.